Chapter Twenty-Nine
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It didn’t take long before rumors spread like scabies on Juju Bean, mostly among all the moms who wanted an invite.
If somebody showed up unannounced and the condo was at capacity, security would call Bianca and she’d put them on a wait list. A lot of Juju Bean moms were tired of being stuck outside the velvet rope.
They got bitter. There were rumors that we’d turned the condos into an OnlyFans content farm.
That we were Scientologists. That we had lesbian orgies.
That Daisy had been the actual leader of that sex cult NXIVM in Albany that was really into volleyball and branded girls.
That we offered scam fertility rituals for desperate women whose latest round of IVF failed.
That we fed our babies Easy Cheese and high-fructose corn syrup.
I was dropping Holden off when a twenty-something girl—she looked too young to be a Juju Bean mom, too eager to be on the condo’s staff—stopped me. “Hi. Sorry to bother you. I work at The New York Times—”
“I already subscribe. I’m kinda late.” I signal to Holden, working mom and all.
“He’s adorable,” she says, hardly looking at Holden, who is, in fact, freakin’ adorable, chewing on his hand in jeans, flannel button-down, and corduroy jacket.
“I’m a reporter. For the Style section. My editor sent me.
She heard there’s a really cool women’s club upstairs?
With a day care?” She hands me a business card.
Molly Gibson, Features Writer, The New York Times. “Do you have a sec—”
“Sorry, I really don’t.” I wasn’t about to give Molly, with the blowout and buffed nails and poise no twenty-something should have, the scoop.
I already saw it unfolding in my head. This girl, who had the luxury of a thousand unpaid internships.
Who never had to drop her résumé off at a temping agency for “creatives.” She’d publish the story, then option it into a six-episode limited docuseries on Hulu.
She’d be accepting an Emmy, and we’d all be back in the Stuy Town playroom.
I look at her card. “But I’ll let you know if I hear anything. ”
As I walk away, Molly calls out, “If she’s trapping you here against your will, I can help.
” I don’t flinch. Not outwardly. But I feel myself stop for maybe half a breath.
Ridiculous. Offensive, even. She doesn’t know anything.
Daisy saved us. And yet, I still feel something land low and cold under my skin, up my spine.
A question I didn’t expect anyone to ask.
I keep walking. Through the revolving doors, nodding at a familiar security guard—part businessman, part high-end nightclub bouncer.
He buzzes the elevator open. I walk faster.
By all means, Molly Gibson, presumably of an elite private school with a definite article in front of it (The Dalton School) and the Yale Daily News, follow me. That will be fun.
I walk past the open elevator doors, holding my breath, Molly’s words trailing behind me, like static. She doesn’t know Daisy. She’s got her all wrong. I just…keep telling myself that.
—
The rumors—and the updated, ironclad NDAs that Olivia helped us mock up—make the Juju Bean moms more enthralled than ever to be there.
It felt taboo, dangerous, sashimi in your first trimester.
Daisy did her part to squelch the rumors, without ever really explaining why the whole thing was such a secret.
I find her in the kitchen, standing at the end of the marble island, sprinkling her stardust on a small crowd of moms eating up her every word and macrobiotic miso cod bowls.
“Whatever you’ve heard about us, it’s wrong.
Whatever you’ve heard about me, it’s not true,” Daisy says.
“This isn’t about sex or religion. There’s no ideology or dogma here.
It’s just a simple movement, a movement rooted in life, playful, joyful life, so all of you can discover your own individual path.
” As for the high-fructose rumors? Daisy signals to Bianca to hand out twenty-two-dollar bottles of lemonade infused with charcoal, designed to improve digestion and gently cleanse your system of impurities.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Does this look like a fucking Capri-Sun?” Daisy says. The mom next to me smiles, covering her lips, freshly plumped at the new injectables station.
From there, Daisy moves to the living room and sits on the rug with several women around a white onyx coffee table as if it’s a campfire.
“This is about having a reason to get up every day that doesn’t involve caring for someone else,” Daisy says. “It’s about you, so that you can be better for them.”
By “them,” Daisy means our babies, but also our partners, our bosses, our aging parents, our pets, the health and happiness of our entire family unit—hell, society writ large—resting on us having a proverbial padded room for ourselves.
The moms are congregants in a megachurch. We’ve found Jesus…and Juvéderm.
—
I go downstairs to check on Holden. When Miss Iowa turns to give me some of his things, I see it. Quinn’s cubby. Cleaned out except for a cotton-candy ruffled cardigan dangling from a hook. “Where’s Quinn?”
Miss Iowa spots the empty cubby, purses her lips. “They don’t tell us.” Another caregiver says under her breath, “Happens fast around here.” She taps the trash bin open with one foot. The “Quinn” zoo animal nameplate rests on top.
Before I can ask any more questions, a familiar combination of smells—fresh corn and doughy empanadas, gardenias and my grandmother’s pillows—snap me out of it.
I hear Holden’s happy squeal, then: “?Buenos días, corazón! ?Dormiste bien?” It’s Marcela. She’s holding Holden. He’s wide-eyed, happy.
“Marcela? What are you doing here? What about your job in Brooklyn Heights?”
“Bueno, you offered me mucho more.”
Offered her more? I hadn’t spoken to Marcela since that afternoon in the Elizabeth Street Garden weeks—months?
—ago. Maybe Daisy had? Time was a flat circle of tiny milestones.
An intentional tumble on the side. A smile not motivated by gas.
Discovering his belly button. The building’s management company, which kept a database of the city’s most qualified caregivers, must have heard about Marcela.
What a fortuitous childcare circle that here she was, teaching Holden how to conjugate the irregular verb “tener”—and she didn’t even have to take three trains to get here. Corona was a clean shot on the 7 train.
I am elated, knowing that Marcela will be caring for Holden, a sense of comfort that for all her élan and A-plus effort, I never felt with Daisy.
I hug them both and walk to the elevator.
Marcela does a baby voice and holds his hand in hers so that they are both waving. “Que tenga un buen día, Mamá.”
“Igualmente, osolito.” I watch them as the doors close. “?Besos grandes!”