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Margo had failed to anticipate how awkward Shyanne would be with the baby. When Bodhi was placed in her arms, something odd

seemed to happen to Shyanne’s elbows, as though marionette strings had pulled them too high, and even her happy smile couldn’t

disguise her mounting panic.

“This is so weird, Mom,” Margo said, because it was weird, it was markedly weird.

“Well, it’s been a while since I held a baby, so excuse me!” Shyanne said.

It was true that Bodhi did seem to cry whenever Shyanne held him. Margo was convinced it was because Shyanne couldn’t relax,

that he was picking up on her vibes.

“Or it’s your perfume, Mom, it might be too strong for his little nose.”

“I don’t understand why you’re nursing him. Why not give him a bottle?”

Several times Shyanne asked this question, and each time Margo explained that giving a baby a bottle too early could cause

“nipple confusion” and mess up their nursing.

“Did you breastfeed me at all?” Margo asked, finally piecing it together.

“I mean, I tried!” Shyanne said.

Margo hesitated, unsure whether to ask if Shyanne’s implants had made breastfeeding impossible.

“I got a bad infection,” Shyanne said, gesturing at her whole chest.

“Mastitis?”

“Whatever you call it,” Shyanne said.

“Was Jinx around a lot when I was a baby?” she asked during another visit after a completely botched attempt to let Shyanne

feed Bodhi breast milk with a bottle. Bodhi was screeching and Shyanne was shaking with panic as she tried to force the bottle

into his mouth.

“No, that was the problem!” Shyanne said. “He was supposed to come and then he didn’t. He had just gotten injured in Japan!”

“Oh my God—how old was I when he hurt his back?”

“Three weeks old.”

“Jesus Christ. Was your mom here to help you?”

“No! Are you kidding? Mama was terrified of flying, she didn’t like me having a baby out of wedlock, there was no way she

was driving from Oklahoma to help me out of a stupid mess of my own damn making.”

“When did he finally come?” Margo asked. She’d always known that her dad had gotten injured “when she was a baby,” but it

had never occurred to her exactly what that must have meant for her mom.

“Well, he had that first surgery in Japan because he couldn’t fly, and then he did rehab there for two months. When he came

stateside, he had to spend time with Cheri and them, so I don’t remember exactly, but I think you were about nine months when

he saw you for the first time.”

“Did you almost kill him?”

“I mean, I would have killed him if I didn’t need him to give me money so bad!” Shyanne laughed, though it was not a happy

sound.

“He must have been strapped. I mean, he basically lost his job, right?”

“Yep,” Shyanne said. “It was not a happy time for anybody. Gives me the butt tingles even talking about it.”

“I’m so sorry, Mom,” Margo said, and she meant it. Before she’d had Bodhi, she’d known her mother loved her, but she hadn’t

understood how expensive that love was, how much a mother paid for it.

Margo worked her first shift since the birth when Bodhi was about six weeks old. Shyanne watched him and after that said she’d

never watch him again. “I get flashbacks,” she said. “He doesn’t like me, Margo. It’s not right for a baby to be crying and

crying like that for hours.” Margo nodded. She didn’t want Bodhi crying for hours either.

The next shift, Margo hired a sitter who was actually her mother’s neighbor, a woman with a lawn statue of a frog Elvis, who said he wouldn’t take a bottle for anything, and he’d basically cried the whole seven hours. The next shift, she hired a sitter off Care.com named Theresa, who was twenty-four and studying for a degree in child psychology and had been a nanny to twin baby girls. When Margo got home, Theresa practically rushed out of the apartment saying everything had been great and Bodhi was an angel. Bodhi was in a state, though he settled down after Margo nursed him, and she reassured herself that everything was okay. Later, Margo looked in the freezer, hunting for ice cream, and saw that the six bags of milk she’d left were still there, completely untouched. It was almost like Theresa hadn’t even tried to feed Bodhi. Her roommates said the crying was nonstop and that Margo was not allowed to have babysitters watch Bodhi in the apartment anymore.

Margo had one more shift before the weekend—well, her weekend, a Tuesday and Wednesday—and so she called her mom. “You have

to,” she said. “This is the moment you show up for me.”

“Noodle, I cannot do it,” Shyanne said. “When he cries, I panic! I’m telling you, that baby does not like me.”

“He’s a baby, he doesn’t like or not like you. I’m asking. I’m asking you this,” Margo said.

“Noodle,” Shyanne said.

“I will pay you,” Margo said.

Her mother paused. “Goddamn it, what time?”

But she called Margo at the restaurant halfway through her shift, saying she could not watch him one minute longer, and if

Margo wouldn’t come get him, Shyanne would drive there and leave him with the bartender. Tessa, the owner, had been extremely

pissed when she handed Margo the phone, saying, “A phone call for you, madame.” In general, getting personal calls at work

was highly taboo. Tessa’s eyeliner was smudged beneath her eyes, adding to the impression she made of a refined and beautiful

bulldog.

“Do you want me to bring him there?” Margo’s mom was asking, her voice tiny inside the bulky block of the cordless phone.

Margo didn’t know which would make Tessa angrier: her leaving in the middle of a shift or a baby appearing at the bar. She opened her mouth and no sound emerged.

“What’s happening?” Tessa asked, softened by whatever she could see on Margo’s face. “Is it the baby?”

“No,” Margo said to Tessa. “I mean, yes, he’s okay. My mom is saying she can’t watch him because he keeps crying and can she

bring him here?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Tessa said, grabbing the phone from Margo and saying to Shyanne: “You should be ashamed of yourself.

Bring him here, I’ll watch him myself.”

That night Tessa let Margo nurse Bodhi in the back office, which sent him directly to sleep. He slept on Tessa’s massive bosom

for the rest of the shift, making Tessa feel like quite the baby whisperer. All the drunk regulars came over to admire him,

and Tessa held forth about how the secret to babies was whatever whatever, always ending with giving the baby some whiskey

on the corner of a washcloth to suck on, though this was not how she’d gotten Bodhi to sleep at all.

In a way, it seemed like a ’90s sitcom, and Margo imagined that maybe Tessa would become the nanny and run the restaurant

with Bodhi strapped to her chest. He’d be a kind of mascot. Nothing cheered up aging alcoholics like a baby! At the end of

the shift, Margo closed out and tipped everyone. She was feeling good; she’d made more money than usual and worked the last

half of the shift light at heart knowing Bodhi was safe. As she peeled his sleeping body from Tessa’s chest, Tessa said, “You’ve

got to get something figured out.”

“I know,” Margo said.

“If you can’t get a regular sitter in place by your next shift, you’re fired.”

“Oh,” Margo said.

“I know it seems harsh. But, sweetie, you shouldn’t be here. You should be home with this baby.”

“Yeah,” Margo said, suddenly so angry it felt like electricity was gathering in her eye sockets. “But I have to, you know,

live. And pay rent.”

“Move in with your mother. Jesus!” Tessa was rubbing her eyes with her knuckles. The bartender, Jose, who had worked there for a hundred million years and still somehow looked only twenty-three, took in their exchange and poured Tessa another whiskey soda.

“I can’t move in with my mother,” Margo said.

“Why the fuck not? What, you don’t get along? Those things don’t matter, Margo, you have a fucking baby!”

Margo stood there, angry and trying not to cry, too stubborn to speak.

“I’m not going to actually fire you,” Tessa said with a sigh. “I mean, I will, but I’ll hate it so much, please don’t make

me.”

Margo nodded. She couldn’t look at Tessa. She couldn’t look at anybody. She moved her head around so the dark kaleidoscope

of the restaurant swirled around her. All the drunk people laughing. Her baby in her arms. “Have a good night!” she said.

“Margo,” Tessa said. “Don’t be upset!”

Margo kept walking, out the front door, down the street, to her beat-up purple Civic. God, how she had loved that car when

she first got it, her junior year. It was used and already had eighty thousand miles on it, but it had a sunroof and a radio

and that was all that mattered. Jinx had surprised her with it. She and Becca would go driving, spying on houses of boys they

liked.

Bodhi woke the moment she placed him in his car seat and cried the whole way home.

Margo had two days off before her next shift and no penetrating new insights into the childcare conundrum. Nannies and babysitters

were around $800 a week, whereas day care was only $300, but day care was, as the name suggested, very diurnal, just obsessed

with daylight. If she had a respectable job being a secretary or something, she’d have an easier time finding childcare. But

she was a night worker, which somehow denied her the right to affordable childcare. It made no sense! A night care would be

even easier to run—all the babies would be sleeping!

How was she supposed to make a living? She was willing to work hard, she was willing to never sleep, to wear an ugly uniform, to be mildly degraded day in and day out. She was willing to do whatever was required. But she needed to believe it was possible .

Part of the problem was that at twenty dollars an hour, paying for someone to watch Bodhi at night would cut her income by

more than half. She considered switching to lunch shifts, but when she called the local day care, it was full. Would she like

to get on the wait list? How long was the wait list? Oh, well, not that long, most people were only on it for three to six

months.

“Are you serious?” Margo asked. “You would have to get on the wait list before even having the baby!”

“That’s exactly what people do,” the woman said.

“Oh.”

To calm down, Margo watched YouTube videos of oddly satisfying things, like cheesecake being cut perfectly or suitcases being

wrapped in plastic, and nursed Bodhi. When that grew boring, she scrolled Twitter, which was like being bathed in the dirty

water of other people’s thoughts. On Instagram she was in a deep, deep ad loop. The algorithm had really figured her out and

was constantly selling her a mixture of vitamins, ritzy baby items, and leggings that made your butt look good. It was high-octane

covetousness. She couldn’t afford anything. Still, she took screenshots of the things she wanted most.

There was a part of Margo that simply didn’t believe Tessa would fire her. Two days to figure out such a massive, intractable

problem wasn’t realistic. Margo needed only a little more time to get her act together. Maybe Tessa would help her figure

out childcare ideas.

The night before her next shift, she texted Tessa: I couldn’t find a sitter.

Tessa texted: ur fucking kidding me.

Margo: I just need more time, it’s hard to line anything up this quickly.

Tessa: You had nine months to line something up. I’m sorry, Margo.

Margo: Wait, are you going to fire me?

Tessa: Yes

Margo: I’m fired?

Tessa: Yes

Margo: Wait, for real??

Tessa didn’t write anything more. It was over. Almost two years Margo had worked there.

Margo ran her fingers through her hair over and over, not really seeing anything out of her eyes.

She’d thought, somehow, that keeping the baby would make people regard her with more kindness. But women frowned at her and

Bodhi in the grocery store. The eyes of men skittered over her like she was invisible. She seemed to walk everywhere in a

cloud of shame. She was a stupid slut for having a baby, and if she’d had an abortion, she also would have been a stupid slut.

It was a game you could not win. They had tried to warn her: her mother, Mark, even Becca. But when they talked about the

opportunities she would be missing, she’d thought they meant a four-year college. She hadn’t understood they meant that every

single person she met, every new friend, every love interest, every employer, every landlord, would judge her for having made

what they all claimed was the “right” choice.

To calm herself, she ate two bowls of Crunch Berries until she could feel the sugar and food dye moving in her bloodstream

like magic. She realized that underneath her panic, a secret part of her was a little thrilled to be fired. To no longer grind

black pepper. To no longer get ranch dressing on her hand and wind up rubbing it in like lotion. She smiled, thinking that

she’d never have to see the head chef, Sean, again, who had once tricked her into looking at his dick by putting it on a plate

with some parsley around it.

She put her empty bowl in the sink and crept back into her bedroom to her sleeping baby.

Tomorrow she would file for unemployment. She would figure it out. Because it was impossible that there was no solution. People

had babies all the time and somehow managed it. She only needed to try a little harder.

The next morning, when she was still asleep, there was a knock on her bedroom door.

It was Kat the Larger and Kat the Smaller.

“We wanted to let you know we found our own place,” Kat the Larger said.

“Bodhi is sleeping,” Margo whispered, gesturing with her hand to bring the volume down. Kat the Larger had a big, wonderfully

loud voice. It was one of the things Margo had initially liked about her.

“Oh, sorry,” Kat the Larger whispered, still somehow mysteriously loud. “We found a new place. So we’ll be moving out in a

week or so. Just wanted to give you a heads-up so you could find new roomies.”

It took Margo a couple of seconds to understand what Kat was saying. Margo and Suzie were the only ones technically on the

lease. They had sublet two of the bedrooms to the Kats, but nothing was in writing.

“No thirty-day notice? I mean, are you kidding me right now?” Margo’s whisper was getting shrill.

“Well, we already paid rent for the month, so you have, like, twenty-five days or something,” Kat the Smaller said.

Margo didn’t know what to say. The intense sensation of unfairness also made the situation feel like it couldn’t really be

happening. Shouldn’t there be someone in charge of how many bad things could happen at once?

“We’re gonna get a guinea pig!” Kat the Smaller whispered, clasping her little hands under her chin with excitement.

“That’s neat,” Margo whispered back. “Really would have been nice if you’d given more notice.”

“Well, we didn’t know,” Kat the Smaller said. “I’m sorry!”

“Good luck with the baby and all that,” Kat the Larger said, raising her eyebrows to indicate how badly Margo would be needing

that luck, and it made her beanie lift slightly. It was too small for her head, the beanie, and now that it had been dislodged

from its stable position, it was incrementally peeling off Kat’s head. Margo just stood there watching it happen, and Kat

the Larger had to have felt it happening, but she did not pull the beanie down.

“We’ll invite you to the housewarming party!” Kat the Smaller said.

“Okay!” Margo said, and closed her door. Then she went over to her bed and lay facedown next to the sleeping Bodhi. She did not cry. She just pressed her face into the comforter, really smooshed it down. Rent was $3,995, which they had split four ways, so they’d now be about $2,000 short a month. She did not truly believe that Suzie would split the missing rent with her, not because Suzie wasn’t nice, but because Suzie worked at the dean’s office at school as a work study for, like, eleven dollars an hour and spent all her money on elf ears and wizard cloaks and stuff. Suzie’s mom was even more hard up than Shyanne. Suzie had once sold plasma so she could buy contact lenses that made her look like a cat.

“Fuuuuuuuuck,” Margo said into her duvet. She wondered when she would need to stop swearing around the baby. Surely not for

a while yet.

Filing for unemployment took Margo the better part of two days. She had to get her birth certificate and Social Security card

from Shyanne, but at the end of it, she was officially on welfare. When she got to that last screen, her heart stopped. Congratulations!

The state would give her $1,236 a month. Digital confetti rained down on the screen.

Margo stared at it. How did anyone think someone in California could live on that amount? She would have $200 after rent,

and that was assuming she found new roommates immediately.

She picked up her phone, set it down, then immediately picked it back up and called Jinx. It rang and rang. She normally would

never have left a voicemail about something like this. His other kids and wife knew about her, but they didn’t like Jinx talking

to her, and she knew his wife, Cheri, was constantly snooping on his phone. She didn’t have it in her to wait, though, and

she figured he was probably in Japan, a Cheri-free zone.

“Dad, this is Margo. I’m in a really bad spot. I got fired from my job, and my roommates are suddenly ditching out, and I’m on the hook for three grand a month in rent. I filed for unemployment, but they’ll only give me twelve hundred a month. I need help. Like, it kills me to say that, because I did this to myself, and everyone told me. But I’m scared. So if you could please call me back as soon as possible, I would—I’m just freaked out. So, yeah. Okay. Sorry this wasn’t more cheerful. Love you.”

She felt sure he would call her back. She had never asked him for anything before this. She’d never asked for him to come

to her graduation, she’d never asked for an iPhone, she had not even asked or expected that he come out for Bodhi’s birth.

She’d been saving a whole life’s worth of chips, and now she was trying to cash them in. And she knew that he loved her. She

knew he would call.

Later that week, as I was eating a microwave pizza amid the towers of the two Kats’ moving boxes, which for some reason they’d

decided belonged in the dining alcove, I scalded nearly all the skin off the roof of my mouth. As I was peeling off the white

flap of numb skin, my mom called.

“Kenny wants to meet you.”

It took me a second to respond. “I’ve already met Kenny.”

“In passing!” she cried.

“All right! So?”

“He wants to take you out to dinner and really get to know you.”

That sounded creepy. “Would you be there?”

“Yes, I think so. I mean, I didn’t ask. Gosh, I wonder!”

“Is this a formal interview process?”

I thought I heard Bodhi in the other room, pulled the phone from my ear, and listened to the air, but there was nothing. I

took another bite of pizza. My mom was still talking when I put the phone to my ear again.

“... which, I’m not counting my chickens before they hatch—I’ve done that before!—but I do think this means it is getting

serious, I really do believe that.”

“If he asked you to marry him, would you say yes?” It was hard to imagine that she would. Kenny was so old and kind of rigid, needed things to be just so. He had that tight potbelly some skinny men grew as they aged. He had been a high school math teacher and retired early to work for his church. With her Bloomingdale’s discount, my mom had been mainlining beauty serums and anti-wrinkle creams for years and she didn’t look much over thirty, so even though Kenny was only six years older, there was still a May-December vibe.

“You bet your ass I would,” she said. “That man is everything I’m not. He’s stingy and cheap and he plans things.”

I laughed. It was amazing how depressed you could get and still find things funny. In fact, things seemed even funnier.

“Margo, that is safety. That is securing the future. Hey, have you been looking for a job?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. I absolutely had not.

“You got any interviews?”

“Yeah, like a seafood place on Wednesday.” I had no idea what part of my brain generated this lie. I didn’t even know what

day of the week it was and how many days away Wednesday would be.

“Seafood is perfect. I bet you’ll make great tips,” she said.

I held my breath, wondering if she was going to ask who would watch the baby and wondering if I would lie about that too,

but she didn’t.

“So you’re marrying Kenny for his fat 401(k)?” It was fun to tease my mother. She always took the bait.

“I would never!” she said. “I would marry him even if he didn’t have a cent.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“I would!” she insisted. “Because Kenny is the kind of man who could lose it all and build it back up again.”

“You think that man is going to let you spend four hundred dollars on face cream?”

“He doesn’t have to know about the face cream.”

“He’s going to know about it if you marry him and get a joint checking and all that. I can’t imagine you giving up that much

control.”

“I have my ways,” she said. I knew she meant poker money. Or Jinx money.

“Do you love him?” I asked.

“I do.”

I assumed she was bluffing, though I wasn’t sure.

She doubled down: “I admire him. I admire the way he is because it’s different than the way I am.”

“Okay,” I said, softening. I understood the bluff was also for herself. The fact was, my mother’s life was untenable and she

knew it. She’d held out for a long time, too long, hoping Jinx would leave his wife and marry her, and that hadn’t happened,

and she wasn’t getting any younger. My mom loved bad boys, she loved hunks with big muscles and motorcycles. Choosing Kenny,

who went so against her type, was a last-ditch attempt to save herself from herself, and there was a kind of wisdom in that.

If you didn’t want the same result over and over, you had to do something different.

“I don’t suppose you could spot me some money for rent while I look for a job?” I asked. “The Kats moved out, so we have to

come up with the missing two grand.”

“Are you asking me for two thousand dollars?”

“I mean, kind of?”

“I don’t have two thousand dollars, Noodle.”

“I figured,” I said.

“Ask Mark. He’s the one who should be giving you two grand.”

“Yeah,” I said, completely numb.

“So when are you free? You’ll have to get a sitter.”

“To have dinner with Kenny?”

“Yes.”

“Why wouldn’t I bring the baby?”

“I haven’t told him about the baby.”

“Okay, I am not pretending I don’t have a baby, Mom.” I knew well enough to head these things off now. When Grandma had finally

died, Shyanne reused her death again and again to get out of things.

“I knew you were going to be this way.”

“Yes, because this is psychotic.”

“It is not his business whether you have a baby or not, Margo.”

“I’ll go to dinner with Kenny as soon as you tell him that I have a baby,” I said.

“Fuck!” she said, and hung up on me.