SIX KIDS? AND YOU WORK? HOW DO YOU DO IT?
“Well, our oldest is away at college, so there are only five left at home” is how I usually deflect the astonishment from people I meet on the street. “And we have help.”
“Oh, you have help.”
This is where the problem lies. Perhaps people assume that if I have help, then I must be rich, and hating rich people has become the latest American pastime, so they must hate me. Or perhaps because my life was made very public for a short time, during which I was nicknamed “Bad Mommy,” they think that this gives them the right to judge my choices.
In any case, people love to beat me up over the fact that I have help. Being raised with nannies doesn’t seem to have adversely affected my kids at all. In fact, all their therapists say they are very well adjusted.
In an otherwise innocuous interview for Parents.com, during which I spoke about how I juggle work and family, I mentioned the girls who help me with my children. In the South, where I come from, “girl” is a term of endearment. I call all women “girl,” regardless of age, race, or sometimes gender. This tidbit was buried in a five-screen click-through about style and girdles and whatnot, but for some reason Jezebel.com, a women’s website that is part of the Gawker group, linked to the article with a squib about how disrespectful it was of me to refer to professional child-care workers as girls. I’d been targeted by this particular website before, so I wasn’t taken aback by the hostility. What did surprise me was how many of Jezebel’s readers are stay-at-home moms, who actually have the time to read, post, and then have lengthy conversations among themselves about how bad I suck as a mom. Who’s watching their kids? The hatred spewed from keyboards all across America.
SuperSally: If you can’t take care of your kids without almost round the clock help from multiple individuals then WTF? Either you had too many damn kids and didn’t bother to think about it as you were popping them out or you are incompetent.
Experiencing the pain of childbirth does not make me love my children more; that’s why God invented epidurals. Changing every diaper, cooking every meal, and doing every pickup and drop-off will not make me love them more, either. Choosing not to do so hardly makes me incompetent.
And then there was this type:
Pureblarney: I cry inside every time I wait for the subway next to a child and his nanny. I will be raising my kids, thankyouverymuch, even if I have to pull teeth to keep any semblance of a career in tow.
Awww. You’ve got to love an idealist willing to perform unlicensed dental procedures for the sake of being with her kids. But would she rather see a totally stressed-out mom pushed to the brink of frustration? A dicey thing if said mom is standing on the edge of a subway platform.
Other comments were virulent—one reader even went so far as to post a testimonial saying she had seen me calmly sit by as my children terrorized an airport terminal. She included in her story the details that my kids were tackling and baiting each other, that I occasionally slung a curse at them, and that Peter was detached and “had completely given up on his family and quite possibly life itself.” She did go on to mention in a later comment that the boys were well behaved on the plane, but she never considered that perhaps I was operating from a plan.
Best (or maybe worst) of all, she accused me of dressing the boys in various hues of Polo Ralph Lauren shirts. I ask you, why would I ever spend good money on something like that when L. L. Bean features just as many colors for half the price? Doesn’t that nice lady know what kind of shoes I could buy with the difference?
Now I am certainly no stranger to angry comments. I take full responsibility for everything I say and the wrath that comes along with it; I just didn’t expect a website that once featured a blogger called Slut Machine to go so self-righteous and judgmental on a woman because she has help. I guess I should be thankful the folks at Jezebel aren’t calling me Sextomom.
Trust me, I’m not at the spa while someone else is raising my brood. Kids in New York need planned activities; they don’t just run out to the backyard or meet up with the neighborhood gang for a game of kick the can. There are music lessons and organized sports, pediatrician and orthodontist appointments, birthday parties, and playdates. Inevitably these events take place at different ends of Manhattan at the same time. It’s a complex matrix of times and places, requiring a team effort to make it happen.
If our household is a team, Alicia is the captain.
“Don’t forget to pick up Truman after your meeting because Nicole will be with Pierson at reading. I spoke to Peik. He is coming home on his own. I’ll take Larson to speech and meet you back here at four-thirty.”
Roger that. Dependable and organized, Alicia calls the plays by telling us all where we need to be on any given day. She expertly handles as many as ten speech and language sessions a week for Larson’s learning disability; she knows all the therapists’ names and has friended them on Facebook. I can count on one hand the days of work she has missed in the thirteen years she has been with our family. I think it’s wonderful that my children love this woman, who has cared for them since they were babies. And if she felt disrespected by being referred to as “girl,” would she still be here after so many years?
Alicia is a single mother to two boys, Warren and Christian, who have grown up alongside my boys. My philosophy is that if Alicia is happy, I am happy, so I attempt to make her life as stress-free as possible. Having her boys around where she can keep an eye on them makes life easier for all of us. Of course, this puts the boy count in the house at seven on most afternoons. Scan the loft and you will see scattered about the apartment glassy-eyed boys of various sizes and colors planted and staring into screens of some version of mind-sucking technology. Until, of course, they all decide it’s time for a game of monkey in the middle. Then they pound about until the downstairs neighbor starts beating on the pipes.
Alicia is petite, well spoken, and well dressed. She never hesitates to use her knowledge of style on me, saying things like “You’re not going to leave the house in that, are you? You look like Secretarial School Barbie.” Or “Explain to me why you are wearing a tuxedo at two o’clock in the afternoon.” Thanks to an addiction to exercise and fitness magazines, she is superfit. When she arrives at eight-thirty in the morning, she has already been to Boot Camp or kickboxing or on some other blood-rushing, muscle-building endeavor. She has a passion for designer handbags and can describe in detail the latest It bag. Once, when I was pitching a fashion game show to a network and needed a display of designer loot to demonstrate the game, I turned to Alicia to borrow what I needed.
“That Chloé bag is gorgeous,” said a network executive.
“I know, don’t you love it? I borrowed it from my nanny.”
“Your nanny? I want to be your nanny.”
“Oh, no you don’t.”
DESPITE HER QUIET DEPENDABILITY, ONE LOOK AT HER FACEBOOK profile photo gives you a clue that Alicia has a wild side. Wearing a wig and a fitted hot-pink dress, photographed from behind showing off her well-toned rear: this is the Alicia I see only occasionally.
“Is that Alicia?” a father asked me at a school Halloween party.
“Catwoman? Yeah, that’s her.” I smiled.
“That’s my sexy nanny!” Pierson added, proud to be there with the masked girl in the tight leather pants carrying a whip. Costume parties always bring out Alicia’s wild side. She tends to look like one of the girls on the Leg Avenue packages at Ricky’s. The sexy cigarette girl. The glamour gladiator. The dark angel. Every costume features Alicia’s hard-earned abs.
She doesn’t get mad often, but when she does she is capable of a crippling silent treatment, which renders me defenseless. The silent treatment is the worst for me. Yell at me, hit me, just get it over with. I have tried to convince her that keeping her anger in is unhealthy, and it would better and more cleansing for her to express why she is angry, but I think she knows I am just saying that because I can’t bear her torture.
Alicia has been a part of our family as long as Peik has. And when I say “a part” I don’t mean some organ we could live without if necessary, like the spleen. Not one of my sons knows a world without her. She knows everyone’s favorite snacks and makes sure they are stocked in the pantry. She is the softy in the house: the boys go to her when they feel unloved or in need of some extra attention. To be democratic, she refers to them all as “Boyfriend.” When Peik was a baby, he pronounced Alicia “Sheesha,” which has stuck so completely that even my friends and neighbors think that is her name.
“I called the house and spoke to Sheesha yesterday,” Larson’s class mother told me, “She is so lovely. She said it would be no problem to make her banana bread for the bake sale.” They know better than to ask me.
Larson has improved upon this moniker by adding “Mom,” as in “Sheesha Mom,” and sometimes just plain “Mom.”
“You are Lawa,” he tells me, “and Sheesha is Mom.” When he calls out “Mom!” from somewhere in the house, if I respond he will sometimes say, “Not you, Mom, my other mom.”
That my children have no problem letting me know exactly on which side their mommy bread is buttered doesn’t bother me at all. I’ve known women who have fired nannies for less-obvious attachment, but my feeling is that if I’m going to entrust my children to another woman, I’m glad they love her. And she, unquestionably, after all these years, loves them right back.
WHEN I MARRIED PETER, ZOILA WAS IN THE PRE-NUP. OR AT LEAST, she would have been if there had been a pre-nup. The first time I came up to Peter’s apartment, I couldn’t help but notice that he already had a wife: there she was, putting away the laundry.
“Laura, this is Zoila,” he told me as she was pulling on her coat and I was taking mine off. “She knows where the bodies are buried.”
Nice job description, I thought.
“Nice to meet you, Miss Laura,” she said. I liked her instantly. She wears ankle socks, and a cardigan, and she changes her sneakers for Dearfoams slippers when she is in the house. The woman is standard-issue sitcom—Alice from The Brady Bunch, with a Guatemalan accent.
“Mr. Peter, I picked up your shirts and bought some new vacuum cleaner bags—and here.” She handed him a little pile of business cards, receipts, and what looked like pennies wrapped in lint. “From the laundry.”
After Zoila left, Peter explained to me that he’d been seeing her for nearly twenty years. She had outlasted every girlfriend, casual date, and broken betrothal. Some women had objected to his deep connection with Zoila, claiming that they, too, could starch a collar or take a complete message, with area code, should he not be at home to receive a call. Those women are history; Zoila remains.
“So you see,” he told me, “she’s part of the deal. If you have a problem with another woman going through my pants and maybe even keeping secrets from you, then you might as well tell me now.”
“Can she cook?” I asked. “Because I don’t.”
“No, she’s not a cook,” he said. “But I don’t really eat.”
“She can stay.”
This was a smart move on my part, as in all my years of marriage I have never had to remember a thing that involves my husband. People tell me it must be nice to have a housekeeper, but I prefer to think of her as a Peterkeeper. She doesn’t run my household, just his Elba-like piece of it.
But Zoila’s value to me is also immeasurable: she never forgets a child’s birthday (and has even had to remind me a few times), but, most important, she has never, ever told me anything about Peter that I might not want to know. I’m not saying that there’s anything to tell, but I gain peace of mind from the confidence that I wouldn’t have to bother with it if there were.
WHEN I CRAWLED HOME, PREGNANT AND EXHAUSTED, FROM THE challenge part of Project Runway, I was faced with the seemingly insurmountable task of creating a twelve-piece collection in two months all by myself. No pattern makers, no cutters, no beaders, just me. This was going to be a full-time task, and I knew that the boys would be too much for Alicia without me, so she brought in Nicole. Now I can’t imagine our house without her.
The only thing Alicia and Nicole have in common is that they are both from the Caribbean. While Alicia is petite, Nicole is six feet tall and weighs two hundred pounds, most of it pure muscle. I like to introduce her as my bodyguard.
Every week she shows up with an intricate hairstyle involving hair that is not her own. She seems to think no one knows it is a weave.
“Hey, Nicole, did you hear about the woman who was shot in the head but saved by her weave?” I tease.
“I wouldn’t know about a weave,” she replied with a gold-capped smile. I think that was her reply, anyway. I can’t understand a damn thing she says through her heavy Trinidadvia-Brooklyn accent.
Nicole also has a thing for Baby Phat clothing, and a severe case of body dysmorphic disorder. A dangerous combination because Baby Phat tends toward the hoochie side. Whereas most women who suffer from this affliction think they are three sizes larger than they are, Nicole insists on fitting her size 16 body into size 6—the result being endless repairs of burst seams on my machine. She always blames the low quality of the garments.
“Ah, Laura,” she said one day, “do you like my new jeans?”
“What?”
“Do you like my new jeans?”
“What?”
“My…jeans…they…are…new.”
“Oh. You do know they’re way too small, right? And why do they have a big metallic cat on the ass?”
“No, Laura, these jeans are so loose,” Nicole said, pointing to her backside. “I should have gotten a smaller size.”
“Nicole, look how stressed the seams are in the thighs—they’re going to burst.”
“That’s just because one of my thighs is swollen. It’s temporary.”
“Your thighs are exactly the same.” I get out my measuring tape to prove it to her. “It’s those tight jeans, cutting off your circulation.”
If Alicia is the captain of our family, then Nicole is the enforcer. At six o’clock, she lines up all the boys and makes them eat. At seven o’clock, she lines them up and makes them bathe. At eight o’clock, brush teeth; nine o’clock, bedtime. While Alicia will always give you a snack—sometimes one she’s already eating—Nicole will glower and point you in the direction of the kitchen, where she has prepared six different dishes, some of which resemble cat food and all of which are so inedible that the kids cry, begging for cereal. We always hope that Alicia has found some time during the day to cook.
The enforcer is very protective.
“When I was leaving school today, one of the mothers asked me who picks the boys’ clothes,” Nicole recounted. It is true that besides Pierson, my other boys always look like they just stepped out of a Salvation Army dollar bin.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“I just kept walking so I wouldn’t have to answer with my fist.”
While Nicole rules the kids with an iron fist and a gold grille, her personal life is a circus. Her phone rings constantly with calls from family members in crisis. There are always lawsuits and court dates, shootings and evictions, deaths and financial crises. Her entire family went to visit her brother in prison and she came back with a group photo to show the kids.
“This is my brother,” she said, pointing to a large man in the center.
“Why is he wearing an orange jumpsuit?” Larson asks, never one to miss a costume.
“That’s what they make you wear in prison.” She continued: “This is my mother and my sister. And this is my brother’s son, Jayden.”
“Your whole family is in jail? Even the kids?”
THANKS TO MY GIRLS, MY HUSBAND, AND MY OWN CONSIDERABLE contributions, our schedule runs like a many-geared, well-oiled machine. During the week, Peter gets the boys up and fixes them breakfast while I get them dressed. Then he takes the three oldest off to school and either heads to work or comes back home. Larson and Finn hang with me until Alicia arrives. She fixes Larson’s lunch and takes him to school, and I watch Finn while I get dressed. When she gets back, I get to work, whatever that may entail for the day. Alicia will place grocery orders and unpack the boxes, and (we hope) cook, to spare us from Nicole’s cooking. If the weather is nice, she will take Finn to the park. When school ends, everyone begins to pinball around the city. Nicole starts work at three o’clock. She goes straight to school and picks up Truman and Pierson on Mondays and drops off Truman at his reading tutor while she and Pierson shop. These shopping excursions may include a stop at the man on Fourteenth Street who fits you for a grille: Pierson is waiting for his second front tooth to come in to get his. On Wednesdays and Fridays, Nicole picks up Pierson early to take him to his reading tutor and I pick up Truman. I usually forget and arrive late at school to find Truman in the lobby, greeting me with some comment like “What the fuck just happened here?” Zoila comes to clean for a few hours on Mondays and Wednesdays. Meanwhile, Alicia takes Finn to pick up Larson, and either brings him home for an in-house speech session with Craig or takes him to his other speech therapist, Amy. Peik usually has to be tracked down on Mondays and Wednesdays to get him home on time for Sabina, his homework helper. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Nicole brings Truman and Pierson to me, I take them to fencing, and Nicole watches Finn so Alicia can go home. When we get back, Nicole watches Finn and Larson and reads with Pierson, while I help Peik and Truman with their homework. When Peter gets home, he helps them with the math that I can’t do. Nicole puts the three smallest ones to bed, then goes home. This leaves Peter and me to get the big boys to bed on time so we can catch a few hours of sleep before musical beds begins.
The fact that all these children have all these places to be is actually the easy part. Getting there is the hard part. There is no SUV parked in the driveway ten feet from the kitchen door. These children are not conveniently delivered door to door in the safety of their car seats. We perform a balancing act involving taxis, buses, subways, strollers, and Snuglis.
Taxis can be difficult to get, especially if the weather is bad, and as the meter ticks up, your bank account ticks down. Buses tend to have older passengers with little patience for a crying child. Nicole once got into an argument with a patron complaining about Larson that ended in the bus driver pulling over and the man fleeing. Subways present an array of problems. While they are undoubtedly the fastest way to get around Manhattan, they are not handicap friendly, and traveling with a child in a stroller is basically the same as wheeling around an invalid.
Alicia was once in a subway station on her way to pick up Cleo from school; she had four-year-old Peik in a stroller. When they got to the turnstile, she asked Peik to get out of the stroller so she could maneuver it through. He did as he was asked and went through the turnstile just as the next train was pulling up to the platform. The doors opened and he stepped in. The doors closed and the train pulled away. Unfortunately, Alicia watched the entire scene from the turnstile, where she was wedged in by the menacing Maclaren.
Resourcefully, she picked up the nearby emergency phone and had a calm conversation with a dispatcher. The transit people told her to wait at that station; the police would apprehend the little escapee at the next station and bring him back to her. Within a few minutes, Alicia had Peik back, safe and sound. She wasn’t even late to pick up Cleo.
When she returned home, she burst into tears in a delayed panic attack and fearfully recounted the story. She was sure she would be fired.
“What will Peter say?” she blurted between sobs.
“Peter will say he had no idea there were emergency phones in the subway. Peter will say he was glad it happened with you and not me, because you handled it so well. Peter will say you deserve a bonus.”
WE MAY HAVE PLENTY OF HELP DURING THE WEEK, BUT UNTIL RECENTLY Peter and I were full-time parents on the weekends. As much as I hated being stuck in the kitchen preparing three seven-person meals a day, I have to admit that Peter had the more difficult task. The amount of activity required to keep the boys occupied when they don’t have school is immense.
“I need a youth replacement,” Peter said, exhausted on the sofa one Sunday evening after a marathon of boy activities. “I’m old; I can’t do this every weekend.” He was right. Hide-and-seek, bike riding, swimming, skiing, catch—the man needed some downtime. He worked hard all week and worked even harder on the weekends.
Blake first introduced himself to me in the lobby of my big kids’ school. He had no idea we were looking for a manny.
“Hi, Laura, I’m Blake. I just wanted to tell you what a big fan I am of your work.” I’m never surprised by the variety of people who watch Project Runway. I meet a lot of men who watch it with their daughters or wives, so a man in his thirties didn’t set off any alarms.
“Thanks, Blake. What are you doing here?” I wasn’t sure whether he was a young father or a teacher.
“I’ve worked with a family for many years whose boys go here. They’re grown now, and don’t really need me anymore, but I try to get by at least once a week and spend some time with them.”
“What do you do now?” I asked, suddenly registering the possibility that all my weekend dreams might be about to come true.
“I’m a professional dancer and I teach dance at a school uptown.”
I liked how strong Blake looked, and how calm, and he obviously had quite a bit of experience taking care of boys. I could easily see him keeping my pack well entertained. He got the job without even knowing he was being interviewed. We had found our manny.
“Oh, and I’m gay,” he said, as we shook hands on the deal.
“Perfect,” I replied. “So’s my husband.”
Blake is just as likely to teach the boys how to build a tree-house as how to sing an aria or how to execute a perfect pirouette—a versatility that has earned him the handle Butch Ballerina. He will drive the boys off to Rye Playland on a Saturday, and be right back at it on Sunday morning to set up soccer pitches and kick a damn ball up and down the field with them. He will then come inside, don an apron, and whip up a meal. Most of his recipes rely on some flavor of Campbell’s Cream of Something Soup, from the classic tuna noodle hot dish to the more exotic Broccoli Cheese chicken casserole. Whatever the dish, Blake presents it with a flourish, as though he hadn’t just opened a can of glop and poured it over a dead bird. He is undoubtedly more David than Amy Sedaris, but any meal he cooks is one less meal I have to deal with.
While for most of the weekend his butch side dominates, the ballerina side of Blake sometimes rears its precious head. He often complains about the temperature in the car and can be fussy about his clothes. Often before he leaves for the ski slope with the boys he will run back into the house from the car to change his coat.
“This coat is ugly; I can’t be seen in it,” he’ll whine.
“Really? Because at least that one didn’t make your butt look big,” I tease. Five minutes later, he’ll back for a second change of coat.
Blake’s gayness fascinates my boys. If he mentions that he thinks the new girl serving burgers at the Red Rooster is pretty, they will tell him, “You’re not really gay, you like girls.” They’re always asking him when he “turned gay” and why he “decided to be gay.” But their all-time favorite method of Blake torture is to sing a small clip from a song in the Family Guy episode where the family inherits a mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, from Lois’s rich aunt. Petah is singing “This House Is Freakin’ Sweet” which includes the line “One hundred bucks, Blake is gay.” They sing it over and over, laughing hysterically, proud that Seth McFarlane wrote it just for them. Blake always handles these incidents with patience and understanding.
Blake will do practically anything a child will do, and with the kind of enthusiasm that makes you think he’s enjoying it. He takes them to man movies I don’t want to see, builds fire pits in the woods, and makes them bows and arrows out of tree branches. He is a walking Dangerous Book for Boys.
I once came upon him with Pierson and Peik out behind the house. Truman was standing a good distance away.
“Hey, Blake,” I said, “what are you guys doing with my hairspray?”
“Building a potato launcher.”
“We’re trying to hit Truman,” Peik said, holding a length of PVC pipe and a Bic lighter. Pierson had a bowl of potatoes.
“Won’t that hurt?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” Blake said. “We’re using baked potatoes.”
“Well, carry on, girls,” I said, rolling my eyes, and went off in search of some well-paid-for peace and quiet.