Sasha had gotten her sister’s email about the shower and had promptly marked it unread to remind herself to come back to it. Sasha hated baby showers, as a rule. She hated how capitalism had turned a meaningful rite of passage into a Pinterest-board extravaganza with ridiculous games. In the email, she’d been asked to help out with one such game involving placing different candy bars into open diapers so that they resembled logs of shit. The guests would have to guess the candy bar based on sight and smell. It was the epitome of stupid, but Sasha loved Daphne, so she planned to arrive with a grocery bag of Milky Way, Snickers, Payday, 3 Musketeers, Butterfinger, Almond Joy, and Baby Ruth bars.
“The candy bar thing,” Sasha said. “Got it.”
“I know you think it’s stupid, and I don’t care,” Daphne said.
Sasha just shrugged. Her sister knew her well.
“I think Mom’s pissed that Krystal is hosting.”
Krystal was married to a coworker of Jay’s, and they lived in a nice house in Queen Anne, the type of house Daphne and Jay were saving to buy.
“I mean, Mom’s place is so small,” Sasha said.
“I feel a little bad. I’m trying to develop a better relationship with her,” Daphne said. She sat up straighter as she said this, as if making a point, as if calling attention to some superiority.
“What does that mean?” Sasha asked, already annoyed. Sasha preferred bonding with her sister over how difficult it was to connect with their mother.
“I mean, she’s going to have a grandchild. I want her to know my child,” she said.
“Well, Mom only works one job now, so I guess your kid will see her more than we ever did.”
Sasha couldn’t help but have this chip on her shoulder. She knew her mother had had to work as hard and as much as she did. There had been no other way. But that didn’t mean she was at peace with the fact that her mother had rarely been around. Even on weekends, she’d had shifts at the pharmacy. She wasn’t there to shuttle the girls to birthday parties or sporting events or playdates. If they wanted to go to something, they had to learn the bus schedule and figure it out themselves. This early independence had probably made Sasha into who she was, but she wasn’t always sure she liked who she was.
“It might be healing for you to resolve some of this stuff with her,” Daphne said gently.
Healing? Resolve?This was not how Daphne usually talked.
“God, are you going totherapy?” Sasha asked.
Jay snickered.
“You know, it’s not a bad thing to seek self-improvement,” Daphne said.
“Youaregoing to therapy?” Sasha asked.
Jay snickered more. “It’s worse than therapy,” he said.
Daphne balled up a napkin and threw it at him.
“She’s a disciple of Angelini Luna,” he said.
The name rang a bell, but Sasha didn’t know why at first.
“It’sAngeni. NotAngelini,” Daphne said. “And I’m not a disciple. I just like her content.”
“She’s on Instagram,” Jay said. “Like, all over the damn thing.”
That was why Sasha recognized the name. Inspired by her sister’s pregnancy, Sasha was planning a dissertation about how Motherhood, the institution with a capitalM, was the final frontier of feminism. She wanted to investigate how society perpetuates the belief that women are not truly women unless they reproduce, leading many to have children as an assumed matter of course, only to realize that the same society that corralled them into this role offers no support infrastructure—no paid maternity leave, no subsidized childcare, nothing. Daphne was already talking about whether or not to continue working after the baby arrived, considering that day care would eat up 90 percent of her salary.
To Sasha, it all seemed like a patriarchal scheme to “keep women in the kitchen.” Without support infrastructure, mothers have no choice but to suspend every other pursuit in their lives to raise their children. This takes many of them out of the workforce and redirects all their brain power away from things like personal fulfillment or fighting for equality—which is, of course, just fine for the white men at the helm. When Sasha tried to talk to Daphne about her thoughts, her sister scrunched up her forehead and said, “Oh, Sash, your brain never sleeps.”
As part of her research, Sasha had been perusing various popular accounts on Instagram to see what kind of messages about femininity were being disseminated to the masses. It was a dark and dank rabbit hole, in which she discovered something called the “traditional wife” movement, #tradwife. This movement involved an endless parade of pretty, mostly white women in their twenties and thirties making meals for their hardworking husbands and talking about how they didn’twant to “waste fertile years” pursuing college and careers. It was, in a word, horrifying. Then there were the all-in mother accounts featuring women who dedicated every moment of their days to abandoning their own needs and desires in service of their children and husband. Also horrifying. Sasha remembered scribbling down Angeni Luna’s name after seeing that her account had a couple million followers. Someone with that much reach was exactly the type of person Sasha had to understand.
“I thought Angeni Luna was a motherhood content person,” Sasha said.
“She has two accounts—her Conscious Couples account and her Mother Nurture account,” Daphne said.
“I’m sorry, but youdosound like quite the disciple.”
