“You too,” I said, a bit too warmly, as I handed the cashier my card. “Thank you so much for following.”
I walked quickly across the parking lot, my grocery cart rattle-clacking loudly over the pavement, my gaze trained firmly on the brake lights of my own car. I was putting the grocery bag into my trunk when I heard that woman again. “Hey! Natalie! Just a sec.”
A tremor ran through me. I considered pretending not to hearher, then decided against it. By the time I turned around, the woman was standing there, smiling expectantly.
“I just realized I never thanked you.” She gave a nervous laugh. “That was why I wanted to talk to you: to thank you. I gave birth recently, and it was—” She paused, glanced up quickly at the sky, blinking rapidly. Oh, God: she was trying not to cry. “It was really hard.”
I wondered what my expression looked like right now. If I was conveying the correct measure of understanding and concern.
“It’s been a really long few months,” she went on. “Just—really dark. I haven’t been myself. But when I came across your account, I just—I was so inspired. You seem like an amazing mother.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, that’s—that’s so kind of you to say.” At that moment, a squeal came from the back seat, and the woman nearly jumped out of her skin. “Oh,” I said, “don’t worry! That’s just my little girl, Jessa.”
She looked at the car, then at me. “Did you leave your baby in the car while you were shopping?”
Oh.
Oh no.
No no no no no no no no no no no—
My body flooded with cortisol. My vision blurred. I could barely hear what I said next. Something about being a very quick shopper (wrong answer). Something about raising our kids like they did in the olden days (worse answer). Through the fog of my panic, I could just see the shape of this woman’s expression.
Disturbed. She looked disturbed.
Somehow the conversation ended. Somehow I was driving home. Tears were streaming down my cheeks. I could feel them, but I wasn’t crying. I was smiling. Wasn’t I? Smiling?
What I wished I had said to that woman: I was disturbed, too. In factdisturbingwas the only word to describe the vast chasm of space between who I needed to be and who I currently was.I’m workingon it,I wanted to say.I am working day and night on this issue. Customer service is aware of the reported blackout. We are working to get service back online and running shortly!
As I drove through the winding mountain roads back to the ranch, humming softly to keep Jessa’s hunger snuffles at bay, I tried to visually map out the rest of my day. By the time I got home, the children would all be awake, the two boys smashing wooden blocks over each other’s skulls while Caleb had his daily thirty-minute-long homeschooling lesson with Clementine.God made dinosaurs! Skyscrapers give you cancer!Clementine’s shirt would probably be inside out; Stetson’s diaper would probably need to be changed. Caleb, meanwhile, would be itching to head out to the barn; most of his favorite livestreams got going around midmorning. And so he would leave me with the kids, and I would ask Clementine to watch Samuel while I took care of Stetson and Jessa, swapping out both diapers, applying rash creams, breastfeeding Jessa, giving Stetson a warm bottle of milk. By this point all the children would be desperate to go outside, to haveoutdoors time,and so I would stand in the grass watching them roll and play and laugh. That would be a good moment for me to be able to plan out the recipe. And then we would have lunchtime, and then nap time, and everyone but Clementine would sleep for two hours, at which point I could set her up with a book on the couch and tell herit’s Mama’s quiet time.Two hours, plenty of time to film. And then the children would wake up and need to be fed and diapered and entertained all over again, but yes, as long as I took advantage of nap time and didn’t make any mistakes with the recipe, I could be finished with filming by four, maybe five at the latest—
“Natalie?”
I turned around. It was nighttime. Caleb was in the doorway, holding a bucket and an ice pick. At the same time, we said, “What are you doing?”
A long silence unfolded.
“Clementine came to the barn,” Caleb said. “She said she hasn’t eaten.”
As if on cue, Clementine stepped forward from behind Caleb.Bitch,I thought before I could stop myself, followed immediately by:No, of course not, just a child, just your child.I was so tired.
“You forgot to make them dinner again, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t forget.” I gestured at the roast in front of me. “It’s right here. It’s almost ready.”
Caleb looked genuinely concerned. “It’s nine at night.”
I blinked. The floorboards slanted. I rested a hand on the countertop to keep from falling forward. I gazed helplessly around the room. Stetson and Samuel were asleep in the playpen, stretched out on their bellies. One look at the baby monitor showed Jessa in her crib.Thank God,I thought, before I could censor my own thoughts.Thank God I put her in the crib.“I must have lost track of time.”
He looked incredulously at me. “That’s all you have to say?”
“I,” I said. “I—I—”
“Natalie,” Caleb said fiercely. How rarely he said my name aloud.
I paused. Then I said something awful, something I’d been thinking for weeks: “I think we maybe need … a nanny.”
“Our children don’t need a nanny,” he replied immediately. “They need a mother.”
