Page 11 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

“You aren’t,” he said. They both knew they were about to have the most abbreviated version of this talk possible. It was like speaking in Morse code.

“I’m not? You know for sure?”

“I can guarantee,” he said.

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay,” he said.

They hung up, and she felt better. But it was a slow, unsatisfying release of tension, like pouring out a flat beer.

One Saturday, when she was six months along, Margo and Shyanne were at the Goodwill hoping to find a used stroller that wasn’t unspeakably sad. Margo wanted an UPPAbaby stroller more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life, and the strollers at Goodwill were so far from the UPPAbaby stroller, made of a brown floral fabric that bespoke another era or country, perhaps Soviet Russia, and crusted with the food of some previous baby who ate, by the look of things, a lot of egg.

“Mark should be buying you a stroller,” Shyanne was saying. “It’s the least he could do. Have you even talked to him about this?”

Once Shyanne accepted Margo wasn’t having an abortion, she narrowed her entire focus to one thing and one thing only: getting money out of Mark. Every conversation became about this, about how Margo needed to sue for paternity and ensure he paid child support. Shyanne was appalled when Margo refused and said she didn’t want to make waves in his marriage. His wife had never found out about them, and Mark was desperate for her to remain ignorant. “Don’t make the same mistake that I made,” Shyanne said. “You may think on some level that if you’re generous and let him keep his marriage, then maybe, you know, things between you...” But that wasn’t how Margo felt at all. She honestly wanted nothing to do with Mark anymore.

“No,” she said. “I’m not asking Mark for a damn stroller.” Except now she was about to start crying in the Goodwill, and she’d never even thought of herself as a materialistic person. Whatever was in Target or thrift stores had always been perfectly fine with her. But she felt if she had to use one of those brown strollers that smelled like bowling alley shoes, then her baby would grow up to spit from truck windows and laugh at racist jokes. And honestly, there was a pretty high chance that was going to happen no matter which stroller she used, and the thought of this made her feel like she couldn’t breathe.

“Maybe I don’t need a stroller,” Margo said. “Or maybe I’ll find one on Craigslist.”

“Here’s what you do,” her mother said, steering her toward the glassware and ceramic section, always Margo’s favorite. “You write to Mark, and you say—”

“No,” Margo said. “I don’t know how to be clearer about this. I will never, ever ask Mark for a single thing. Not ever.”

Shyanne rolled her eyes. “I guess we’ll see about that.”

“Let’s go look at the blue one again.”

“The blue one’s snack tray is busted.”

“Let’s go look at it again,” Margo said, dragging Shyanne back to the strollers.

In the end, Margo waited in line for thirty minutes and bought the blue one, her head held high, her eyes lit up by a pride that burned, that she could feel inside, its blue flame-tongues lapping, and she believed then that it could make her clean, burn away every impurity, that it could save her.

And then Bodhi was born, and Margo was alone with him in her room, like she’d been locked in there and told to spin straw into gold. How did other women do this? She slept at most two hours at a time. Her pajamas were crusted with dried milk and baby spit-up. Instead of changing out of them, she’d put on her giant gray sweatshirt, strap Bodhi in his carrier on her front, and shuffle down to Fuel Up! on the corner, where she’d buy an orange juice and Harvest Cheddar SunChips, a breakfast she and Becca had invented called “Orange Meal.”

She’d texted Becca way back after their call—I’m keeping it—and Becca hadn’t responded. When Bodhi was born, she sent Becca a picture. Becca texted back, He’s beautiful! Congratulations! But after that, radio silence. Even the girls she knew from high school who admirably tried to stay friends with Margo after Bodhi was born, coming around with Chinese food and hoping to watch Netflix, were disturbed by how impossible it was to have fun with the baby. They didn’t know how to hold him—he’d arch his back and thrash when they tried—so they couldn’t even help while Margo took a shower. He knocked over an entire container of egg foo young with a flailing arm while he was still hooked to Margo’s boob. That was the other thing: her boobs were everywhere. She’d forget to put them away, and one tit would be dangling there like a lazy eye while she finished whatever she was saying or took a bite. And her nipples had become weirdly long, like fully half an inch long. It was not fun. It was not fun to visit Margo and the baby, and so gradually they all stopped.

Her roommates weren’t sympathetic about the baby situation. All three acted like Margo having a baby was just about the same thing as getting a dog when dogs were prohibited on the lease. It seemed insane to them that someone was allowed to have a whole screaming baby wherever they wanted, and Margo understood their point, she could remember distantly their headspace, but she wasn’t able to communicate to them what had changed for her or how she thought they should behave.

Once, in the middle of the night, Bodhi would not stop crying, and she had no idea why. She’d done all the things: she’d changed the diaper, she’d nursed him, she’d burped him. But he kept arching his back and making these piercing shrieks, like a supremely pissed-off eagle. She tried stuffing her boob in his mouth, and he only turned his face away and screamed some more.

Kat the Larger banged on the wall. “Keep it down in there!”

“Don’t you think if I knew how to make him stop, I would?!” Margo screamed.

She heard Kat the Larger throw something, by the sound of it a book or maybe an alarm clock, something relatively heavy.

“What do you want me to fucking do?” Margo yelled.

“Go outside,” Kat the Larger roared, then Margo heard stomping, and Kat the Larger was in her room, talking fast as an auctioneer. “I don’t know why you think this is acceptable, this is completely unacceptable, are you fucking nuts, you think I have nothing to do tomorrow, I have a final in biochem, and you will never understand what this night of sleep might cost me, you will never get it, so if you can’t make him shut up, take it outside!”

Kat the Smaller appeared behind her in the doorway. “If you guys could keep it down?” she said.

“It is two a.m. and you are kicking me and a three-week-old baby out of the apartment?” Margo asked, feeling the wonderful, revving warmth of rage. She hadn’t known this was what she needed: to fight. She was so angry, she’d been angry for weeks: at Mark for making her pregnant and also for being right that babies were hard and she shouldn’t have had one, at Shyanne for not helping more and for being correct that this decision would ruin her life. It was ruining her life. Her life was ruined. She hadn’t taken a shower in four days, and even when she did there was no other choice than to lay Bodhi on the bathmat and let him cry, talking to him and singing as she washed her hair and body as fast as she could. Why on earth had she done this? The size, the sheer magnitude, of her own idiocy was crushing. And it hurt all the worse because she loved Bodhi more than she’d ever loved anything or anyone, and she would not give him up for all the world.

“Fuck you both,” Margo said. “You could offer to help me. You could extend basic human decency.”

---