Page 14 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

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.

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