Page 50 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

“Well, Bodhi won’t always take a bottle.”

“Excuses,” Shyanne said, moving on to the next tower of underwear. She was right. I thought about Jinx saying I had nothing to be ashamed of. Why couldn’t it be true?

“I’ve been doing some work on this website, and it pays pretty well,” I said.

“Filling out surveys? Margo, believe me, I’ve done the math, you wind up working for pennies an hour.”

“No, it’s basically. ..” I was trying to think of some way of saying it without the word porn. I kept trying to pretend it wasn’t porn, except it was porn. “It’s basically like a hybrid of porn and social media.”

Shyanne grabbed my wrist. Her fingers were icy cold. “Do not talk about this here,” she hissed.

Once we were outside the store and walking to Macy’s, she said, “So you’re doing porn? I can’t believe you, Margo. I mean, honestly.”

“It’s not really porn, though,” I said. “There’s no sex, there’s no other person involved, it’s basically pictures of me in my underwear.”

“I’m so disappointed in you,” she said. She was walking fast, and I was struggling to keep up with Bodhi in his stroller. I couldn’t see him because of the sun visor, but I knew he had to be on the verge of waking. We passed the koi pond where beautiful blond children in fine fabrics were laughing and playing. It felt like we were in a dream.

“Mom,” I said. “It isn’t, like—it isn’t that bad!”

“I didn’t raise you to be a whore.” She said this so quietly I wasn’t even sure if she’d intended me to hear it.

I didn’t say anything, we just kept walking, rushing like we were divers swimming for the surface. I wasn’t sure if we were even still going to Macy’s, I was simply following her. It turned out she was heading to an isolated area next to an escalator by a store currently under construction. There was no bench or anything, so we stood there awkwardly.

“No man will marry you now,” she said.

I’m not sure there was a thing she could have said that would have struck me as more ridiculous while also tapping directly into my deepest fears.

“Future employers? Forget about it! Once it’s on the internet, Margo, it’s there forever.” Shyanne was trembling, she was so upset. Her mouth was pinched tight in a way that made her look suddenly old.

I didn’t know what to say. Bodhi started fussing, so I picked him up out of his stroller. He was hungry, and I was praying my milk wouldn’t let down during this conversation.

“You have ruined your life,” she said.

I looked up at the escalator, out at the palm trees in the parking lot, anywhere but at her face.

“You thought he ruined your life?” She pointed at Bodhi. “Not even close. You ruined it.”

It almost didn’t matter if I didn’t agree with her, the shame was like an egg cracked on my head, cold and wet and dripping.

“If you had told me you were thinking of doing this, I could have stopped you!” She was crying now, wiping away the tears with the pads of her fingers, trying not to stab herself with her nails. “I’m so sad, Margo, and so disappointed. I don’t even know what to say. I thought I raised you better than this.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. It felt like my mouth was numb. All my skin was numb, actually. I didn’t know how to argue, even as I knew that if anything, she’d raised me for this. “Beauty is like free money.” I thought about the things Shyanne said all the time when I was doing my OnlyFans: “Never smile too big at a man too quickly, a shy small smile will make him think he earned it.” “Never sit with your purse on your lap, it’s blocking your coochie.” “Men love hearing their own names, always call people by their name.”

“Mama,” I said, terrified I would start crying. “The thing is I’m good at this, and I think—”

“I don’t care how good you are at it! Jesus, I can’t believe you would even say that.”

“It’s not just about sex, though,” I tried to argue, thinking even as I said it about all the guys who dropped my account because there wasn’t enough sexual content. “It’s about building a brand and using social media and—”

“No, this is about giving people everything they need in order to decide you’re a piece of trash who doesn’t deserve shit. This is about losing the respect of every single person who would ever help your sorry ass even a little.”

I thought about Jinx and hospitals and engagement rings and men strapped to teeter-totters being eaten by starving bears. But I had no clue how to narrativize any of that for Shyanne, how to put together all the puzzle pieces in her mind the way I had been putting them together in mine.

“Mamamama,” Bodhi said, grabbing a fist of my hair. “Mamamamam.”

The first time he ever called me that.

“I’ll do Macy’s on my own,” Shyanne said.

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