The Blob

There’s something wrong with me, but I don’t know what. I don’t know if anyone else knows, but I think my Mom suspects. Or maybe my Dad, I can’t be sure. There isn’t anybody I can tell, because if I did they’d probably have to lock me up or something. When I look in the mirror, I can’t see anything obvious. I look the same as I’ve always looked—curly red hair, greenish eyes, a few freckles, and that tiny scar on my left temple that I can’t remember getting. I’m afraid to ask about it now. I’m afraid of everything. I can’t talk to anyone, not that anyone wants to talk to me. I think they’re all afraid of me, too. I don’t know what’s going to happen.

I’ve known ever since my baby brother was born that something was off with me. Before then, I guess things were abnormal too, but I just hadn’t realized it because, well, things always went like I wanted them to go. There was no reason for me—or the other side of me—to do anything, you know? Everything was good. It was just me and my parents and I guess I was what people call spoiled. My parents had tried for years to have a baby, with no success. They’d pretty much given up when I came along, and they were so thrilled that they treated me like a princess right from the beginning. My Mom told me stories about how she never left me alone, how she loved me so much she could never bear to leave me with a babysitter. Even her own mother, my grandma, she wouldn’t trust alone with me. I was more precious than gold, my Mom said. 

I never was dressed in cheap onesies from Target or Walmart. Only the best for me; organic cotton outfits from expensive shops, handmade in France or England, a Bellini crib imported from Italy. A Silver Cross baby buggy, which fyi is the same kind that the British Royals get for their babies. Frothy little dresses and patent leather shoes from Saks or Nordstrom when I got older. An entire room (a big one) in the house was made into a walk in closet just for me. I didn’t appreciate all this attention when I was very young, but soon enough I figured out that I could ask for anything—anything at all—and it would magically appear. Luckily for my parents, (since we lived in San Francisco, in a fancy brick townhouse in Presidio Heights with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge from our designer decorated living room) I never was much of one for animals, although if I had been one of those girls who doesn’t want anything but pets and more pets, and especially a pony, I’m sure they would have figured out how to keep a pony in our smallish back garden. They just never said no to anything. So, yeah, for a kid, my life was about as perfect as it could get.

But when I was seven years old, the unthinkable happened. My mother had another baby; a boy. My parents had accepted the idea that they were a one child family, that it would be just the three of us forever and ever. I was their miracle, their dream come true. And then, just like that, my world came crashing down. First of all, a boy is worth more than a girl in every culture. The male carries on the family name, has superior strength and naturally has more power in whatever society, because face it—men are the ones with all the power on this planet. I hate men. I hate my father for not being satisfied with me, or if he was satisfied with me, for being MORE satisfied with the little beast who is my brother. 

You can’t really blame me; this is all my parents fault. If they had just continued to treat me the way they always had, then I think maybe things would have been okay. Maybe. But they didn’t. It was like I became invisible overnight. Here’s an example:

Me: “Mommy, can you make me pancakes and bacon for breakfast?” (fyi I asked very politely, in my usual sweet voice)

My Mother: “Darling, I can’t, I’m feeding the baby, can’t you see?” (fyi, this was said in a borderline rude tone of voice, like I’m ANNOYING her or something by asking to be fed!)  “Just pour yourself a bowl of cereal,” she said.

As if! Never in my life had I been responsible for my own meals, and I didn’t appreciate being told that now, at age seven, I was on my own. How did she think she could get away with that? I would have stomped off to demand that my Dad make the pancakes and bacon, but he had left for work hours earlier. I stood there and stared at my mother in disbelief, but she didn’t even notice. She was busy making cooing noises to the disgusting blob that had attached itself to her breast and was busy sucking away, making gross sounds, and the milk leaking out of the corner of its mouth dribbled down onto my mother’s shirt. It was enough to make you vomit.

The one good thing that came out of this awful addition to my family was that my mom decided she had to finally give in and hire a nanny. She said the new baby had a sensitive stomach, and suffered from colic, and she could never get enough sleep, she was tired all the time. So she and my dad interviewed like a million women and ended up hiring this girl from Sweden. My mom liked the idea of a Swedish nanny because she said the Swedes are a naturally clean people—my mom has a phobia of germs. So she hired this 23 year old blonde girl who had great references from three other families that she had nannied for. I guess technically she was an au pair, although I’ve never been clear on the difference. Maybe it’s that au pairs are young and hot-looking and nannies are older and kind of fat, or at least not sexy. And let me tell you, this girl was hot. Too hot for her own good, as it turns out.

I go to a private school only three blocks from my house. It’s very competitive to get into any schools in San Francisco—I’m not even kidding—parents sign up on waiting lists, or apply and pay deposits, whatever it is that is required, when they are just THINKING about having a baby. But my parents didn’t have to go to all that trouble or worry, because as you may have figured out, they have truck loads of moolah. Everything in life comes easier when you have money, you know? (I plan to have as much of it as possible, if I can just figure out how to deal with my current dilemma) Plus my dad is some kind of bigwig in the foreign service or something, I don’t even know. Ambassador? I think he is or used to be an Ambassador to maybe some place like Belgium? It’s all boring, so I don’t really pay that much attention. I’m busy enough focusing on my own life.

But back to the blonde au pair girl. Her name was Ingrid and I hated her the first moment I laid eyes on her. She waltzed in through our front door and started acting like she lived here and it pissed me off even though she actually was going to be living here. She acted like she thought she was superior to me, kind of like she felt she outranked me? But she didn’t know who she was dealing with. I managed to get rid of her in less than a year, just before my eighth birthday rolled around. The other thing I hated about Ingrid, was she paid more attention (as did everyone) to the new baby than she did to me. So those two things alone—her stuckup-ness and her favouritism toward the baby– made her future unpromising as far as employment in our household went. It was really easy to do, because there was my mom, as pathetic as she was and as grossed out as I was by her newly flabby body and her breasts leaking milk all over the place and the fact that she never wore makeup or went to the gym anymore, she just lay around the house sleeping or pumping milk for Ingrid to feed the baby while she slept—it was disgusting really, but also super easy to come up with a plan.

I knew that once I got rid of Ingrid, my parents would replace her with someone else, but at least I hoped it would be someone who had some respect for me. Someone who paid just a tiny bit of attention to me instead of all baby baby baby baby. (I was so sick of that baby blob. I wished it would die, but it wouldn’t)

Anyway, my dad was gone all day at work like he always was and my mom was sleeping all the time when she wasn’t holding the blob, and Ingrid was prancing around the house all dressed up in her sexy Swedish outfits that were all very tight and very low cut. She was asking for trouble, really. So I got the idea one day when I saw my Dad looking at her as she (no doubt deliberately) bent down to pick up one of the blob’s stupid toys off the floor. She bent over farther than she needed to and her boobs were practically hanging out and I saw my dad staring at her. 

So the next time my Mom left the house, which she never did unless she had a doctor’s appointment, which is what she had that day because she had postpartum depression, my dad said, which is why she did nothing but lie around the house all day. But my dad didn’t sound exactly sympathetic when he explained this to me, and frankly, I think he was sick of looking at her too, lying around all morose and fat and stinking of rancid milk. Yuck. So I sneaked into Ingrid’s room while she was playing Baby Einstein videos for the blob, and I took one of her earrings and I put it in my parents’ bed. I picked a big earring (Ingrid had like a million earrings, all different sizes, and a bunch of sexy Hanky Panky thongs, too—I knew this, because I’d gone through all her belongings, secretly)

I was a little worried that maybe my mom wouldn’t notice the earring even though it was big, so I added a pink lacy thong to the evidence. I put the thong kind of wadded up, underneath the far side of the bed, my mom’s side, and I put the earring under the sheets, near the foot of the bed. Genius, huh? I knew all about the birds and the bees even though I wasn’t quite eight. 

I was at school (unfortunately, because I’d wanted to witness events) when you-know-what hit the fan. Ingrid was gone when I came home from school and my dad wasn’t there, and my mom was sitting at the kitchen table, her eyes all red and puffy, and the blob in her lap as usual. (By this time, he was taking bottles and baby food instead of boobs) 

Me: “Mommy, what’s wrong? Where’s Ingrid?”

My Mother: “Nothing, darling. It’s just that she decided that this job wasn’t right for her.” 

Me: (haha—liar liar pants on fire)  “Will we get a new nanny?”

My Mother: “I’m not sure—maybe.” (in a tired voice—still obviously depressed)

Me: “I’m sorry, Mommy. Can I help with the baby?” (like, can I throw him out the window?)

My Mother: (smiles weakly) “Maybe later, darling, thank you for asking.”

The new nanny appears a week later. Her name is Millie and she is from Oregon and about a million years old and definitely on the fat side, but not so fat that she can’t take care of a baby. I guess the blob is still considered a baby—it’s almost a year old now. It smiles and babbles and I still hate it.

This nanny is actually okay. She pays attention to me and almost always does what I ask her to do. She can make great blueberry pancakes (which are my favorite food ever) and she never tells me she’s ‘too busy with the baby’ to run my bath or read me a story. I ask her to do things just to check and make sure she will, not that I really like having her read to me—I can read perfectly well, and I can run my own bath.

This morning it happened again. The baby had a bruise on his leg this time. He’s been getting unexplained cuts and bruises, usually on the nanny’s day off, and it usually happens during the night. I’ve noticed my parents giving me the side eye, like they think I am somehow responsible, but I swear to you, I don’t know anything about it! Unless I’m doing it in my sleep? I have to tell you, it doesn’t bother me at all, seeing him with cuts or bruises. It wouldn’t bother me if he had a broken bone, either. Or if he were dead. But just because it wouldn’t bother me, doesn’t mean I did it. But if I didn’t do it, who did? Can a baby do that to himself?

And when I was getting ready for school today, I noticed a little smear of blood on my left arm, on the inside of my elbow. I checked myself for cuts but I didn’t have any. I knew it was blood because it was that reddish brown color like when you swat a mosquito that’s been drinking your blood and you don’t wash it off, and a little later it’s gone from red to dark reddish brown. On the one hand, like I said, I don’t mind this happening to the blob. But on the other hand, what if I’m blamed for it? It seems inevitable since there is no one else here to blame.

I’ve been weighing my options. I know my parents love the blob more than me, and if push comes to shove, they would get rid of me before it. What would they do? I don’t know. I did hear them talking one day when they thought I was watching tv, but I’d come into the kitchen to get a glass of juice, and just before I walked into the kitchen I heard them say something about “girls boarding school”. That sounds ominous. I have no desire whatsoever to go live in some wretched boarding school where it will be either all stuck up rich girls and I won’t have any friends (not that I do now either, but at least I don’t live at school) or else it will be some dreadful old drafty Victorian place where they feed you nasty food and maybe even beat you with switches like some sort of Dickens novel. It seems like I only have one viable option and that is to get rid of the blob permanently. Then we will be back to our original one child, normal family and everything will be good again.