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    “We need to hire Debora for at least four months,” I insisted. I needed to prove to Debora not only that we were as financially secure as Hollice, but that I was way more fun and totally more right for the role of Medea in our senior-class play.
    “You want a stranger in our house for four months?”
    “What’s the big deal? We already have one that’s staying for eighteen years,” I said. “ ‘Of all creatures that can feel and think, we women are the worst treated things alive,’ ” I moaned, channeling my best mid-Atlantic dialect.
    “Isn’t
Medea
about a woman who hates her husband and kills her kids?” Jason finished peeing, then traipsed into the bedroom and turned on a golf game.
    “And her husband’s name was Jason. I would have been brilliant!” I blocked the television and took a long, drawn-out dancer’s bow, then pretended to drink a vial of poison, which had nothing to do with the plot of
Medea
and everything to do with showcasing the “Special Skills” section of my résumé that listed my proficiency in mime. Sid watched from a makeshift pillow crib in the center of our bed, clearly picturing what his life would be like if Hollice were his mom.
    Jason consented to keeping Debora on for an additional ten weeks, less because he agreed with me and more to increase his odds of never seeing me mime again.

    I was quickly learning that a baby is a gift that requires a million other gifts. No matter how prepared you think you are, you are missing at least a dozen vital basics.
    “Where are his pajamas?” Debora rummaged through Sid’s drawers, confused. It was Sid’s first real bedtime in his nursery and the only thing he had on was a diaper and an umbilical cord.
    “What do you mean?”
    “The baby needs something to sleep in.”
    “Don’t we just swaddle him? I didn’t know they made baby pajamas.”
    “Yes, he
has
to have clothes to sleep in,” she said, like a worried social worker talking to a teen mom. “And you also have to buy a bathtub, a bottle warmer, some diaper-rash cream, crib sheets, storage bins…”
    The list went on and on. I was the least prepared parent she’d ever worked with, she said with an uncomfortable laugh. She told me she’d spoken to her best friend Uzo about the situation during a break that afternoon, and they were going to pray for me on their Tuesday-night prayer hotline. I envisioned her and Uzo on their hands and knees, weeping to Lord Jesus to save Sid from the certain doom that would come from having a mother who was too dumb to know what baby pajamas were and was still hiding a stripper pole in the garage.
    Uzo was Debora’s good friend who she never shut up about. She also happened to be Beyoncé’s baby nurse.
    “She’s been a celebrity baby nurse for years,” Debora said, pulling a bag of kale out of the fridge to make a green drink she’d read about in
Us Weekly.
“She gets paparazzied all the time. You’ve definitely seen her in all the magazines.” Debora beamed. The blender begrudgingly chewed up the copious amounts of ice, almond milk, and bananas as Debora stared at me, waiting for some sort of kudos for the fact that she drank smoothies.
    It weirded me out how wrapped up in the fame game my baby nurse was. I understood a hairstylist caring about celebrity—a trainer, even a chef. But a fucking baby nurse? Was there anyone in Los Angeles not trying to jockey their way into their own reality show? Debora was a churchgoing woman, a disciple of the Lord, a woman who told me at least twice a day that she could communicate with angels. But even Debora couldn’t resist the siren song of Bravo Andy.

    Hollice had taken to texting me daily, checking in. She was over-the-top sweet, asking when she could come over and meet Sid. She’d never been to my house before and I was more than a little hesitant to have her over. I didn’t know how I would handle being around her. In high school I had always left our interactions