Our neighborhood in Brooklyn was one that people move to when they're nine months pregnant. It was a 50-50 mix of new parents and long-time Caribbean-Americans, plus one lone guy who played a trumpet seemingly found in the rubbish bin under street lamps at night to round things out. I can still hear the wails of that thing, it takes me back to when the night was chopped into segments with baby Scout.
I am not a joiner, but when I had Japhy, 18 months after Scout, I decided to "join" the local parents' group, which was really a moms' group. I thought my baby needed friends? Motherhood should be the great leveler, since you've each just been ripped apart and appliqued back together, but hanging out with other people and their floppy newborns is awkward. Someone whose baby is less floppy or chubbier or capable of nursing without a nipple shield emerges as a kind of alpha. Nothing is ever even, and these groups often become scratch towers for people dealing with the joint surprises of a dependent they must lug about, and a completely decimated core. I thought it would be more about having tea cakes at each other's houses, but it actually looked more like guerilla warfare against the unnameable agitation of early parenthood, with babies used as weapons.
The mom group I joined had loose meetups that anyone could join. It was egalitarian except in that someone had the keys to the Facebook group. That person, who had perhaps established the Group, organized an Easter egg roll event in the park that year. I didn't know what the fuck an Easter egg roll was (??) so I didn't sign up, but I guess other people were keen.
Things blew up when one of the people with a baby around Japhy's age tried to sign up late to the roll. She was told that the egg roll was "full," and only people who had RSVP'd to the event could attend. Now, the park nearby is large; it has several meadows — an entire Broad City episode was devoted to losing your friends in its expanse. But, pushed on it, the Administrator held firm: they should have RSVP'd earlier; the roll was full.
I am not Type A, but seemingly 90% of the moms in this group were, or maybe they just knew how to be American, having been trained from birth. The one who had been turned away certainly had administrator energy. She relayed this story to several us still in the baby zone. What a zap it gave! A common enemy! Almost immediately, an alliance sprang up to assure her that the Administrator was on the wrong side of history. How could she, everyone said, dissecting the various ways her actions were unconscionable. One mom in particular, who had a hard squinty confidence and a way of smiling that felt bone-chillingly cold, declared the Administrator a bitch, egging on the spurned mother to act. I had no horses, or eggs, in that race, but I knew these moms better than I did the longer-established moms, so I took that side.
A splinter group was established — the People's Front of Judea to the Popular Front run by the Administrator. We would be a Google Group, which was better anyway, we thought. I say "we" but I was kind of a part-time lover in this group, back at work and not around for all the afternoon hangs. When we did get together, everyone would titter about the bitch Administrator and what she did. "She never gave back my Tupperware after I delivered a meal," I had to admit. I had left it on her doorstep after I rang the doorbell eight times and she never answered it. I walked back to my apartment toting my empty reusable shopping bag like a deflated balloon.
I feel the need to state that I did like some of the more chill moms in this group. I remember meeting up with one in the park for an afternoon beer on a picnic rug one time. That's what moms' groups should be, babies plonked on a rug together, and a drink as you watch the park turn around you, together in the high noon of your life. I also should have just quit this group, since they weren't that fun, and they thought The Coddling of the American Mind was the best book they had ever read. They never crossed into our family-friend zone, they were the mom group. I'm polite though, and a people-pleaser at core. I liked some of them individually, but as a group, the dynamic sucked, and one, the mom with the creepy smile, was clearly an asshole, always finding a way to one-up everyone, talk over people, and establish herself as the authority on a given topic. I see her now straddling the tiny summit, pushing off moms as they attempt to scramble up, like Delta flinging challengers off the Pyramid in Gladiators.
The fact that the formation, the geological story of this group, rested on the eggs, is key. A clutch of new moms batting about eggs? The metaphor paints itself. How vulnerable you are at that stage, carrying about your own kidneys in an Ergo.
Do you remember the Stanford prison experiment? Researchers divided participants into prisoners and guards, and in-group behavior developed FAST. The guards were soon abusing their power, wielding it over the prisoners, who had been their equals before one group became two. This is often the way of moms' groups.
I signed up for a first aid class someone had organized for the group, and the second I walked into the room that night, I could feel the snickering energy of Creepy Smile. Just a hollow of chilliness where a normal friendly hello might have been. I am good at enduring awkward situations — I can't deep dive under water but I can hold my proverbial breath for HOURS of awkward shit — but this was an excruciating two hours. I left without really saying goodbye, wondering what I had done to wind up on the outer. I felt like Kramer getting fired from his job: "I don't even work here!"
I saw her husband at the playground some weeks later. Our kids were the only ones on the equipment, so I said, “Hey X.” He turned to look at me, fright painted over his face. He turned back around without saying anything! WOW. I thought. You could see him panicking with the knowledge that I was an Enemy. If I had any doubt this cleaned it up.
Here's where the story gets weird and sad. One of the children in the group died in their sleep long after I had left the group behind. I liked the mother, had brought Japhy to the kids' birthday the year before where he toddled about in a plastic fireman’s helmet with the birthday boy, but otherwise it had been months since I saw any of them. Suddenly, the group had to put down the sticks and spring into action around this poor mother, regardless of sides. I saw one of the kinder moms just crumpled, her whole face wet with tears. I brought food, gave hugs out.
A year after the death, the moms came together one last time — by now, people had left the neighborhood, put deposits on houses in New Jersey and such — to remember the child. Creepy Smile was there, and after we had stood in a circle to honor his memory, she invited me out to drinks with the rest of the moms.
"Oh, I can't," I said. “I’ve got to do some work.”
"Just a drink!" said some of the moms. Creepy Smile chimed in, “Come on!”
I gave a sad, sympathetic face. "I don't want to," I said, and walked home.
Goodies
I was reminded of the Easter egg incident by a recent juicy thread for paid subscribers in the excellent Evil Witches.
“The tradwife has proven herself not too different from the lesbian separatists of the second wave who she claims to detest. In disavowing feminism she actualizes one of its most infantile desires—reducing to a blessed minimum contact with men and the sexual threat (or promise) they pose.” — Zoe Hu
“He wants to sit and explain to her, as he never did when she was alive, how beautiful it was, when he was little, body flat and still on the high, wet grass of their backyard, the squish of soil: a flock, a pack, a bunch of birds would swoop down and up, soar by, and he’d stay quiet. How they all moved together in one fluid bunch.” — Lynn Steger Strong’s Flight, which I loved.
“If I turn the dial way down on their money, and if I am really honest, can I see echoes of their frustrations in my own? What is the common thread for those deluded Upper East Side/Park Slope ladies and the scrambling middle and working class moms of, oh, everywhere else?” — April Daniels Hussar on Fleischman 2.0.
“The book had opened. And the timing was inexplicable; a nurse had placed a blood pressure cuff on his arm and left it there a moment too long, while she turned round to do something else. Seconds later he felt a pop, and 90 per cent of the pressure in his abdomen vanished. ‘Come back,’ he called, to someone, anyone, to his own body that was halfway down a long white hallway.” — I get so excited when Patricia Lockwood writes anything
“This is enshittification: surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they're locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they're locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit. From mobile app stores to Steam, from Facebook to Twitter, this is the enshittification lifecycle.” — Cory Doctorow
My favorite part was when you abandoned your Tupperware.
Oh yeah, that's the stuff. Good to the last drop. Thank you.