I look back at Joni. She stares at me with a crooked smile. “Ladies and gentlemen, the student has become the teacher!” she shouts, skipping around the rest of the shoppers in the aisle.
We keep the game up for over an hour, whispering stories about a guy who refuses to eat anything but foods that start with the letters C, R, or W, because those are his initials, the couple who’s planning to fill their swimming pool with rice pudding to celebrate their anniversary, and the frazzled woman who’s buying enough hot dogs and hamburgers to feed her husband’s entire extended family—who arrived, unannounced, from the Czech Republic earlier this morning.
We get zero work done, but we move from aisle to aisle enough that no one notices.
I don’t realize until later that it’s the first time in over a week my thoughts aren’t entirely consumed with journals.
Chapter 18
Monday morning, Mom gets up early to go with me to drop Hope at the day care downtown. It’s in a municipal-type building, and you have to go through security to get in. We have to take Hope out of her car seat so it can go through the X-ray machine. Mom carries her as she walks through the metal detector.
Mom hasn’t said much about my decision to go with this place. It seemed like she’d been pulling for the nanny option, but ever since I made my choice, she’s been all business about the downtown day care, like it was the plan all along. She’s probably just glad I made a decision at all.
We walk down a few different cinder block corridors, following the handwritten signs for the child care room. Harried parents in badly fitting suits and various uniforms hurry past us.
The day care is a large room with mismatched tiles and area rugs and crayon drawings on the walls. It seems clean enough, but the furniture is old and worn. Freestanding shelving units and cubby bins divide the room into sections. Signs hang from the ceiling over each area: 6 Weeks–1 Year. 1–3. 3–5.
And it’s really, really loud. There are kids everywhere. Each section is more crowded than I imagined. Kids crying, screaming for their mommies, running around, squealing, fighting over blocks and books and markers. I have an instant headache.
Mom and I head over to the front desk. The woman sitting there is holding a cup of coffee with both hands and guzzling it as if it’s Gatorade at halftime.
“Excuse me,” Mom says, but the woman holds up a finger for us to wait while she takes one last gulp.
“Mondays,” she says, shaking her head.
Mom makes a kind of commiserating I totally hear ya chuckle that I have never heard her make before. She doesn’t work in an office. And she loves her job. She doesn’t care about Mondays. I raise an eyebrow at her, and she shrugs.
“We’re here to drop off Hope Brooks,” Mom says to the woman. “Today’s her first day.”
The woman punches some buttons on her computer’s keyboard with her way-too-long nails. “Right. Brooks. Full days, seven a.m. through three p.m., Monday through Friday, is that correct?”
“Yes,” Mom says, and the woman pushes some forms across the counter at her.
“Make sure all the contact information is correct, fill out the rest. Don’t leave anything blank. And sign.”
Mom slides the papers to me and hands me a pen.
I look at her. “Can’t you do it?”
“You’re the parent, Ryden. I’m not her legal guardian.”
I let out a little groan and complete the forms as quickly as possible. Name, address, emergency contact, allergy information, feeding information, insurance, blah, blah, blah. I hand them back.
“We send our bills every two weeks. Payment is due within five days.” She waves a hand, gesturing that we should bring Hope over to join the chaos.
The 6 Weeks–1 Year section is actually the calmest. The kids aren’t old enough to be fighting or playing with each other much, so there’s just a lot of crying and sitting around and stuff. But there’re a lot of kids here—at least twenty—and there’re only two teachers or whatever you call them.
I feel Mom tense beside me, but she keeps a smile on her face and introduces us to one of the teachers. In a matter of seconds, she’s handing over Hope and we’re waving good-bye, and then we’re out in the hallway.
Mom and I look at each other as the door swings closed and the noise from the day care is somewhat dimmed.
What just happened?
And why does it feel weird?
Mom’s eyes get watery, and she swallows a couple of times to keep her emotions in check.
“You okay?” I ask.
She sniffles and shrugs. “That was harder than I thought it would be.”
Sort of, yeah, for me too. But that’s stupid. I’ve left Hope with my mom and Alan a zillion times. This isn’t any different, except now I have to pay for it. I get to go back to school and go back to normal, and Hope gets to be around other babies and do, I don’t know, baby stuff. So what’s the fucking problem?
“You okay?” she asks, and I realize I’m staring off into nowhere.
I’m fine. It’s all fine. But I can’t seem to find the words, so I nod.
Mom puts her arm around my shoulder as we walk back to the car.
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