Jen Kirkman - I Can Barely Take Care of Myself

Standing in Eli’s doorway, looking at his innocent little face, I didn’t have the heart to just turn the light out and ignore him. I wouldn’t have to wait until I had my own kids. This was my moment to make an impact on the youth of America by doing the exact opposite thing that my parents did. I would not tell him that there is a God waiting to take him in his sleep.

While I racked my brain for the best way to answer his question without really answering his question, Eli, in the manner of children everywhere with too much time on their hands, came up with more questions. Such as, “When am I gonna die?”

I knew I had to protect him and let him remain a kid. Kids need myths, like the tooth fairy, and when they’re older they can handle the truth: that your parents flush your teeth down the toilet like they’re getting rid of forensic evidence and leave you only twenty-five cents, not accounting for the inflation that’s occurred since they were kids. You’ll have to borrow a dollar from them later anyway in order to afford a Charleston Chew candy bar and they’ll guilt you and say, “That will pull your teeth out.” By the time Eli knew the truth about anything I’d be in college and wouldn’t have to worry about helping him process it. For tonight, in order to protect him and get myself out of his room and on to the bag of Oreos waiting for me in the Reinhardts’ kitchen, I would lie my ass off.

“Oh, Eli,” I said. “You will live to be two hundred years old before you die and that is a very, very long time from now.”

I was proud of myself until Eli said, “So, I am going to die?”

I said, “No. No. I mean, if you die, you will die at two hundred, but… not everybody dies.”

Eli said, “So, some people die and some don’t?”

Um. Yes.

Eli said, “Why did God make my grandpa die?”

Um…

Eli asked, “Can I die before I turn two hundred if I’m murdered in my bed?”

I’m glad that I didn’t think to raid the Reinhardts’ medicine cabinet to see whether the missus had any “mother’s little helper,” because I seriously would have considered crushing some into the orange juice on Eli’s nightstand to help him take his mind off bed-murder.

Fuuuck. How did this kid know about murder? He’s right. Murder is scary. And it’s real, even in seemingly safe havens like Needham, Massachusetts. Some guy in our town had chopped his wife into tiny pieces in their bathtub just streets away from where little Eli Reinhardt lived. I was terrified of murder myself and to be honest I didn’t like the idea of the Reinhardts’ glass sliding doors in their living room. Sure, they had locks, but I could just picture the murderer tossing his ax through the thin glass, shattering it, and then walking purposefully toward me with a bloodthirsty gleam in his eye. “But I don’t even really live here!” I’d scream. As if that would be a good reason why he shouldn’t introduce me to the pointy end of his ax.

I still had a chance to be a good substitute parent. I told Eli that there was no such thing as murder. I told him it was just a thing he saw on TV but not actually something that was physically possible. People couldn’t kill other people, so he had nothing to worry about.

As a special treat, I decided to lie on the floor next to Eli’s bed. I told him that I’d lie there until he fell asleep so that if he had any more scary thoughts, I’d be right there. Once Eli was asleep and dreaming of a vengeful God, I snuck out, whipped the blinds shut in the living room, and stuffed my face with Oreos.

I had no idea that kids under the age of five had the capacity to remember things from week to week. I thought Eli would have forgotten all about murder and dying at age two hundred by the time I saw him seven days later. Nope. Eli wanted me to sleep on his floor again, and as I lay there he worried out loud that his parents would get murdered. He asked, “If my parents were murdered, would you live here and take care of me?”

How did I go from favorite babysitter to guardian-in-case-of-a-double-homicide? I reinstated my lie to Eli. “Eli, no one is getting murdered. I told you. It’s not real.”

Should I tell the Reinhardts about Eli’s obsession with untimely death? I couldn’t tell them that I fell asleep on his floor—that would make me sound like some kind of perv. I felt like I’d fucked this kid up for life. Maybe there’s something parents know that babysitters don’t—like how to properly and with authority squelch all conversations about stabbings and how to not do what the kid wants just so you can get what you want, because eventually that type of negotiation brings everyone down.

A few weeks later Mrs. Reinhardt talked to me woman-to-teenager about the little boy we were raising. She was distraught because Eli kept saying that he wanted to stab people to see whether they would die. Ever since I told Eli there was no such thing as murder, he had apparently gotten confused and become sort of obsessed with this crime. She said that Eli was mad at God for picking his grandfather to die. She asked me, “Jennifer, why was he thinking about such things? How did these ideas get put in Eli’s head?”

I don’t know, Mrs. Reinhardt. Chalk it up to… kids think the darndest things?

The Reinhardts eventually stopped calling me. I’m sure that wasn’t Eli’s decision—after all, I was to be his godmother after his parents were found bludgeoned in their beds by the Massachusetts Murderer.

I ATTEMPTED BABYSITTING one more time with the Roberts family. The Robertses also had a four-year-old son; his name was Danny. I actually looked forward to spending time with little Danny. He didn’t have the dark streak that Eli did.

I never had to worry about getting Danny to go to sleep or explaining that one day when he was two hundred years old his heart would stop beating, because I only babysat Danny on weekday afternoons. Danny didn’t force his kid-agenda on me. Sure, he made me watch Mac and Me (the poor man’s E.T. ) a few times but he’d often hand me the remote and say, “You pick.” So I picked. And Danny and I spent many afternoons together watching the video for “Fascination Street” by the Cure on MTV. I had a crush on Robert Smith, the lipsticked lead singer. Danny would tease me and say, “He’s your boyyyfriend. ”

A few weeks into this gig, I was stuffing my face with ice cream and I lost sight of Danny for a few minutes. He showed up in the kitchen with red lipstick smeared on his face. He announced, “I like Mommy’s makeup.” I sprang to action and started wiping Revlon no. 2 off Danny’s face. That’s when he announced, “Jennifer, I want to French-kiss boys.”

Well, at least he didn’t want to murder anybody.

Danny’s mom came home and I had to explain to her that Danny didn’t have a rash on his mouth. It was a stain—from this season’s hottest matte lipstick color.

She was upset that I’d turned my back for a minute, something I guess you can’t do when a little boy with a makeup fetish is running around the house.

As she drove me home she said, “I’ve been meaning to talk to you anyway, Jennifer. You can’t have boys over when you babysit Danny. He can’t stop talking about your boyfriend Robert Smith.”

After turning Danny into a future drag queen, I took a self-imposed leave of absence from the babysitting business. I’d learned that you couldn’t talk to kids about death or show them music videos of men who sing in eyeliner. I possibly had turned one kid into an obsessive-compulsive with the urge to murder, and another kid gay. I’m not equating being a murderer with being gay, but from what I understand, either can be a difficult thing to admit to your family.