Laura Bennett - Didn’t I Feed You Yesterday?

“So you see,” he told me, “she’s part of the deal. If you have a problem with another woman going through my pants and maybe even keeping secrets from you, then you might as well tell me now.”

“Can she cook?” I asked. “Because I don’t.”

“No, she’s not a cook,” he said. “But I don’t really eat.”

“She can stay.”

This was a smart move on my part, as in all my years of marriage I have never had to remember a thing that involves my husband. People tell me it must be nice to have a housekeeper, but I prefer to think of her as a Peterkeeper. She doesn’t run my household, just his Elba-like piece of it.

But Zoila’s value to me is also immeasurable: she never forgets a child’s birthday (and has even had to remind me a few times), but, most important, she has never, ever told me anything about Peter that I might not want to know. I’m not saying that there’s anything to tell, but I gain peace of mind from the confidence that I wouldn’t have to bother with it if there were.

WHEN I CRAWLED HOME, PREGNANT AND EXHAUSTED, FROM THE challenge part of Project Runway , I was faced with the seemingly insurmountable task of creating a twelve-piece collection in two months all by myself. No pattern makers, no cutters, no beaders, just me. This was going to be a full-time task, and I knew that the boys would be too much for Alicia without me, so she brought in Nicole. Now I can’t imagine our house without her.

The only thing Alicia and Nicole have in common is that they are both from the Caribbean. While Alicia is petite, Nicole is six feet tall and weighs two hundred pounds, most of it pure muscle. I like to introduce her as my bodyguard.

Every week she shows up with an intricate hairstyle involving hair that is not her own. She seems to think no one knows it is a weave.

“Hey, Nicole, did you hear about the woman who was shot in the head but saved by her weave?” I tease.

“I wouldn’t know about a weave,” she replied with a gold-capped smile. I think that was her reply, anyway. I can’t understand a damn thing she says through her heavy Trinidadvia-Brooklyn accent.

Nicole also has a thing for Baby Phat clothing, and a severe case of body dysmorphic disorder. A dangerous combination because Baby Phat tends toward the hoochie side. Whereas most women who suffer from this affliction think they are three sizes larger than they are, Nicole insists on fitting her size 16 body into size 6—the result being endless repairs of burst seams on my machine. She always blames the low quality of the garments.

“Ah, Laura,” she said one day, “do you like my new jeans?”

“What?”

“Do you like my new jeans?”

“What?”

“My…jeans…they…are…new.”

“Oh. You do know they’re way too small, right? And why do they have a big metallic cat on the ass?”

“No, Laura, these jeans are so loose,” Nicole said, pointing to her backside. “I should have gotten a smaller size.”

“Nicole, look how stressed the seams are in the thighs—they’re going to burst.”

“That’s just because one of my thighs is swollen. It’s temporary.”

“Your thighs are exactly the same.” I get out my measuring tape to prove it to her. “It’s those tight jeans, cutting off your circulation.”

If Alicia is the captain of our family, then Nicole is the enforcer. At six o’clock, she lines up all the boys and makes them eat. At seven o’clock, she lines them up and makes them bathe. At eight o’clock, brush teeth; nine o’clock, bedtime. While Alicia will always give you a snack—sometimes one she’s already eating—Nicole will glower and point you in the direction of the kitchen, where she has prepared six different dishes, some of which resemble cat food and all of which are so inedible that the kids cry, begging for cereal. We always hope that Alicia has found some time during the day to cook.

The enforcer is very protective.

“When I was leaving school today, one of the mothers asked me who picks the boys’ clothes,” Nicole recounted. It is true that besides Pierson, my other boys always look like they just stepped out of a Salvation Army dollar bin.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I just kept walking so I wouldn’t have to answer with my fist.”

While Nicole rules the kids with an iron fist and a gold grille, her personal life is a circus. Her phone rings constantly with calls from family members in crisis. There are always lawsuits and court dates, shootings and evictions, deaths and financial crises. Her entire family went to visit her brother in prison and she came back with a group photo to show the kids.

“This is my brother,” she said, pointing to a large man in the center.

“Why is he wearing an orange jumpsuit?” Larson asks, never one to miss a costume.

“That’s what they make you wear in prison.” She continued: “This is my mother and my sister. And this is my brother’s son, Jayden.”

“Your whole family is in jail? Even the kids?”

THANKS TO MY GIRLS, MY HUSBAND, AND MY OWN CONSIDERABLE contributions, our schedule runs like a many-geared, well-oiled machine. During the week, Peter gets the boys up and fixes them breakfast while I get them dressed. Then he takes the three oldest off to school and either heads to work or comes back home. Larson and Finn hang with me until Alicia arrives. She fixes Larson’s lunch and takes him to school, and I watch Finn while I get dressed. When she gets back, I get to work, whatever that may entail for the day. Alicia will place grocery orders and unpack the boxes, and (we hope) cook, to spare us from Nicole’s cooking. If the weather is nice, she will take Finn to the park. When school ends, everyone begins to pinball around the city. Nicole starts work at three o’clock. She goes straight to school and picks up Truman and Pierson on Mondays and drops off Truman at his reading tutor while she and Pierson shop. These shopping excursions may include a stop at the man on Fourteenth Street who fits you for a grille: Pierson is waiting for his second front tooth to come in to get his. On Wednesdays and Fridays, Nicole picks up Pierson early to take him to his reading tutor and I pick up Truman. I usually forget and arrive late at school to find Truman in the lobby, greeting me with some comment like “What the fuck just happened here?” Zoila comes to clean for a few hours on Mondays and Wednesdays. Meanwhile, Alicia takes Finn to pick up Larson, and either brings him home for an in-house speech session with Craig or takes him to his other speech therapist, Amy. Peik usually has to be tracked down on Mondays and Wednesdays to get him home on time for Sabina, his homework helper. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Nicole brings Truman and Pierson to me, I take them to fencing, and Nicole watches Finn so Alicia can go home. When we get back, Nicole watches Finn and Larson and reads with Pierson, while I help Peik and Truman with their homework. When Peter gets home, he helps them with the math that I can’t do. Nicole puts the three smallest ones to bed, then goes home. This leaves Peter and me to get the big boys to bed on time so we can catch a few hours of sleep before musical beds begins.

The fact that all these children have all these places to be is actually the easy part. Getting there is the hard part. There is no SUV parked in the driveway ten feet from the kitchen door. These children are not conveniently delivered door to door in the safety of their car seats. We perform a balancing act involving taxis, buses, subways, strollers, and Snuglis.

Taxis can be difficult to get, especially if the weather is bad, and as the meter ticks up, your bank account ticks down. Buses tend to have older passengers with little patience for a crying child. Nicole once got into an argument with a patron complaining about Larson that ended in the bus driver pulling over and the man fleeing. Subways present an array of problems. While they are undoubtedly the fastest way to get around Manhattan, they are not handicap friendly, and traveling with a child in a stroller is basically the same as wheeling around an invalid.