Ketchup Is a Vegetable: And Other Lies Moms Tell Themselves (14 page)

She also has a fetish for body art and has a secret stash of Sharpies somewhere in my house. She has adorned herself more than once, with belts and bras a la Sharpie. I have no earthly idea who her supplier is. I don’t remember buying Sharpies in my entire life and I have confiscated ten of them from her in a three-week period.

Potty training with this child would have been enough for me to stop reproducing, had I not already been pregnant. Several months after Sadie was born, Emma found me in the laundry room and said, “MOM-MA… I poo-poo in Baby Sadie ploor…” Sure enough, there were two little nuggets waiting for me — complete with a trail of toilet paper from the bathroom all the way to Sadie’s room.

But that’s not even her worst. Only a few days later I was cleaning the kitchen, Emma came running in and screamed “MOM-MA I poo-poo in the sink.”

I felt the blood drain from my face as I tried to comprehend what she had just told me. Excuse me, she did
what
?

“What did you say Emma?”

“I poo-poo in the sink Momma.”

No, no, no, no, no. She didn't. She wouldn't. I mean
why
in the world
would she take her pants off
in the freaking bathroom
and
not
go in the potty? She had to be making this up…

“MOMMA, EMMA WENT POO-POO IN THE SINK!” Aubrey screamed in disgust.

I went to the bathroom to find poop in the sink, where we wash our hands and
brush our teeth
. It was completely and totally disgusting, but I have to admit that I also considered it progress. At least she was in
the bathroom this time.

Emma was immediately disciplined and sent to time out. While I was scrubbing every surface of the bathroom with bleach, holding back tears and trying to figure out what I could possibly have done to deserve this, Emma was singing the blues from time out.

“I’ne sowwy Momma, I weady be nice now. I not poo-poo in da sink anymoor. Mommy? Mommy? You heah me? I not poo-poo in da sink anymorr. I pwomise.”

I was afraid to even guess where she would go instead. And I should have been scared because our potty training mishaps were about to hit the fan.

When I was approximately forty-'leven months pregnant with Sadie, Emma came crawling into the bed with my husband and me in the middle of the night. Normally I would have picked her up and put her back in her own bed, but I was too pregnant to pick her up and she was being really still and quiet. So, we snuggled. I was lying on my left side and she nestled up against me. I kissed her little cheeks and she said, “cwratch my armpits, Momma,” and I did. (I don’t know why she likes to have her armpits scratched but it’s her favorite thing in the entire world.)

As I was scratching I began to notice a smell. Not a poop smell. A morning breath meets strep throat smell, you moms and nurses out there know what I’m talking about. I thought to myself, “Poor baby, her throat probably hurts so bad she can’t sleep. I probably need to take her to the doctor in the morning.” I was lying there feeling sorry for her and scratching her tiny little armpits and skinny little arms, when she opened her fist and put something in my hand… something small… something round... something slightly sticky. The scream that issued forth from my lips could have gotten me a part in any horror movie.

“AAAAAAAGHHH! Oh my God, Oh my God, OH MY GOD! ZEEEEEBBBB!!”

Zeb sat straight up in the bed, looking for an armed intruder, “WHAT? WHAT IS IT?”

“HOLY CHIT! Emma just crapped and put it in my hand!” I screamed as I flipped on all the lights. “She crapped on me! ZEB, SHE CRAPPED ON ME!”

My child — my
baby
, had just crawled into my bed and handed me a turd.

A turd.

My child
literally
just crapped on me. My mind could hardly take it in. What in the Hell did this mean? Who was I supposed to call about this? My mother? Super Nanny Jo Frost? Dr. Phil? Oprah? I had
never,
in my whole entire life, heard of someone whose child had crapped
in their freaking hand
.

I was in shock, totally grossed out... and my bed had been
violated
. After a 3:00am bath for Emma, some
vigorous
hand washing on my part and a quick sheet change, we all got back into bed. I avoided eye contact with Zeb for the next twenty-four hours, hoping against hope that if we didn’t talk about it — maybe it hadn’t really happened. It was all just a bad, bad dream.

My point is this: just because my child is in a smocked dress, with a hair bow adorning her golden Shirley Temple curls does
not
mean she is as sweet or easy as she looks. I realize that there are fundamental differences in raising boys and girls. Boys like to play with trucks and guns. Girls like to play dress up and with make-up. Boys have a penis, girls have a coo-coo — or whatever you call it in your house. A child’s temperament determines how easy, difficult, mischievous or compliant they are, and like it or not, it doesn’t have anything to do with what sex they are. Sometimes, little girls wear hair bows simply to hide their horns… and until your little boy has crapped in your hand — I don’t want to hear what a handful he is.

I
n 2006, two life-shattering events occurred: the house I grew up in was broken into and burned to the ground taking with it every earthly possession my mother owned… and both of my grandparents passed away after fighting illnesses for many years. I had just had my second child in less than two years in a town I had only lived in for three short months. Because my husband is completely incoherent in the middle of the night, I was getting up every time one of our girls woke up, while banking on being able to nap every day.

It wasn’t out of the ordinary for me to put a sign on the door telling folks to not ring the doorbell while we were sleeping. Sometimes the only sleep I would get in a twenty-four hour period would be during nap time. It requires an unprecedented level of skill to get a newborn and a toddler to sleep at the same time — if I ever enter a beauty pageant I plan on using this as my talent. Needless to say, nap time is
sacred
at my house and with the levels of stress I was experiencing in my personal life, I needed all the sleep I could get.

You can only imagine my joy one fine afternoon when the doorbell started ringing just as I was drifting off. We had an odd shaped window right beside the door, for which I could never find a curtain so once I was spotted by two young Mormons I could no longer pretend I wasn’t home. I wrapped my bathrobe around me and walked to the door.

Now, I watch
Dateline
and
Oprah
and I wasn’t
about
to open the door for two well-dressed men I had never seen before. My Momma didn’t raise no fool. I leaned against the window and screamed at them, “We don’t want any and I’m trying to sleep! Go away!”

The young men looked confused and screamed back, “Do you know who we are?”

“I don’t care. I’m trying to sleep, GO AWAY!”

“Ma’am,” one of the men screamed as he flipped open his badge, “we’re with the F.B.I.”

Gulp.

I immediately had butterflies in the pit of my stomach the size of the turkey on my Momma’s kitchen table every Thanksgiving. This was worse than the time I had a note taken by the teacher in the 6
^th
grade with multiple curse words in my own handwriting. And worse than all the numerous times I’d been called to the principal’s office in high school… combined. What in the world could they want with me? And
holy chit
, I just yelled at the FBI!

I slowly opened the door. “How can I help you?”

“Ma’am we’re here because child pornographic images have been traced back to your IP address.”

Knock
me
over with a feather. “Huh? WHAT did you just say?”

“We have traced known pornographic images back to your computer.”

“I’m sorry, but that is impossible. Could it just be pictures of my kids in the bathtub or something like that?”

“No ma’am, that’s not considered pornographic. These are known images of children being molested and they are on your computer. Are you the only one who uses the computer?”

“No, my husband uses it too. But I’m telling you this is NOT possible.”

To say I was in complete and total shock would be like saying Michael Jackson had a little work done. I was flabbergasted. The FBI agent reached into his pocket and pulled out a photo. It was of a young girl being molested, the obscene parts had been blacked out. But it was sick and disturbing and if it was on my computer, I was going to beat the
hell
out of somebody.

The agents said they needed to interview anyone who used the computer and if my husband wasn’t home they could come back at a more convenient time. I asked them to wait at the door and with shaking hands called my husband at work as I quickly got dressed. “You need to come home
right
now and talk to the two FBI agents who are here.” Zeb thought I was playing a sick joke on him until I started sobbing uncontrollably.

I know my husband. At the time we had been married for ten years. We’ve been together since we were eighteen and I knew there was no way he was capable of this. As hard as it is for some men to believe, my husband finds all pornography disgusting and demeaning. It has never mattered to him how fat I am or what my hair looked like, he has
never
so much as glanced at another woman since we’ve been together. For some unknown reason I am all he wants and needs.

I let the agents in the house. (Yes, I made them stand on my front porch while I called my husband AND my Daddy and threw some clothes on.) I told them my husband was on his way home, because we wanted to clear this matter up immediately. I am
not
good at nervous small talk, as you may recall from my appointment with my plastic surgeon about my boobalas, and I was about to soil myself trying to convince these people that my husband wasn’t capable of such monstrosities.

Me: I’m sure y’all are really good judges of character and you’ll see as soon as you meet him that this isn’t possible. I don’t even know when he would look at it. He goes to bed early and I’m up all hours of the night with the babies so it’s not like he could sneak in here and do it then. I’m sorry I’m chattering so much, I haven’t slept in awhile and we just got back from my grandfather’s funeral in Alabama and I’ve been really upset. (
Why was I talking so much?
Shut up Robin, SHUT UP! You sound more guilty with every word!)

Agent: Did your husband go with you?

Me: Oh, no. Not for the whole time, he flew in for the funeral…

The agents exchanged meaningful eye contact, like “A-HA, that’s when he did it.”

CRAP! They were good at this. I was so nervous, I was ready to go all Chunk from
The Goonies
and start confessing every bad thing I'd ever done in my entire life.

Me: He wouldn’t do this, I’m telling you.

Agent: Ma’am, with all respect we hear that every day.

Me: If y’all find child porn on my computer, he’s going to be
glad
you're here, because I’m going to beat the living CHIT out of him. Do you understand me? You’ll be here for his protection, because I’m going to
kill him
!

About this time Zeb walked in the front door, nervous as I had ever seen him. The men all shook hands and exchanged greetings and Zeb asked the agents what he could do to clear things up.

“We have a program that we can run on your computer to scan for the images, if they are there it will pull them up…”

Zeb began to explain to the freaking F.B.I. why he believes the Internet should be free — boyfriend can be a little Communist in his political beliefs sometimes — and because of this belief, he has left our wireless access unencrypted, thus leaving our Internet connection open to every freeloading pervert in the neighborhood. Zeb continued to ask the agents how they would feel “hypothetically speaking” if they found some not-exactly-legal copies of movies on our computer.

This explained his nervousness to me, but really made me want to throttle him. I mean, could we just maybe, I dunno —
cooperate with the F.B.I
? Hell-o? Earth to Zeb!

“Do it,” I interrupted. “Run the program. If there’s porn of any kind on my computer I want to see it.”