1.
Vivian Delgado's close female friend was a nutritionist. She lived by a vegetarian, wellness lifestyle and pushed her rice-water baby-feeding theory.
She preached that meat, eggs, and dairy all carried inborn toxins, that too much of them left a child with poor digestion and prone to getting sick.
Vivian believed in her ideas completely. He cut meat, eggs, and dairy from our daughter's diet outright, and only gave me money to buy thin rice porridge.
"Rice water is cheaper and healthier for raising a baby. Build her body up now, and later she'll digest meat, eggs, and dairy just fine."
Every day our daughter cried herself hungry, but her cries were as small as a kitten's.
Rice water couldn't fill her at all. She was over a year old and weighed barely fifteen pounds, far under normal.
All I could do was turn to my in-laws, hoping to get a little money out of them.
I never expected he'd just turn around and post me online.
The whole internet piled on me:
【Isn't this gold-digger done digging yet? Your man gives you living expenses every month, and you go running to your in-laws for money, using the excuse that your kid has no milk to drink.】
【Shameless, greedy to the bone. If it were me, I wouldn't take a woman like that even if she came crawling.】
My own family called to curse me out too.
"We married you off so you could build a life, not so you could squeeze people for money."
"Are they starving you of food, or of drink?"
I tried to explain, but not one person was willing to listen.
Until our daughter spiked a fever, and the doctor could barely draw enough blood to run tests.
Crying, I called Vivian, and all I got from the other end was mockery.
"So this is your new angle for money, huh."
"Do you even know how to spell 'shame'? Quit using the kid to milk sympathy."
Until that good buddy of his, the one who'd been a groomsman back at the wedding, tracked me down.
"So if I pay, will you come to me?"
……
Our daughter's little body was burning up, hot as a tiny furnace.
She kept throwing up too, bringing back the rice water she'd swallowed that morning.
I took her temperature. Far above normal.
I scooped her up and rushed her to the ER.
The cab cost a little over ten dollars. All that was left on my card was the hundred-something I'd set aside this week to buy her rice porridge.
Frantic, I called Vivian. "Transfer me some money. Our daughter's sick, she needs bloodwork. Send me three hundred first."
"They'll probably have to give her a shot soon too. Can you come to the hospital?"
Barbara Edwards's voice came through from his end. "Vivian, are you in or not? We're only waiting on you."
"Don't make me think you're some coward."
"Don't tell me that wife of yours is calling to beg for money again. Does it ever end? Are you supporting a wife or worshipping an ancestor?"
"If you're a real man, you'll toughen up. Stop indulging her nasty little habits. Kids catch colds, kids run fevers, it's not going to kill her."
Only then did Vivian speak into the phone.
"Mercedes Floyd, can you please stop making trouble out of nothing?"
"Barbara's a nutritionist. Whatever she says is right."
"A little fever and you run straight to the hospital. You think my money falls out of the sky? Take the kid home and stop embarrassing me."
The nurse heard the voice on the phone, and her eyes filled with pity.
"Mom, I'll be blunt. The baby needs her fever brought down fast, or something could happen."
Our daughter whimpered in my arms. I gripped the phone tight, and a call came in.
I thought Vivian had changed his mind and picked up at once, only to hear an unfamiliar man's voice.
"So if I pay, will you come to me?"
"You can think it over first."
I stared at the large transfer that had already landed on my phone, my heart pounding like a drum.
Nolan Marsh.
One of Vivian's friends, invited to be a groomsman back when we got married.
I looked at my daughter's thin little face, and I didn't refuse the money.
This kind of life, where I could never see what came next, I'd had enough of it.
I held her while they drew blood, my pale little baby, her veins too fine to find.
They stuck her a few times before they got even a little.
The nurse came over and helped me get her emergency fever treatment done.
Watching my daughter's sleeping face slowly settle back to normal, the tears I'd held in for so long finally fell.
It wasn't until the afternoon, once she was stable, that I went home.
Vivian set a container of takeout on the table.
Then he took out a sheet of paper and handed it to me.
"Barbara's about to start teaching live classes. You'll be her assistant and put the kid on camera, help promote her parenting expertise."
