The thermometer beeps. I already know I won’t like whatever news it has for me. I can feel the waves of angry heat radiating from my daughter’s skin, her breath.
102.3F.
I check my notes app while halfheartedly shushing my baby, and find that it’s been an hour since I last gave her Tylenol.
Her screams get louder, so I scoop her from the changing table, mindlessly bouncing her while I double-check the Tylenol dose on Google.
Zoe calms down in my arms, her eyes closing despite her anguished, frowning brows.
I reread my text thread with Angie, my boss and the owner of Zoe’s daycare.
Angie: What’d the dr say about Zoe?
Me: Viral. No ear infection. Fever could last three more days before it runs its course.
Angie: Antibiotic?
Me: No. She said it doesn’t help this kind of thing.
Angie: Should’ve gotten one anyway, she has a history. Will you be back tomorrow?
Me: She won’t have been fever-free for 24 hours, so…
Angie: Of course Zoe can’t come. But can you?
Me: Well, I can’t leave a nine-month-old home alone, can I?
Angie: You can hire a sitter.
A sitter would command a higher hourly rate than I’d make at work.
I never responded.
Zoe lets out a pained moan, and my heart breaks. I stand with my eyes closed, swaying with her hot little cheek resting on my shoulder.
Desperate and delirious, I open Instagram and take a grainy, dark selfie of my ugly, red-eyed face.
I add a line of text: “Message me if you know of any good flu remedies.”
I don’t expect anyone to be up, but I have a response from Courtney Gillespie, a girl I went to high school with. She posts a ton, so I shouldn’t be surprised that she’s on Instagram at 12:45am.
Courtney: Hey girl! My company actually has an immune supplement that works really well for the flu! You’re still in Augusta, right?
Me: Nice! Yeah, I am.
Courtney: I have some in stock if you want to swing by and pick it up tomorrow 🙂
I accept, and she gives me her address.
We survive the night. I load Zoe in the car and drive straight to Courtney’s house. My phone is ringing nonstop, and I know it’s Angie, but I am too tired to care.
Courtney’s neighborhood is full of big houses with circular driveways. When I arrive at the house that matched the address she gave me, I decide this must be a joke. No way Courtney Gillespie lives in this mansion. It has Grecian-looking columns, a wide, stone front porch, and a fountain in the front lawn surrounded by manicured bushes.
Zoe and I look like poor beggars at her doorstep.
I knock, and Courtney answers, all concerned smiles and nods. Her perfect bob, her lipstick, and her light khaki capris all reek of a wealth I never knew her to have.
She lets me in, and Zoe immediately calms. I don’t blame her; Courtney’s house is warm and smells amazing. She leads us to the stock room, a home office with a color-coded storage system neatly packed with tiny glass bottles. It’s as beautiful as it is overwhelming.
“Here it is,” she hands me a vial with the words “Immune PUNCH” on the label. “It’s twenty dollars.”
After witnessing the grandeur of Courtney’s home, I’m relieved it doesn’t cost more.
I hand her the money and ask her how to use the Immune PUNCH. She demonstrates a variety of methods- including a diffuser I can’t afford. Then my phone rings again.
“Ugh.” I sneer at the screen. “Sorry, it’s my boss. She’s been calling all morning.” I tell her the daycare situation, the sick policy.
“Is she serious? They want you to put work above your own family? You’ve got to quit.”
“I know, it’s fucked up. But we need the work to put a roof over the family’s head, so…”
“Doesn’t your husband work?” Courtney asks, almost accusingly.
“Yeah, he just doesn’t make enough for me to stay home.”
She looks unsatisfied.
“He works very hard,” I add.
“Look, girl,” she says. “Employees will always be abused. You and your husband are both overworked and underpaid. They are incentivized to keep you needing them. You need to try being your own boss for a change. Then you set your own hours and voila,” she motions to the house. “Yourmoney.”
“Sounds great,” I deadpan. “But we’re not in a position to start a business now.”
“It doesn’t take much. Just a little investment in yourself. Your future. Your baby’s future,” she says, tickling Zoe.
Zoe smiles for the first time in days.
“Look, you scrounge together like, eight hundred bucks, and call me. That’s all you need to start your inventory and get selling. Then it pays for itself. And you’ll have more than you know how to spend,” she says.
I never wanted to be an entrepreneur, and I’m not keen on parting with eight hundred bucks. So I just dab some of this “Immune PUNCH” on Zoe’s wrist, I thank Courtney, and we leave.
Zoe remains fever-free the rest of the day. I text Angie that we’ll be back tomorrow, and my stomach remains clenched until I realize she isn’t going to respond.
While rocking Zoe to sleep, I open Instagram and type Courtney’s name in the search bar.
I’ve never paid much attention to Courtney’s increasingly prevalent online presence. I figured she was trying to be an influencer of some sort, which I suppose could still be true, but after seeing the evidence of her riches, I am overcome with greedy, jealous curiosity.
It’s a beautifully curated grid, I think, and then I scold myself for calling a collection of Instagram posts “beautiful.” Somehow she’s gotten all the pastel thumbnails to fall into a pattern that resembles a healthy, glowing sunset. Like she’s always in perfect, golden hour lighting.
I select her most recent post, and find that the actual video looks nothing like the thumbnail image. It’s her, sitting in the front seat of some mega mom car, lip-syncing enthusiastically to a rap song about “making it” with the following words on the screen: when that 5-figure direct deposit hits in the school carpool line.
It’s absurdly classless and lame, and I wonder how anyone could possibly enjoy this content. Apparently, they do, because it has hundreds of “likes” and 85 comments. I open the comments, wondering if people are chewing her out for being trashy.
Instead, nearly every comment is comprised of the same two words: “IM IN!”
Bewildered, I scroll up to the caption, which reads: “Ready for this to be a weekly occurrence for you, too? Comment “IM IN” to be invited to my FREE, no obligation discovery session, Thursday night at 7!”
Why she has to specify that such a thing is free, I’m not sure, but I am intrigued. More importantly: A weekly occurrence?! I don’t know Courtney well; we only played flute together in high school. But she was a nice girl. A good girl. Not the type that would outright lie about money.
I open the comments and type in the words myself: “IM IN.”
Nothing happens.
Zoe and I go to daycare, and miraculously, I still have a job. In fact, Angie asks me lots of questions about how we’re feeling and warns me not to “push it” too hard, all while one toddler cries in each of my arms and another tugs on my pant leg.
After work, I find a notification on my phone from Courtney. She’s Insta messaged me.
Courtney: Hey girl! How did that Immune PUNCH work? Are you and Zoe feeling better?”
Me: Yes!! It worked like, instantly. I was surprised, not gonna lie.
Courtney: So glad to hear it— Doesn’t it feel amazing to heal the natural way? Btw here is the link to the discovery session tonight. No pressure, but I hope to see you there!
I do attend the discovery session, sitting on the toilet after putting Zoe to bed. I don’t want my husband to hear this; he’d freak out, and I’m only here for an envious, twisted pleasure, not because I plan to join.
Courtney’s face illuminates my screen. Her makeup is simultaneously polished and casual. Like she isn’t wearing any, but I refuse to believe that, because no one should be that pretty without makeup.
She calls out a few of the attendees by name, and when she gets to me, I unmute myself to whisper “hi,” unsure why I am embarrassed to do so. My camera, of course, remains disabled.
Courtney speeds through her brief spiel about the products. She uses vague terms like “adaptogen” and “happy chemicals” and “micronutrients.” By the end, it is still unclear if the company sells essential oils or supplements, or both, or maybe there is no difference, and I am dumber than I thought.
Then we get into the part she’s most passionate about: changing women’s lives. Here, she reveals that while she loves to share her products, what she really loves to share is this business. She talks about how women are conditioned to avoid risks, to be meek and mild and docile, and how she finds entrepreneurship empowering. She skillfully avoids the word “feminism”— opting for alternatives like “girl power” and “embracing your mom boss energy.”
She launches into a tirade about corporate America– how none of us will achieve financial freedom unless we become business owners. I’m not part of corporate America, but that doesn’t stop her from telling my story about being harassed by my boss when Zoe was sick.
This segues into her telling us that we won’t need to pay for daycare anymore if we join her team; that this entire job can be done from home alongside motherhood.
That selling point lands harder than any of the self-empowerment bullshit. What if Zoe didn’t have to get sick from daycare cooties twice a month?
When someone asks her how much it costs to get started, she proudly declares it costs only a thousand dollars. That is not the number she’d told me at her house, but what’s another two hundred bucks at this point?
She begins sharing a list of patronizing strategies to save the thousand-dollar seed money; things like “avoid dining out” and “cancel unused subscriptions” that anyone as poor as me has already exhausted.
Then she mentions borrowing money. At first, I tune her out. My husband is so debt-averse, I know it isn’t happening. But Courtney has a point; this is different from running up a credit card at the mall. This is an investment. This is borrowing money to grow it. I could probably pay it off before he notices.
Courtney and I arrange a time to meet at her place. My husband thinks I’m just getting coffee with a girl from high school, which isn’t technically a lie.
I tell her that I don’t think my husband will like it if I put seed money on credit. She sighs knowingly and tells me this is a common issue.
“Most men aren’t half as industrious and resourceful as they like to think,” she says. “And they don’t like women investing in themselves. They like you to be helpless and reliant on them.”
I’m about to interject that this is not at all what I meant, but she keeps going.
“Trust me, he’ll change his tune when you retire him at 40.”
I envision the scene, telling him he never has to work again. It’s so good that I can’t pass up a shot at it– even if it is a long one.
I hand her my credit card, and she orders my starter kit.
“Stand in front of my inventory wall! I’ll take a photo for your announcement post,” she says.
“Is that a little weird?”
“Why?”
“Will people think I’m pretending this is my house?”
“How would they know? Maybe you moved.”
I stare at her, piecing together that my concern was actually her intention.
“It’s called manifesting. Pose in the house you want, and it will come to you. Put out the energy you want to attract. Document it, post it. It’s like a vision board.”
Makes enough sense. “Okay.”
I pose in front of the vials, holding my arms out as if displaying my own vast collection. Courtney helps me edit the photo and crafts a caption about this exciting new opportunity, inviting my followers to DM me if they want to join.
When she passes my phone back, I notice my grid looks prettier than I remember. Somehow, this new post has pulled colors from every other thumbnail, creating a palette not unlike a warm sunset.
I won’t question it. It’s me. I’m manifesting.
A week after my startup kit arrives, Courtney calls me to ask if I’d like to place another order. I tell her I have yet to make a sale, and she becomes irate.
“You know you have to place at least one order a month, right?”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“Yes, I did. You need to start selling. Do you need my help?”
I accept, and even though she is the last person I want to spend time with after this exchange, I agree to meet her at the mall to plan.
But when I arrive, we don’t plan. We shop.
We look at designer bags that cost more than my car. She grabs my phone to snap a photo of me trying one on, then posts it on my story.
“I can’t afford this,” I say.
“Don’t you have a credit card?”
“The limit isn’t high enough for a bag like this.”
We go to another store, one for girls in their twenties who go clubbing, and she finds one that looks like the designer bag I’d tried on, but this one’s thirty-eight dollars.
“You need it for your events. You have to exude success to be successful.”
“Manifest it.”
“Exactly. You can borrow my car when you visit clients, if you need to.”
I nod, unsure what to make of this.
The story she posted gets more likes and “wow” emojis than anything I’ve ever shared. Even though it’s a farce and I never bought the bag, I’m reveling in the idea that all these people believed it.
Another week passes without a single sale. My house smells amazing, though.
I call Courtney for our “Friday check-in.”
“I’m kind of freaking out. I post every day, just like you said. No one wants to buy this crap.”
“Well, are you still working at that daycare?”
“Yeah, of course. I haven’t made a single sale. I can’t quit my job.”
Courtney laughs. “Well, that’s why you haven’t made a sale. That, and you’re calling your product crap. You don’t believe in your product, how do you expect anyone else to?”
“I believe in it, sure, it’s just–”
“Look at the life I’ve built on these products. The exact same products you have access to. If they’re not selling, trust me, it’s a you-problem.”
I have never heard her be so openly mean, but I have to admit, she has a point. Maybe society has conditioned me to avoid risks, maybe I do need to trust myself.
I stop showing up to daycare. I start wearing lipstick every morning just to film myself talking about these oils and supplements. I’m posting incessantly.
As suggested in my starter pack marketing materials, I ask a local boutique to host an event with me, and they agree. We’ll provide wine and offer discounts on the store products and my products.
It works; I make some sales. I still haven’t made enough to cover the costs of the wine.
But I’ve exchanged numbers with some of the ladies, and I start texting them.
“Hey girl! Was wondering if you wanted to be the FIRST to try this immune PUNCH!”
Sometimes, it works, but I think they’re just pity-buying it. They just want to support this woman-owned business I’ve created. No one wants this shit.
I dip into my own inventory and take a dirt-filled capsule called “motivate.”
I realize that I can’t say “no one wants this shit” anymore. Courtney is right, as always. I need to manifest.
Everyone wants this. This freedom. The ability to work from home with my daughter. I don’t have to work on anyone else’s clock except ours. Everyone wants these wholesome, natural products; they just haven’t discovered them yet.
I am doing them a favor by texting them. I’m doing them a favor by messaging them. Like that time that Zoe was sick, and Courtney messaged me, and she cured her.
I start reading the pamphlets on every item I sell, studying furiously with the help of my ever-depleting bottle of “motivate” capsules. I will become an expert, and I will heal people, too, goddammit.
I use my credit card to get my hair cut into a tight little bob, the kind a saleslady should have. I need business cards. I need a headshot for my business cards. I need to set up a booth at the farmer’s market. I need more lipstick.
I make contacts. I make sales. I gain followers.
I’m still in debt, and it’s almost time to place another order.
I call Courtney, and she’s happy with my progress.
“I’m so proud of you, all your sales. Isn’t it incredible, the power of betting on yourself?”
“Yes, it is. I love the products. You were right about quitting daycare.”
“We women tend to stand in our own way.”
“Right. But Courtney, how did you make all that money to afford that house? I am selling like crazy, but the margin just isn’t high enough.”
“By manifesting it.”
“Seriously, you can’t make that much money selling this.”
She pauses, and I brace myself for another lecture about believing in myself. But her voice lowers, and she says, “Honestly, you can make a nice living exclusively selling, never recruiting another girl in your whole career. But if you want the big money, your best clients will be your recruits.”
“Oh?”
I definitely want the big money.
“Yes. Because consultants have to order so much for their inventory.”
“That makes sense. So, how do you go about recruiting?”
She tells me the boring stuff, the posts, the discovery calls. “But the most important thing to do is to manifest. Show off. If you look rich, they’ll want to know how you’ve done it.”
“I’m not rich yet.”
“Don’t you ever say that. You may be in a bumpy patch now, but you are in the fast lane to success. Trust me. You’re on this path just a few paces behind me, and I know it will get so good for you,” she says. “Come on over, and we can film some content for you tomorrow.”
We film those awful videos like the ones on her Instagram. Me leaning against the columns on her front porch, standing in her kitchen, sitting in her car, wearing her bags and her shoes; all while lip-syncing to dumb songs about my success. Courtney holds Zoe in one arm and my phone in the other, shouting commands like an agitated film director.
She posts the first one, and I immediately get a flood of comments. All of them saying the same two words: “IM IN.”
“Potential recruits!” Courtney squeals. Then, she answers a call. “Hey, yeah, we’re almost done. Yeah, we’ll be gone by the time you get home,” she says to the person on the other side.
“Was that your husband?” I ask.
“Oh, no,” she says casually. “Just my upline, Courtney. The girl who recruited me. This is her house, she was just making sure we’re done with it.”
I swallow. “Her house? You mean, it’s not yours?”
“No,” Courtney says, as if she hasn’t been lying to me this whole time. “It’s Courtney’s.”
She stares at me as if I’m the one acting suspicious.
So, she borrowed her upline’s house. So, she lied to me about it. At least she still shared it with me?
I suppose she’s merely practicing what she preaches: manifestation.
Zoe is asleep in the backseat when I get home, so I scroll on my phone to put off waking her up. I check our banking app. Between shopping trips, inventory orders, and sales events, my credit card bill has tripled since I started this.
I gingerly lift Zoe from her carseat and take her to the house. My husband is cooking dinner.
“Hey, Courtney,” he says to me, and kisses me on the cheek.
He doesn’t notice that I’ve lost my job, the closet is full of unopened, good-smelling boxes, that my Instagram persona has morphed into something insufferable, that our credit score is tanking.
Men.
After dinner, I’m rocking Zoe to sleep, and I start watching Instagram stories. I must lose track of time, because it’s 12:45 am when I stumble upon a story posted by Courtney, an old friend from high school.
It’s a dark, grainy selfie of her miserable face, asking for flu remedy recommendations.
I message her about the Immune PUNCH.
When I check on my post from earlier that evening, I read the names behind the sea of “IM IN” comments. I wonder if my phone is broken, or if my brain is broken, but it looks like all fifty comments were posted by me. courtney_gillespie. I scroll and scroll and scroll, then I close the app.
When I open it again, I have an unread message from that girl who needed a flu remedy, Courtney Gillespie. She wants to try the Immune PUNCH. She was always a nice girl. I wonder if she’d make a good recruit.