Women Can't Do It All

It’s 167 St and Grand Concourse, the D Train. Outside if you live anywhere more than a mile from the train you’ll have to catch an overcrowded bus or trek home. Welcome to the Bronx.

If you can make it through the beggars, and the salesmen, and keep your kids together youll be doing alright. She’s lifting the stroller up and carrying it two to three flights of dirty piss-stained stairs. Her other baby follows behind her, he’s about 2 or 3 years old. Maybe one of the good guys will lend a hand and help her get the stroller up, or maybe they'll just keep walking like she’s invisible as they do most of the time.

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Her baby father hasn’t seen them in over a week but he’s active on instagram. She doesn’t really know where he is for real. Some girls slid in her DM telling her that they saw him and he was trying to speak to them and they just “thought she should know.” At this point it’s commonplace. She rolls her eyes. It’s not worth the time. She has kids to worry about now.

Lifting the stroller halfway up the flight of stairs a gentleman comes and grabs the other end. There’s no words, he just jumps in. That’s the energy I need, she thinks to herself. They get it up the stairs. The other baby lingers behind. “Come on JJ, let’s go baby.” She yells to him. He hustles up the steps. His little legs moving in his Cement Jordan 3’s Size 6C. “Thank you so much sir,” she says to the man who helped.

He is a working class Hispanic man, and likely does not speak English. I love Spanish men, they always helpful, she thinks to herself.

They get out of the train. “Mommy, can I get an icee, mommy please.” JJ asks. “Let me see if I got cash, hold up.” She responds, digging through her pockets as if she is trying to find a passport or something of the upmost importance.

“coco, mango, cherry,” he says. She hands the money to the piragua man—A Bronx delicacy. The baby walks happily beside his mom. he doesn’t know any different. He doesn’t know that she hasn’t paid the ConEd, or that she needs to find a second job as soon as possible, or that she still has two bags of laundry waiting when she gets home and needs to prepare dinner. He doesn’t know that the laundry might take 4-6 hours depending on if the machines in the building are all working or if they is a wait. He doesn't know that every night she thinks about their dad and misses him but feels wrong to miss him because of everything he has done to her. He doesn’t know that she spends too much time wondering what life would be like if he could just commit and be faithful. He doesn’t know what she sacrificed to keep them how there was no baby shower or gender reveal for her when they were in the womb. Just rejection and shame. He doesn’t know that she can’t tell her job she needs two hours off the next day because he has a doctor’s appointment and she is the only one who can take him. He doesn’t know that mommy probably won’t get to just sit down at all today. He doesn’t know that she cried in the shower last night because she missed the same man that takes her for granted. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know daddy was in and out because he still felt he had life to live and who did it all fall on? Mommy. And that’s some real shit.

See this woman isn’t real. She is made up. But the situation is real. I have lived a variation of it and I have watched many women around me live it. Broken down, the light in their eyes fading, their foreheads developing a slight wrinkle, their bodies worn down, their hearts heavy, their minds constant. Women can’t do it all and they shouldn’t have to.

Modern society said if women want rights—if women don’t want to be controlled then they must do it all. somewhere down the line we went wrong, this isn’t the equality we were talking about. Desiring respect and opportunity will never equate to systematic abandonment. So the next time you see a woman and a mother doing it all, please stop, please help. She needs it. We cheer on the woman who does it all. We say wow you’re truly amazing, because she is. But what we really mean to say is, I am sorry. I am sorry that the world made it okay for it to fall on you. I am sorry that the circles got smaller and the resources got scarcer, I am sorry we don’t hold men to the same standards. I am sorry that it all fell on you.