When I was in third grade I had

a nanny named Jill who lived with us. She was the second Jill. The first Jill was when we lived in the house in New York, just my mother and I. I liked her I think but I don't think I had her (I had her?) very long. But the strongest memory I have of her is a time I stepped on her toe and she had an "ingrown nail!" and she cried and screamed at me, so I guess first Jill may have been a little mental no wait - i also remember watching snow fall in big flakes for the first time with her. She had pretty art in her room. She bolted in the night leaving a note about hating to leave, but she had to, but she loved me, just like Maria did in The Sound of Music. Second Jill, a lifetime later (everyone remarries! moves to New Jersey! has babies!) was the best nanny a girl in third grade in New Jersey with a sort of blobbish-age baby sister could have. We were in love. Jill made any of the lie-bragging about my mom I had ever done come true times a million. Jill made me scavenger hunts for when I came home with clues to the next thing all over the house - ingenious clues, sometimes picture clues, - the library was often a trap. While I did the hunts she made a snack of something in an ingenious shape. She sent notes in lunch. Once she made red sweatpants for me with ribbons and buttons and a decorative pink & white patch. She put them in my room and she told me not to confuse them with play red sweatpants which I immediately did and ripped a huge hole in them that day, that instant , just about. When she went back to Wisconsin for the holidays she left a note in the box under her bed for me not to spy on her things -she knew me too well. She was magical like Mary Poppins - from Wisconsin - who went to such a cool youth group church that we rode for miles to to pick her up from. She would tell us about the coed Jesus trivia games they played wearing bathing suits(?) in a Jello filled swimming pool. Cool.

It is true, I think, that she only ate buttered popcorn. I was told that and I think it bore out. And it's true I'm sure that she had an emotional side I didn't see. She left though - and I think my mom fired her. She was gone and my mother talked to me about how she was mentally ill, anorexic, and kleptomaniac. I just thought of her suddenly talking to Jessica on the phone. She was telling me about her mom these days and I don't know - it took me back - even though I hadn't met Jessica when Jill was my nanny. What a sad story. My mother didn't know how to be kind to that girl. I talked to the school counselor about it. He had a special room where you could look down on the people in gym class from two stories above through a tiny hidden door - those happy kickballplaying suckers didn't know the secret perspectives revealed to those as weird as me. I repeated to him what I'd been told - she only ate popcorn, she stole my mother's pin that she got at her promotion party at her firm - and people only steal things like that when they have a fixation with the person it belongs to - it was personal. I remember telling my friend Meredith about it. I loved telling her the dramatic things about my life - they impressed and excited her. It's strange thinking about Jill. It just occured to me too that I could look her up. Facebook being what it is. My mother told me that she went to an institution and that's what I told Meredith dramatically in the hallway - we had been getting pretty good at leaving class at the same time. I missed her badly - after her came Angie, a sweet mormon girl, I was purposely mean to- through with nannies and all this best friends let's hang out and talk. She left soon enough, homesick - back to Utah (I did warm up to her. Asked her now and then about the Bible.) But my attitude was that Jill was the best, what was there to gain from Angie... I just wouldn't commit ;) Then someone came and calIed a suicide hotline the third night of living in our house, Jolie (accent on the "Jo"). Then came the era of Indra from Trinidad Tobego, who just stopped showing up one day, and then Emma from Belize and Stephanie got some discipline at last (and someone told poor sixth grade me that it wasn't weird if my mother made me cry - she had that effect.) Emma was mos def fired. it was right after my step-dad had some kind of heat stroke and was lying on the couch and she said "Well she's finally done it- she's finally killed him." Emma was a blog of her own. I wonder what really happened with Jill. Maybe she wasn't fired. Maybe I'll try to suss this out from my drunk mother the next time I have the chance.