Nepo Baby

For the first thirteen years of my life I was a nobody. A relatively content little nobody. Then I started high school and suddenly everything changed. And I don’t mean the stereotypical my body started growing hair in strange places and I experienced garden variety depression type of everything changed. No, what happened to me was specific to me.

I became someone.

I went from nobody to somebody.

 You see, for the first thirteen years of my life I was no different from any other person I knew. I was the same as any other kid, then I was the same as any other teenager. Well, for a small while anyway when it comes to the latter.

You see, when I started high school, because I was in classes with new people and not everyone I had grown up with back in primary school, I had to do those awful icebreaker introductions. You know the ones.

My name is:

I went to school at:

My favourite colour is:

All of that banal, tedious stuff. The things nobody cares about. The information everybody forgets about as soon as you tell them.

Somebody asks me what my Instagram is, what my Snapchat is. I tell them I don’t have any of those. But whether this person thought I was lying or not, whether this person didn’t know I didn’t have any social media or not, because people now knew my name from the icebreakers, somebody went ahead and checked to see if I had any social media anyway. At least that’s what I assume. How they found out what they found out must have come from them searching up my name. Definitely from searching up my surname.

You see, my foster parents knew something that my mom – my biological mom – did and they didn’t tell me about it. And I don’t blame them for it, not really.

How I found out what my foster parents kept from me all my life happened, I think, on the third or fourth week of me being at high school. I was eating lunch in the cafeteria when I got a notification on my phone – a beeping sonar-like sound that came from my pocket. I pull out my phone and see that I’ve got an Airdrop notification on the screen. I looked at the people around me in the cafeteria but everyone head the head down or was busy talking to somebody. I opened up the notification and was greeted by a picture of a women I’d never seen before.

The women in the picture looked kind of young, in her mid or late twenties. I saw that she had a baby in her arms and then I noticed she had one of her breasts exposed near the babies face. Someone had Airdropped me a picture of a women breastfeeding a baby for some reason. I looked around again for who might have sent it but no one stuck out – no one was looking at me. I thought it was either a joke or a mistake and so just went back to eating.

In class a few hours later I get an Airdrop notification again. It was the women with the baby again but she and the baby were in different clothes. The baby was being breastfed again. I was confused and looked around the classroom but everyone’s attention was on the teacher at the front of the classroom. It seemed obvious at that point that this was someone’s idea of a joke or something so I just ignored it.

The next day I get four Airdrops notifications in class. All of them featuring the same women and the same baby. All of them showing the baby being breastfed.

At lunch I get nonstop Airdrop notifications. Picture after picture of this women breastfeeding the baby. From the rate I get them, it looks like multiple people are sending me them.

At home I tell my foster parents about it.. My foster mom asks to see one of the pictures. I show her and she gets a concerned look on her face. My foster dad looks at the picture and his expression changes to one of concern, too. I ask them, what’s up? What’s the big deal?

My foster parents look at each other. My foster mom speaks first. Say’s, “I’m sorry you had to find out like this.” Say’s, “It wasn’t something you should know about yet.”

I ask, What? What shouldn’t I know about yet?

My foster mom looks at my foster dad and he, his head hung, exhales then gives my foster mom a nod. My foster mom looks at me, swallows then says, “that women in the picture – that’s you’re…” she trailed off, looked up at a right angle, then held her hands up, the fingers extending and closing as if trying to offer me something her voice couldn’t. She stops looking up at a right angle and her sad eyes settle on my own. The hands offering me nothing drop to her sides. She says, “It’s your mother. You’re birth mother.”

I look at the picture on the phone. My mother. It was the first picture I’d seen of her.

My mom. And in my mom’s arms the baby. My foster parents didn’t need tell me – I knew who the baby was.

What my foster parents did tell me however was why it came to be that I was taken away from my mom and how my mom was arrested. I knew she was in jail. They told me she was a long time ago but didn’t tell me why. They said they would when I was older.

Well, I wasn’t as old as I’d imagine they’d like me to have been but they told me.

They told me my mom used to make videos on YouTube. These videos were instructional – they taught women how to breastfeed properly and how to know if your baby was hungry or full, and so on. Turns out my mom – my birth mom – got a decent following on her channel and so kept on making these instructional-type videos. But then, my foster parents told me, it wasn’t just educational videos on YouTube that she continued on making.

The following that she got on YouTube, the viewership, the subscribers, not all of them turned out to be watching for educational purposes. And my mom, she eventually cottoned on to this. She didn’t stop making videos, however.

No. She started making more. A new kind of video. These new types she made though, pretty soon she couldn’t get away with making them on YouTube. Turns out she couldn’t get away with making them much anywhere.

My mom started posting videos on sites not as popular as YouTube, sites where the rules were more lax.

These videos, you could tell what kind of videos they were from the titles alone. No longer did the videos that my mom made have titles like: “How to Make Sure Your Arms Don’t Get Tired While Breastfeeding”, or “The Best Way to Make Sure Your Baby is Full”.

No. The titles you’d find on these new videos would read something like: “Hungry Boy Gets a Mouthful”, or “A Secret Little Midnight Snack for Mommy’s Boy”.

I don’t think anyone would classify these new videos as being particularly educational. Especially not the authorities. Matter of fact they did classify them as something and that something resulted in me being taken away from my mom – my biological mom – by child protective services and my mom being taken away to prison.

For the thirst thirteen years of my life, I didn’t know this. Now I did. And so did everyone else.

Day after day, week after week, I was sent phots from the videos, clips from the videos, and links to some of the videos which still somehow existed on some sites.

I watched one of the videos. I wanted to know what my mom’s voice sounded like.           I tried to understand why she did it. Was it money? Where things that bad she felt she had to resort to this?

Watching the video, trying to understand, its hard not to face the reality of what’s going on. In the video, that thing my mom’s holding – it’s not her son; it’s not me. It’s a prop. It’s nothing more than an object needed to for the sake of the video.

And these videos are the only thing I have of my mom – my only frame of reference. Video’s where I’m nothing more than a plastic baby doll being used to complement a performance.

I thought about moving schools but decided what would be the point? The same thing would likely just happen again. I’ll just have to try and accept my new found celebredom and not have a mental breakdown until then.

Part of trying to accept this though is going to require some understanding, I think. So, as much as I knew it would upset them, I asked my foster parents if I could visit my mom – my biological mom – in prison. They objected at first, tried to argue with me. But I won out in the end. I told them I needed this. I need to try and understand why she did it.

Which brings me to today. Sitting down in front of a plate of glass, two partitions on either side, a phone to my right. Any second now she’s due to appear.

And she does.

She’s older than the actress in the videos, but you can tell it’s her. And this person who I haven’t seen for the first thirteen years of my live, who I’ve seen pictures and videos of everyday for the past couple of months, she sits down in front of me. She picks up the phone on the her side of the glass. I pick up mine.

There’s a short period of time where neither of us speaks. Then one of us does.