Caroline’s impressed. Every house in this neighborhood is huge but this one’s by far the biggest. It looks like the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air mansion. The lawn is White House size, taller fences surrounding the property. Rumor has it this mansion belongs to one of America's biggest rock stars and his ex-supermodel wife. Or is that supermodel ex-wife? Caroline buzzes in at the front gate, shows her ID to a security guard and gets escorted to the front door. She waits in the marble entrance way, crystal chandelier above her, wide Cinderella staircase spiraling upwards in front of her. She waits 45 minutes before her employer arrives.
"You must be the new nanny."
She obviously recognizes him, one of the most famous faces on the planet. He looks different though, tired. His clothes are painted in food as if he's been in a cooking accident.
"Hi, I'm Caroline" she reaches out to shake his hand but gets ignored.
"Great, well, I'll take you to Mimi's room and you can keep an eye on her. Any questions?"
"How old is Mimi?"
"She's just turned 2."
She loves them at that age. Looking after children has always been her dream, she's wanted to be a nanny longer than she can remember. Her mother wants her to go into the family business of being a bailiff. Property repossession and loan-sharking and bail collecting, but Caroline can’t think of anything worse.
"Follow me" her employer orders.
He leads Caroline through the huge busy kitchen as chefs and maids knock past her carrying pots and platters of food, orders being shouted like a Korean sweat shop. She follows him in to a spacious adjoined nursery. The sounds from the kitchen are completely blocked out, the lights dimmed, a clockwork music box tinkers out a soft lullaby. In the center of the room is a crib surrounded by a perimeter of elegant silk curtains.
"She's a pretty good kid, sleeps most of the day. It's just that her mother says if she takes up any more of my time she'll be sent to a foster home. Just stay here and if she wakes up get her whatever she wants."
He leaves.
Caroline sits down, taking a book of Sudoku from her purse. After 15 minutes her concentration is broken by a terrible agonized screaming. Caroline's heart spikes painfully as she jumps to attend the child. She pulls back the curtains and is blown away by what she sees. Little Mimi is obese. She’s obese for someone four times her age! She looks like an overinflated beach ball the way her fat is so equally distributed to make her practically spherical. Her sack of potatoes gut slumps over her squishy teddy bear legs. Mimi is snugly outgrowing tight purple fleece footed pajamas with fluffy hems. Despite them warmly covering her precious tootsies she’s also wearing a pair of adorable squishy slippers. Her arms are vast for her diminutive size, like legs of lamb, whereas her actual legs are so fat she scarcely moves them. Her face is chubby, 3 chins jiggle with every smack of her chops. Her vivid green eyes wide with vulnerability but also the spoiled wrath of a diminutive dictator. Her sweet little nose is dotted with freckles. Her jet black hair is done in pig-tails. She screams and thrashes her arms with impatience, sweating profusely from the exertion.
"SIPPY!!! MIMI WANT SIPPY!!!"
Caroline is disgusted at the size of this child. Clearly this poor baby girl has been horribly neglected.
"Oh, you poor sweet dear. You don’t want to be a fat blob, eating all day, do you? You want to run around and go to school don’t you? Come here, beautiful girl, let me take care of you."
Caroline leans into the crib full of stuffed toys and shuffles her arms under Mimi's heftiness. She tries to lift her up but the toddler’s unexpected weight catches her off guard and Caroline’s back jerks and cracks loudly.
"Ahhhh" Caroline manages not to swear, she’s an old fashioned, sweet girl but now she can hardly move from the pain up and down her spine. Mimi simply pats her bloated belly and giggles, as if Caroline's pain amuses her. In the blink of an eye she reverts to her impatient spoiled screaming.
Mimi's father rushes back in, looking more disheveled than before and bleeding from his wrist.
"What the fuck’s going on?"
Ignoring tortured Caroline, he leans in and picks Mimi up with almost no effort.
"What is it, sweet girl? Is Daddy's little princess hungry again? Oh, you certainly take after your Mommy don't you?"
He blows a playful raspberry on his daughter's cheek. She pushes his face away with her chubby sausage link arm, straining her other arm weakly towards the back of the room. From somewhere distant in the house comes another terrible shrieking, similar to Mimi's and equally feminine, but deeper as if it’s the angry roar of a furious mother bear.
"Shit, she's awake again." He hands Mimi back to Caroline, dumping more agony onto her spine as the 95lbs toddler kicks and punches the abused woman. "Just giver her her sippys, they're in the fridge. That’s why you’re here, to get whatever she wants. You’re not meant to be Mary fucking Poppins, now do your job so I can go do mine." He disappears again, slamming the door.
What Caroline first thought was a wide wardrobe now turns out to be a large refrigerator. She arduously places Mimi back in her crib and limps over to it. Inside are hundreds of children's sippy cups filled with a black liquid. She takes a bottle and smells its contents.
"Wait a minute, that's…" she sniffs again before taking a swig, "That's Dr. Pepper! Tell me they don't give this to a child!"
At her crib Mimi is straining her blubbered arms between the bars, howling and squealing desperately for it. In the fridge are a number of empty feeding bottles, large ones, and plenty to eat but nothing else to drink. Soda will just have to do for now until she can complain to her employer. She staggers over to Mimi and hands the sippy cup to the excitedly slobbering child who snatches it away with unexpected speed. Mimi slurps the nipple into her plump lips and sucks back the black, sugary fizz in record time. Finished, she drops the bottle and screams for more. Still in pain, Caroline hobbles back to the fridge (mercifully close) and collects another. Mimi downs this in even less time. She screams for more and more again and again, no amount of teeth-rotting pop is enough to quench her. Before long Caroline thinks Mimi must have drunk her own weight, but that’s impossible. Right?
After 10 minutes Mimi has done every sippy cup. She BURPS, content. It seems the amount of soda in the fridge is measured perfectly to Mimi's appetite.
"HUNGWY!! HUNGWY!!" Mimi screams.
"What's that, sweetie? Are you hungry? Oh but you just drank so much!"
"HUNGWY! HUNGWY! FEED ME! ME HUNGWY! ME HUNGWY!! ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME!!!!"
"Well" Caroline exclaims "I see why they named you Mimi."
She investigates the fridge, empty of soda but stacked with food, none of it appropriate for a 2-year-old. There are stacks of pizzas, bowls of onion rings, sour cream, fries, burgers, tacos, lasagna, spaghetti, cookie dough, ice cream and all sorts of fatty, greasy junk food. There’s a note taped to one of the shelves. She reads it.
"You've got to be kidding me."
The note explains that to feed Mimi you take any of the food in the fridge and blend it into a paste, pump it into one of the large, empty bottles and feed it to her. She can't believe it, but would rather feed the child than let her stave. She starts to mix up food, the whirring engine making Mimi immediately drool and howl with an even more desperate hunger. As soon as her meal is ready Mimi once again snatches the bottle from Caroline and sucks out the pureed contents like an octopus with a crab. Upon finishing she drops the bottle and whines in a burbling baby talk for more. This little minx is addicted to food, her dependence more desperate than a crack baby's.
Caroline soon learns the reason there are so many empty bottles is to minimize the gap between Mimi’s mouthfuls. Things get so desperate she starts pumping the blender straight into Mimi who slurps it all back greedily.
Finally, Mimi is stuffed. Caroline decides to change her diaper but even after the arduous task of carrying Mimi to the changing table she finds it almost intolerable as the child won’t stop screaming unless she’s being fed. Caroline's ears ring, she can barely hear anything else, her hearing having taken quite the pounding. Capitulating to the toddler's greed, Caroline finds a cheesecake in the diaper bag, as wide and tall as a hat box. She places it on the table next to Mimi but the lazy toddler just plops her mouth open. Feeling patronized, Caroline breaks off hunks and stuffs them into the spoiled child. Finally she gets Mimi’s diaper off and the smell is horrendous, no doubt from the diet of fatty, greasy, salty foods. She gags, running to the bathroom in case she has to puke. When she returns Mimi has eaten the cheesecake and is now obnoxiously kicking at Caroline, surprisingly hard, to demand more food. Caroline fetches a packet of cookies and Mimi again lets herself be fed. Soon enough Mimi becomes overzealous with her eating and bites down hard on Caroline's fingers, cutting her sharply.
"Jinkies!" Caroline pulls her hand away in pain. The sudden unjustified interruption of eating upsets Mimi who starts crying immediately.
Mimi's father rushes in.
"What is it? What's wrong?!!?"
"HUNGWY!!! ME HUNGWY!!" Mimi screams.
"That's it!" Caroline protests. "I've had enough. I'm finished with this little BITCH!"
She grabs her purse.
"You're leaving?"
"Yes! I've had enough, after today I'm done with kids. I've had my back broken, my hearing ruined, blood drawn. I'm joining the family business, bail collecting. It can't be as bad as this!!"
With that she limps out of the nursery.
Mimi's father turns to his beloved daughter, still screaming and thrashing. He picks her up and shoves 4 cookies into her crumb-spilling mouth.
"Well, sweetie, you've done it again. You've driven off another babysitter."
Mimi giggles, swallowing her mouthful, then…
"MORE! MORE! FEED MIMI!! MIMI HUNGWY!! ME ME ME!!!!!”