Book Mommies

The Book Mommies are the collective of mothers Nightbitch encounters at the library's Book Babies story time and in her neighborhood park, a group whose defining traits are their polished appearance, their enthusiastic embrace of motherhood, and their involvement in selling herbal supplements. They first appear in the narrative as a source of visceral, unexplained nausea for Nightbitch, who recognizes them from her infrequent trips to Book Babies and immediately identifies them as a distinct social species. Led by the Big Blonde, who pushes an all-terrain side-by-side stroller that Nightbitch knows cost well over a thousand dollars, the group includes a mommy with a mopey little boy whose nose is always running and a mommy with a hyperactive three-year-old prone to throwing pebbles. When Nightbitch spots them at the park on a gorgeous summer afternoon, she collects her son as quickly as she can, not wanting her communion with the day and her thoughts about Wanda White to be broken by "these women and their children and their wretched contentment." The Big Blonde's cheerful greeting is met with Nightbitch's abrupt "Hi! We were just leaving!"

The Hard-Core Book Mommies and Jen

Within the broader group, the narrative distinguishes the "hard-core Book Mommies"—those who are "really into being mommies and selling herbs and enriching their children all the time." Chief among them is Jen, whose appearance is meticulously curated: curled eyelashes, penciled brows, painstakingly applied concealer, manicured fingernails and toenails, and shaved legs. Jen smiles and chats easily about herbs, professing to love something called "Mombie" on days when she wakes up with "the grumpies," a claim Nightbitch finds absurd coming from someone she believes has no true understanding of the grumpies. Nightbitch's internal monologue in response to Jen's easy contentment is a torrent of rage, cataloging the real grumpies she has experienced: yelling at twins in full voice in the middle of the night, sobbing beside them when they ask for another glass of water at ten at night, locking herself in the bathroom for twenty minutes while her child bangs on the door and yells "MAMA" until he is sobbing and possibly permanently traumatized. She longs to stun them all into silence by confessing her fantasy of driving as far south as she can go, checking into a cut-rate motel, and drinking horrible piña coladas all day in a faded beach chair.

The Book Mommies as Social Foil

The Book Mommies serve as the novel's primary social foil to Nightbitch's experience of motherhood. At a gathering where she resolves to sit and participate and be a normal mom, she listens as the contented mothers talk about their best recipes that the kids will eat, all seeming to be friends with one another. Nightbitch refuses to make eye contact, instead looking at her phone and feeling slightly superior for not caring about leggings and essential oils. She feels educated, interesting, and independent, and does not want to be like the happy mothers. The narrative poses the question directly: was it that she didn't want to be happy? No, the answer comes, it was that she wanted another option. The Book Mommies embody the only option on offer—the happy, well-adjusted, herb-selling mother—and Nightbitch's rejection of them is simultaneously a rejection of the only available model of maternal contentment.

The Herbal Recruitment Machine

The Book Mommies' defining activity is the recruitment and sale of herbal supplements, a system that Jen operates with relentless, almost automated efficiency. When Nightbitch lies flat on the floor at Book Babies, gulping deep breaths and telling herself it is all in her head, Jen's face fills her line of vision as she dangles a little packet of "Balance" in front of her, promising, "Take these, and you'll feel fine. I'll find you online!" Jen's business card proclaims her an "Herbal Ambassador" with the tagline "Live the Life You Deserve." Her recruitment messages read as if lifted from a glossy pamphlet, beginning without so much as a transitional greeting: "I am looking for motivated and driven people to partner with me." She praises Nightbitch's vast network, claims unidentified doctors endorse a number-one-selling product on a global scale, and offers anecdotal tales of high-school friends who had been lawyers, teachers, and dermatologists before becoming work-at-home moms who fit their sales into the nooks and crannies of their lives. The pitch ends with the claim that the company is "too good to be true…yet still is!" and the promise of significant residual income for years to come. Nightbitch finds the story of a lawyer mom who stays home and sells herbs more depressing than her own life, certain that such a woman has no rich and weird internal life coloring her days in magical shades of dog.

The Herb Party and the Cult of Happiness

The Book Mommies' ideology reaches its fullest expression at Jen's herb party, where the language of empowerment and happiness becomes a kind of evangelical liturgy. Jen yells, "Who's ready to have more energy and be happy?" and all the mothers yell in unison, "I am!" She shouts, "Who came here today to live the life you deserve?" and the response comes harmoniously: "I did." Nightbitch, watching, thinks, "The life I deserve? What was that? Some sort of curse?" and then, "Oh my god… Holy fuck." The party features testimonials, crying, a chart projecting the chapter's quarterly earnings, and an elaborate flowchart demonstrating the earning potential of each mother and how they are weaving a powerful web of financial support for each other. The mothers are instructed that they all need to project success and use the products so they can better speak to their restorative qualities when selling, and that they must be outgoing and strike up conversations on airplanes and in grocery store lines wherever they might find an unsuspecting, captive audience to whom they might spread "the gospel of herbs." Jen closes by raising her hands in the air and closing her eyes in evangelical ecstasy, asking, "Who's ready to join the team?" and one mother stands and answers, "I am."

The Book Mommies and Nightbitch's Transformation

The Book Mommies also mark the visible stages of Nightbitch's physical and social transformation. When she arrives at Book Babies in a ripped linen caftan with frayed edges unraveling dangerously, her hair unwashed for a week and protruding from her head in a frenetic net of curls and knots, her freckles drawn out by the late-summer sun and her shoulders burned red from daily sessions of fetch with the boy, Jen exclaims, "Oh my god! You are so boho! I love what you've done with yourself." The other Book Mommies look on less enthusiastically—disapprovingly, one might even say. The contrast between Nightbitch's feral, unpolished appearance and the Book Mommies' manicured perfection is stark, and their disapproval signals her growing alienation from their world. Even the boy participates in this dynamic, arfing at Jen and sitting beside her to be petted, with Nightbitch playing along with a tired smile and the universal mom sign for "Look at this psycho he is breaking my spirit in some small way, every day, yet still I adore him." Jen pats his head and says, "Well, look at you," while the other mothers smile dubiously or offer polite chuckles, and Jen dismisses the boy's dog behavior with "Sure, sure. They're always being something."