A few years before our time in this neighborhood, a woman lived in our very house and opened a daycare on the bottom two floors. Before she even opened for business, word spread that she had left New Jersey for Baltimore because a child had choked to death at the previous daycare she had managed. There were also persistent rumors of sexual abuse charges leveled against her. Despite the lack of evidence, no parents were willing to leave their child in the woman’s care, even in a neighborhood where children were abundant and daycare options were scarce, and so, despite her wise choice of location, the woman’s business was an abject failure, forcing her to shut down and sell her home at a loss. Over time, our neighbors have concluded that the rumors about the woman were completely baseless and, in fact, they were malicious lies spread by another local daycare owner, Ms. Alessi, hoping to gain competitive advantage. Ms. Alessi recently reported that while attending a trade conference in Cincinnati she learned the fate of her failed competitor: she had moved back to New Jersey and is said to have drowned in the ocean, the whispered explanation being that it was an act of suicide.
Photo by Dauvit Alexander
