Jane’s employers plan a luxurious holiday away, tagging her along to look after their children. While they promised that they would take care of all the expenses, it is only when they return home that they demand that Jane play her part and pay for her plane tickets. But Jane won’t give up that easily.“Jane, can you come into the living room?” Mrs. Smith called out, her teaspoon clinking as she stirred sugar into the cup of tea Melanie, the helper, had just given her. I was tidying up the playroom. “Now, please,” she added. Her tone was sweet, but something felt off. I walked into the living room, trying to keep my nerves at bay. “Sure, Mrs. Smith. What’s up?” I replied, wiping the disinfectant onto my jeans. She was sitting on the couch, perfectly poised as always. Not even a strand of hair out of place. Mr. Smith was seated beside her, his phone in his hand. He gave me a tight smile.“
Jane, we need to talk about the vacation.” I nodded, curious. We had been home for two days now. Back from our trip to the seaside, staying in a luxurious resort. It was almost the break I needed, minus the fact that I had the Smiths’ three children, and their friends, the Johnsons’ two sons to care for as well. I was just doing my job in a fancier location. “Of course,” I said. “It was a lovely trip. Thank you again for inviting me.” “Yes, well,” Mrs. Smith started. “We need to discuss the plane tickets. When will you be able to return the $1000?”I blinked. I was sure that I had misheard her. “Sorry, $1000? For the tickets? What?” “Yes, for the tickets, Jane,” she spoke slowly as if I was stupid. “We spent a lot on them, and we thought you’d be grateful enough to pay us back.” My heart raced. I didn’t have that kind of money to spare. I was their full-time nanny, with a mother to care for at home. “ But you told me that everything was sorted. You said, ‘Don’t worry about it, Jane. We’ve got it all covered.’” Mrs. Smith’s expression hardened. Mr. Smith gazed at me.“That was before the Johnsons refused to sign a business deal with Craig. That was the entire purpose of the holiday. Mr. Smith and I needed to woo them. So, there’s no need to seem generous now, Jane. You have exactly one week to return the money, or it will be taken from your pay.” I was stunned. The room felt like it was spinning. “But… I can’t afford that, Mrs. Smith,” I admitted. “Most of my salary goes to the rent at home and my mother’s medication. I can’t take that away from her. And you didn’t mention anything about paying you back!” “That’s not our problem, Jane. One week,” Mr. Smith reiterated, reaching for a croissant from the tea tray left for Mrs. Smith. With a wave of his hand, he signaled the end of the discussion. That night, I sat in my tiny room a few feet away from the Smiths’ house. I was seething. How could they do this? I needed a plan, and I needed it fast.Then it hit me: the Smiths cared deeply about their social standing and their reputation. “Of course, that’s all they care about,” I muttered to myself as I brushed my teeth before bed. “But I can use that to my advantage.” The next day, after I dropped the kids off at school, I created a fake email account. I drafted a polite but detailed message about my experience, making sure to be clear without naming any names. But there were enough telltale signs pointing to the Smiths, from their cars to the kids, to the gold facial appointments that Mrs. Smith bragged about. Thereafter, I sent it to the key people in their social circle, including the other influential families that the Smiths wanted to be in league with.“I just don’t understand what they want from us,” I overheard Mrs. Smith say into the phone later that day. “Eva asked me if everything is true, but I don’t know what she’s talking about.” A few days later, the gossip started spreading. The Smiths’ dirty little secret on how they treated “their staff” was out, and naturally, their reputation took a hit. Mrs. Smith called in a masseuse to soothe her muscles. “Just let them into the spa when they arrive, Jane,” she said. “I need all the help I can get.” Later that day, when I went to pick the kids up from school, the other nannies were hanging about, waiting for the bell to ring.“Did you read the email about the Smiths?” one of the nannies said. “Jane, are they really like that?” I nodded. “They’re good parents, but they’re horrible people,” I admitted, not wanting to give away that I was the person who sent out the email. “How long will you work for them?” another asked me. “I couldn’t live or work under those circumstances. Rich people need to learn that respect for them is earned, too.” I smiled. The nannies went back and forth as we waited. And through their chatter, I discovered something interesting about Mrs. Smith.Turns out that my employer had a habit of “borrowing” items from her friends and never returning them. “An entire Gucci handbag, Jane,” Mina said. “Mrs. Smith asked my ma’am if she could borrow it for a fundraising gala two months ago.” “That’s ridiculous!” I said, shocked. “I didn’t know that she was capable of that sort of thing. But she doesn’t like me getting too close to her things anyway.” A few days later, Mrs. Smith held one of her ladies’ luncheons. It was a monthly event that she loved hosting, but this time it was only two weeks into the month. “I need this to go well, Jane,” she said as I cut fruit up for the kids. “So, you need to attend it. The kids will be at school. Everything will be catered for. Just walk around and talk to the women. Make us seem human.”I knew that she was puzzling. She must have heard more than enough through the grapevine. During the event, I walked around as requested of me. But I wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip. And I had nothing to lose. The Smiths were probably going to fire me at the end of the week when I couldn’t make the $1000. “We’ll deal with it, darling,” my mother coughed into the phone when I told her the truth of the matter. At the luncheon, I walked around, casually mentioning to the ladies how much I admired Mrs. Smith’s collection, making sure that I spoke to Eva, Mina’s employer. “Mrs. Smith has a stunning handbag similar to yours,” I said. “Gucci. Did she lend you this one? She’s always telling me that she lends her things out because she has so much.”Eva looked at me over the top of her champagne glass. “Is that so, Jane?” she asked, her eyes narrowing. Whispers started circulating. By the end of the luncheon, Mrs. Smith’s reputation for borrowing without returning was the hot topic. The next morning, her friends began asking for their things back. Mrs. Smith was mortified. During dinner the next night, Mr. Smith called me to the table, asking me to join them. “Thank you, but I usually wait for Ivy and Melanie to eat,” I said politely, mentioning the chef and her helper. “No, sit with us,” he insisted. I obliged. Despite his tone, I hoped that maybe he was going to tell me that the money could be forgotten. And that everything would return as normal. “It has come to my attention that an anonymous email has gone out,” he said, cutting into his steak. “A disgusting email,” Mrs. Smith added, taking a long sip of her wine. “Did you have anything to do with it?” he asked me, his eyes trying to coax a confession out of me. I shook my head, looking down at my plate. “Then that settles it,” he said, knowingly. “You’re dismissed. You can pack up and get out tomorrow.” I did exactly as I was told and moved back home. A week later, Mrs. Johnson called me. “Jane, can you come over for tea?” she asked warmly. “Of course, Mrs. Johnson,” I replied, curious about the nature of the invitation. As we sat in her luxurious living room, she looked at me with genuine concern. “I heard about what the Smiths did to you. It’s disgraceful.” I nodded, trying to keep my composure. “Well,” she continued. “We’ve decided to cut ties with the Smiths entirely. And we’d like to offer you a job. Better pay, better working conditions. We could use someone like you for our kids.” I was stunned. “Of course!” I exclaimed. I needed the job desperately. “You’ve earned it,” she smiled. “The boys loved having you watch them during the holiday. And somehow, you got Jonathan to eat his peas!” I don’t know how the Smiths reacted to me working for the Johnsons, but I hoped that they felt betrayed. What would you have done?
Michael Jackson’s only daughter Paris proud of African-American roots, identifies as black
Paris Jackson, the only daughter of late pop star Michael Jackson, opened up about her African-American roots and how proud she is of that, as well as the criticism she received.
Paris, 25, was born to parents Billie Jean hitmaker and Debbie Rowe in 1998.
Over the years, there have been speculations that Jackson wasn’t the biological father of his three children, Paris and her two brothers, Bigi, 22, and Prince, 27. This was due to the fact that that many couldn’t see any resemblance between the late star and the kids, especially Paris who has white skin, light eyes and now bleached-blond hair.
The kids were very close with their father who went to great lengths to protect them from media scrutiny. His measures were unlike, however. He would show his son Bigi to the public with his face covered with a blanket, causing him troubles while growing up because his friends often teased him. He now prefers to be called Bigi.
Following the star’s death in 2009, his children were tossed alone in the public eye, turning them a highly profitable prey for the media that were eager to share their photos and followed their every step.
This experience left Paris battling a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“I experience audio hallucinations, sometimes, with camera clicks and severe paranoia and have been going to therapy for a lot of things, but that included,” she shared.
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By age 15, Paris attempted suicide “multiple times” and in 2019 she was admitted at a treatment facility. “It was just self-hatred…Low self-esteem, thinking that I couldn’t do anything right, not thinking I was worthy of living anymore.”
Today, she’s a successful musician who follows into her father’s footsteps. Over the years, she has also walked the runway for famous brands such as Chanel. Paris is a member of the band The Soundflowers.
“Everyone in my family does music. I mean, I’m a Jackson,” she said in 2020. “It makes sense that I’m a musician but like, a Jackson doing folk indie?”
Paris is very close to her brothers and looks up to Prince. “He’s everything to me, you know?” In 2020, she told People of her relationship with her older brother. “I’ve always looked up to him and always wanted his approval and everything, and wanted to be more like him.”
He loves and supports his younger sister as much. “Basically, as a person, she is who my dad is. The only thing that’s different would be her age and her gender,” he said of Paris, adding that she’s similar to her father “in all of her strengths, and almost all of her weaknesses as well. She’s very passionate.”
The physical appearance of the King of Pop underwent significant changes over the course of his life and many accused him of bleaching his skin, which was considerably darker in his younger days, but he claimed he had never done anything to his skin and that it turning white was a result of Vitiligo, during an Oprah interview in 1993.
“I am proud of my race. I am proud of who I am,” Jackson told Winfrey at the time.
Back in 2017, speaking of herself, Paris told Rolling Stone magazine she “considers [herself] black,” and that “[Michael] would look me in the eyes and he’d point his finger at me and he’d be like, ‘You’re black. Be proud of your roots.’”
“Most people that don’t know me call me white. I’ve got light skin and, especially since I’ve had my hair blond, I look like I was born in Finland or something,” she said. “And I’d be like, ‘okay, he’s my dad, why would he lie to me?’ So I just believe what he told me. [Because], to my knowledge, he’s never lied to me.”
This declaration of race triggered criticism on Paris. Among the rest, it was host Wendy William’s that mocked Paris’ statement.
“I get that she considers herself black and everything, but I’m just talking about the visual because you know…black is not what you call yourself, it’s what the cops see you when they got steel to your neck on the turnpike.”
She added: “It’s what they see. But that’s cute and good for her.”
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