As the school year progressed, I began to sense my daughter’s lack of enthusiasm for going to Mindy’s house. That alarmed me a little — if my daughter stopped being friendly with Mindy, what would happen to my friendship with Chaya? And I felt bad for Mindy. Her mother always mentioned how lonely she was without any siblings, and how much she loved it when my daughter came over.

In every interaction, Chaya continually emphasized her “victim” status to me, so that I’d feel compassion for her and her daughter.

“Just go for an hour,” I’d tell my daughter. “Then you can come home.” By this time, we’d decided my daughter was old enough to walk around the neighborhood by herself.

Then, one night during summer vacation, close to midnight, Chaya called. “I hope I didn’t wake you,” she said.

“Don’t worry, I’m up washing dishes,” I reassured her.

“I don’t know if Tali told you, but my husband and I are going through a divorce.” She lowered her voice as she said the word divorce. My heart twisted. Wow, only one child, and now she’s getting divorced. I couldn’t even imagine the strain the challenge of infertility would have on a marriage. What a nisayon! What a mess!

“No, Tali didn’t say anything to me,” I managed to get out. “I’m so sorry to hear this. I’m so sorry you have to go through all this.”

“It’s all very complicated,” Chaya acknowledged. “And I have a lot of meetings with a mediator and lawyer I have to go to, and obviously I can’t take Mindy with me. I don’t have any family to leave her with. I’ve been racking my brains for the last few days working out what to do with Mindy. And then I remembered you. Do you think she could spend the day with you tomorrow? I know it’s early in the morning, but I have to be in the city by nine. Could I bring Mindy at eight?”

All the favors Chaya asked for were at the last minute; her urgent requests didn’t give me the chance to think them through properly.

Eight in the morning during vacation! The children were usually still in bed then. And I had a newborn; I definitely wasn’t going to be up and about. But I didn’t want Chaya to feel bad about a thing. “Of course,” I said. And to make light of it, I added with a laugh, “Just don’t be scared off by our pajamas.”

When I told my daughter about the plans, she made a face. “Mindy is such a baby,” she grumbled, leaving me taken aback by her lack of generosity.

Mindy knocked on our door at eight sharp the next day. I was surprised her mother hadn’t come up to our apartment with her, but figured she must be rushing to get to the lawyer’s office on time.

Chaya wasn’t interested in a friendship with me, she just wanted my babysitting services.

As the day went by, I understood my daughter’s grimace. Mindy was annoying. She didn’t act like a nine-year-old, more like a five- or six-year-old. She didn’t play nicely with my daughter at all. She followed me around the house complaining.

“Mrs. Cohen, I got the doll first, but Tali doesn’t let me play with it. She said that doll is hers, and she gave me a different one. I don’t like that one. It’s not fair.”

“Mrs. Cohen, Tali wants to play Monopoly. I hate Monopoly. Can you tell her?”

“Mrs. Cohen, Tali isn’t being nice to me.”

She loved my newborn, though, and spent a lot of time on the couch holding him. I took a photograph of her holding him and sent it to Chaya to reassure her that all was well and Mindy was in good hands.

At two, Chaya texted me: I’m almost back. I’m just stopping at home because I need the bathroom. Maybe Tali could walk Mindy home?

I was a little disappointed. I’d wanted to meet Chaya. And I thought it was strange that she didn’t want to meet the people her daughter had spent the whole day with.

Again, clear signs Chaya doesn’t view this as a friendship. There is no reciprocity here.

But then I tried to put myself in her mind. I imagined how exhausted she must be, how hard her day must have been, how little emotional energy she must have to make small talk with a new friend when she was going through a divorce.

Chaya called the next week and asked if we could have Mindy again. Since I have trouble saying no in general, one technique I’d developed for assessing when to put up boundaries was to take myself out of the picture and weigh up the other person’s need versus my need. So this time I agreed. The need for a soon-to-be single mother to get babysitting help was greater than my need to have an easy day. I was on maternity leave, my kids were home anyhow, and she could just blend in with them, sort of, and if not, she could help me out with the baby.

Again, Chaya didn’t come to pick Mindy up, she just texted me.

Chaya: I’m getting on the subway now. Is Mindy okay?

Me: Yes, she’s doing great. She went to the playground with Tali and my toddler.

Chaya: Great. I worry about her all the time. What she’s going through isn’t easy. But I’m always relaxed when she’s at your house.

Chaya would “butter me up” by being so warm and friendly that I mistook the relationship for a friendship.

Then, an hour later:

Chaya: I’m back. Have they come back from the playground yet? Can Tali walk Mindy home?

Chaya had been so friendly over the phone when she’d touched base with me during the day, and my disappointment at not meeting her had sharp edges.

I didn’t hear from Chaya until a week or two after the school year started, when she sent me a message with a saga about how Mindy wasn’t in school at the moment for complicated reasons, and Chaya had a meeting with the lawyer again. Mindy was supposed to stay with a neighbor, but the arrangement had fallen through. She’d found someone for Mindy to be at for the morning, could I take Mindy for the afternoon? And would I be able to pick Mindy up from there? And send a text confirming I had her and that she was okay?

The year before, I’d had a child stay home for the last few months of school; he’d hated his rebbi and had simply refused to go to school. I’d experienced the same stress of finding him somewhere to go when I’d had an urgent doctor’s appointment. My heart went out to Chaya. On top of everything she was going through, Mindy was refusing to go to school? Wow. Picking Mindy up was a bit inconvenient, but compared to Chaya’s challenge, it seemed minor.

That afternoon, again, Chaya texted me to say she was back, and could my daughter walk her home? This time, I decided some boundaries needed to be in place. I sent a voice note back. Hi, Chaya. I’m sorry, I need my daughter to start the evening routine already. It’s getting late and it will take her at least 20 minutes there and back.

Chaya responded with a voice note of her own. Her voice was a whisper as she said: I see. The problem is it’s very complicated. If she walks home by herself, she could run to her father’s house….

I didn’t want to imagine what was going on behind the scenes. I felt bad that I’d forced her into a position where she had to reveal this personal information to me. My baby was cranky. What if I put him in the stroller and walked Mindy home myself? Hopefully the baby would drop off to sleep along the way. And then I’d also get to meet Chaya.

Chaya was waiting downstairs, outside her apartment building, when we got there. Mindy ran into her open arms and Chaya squealed, hugging and kissing her. Hmm. No wonder Mindy was so babyish. Her mother was treating her as if she was a toddler, not a ten-year-old. Then I brushed away that thought. How ungracious of me. Mindy was her only child. Of course she would baby her.

As soon as Chaya began to talk to me, I felt a strong surge of dislike. Chaya thanked me effusively for having Mindy, but then she launched into a diatribe about our daughters’ school. “I don’t want my daughter to attend Bais Yaakov. I want her go to Hyman’s. It’s more open-minded and so much smaller. Bais Yaakov is huge. They don’t even notice you there. Mindy only got attention because of what’s happening between me and her father. It’s such a shame they wait until there’s a crisis to give a student some attention.”

“Yes, it is an enormous school,” I managed to say.

“But Mindy’s father won’t hear of it. He says Hyman’s is too modern. We’re trying to work it out with a mediator. In the meantime, Mindy’s home, and she’s sooooo bored. And she misses her friends. She was so excited when I told her I’d arranged for her to go to Tali.”

I was so shocked I could only nod and force a smile. The reason Mindy was home wasn’t because she refused to go to school, but because Chaya was having a standoff with her ex about the choice of school? For that I’d gone out of my way to pick her up in the middle of the day and put up with her following me around the house and my daughter’s sullen pout? I tried to be dan l’chaf zechus. Chaya was doing this because she cared about her daughter and wanted her in a smaller, more nurturing environment. I could understand that.

I didn’t hear from them until the winter, though I did notice an uptick in Chaya’s WhatsApp statuses, one of which said, “First Succos as a single mother. Anyone want to come and build a succah for me?” I considered asking my husband to help her out, but then thought better of it. My maternity leave had ended and I was back at work. I needed as much help from my husband as I could get. Chaya would have to find someone else.

Around Chanukah time, Mindy called my daughter and invited her to come play. I needed my daughter home to help me watch my other children, so I said she couldn’t, but Mindy was welcome to come over here. Mindy sounded excited about the idea, but then asked if we could pick her up. “It’s raining, and my mother has no patience to go out,” she explained.

This shows how unusually self-centered she was. She had no problem asking someone else to come out in the rain, but she herself didn’t want to get wet.

I heard her mother say something in the background, and Mindy laughed awkwardly.

For the first time, I felt angry. They were saying the unspoken part out loud. Chaya doesn’t want to come out in the rain, but has no problem asking me or my daughter to come out? I gave a firm no.

I didn’t hear from them for the rest of the year.

Mindy never called for a play date and my daughter Tali didn’t mention her at all. I wasn’t sure if Mindy was still in her school. Until I received a phone call from Chaya in the early summer.

Chaya would only call when she needed something.

When I saw her number pop up on my screen, I let the phone ring a few times before picking up. We did a quick catch-up on each other’s lives — yes, the baby was adorable, almost one year old already, and yes, she and her ex-husband had worked things out and Mindy was attending Bais Yaakov in the end — before she said, “I know you’re a graphic designer. Do you work for someone else or do you have your own business?”

“Now I’m a salaried worker. But previously I owned my own business. Do you want help registering your own business?” I asked. “I can recommend the accountant I used—”

“No, no, the reason I’m asking is because I’m about to sign a contract on a rental apartment. And I had a friend who was going to be a guarantor for me, but it fell through at the last minute. It’s urgent, I’m going to lose the apartment if I don’t sign.”

Again, everything was always urgent, last-minute, because something had fallen through.

“I need someone who gets a pay slip to sign as the guarantor. It’s just a formality, I have the money to pay the rent, I can prove that to you. I’m just a single mother, and I don’t have any family, so I don’t have anyone else I can turn to… and you’ve helped me so much in the past….” Her voice was choked.

I felt like the most awful person in the world saying no to someone in need, but I knew that if something went wrong, I didn’t have the money to pay for her additional rent. I have a large family and all the expenses that come with that. If I applied my rule of need versus need, then my need to feed my children and pay our bills won in this case. Not all landlords require a guarantor; Chaya might have to find a different apartment to rent.

“I wish I could help you, but this is something I can’t do. But hatzlachah, hatzlachah. I hope this works out easily,” I told her.

Chaya mumbled a, “Thank you, I hope so, too. Have a good day,” and quickly hung up.

It was only when I got off the phone that I realized just how strange her request was. She had met me once for five minutes. We were practically strangers.

My face felt hot. I’d always thought Chaya saw me as a kind person who would go out of her way for someone. But this was more than going out of my way to help a person in need. After not being in contact for almost half a year, Chaya was now asking me to sign as a guarantor on her apartment — an act that could potentially require me to  shell out thousands of dollars every month on her behalf.

Now I was angry. Furious. Chaya hadn’t seen me as a compassionate person. She’d seen me as someone to use at her convenience and dispose of when she didn’t need me. Someone so exploitable she wasn’t even embarrassed to make such an audacious request.

How could I not have seen it before?

As soon as I thought that, I berated myself for being so harsh and judgmental. Maybe she had the money to pay the rent, and this really was a formality, and she just needed a signature? Imagine having no family and no one to turn to for help!

I did what most millennials would do. I googled “signs of manipulative behavior” and read article after article. The more I read, and the more I thought about what I’d read, the more I realized that I’d been manipulated. How could I have been so blind to it?

Every time Chaya had asked for a favor, she’d chatted to me like we were best friends, but she’d never even come up to my house to meet me, let alone made the effort to get together or call at other times. She didn’t see our relationship as a reciprocal friendship. There was no give and take, just take and take.

Her favors were always last-minute requests, always urgent, which didn’t give me time to think things through clearly.

And her stories were so emotive, I’d felt such a rush of compassion for her. But when I looked back, some of her stories made so little sense. Chaya didn’t let her daughter walk home by herself because she might run off to her father, so she asked that my daughter accompany her. How would another ten-year-old stop her from doing that exactly? And was her husband even the villain in the story? I’d just assumed he was. But who knew?

Chaya said she had no family. But she was young, an FFB, and her ex-husband was from a renowned and enormous rabbinic family. Was it really possible she had no parents and no siblings? It was possible… but these situations are very rare. Given everything, I now understood, what were the chances this was her situation?

Maybe Chaya was estranged from her family? Maybe that was it? Maybe she wasn’t as alone as she made herself out to be, but someone who had alienated everyone in her life?

I did something I’d never imagined I’d do: I blocked her phone number. And even though my heart splintered into a million pieces when, although my phone didn’t ring, I saw on my call log that either she or her daughter had tried to get through to me numerous times one afternoon, I refused to cave in.

I thought I’d gotten rid of that “Take advantage of me” sign on my forehead. Clearly, you could still see its imprint. Chaya had shown me it was time for me to scrub off any sticky remnants that remained so I’d be able to save my energy for people who were really in need.

Are You an Easy Victim?

In her book, Who’s Pulling Your Strings? Dr. Harriet Braiker lists seven characteristics a manipulator looks for in a potential person to manipulate. If you identify yourself here, then you’re more likely to be taken advantage of.

A tendency to people-please

A fear of rejection and a strong need for approval

A fear of conflict and confrontation

A difficulty saying no

A lack of a strong sense of self

A tendency to distrust your own judgments

An external focus of control, meaning a tendency to feel that external events or people are more in control of you and your life than you are

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 902)