Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig merced-a.com. NS
Answer
merced-a.com. 5 NS ns02.domaincontrol.com.
merced-a.com. 5 NS ns01.domaincontrol.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0