“Brianna has done great things with our unfortunately limited funding. We are lucky to have her.” Amadeo wonders idly if they are sleeping together. This is an interesting thought, and he looks at her more closely. There is something appealing about her, something wholesome and kind. Her hair is cut in a pallid little bob, her forehead high and square and shiny. His daughter beams at her teacher, and in the light of Angel’s admiration, Brianna is almost pretty.
“Mostly”—here Eric Maxwell sweeps his hand across the gathered girls, in their short dresses and shiny black slacks, their makeup, all of them trying to look professional, but succeeding only in looking a little slutty—“I’d like to thank these industrious ladies, who have worked hard on their presentations. And now, I turn the stage over to them.”
“Wait, what?” Amadeo says to his mother. “There’s presentations?”
Lizette and a blonde take their places before the whiteboard. The girls in the audience whoop their support. “Yeah Lizette! Yeah Corinna!”
Lizette pulls at her skirt, which has worked its way around her waist. He’s surprised to see her looking so uncertain, after her swagger earlier. Angel is holding Mercedes; she waves one of the baby’s hands. “This is a talk about nurturing discipline,” Lizette murmurs. The paper trembles in her grip.
The blond one—Corinna—nudges her. “You gotta project.”
Lizette raises her voice for a few words before sinking back into inaudibility, so the blond one grabs the paper and takes over. “Discipline is a problem issue every mom from age thirteen to sixty has to face at some certain point in her lifetime.”
Brianna has a pleasant, attentive look plastered on her face, but Amadeo notices when she pulls a book from the bookcase and reshelves it. The blond girl drones on about time-outs and consistency. The information seems to have been copied directly off the internet.
“Because think about it,” says Lizette belligerently, reclaiming the stage. She’s found her voice, she’s going off-script. Brianna Gruver bites her lip, poised to intervene. “Say your kid is screaming her head off. You think she’s going to stop screaming if you spank her?” She jerks her chin at her child. “As an example, Mercedes doesn’t know what a spanking means. She’s too little to know what anything means.”
The event is catered by Food King. As the girls talk, Amadeo munches from the veggie tray, using carrots to scoop quivering quantities of ranch dressing. Some splats onto the carpet. He looks around and scuffs the spot with his shoe.
“In conclusion,” Lizette says loudly, “discipline isn’t about hurting. It’s about loving correction.” She and Corinna grin, count three nods, then give deep, campy bows.
After, Amadeo brings Angel a plate of veggies. She thanks him but sets it on a desk, her attention entirely absorbed by her friends.
“That was awesome,” Angel tells Lizette as she hands Mercedes back. “Thanks to you, I’m going to quit throwing Connor. Maybe just a gentle toss now and then.”
Lizette ducks her head, pleased. “It was stupid.”
“I did most of the research,” says Corinna. “Actually.”
Angel hugs Corinna. “You did so awesome. And you projected really clearly.” Corinna lights up, and Amadeo’s eyes prickle with pride.
After, there’s a tour of the baby room （rocking chairs and mobiles and rows of clean white cribs, colored floor mats to cushion tiny bodies during Tummy Time） and everyone mills about.
There’s something irritatingly democratic and condescending about Eric Maxwell, the way he hobnobs with his target population, engaging with the scattered siblings and parents of the teen mothers. You can almost see him gathering anecdotes of improved lives for the annual report. He shines his sympathetic attention first on one woman, then on another. And then, having discharged his duty, he gives Brianna a little salute and slips out, presumably to get in his Volvo and hightail it back to Santa Fe.