The thunder and lightning continue for hours, scaring the dolls. Ms. Khoury tells them that a tropical storm is moving north from the Carolinas. The basement of Pierce floods that night. There are downed trees along Chapin Walk. On Saturday, after the sump pump has removed the water, cleaning crew is told to deal with the debris. They’ve never been down to this basement before. The storage area is disappointing, ordinary. They grumble about the smell as they remove damp boxes of papers, uniforms, shampoo, toothpaste.
They’re nearly done for the day when Charisse gets lost, and during her attempts to rejoin the group, finds a locked room. The others wait for her at the base of the stairs. Frida tells Charisse to hurry up. Ever since Charisse joined cleaning crew, she’s slowed them down.
Charisse shrieks. She calls to the group. After the mothers find her, they take turns peeking through the keyhole.
Someone says she’s not sure what she’s looking at. Frida is one of the last to look. She expects to see doll parts, rows of heads, maybe a pile of broken infants, the boy who threw himself against the fence and melted, Lucretia’s doll, even the doll belonging to her first roommate, Helen. As her eye adjusts to the dark, she sees a body. The body is on a cot, the woman’s face turned toward the door. One of the mothers.
Frida squints.
“Who is it?” Charisse asks.
While they’re talking, the woman opens her eyes. She sits up and peers at them, then runs to the door and starts banging. Frida and Charisse jump back. The woman shouts. Frida recognizes her voice. It’s Meryl.
Frida raises a hand to her mouth.
A guard hears the noise and tells the mothers to go upstairs. Meryl continues banging on the door and pleading.
Meryl has been gone for three weeks. In her head, Frida lists the reasons why she can’t help. Harriet, Harriet, Harriet. Being the roommate of a quitter and a runaway. Two trips to talk circle. The watch list. The hug. But Meryl is afraid of the dark. She slept with teddy bears all through high school. The basement walls are damp. She could get sick.
Cleaning crew sits together at dinner. Charisse wants them to make a plan. “We need to talk to Ms. Knight. We can get Meryl out.”
If they don’t try, Charisse says, cleaning crew will be like the Germans who turned a blind eye when the Jews were rounded up. This line of argument is not well received. Everyone thinks it’s unfair to bring up the Holocaust.
Charisse wants to call her lawyer, have her lawyer call the ACLU.
Frida warns her not to jeopardize her case. “I’m just as worried as you are, but we have to leave this alone.”
Charisse gives her a long disapproving look. “That’s pretty cold, Frida. She was your friend.”
“She is my friend, but we have to think about our kids. The registry, remember?”
News of Meryl’s confinement spreads quickly. Everyone is concerned about what’s being done to her. They don’t understand why the school brought her back. They worry Roxanne is being held somewhere else on campus.
Frida knows Roxanne would want her to do something. She’d want Meryl to be safe. She was so angry that they hadn’t done more for Lucretia. Several times, when Frida sees Ms. Gibson or one of the women in pink lab coats, she wants to say something, wants to ask if they can at least move Meryl to a regular dorm, to one of the empty buildings. But then she thinks of Harriet and holds her tongue.
Charisse continues her campaign. She tells Frida to remember when she was nineteen, a college student probably, not locked in a dark, damp basement. She brings up the case of Kitty Genovese and the innocent bystanders. Frida tells her that case has already been disproven.
At lunch the following day, Charisse makes a beeline toward Frida’s table. Frida leaves before Charisse can shame her further, tells Charisse to ask Beth. Charisse follows Frida back to Kemp, follows Frida to her room.
“We have to take care of her,” Charisse says.
Frida says, “Get out. Get out, or I’ll tell the guards.”
* * *
With Meryl in the basement, everyone is watching their table again. Beth spends all of Sunday sobbing. She says her parents used to lock her in the basement to punish her. She tells Linda to think about what happens to kids who get locked in dark places. What it does to their minds. Their souls. Linda responds by pouring water on Beth’s food.
They don’t have to worry about Meryl for long. The girl shows up at breakfast on Monday morning. Her hair has been cut into an unflattering shag, dyed a severe shade of auburn. There’s a patch of hair missing above her left ear. Her hands shake. Her wan smile seems like a show for Charisse, who sits next to her and pets her arm and seems to expect continuous thanks for obtaining her release.