It’s the first Tuesday in December, fifteen months since Harriet was taken away, fourteen months since Frida last held her, four months since their last phone call. They’re about to have their final visit. Yesterday, the judge terminated her parental rights.
She hasn’t been added to the registry, doesn’t have to be if she has no child. The judge promised her thirty minutes this morning. Frida checks her phone. Gust hasn’t texted. It’s 10:07. She didn’t think he could possibly be late. She asks if his tardiness will be held against her. Twenty-three minutes isn’t enough.
“Don’t worry,” Ms. Torres says. Going five or ten minutes over won’t be a problem. She smiles, seems to have softened, looks at Frida with pity. Ms. Torres says she understands that today is important. They can take care of paperwork in the meantime. She hands Frida a clipboard. By signing the forms, Frida grants the state permission to release her information when Harriet turns eighteen.
The judge’s decision is final. Parents can’t appeal. Frida asks if she can contact Harriet then, or if she has to wait for Harriet to contact her.
“She’ll need to look for you. Have confidence, Ms. Liu. Most children want to find their birth mothers.”
Frida nods. She hopes the next parent sitting in this chair will become violent. Someone should throw the social worker against the wall, strangle her, push her out the window. The body count should be equal. As many women in pink lab coats and instructors and counselors and social workers and family court judges as the mothers who’ve died, as the ones who’ll die in the next round, at the next school.
For her permanent contact information, she lists her parents’ address and phone number, adds her own cell phone number and email. She signs her name. When Harriet is eighteen, she’ll be fifty-five. She doesn’t know where she’ll be living, if she’ll be able to survive until then. It feels wrong to be alive, to be sitting here dressed up and wearing makeup. Her hair has been dyed black and cut into a blunt bob with bangs, a style Renee suggested. Her nails have been manicured. Her teeth have been whitened. She’s wearing the same sweater set and pencil skirt she wore to the first supervised visit. The clothes are baggy on her now. She looks conservative and tidy, not the mother she was before, not the mother she became, but a mother from a manual, blank and interchangeable.
Her hearing took two hours. The judge had already reviewed classroom and evaluation and Sunday-call footage, considered data from Frida’s brain scans and taken from Emmanuelle, read the recommendations of Ms. Khoury and Ms. Russo and Frida’s counselor, Ms. Thompson.
The judge said, “I’ve learned so much about you, Ms. Liu. You’re a complicated woman.” What made the program so special was having the child’s perspective. Even if Emmanuelle didn’t have all the language to describe Frida’s mothering, even if the instructors couldn’t watch Frida at every moment, with the rest of the data, with the technology, the court had a full picture of Frida’s abilities. Her character.
“We’re able to extrapolate,” the judge said.
Frida thought she’d go blind. Renee spoke. The state’s lawyers spoke. The social worker and court-appointed child psychologist and Gust and Susanna testified. Susanna was only two days out of the hospital. Gust and Susanna, who weren’t permitted to hear anything about the program, each only spoke for a few minutes before leaving the courtroom and returning to the NICU to be with Henry.
“We’ve all forgiven Frida,” Gust said. “It would traumatize our daughter to keep them apart. Harriet has been through so much already. I want her to have a normal childhood. A normal life. You can make that possible for our family.”
Susanna said, “Harriet asks about Frida all the time. She says things like, ‘Mommy come back. Mommy miss me.’ For us, it’s not a question of trust. I know Frida can do it. She’s a good person.”
When it was Frida’s turn to testify, she atoned for her poor judgment regarding the runaways and Tucker. She answered the judge’s questions about her three trips to talk circle, the pinching incident, her zeros, her arguments with the counselor. She described her relationship with Emmanuelle as beautiful and rich. She learned from the doll as much as the doll learned from her. “We were a team,” she said.
She told the judge that motherhood gave her life purpose and meaning. She said, “I never knew what was missing until I had my baby.”
Frida checks the time again. Where is Gust? She returns the clipboard and takes a box from her purse, asks permission to give Harriet some family heirlooms.