Frida leans her head against the window. Susanna needs to make sure Harriet wears a hat today. She’s too casual about dressing Harriet for cold weather. Blood rushes to Frida’s face. She wants to know what time Harriet woke up this morning, what Harriet is doing right now, what Harriet ate for breakfast, whether Gust has been delivering messages every day as promised. Mommy loves you. Mommy misses you. Mommy is so sorry she’s not here. Mommy will be back soon.
* * *
The mothers disembark. They squint and shiver. They stretch their legs and dab their eyes and blow their noses. More buses pull into the parking lot of a field house. How many mothers will there be? At the family court building, Frida counted eighty-six women. Renee promised her that real criminals—murderers and kidnappers and rapists and molesters and child traffickers and pornographers—are still being sent to prison. The majority of the parents CPS deals with, Renee said, will have been charged with neglect. That’s how it’s been for years.
“The surveillance might keep you safe,” Renee told her. “Everyone will behave themselves, I hope.”
Frida has peddled this line of thinking to her concerned parents.
Guards escort the mothers from the parking lot to an imposing walkway lined with bare oak trees. It feels like they’re in France. An estate in the countryside. The walk takes ten minutes. Frida hears a guard say they’re going to Pierce Hall. Up ahead is a gray stone building with windows edged in white, tall white columns, a gray domed roof.
At the entrance, a trim white woman in a pink lab coat stands before a set of doors, flanked by two guards.
Renee thought they’d be sent somewhere secluded, but the mothers have arrived at an old liberal arts college, one of the many that went bankrupt in the last decade. Frida visited this campus twenty-two years ago when she was touring colleges with her parents. She still remembers the details. Her parents repeated them often. This one had been their first choice for her. Four hundred acres for sixteen hundred students, two forests, a pond. An outdoor amphitheater. An arboretum. Hiking trails. A creek.
The college was founded by Quakers. The bike racks are still here. Recycling bins. Bulletin boards with staples. White Adirondack chairs. Blue emergency lights and call boxes. Frida supposes she should feel relieved. She’s been picturing windowless rooms and underground bunkers and solitary confinement and beatings. But they’re minutes from a major highway. A campus is a world she knows. The guards don’t have guns, and the mothers aren’t in handcuffs. They’re still part of society.
The mothers are told to form a line. The woman in the pink lab coat asks for each mother’s name and offense. Frida stands on her tiptoes and listens.
“Neglect.”
“Neglect and abandonment.”
“Neglect and verbal abuse.”
“Neglect and malnutrition.”
“Corporal punishment.”
“Physical abuse.”
“Abandonment.”
“Abandonment.”
“Neglect.”
“Neglect.”
“Neglect.”
The line moves quickly. The woman in the pink lab coat has impeccable posture. She looks to be in her early thirties, wears her curly brown hair in a bob. She has freckled skin and small teeth, smiles with too much gum showing, seems oppressively cheerful. Her voice squeaks. She overenunciates in the manner of someone who works with non-native English speakers or small children. Her lab coat is the shade of palest blush pink worn by girl babies. Her name tag reads: MS. GIBSON, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR.
“Please take those off,” Ms. Gibson tells Frida. “I need to scan your eye.”
Frida removes her glasses. Ms. Gibson holds her by the chin, uses a pen-shaped device to scan her retina.
“Name and offense, please.”
“Frida Liu. Neglect.”
Ms. Gibson beams. “Welcome, Ms. Liu.” She consults her tablet. “Actually, we have you down for neglect and abandonment.”
“There must be a mistake.”
“Oh, no. That’s not possible. We don’t make mistakes.”
Ms. Gibson hands her a canvas sack, tells her to fill out the label and put her personal clothes inside once she’s settled in her dorm room. The sack will be collected later. All the mothers will be living in Kemp House. Everyone will be wearing uniforms after today.
So it begins, Frida thinks. She is a bad mother among other bad mothers. She neglected and abandoned her child. She has no history, no other identity.
She enters Pierce Hall, passes through a carpeted lobby to a foyer with a gold chandelier and a huge circular glass table that must have once held floral arrangements. There are signs for the offices that used to be here: career services and financial aid, study abroad, the bursar’s office, admissions.