“Aren’t you curious what the dads are doing? I heard they don’t have uniforms. They can wear their regular clothes.” Helen thinks the fathers probably have fewer guards. Their minders probably don’t wear lab coats. If their minders are female, the lab coats would be too sexually suggestive.
“They probably have better food,” she says. “I bet they’re allowed to keep their kids’ pictures. Or have visitors. They probably don’t have cameras.”
“Everyone has cameras, Helen. Our phones have cameras. Our phones listen to us. Someone might be listening to us right now.”
“Maybe they don’t need cameras if there are only five dads.”
“There are more than five. There have to be more.”
“Doubt it,” Helen says. “What about us? Who do you think will be the first to go?”
“Go like pass?”
“No, drop out.”
Frida rolls over and stares at the wall. She’s been wondering the same thing. Her money is on one of the middle-aged white ladies. Someone is probably placing bets on her. She says that everyone should get their kid back.
“Maybe some of them shouldn’t.”
“Helen, don’t say that. Never say that again. I’d never wish this on anyone. You think anyone deserves to end up here? Shit. I’m sorry. I’m not complaining. Do not tell anyone I said that.”
6.
THE MOTHERS ANNOUNCE THEMSELVES WITH a rustle of fabric. The jumpsuits are huge and sexless and infantilizing, inspiring a chorus of complaints on the way to breakfast. The mothers want better uniforms, more comfortable boots. They want softer towels, extra lotion, different roommates, no roommates, longer showers, curtains on the windows, locks on the doors. They want their children. They want to go home.
Floodlights switch on as they pass each building. Frida keeps her thoughts to herself. She shuffles into the dining hall, wondering if this is what it’s like to land on a new planet. When the bell rang this morning, she had no idea where she was.
She fills her tray with a bowl of oatmeal, two pieces of toast, a cup of coffee, a cup of milk, a Granny Smith apple. The food seems cleaner and fresher than it did last night. This will be her first real breakfast in ages. She’ll make herself finish everything. Hopefully, the women in pink lab coats will notice. Perhaps if she’d eaten normally this fall. Cooked more. Kept her fridge stocked. It would have been easy to present a better picture. She pauses with her tray. To no one’s surprise, the mothers have self-segregated. There are tables of Black mothers, tables of Latina mothers, white mothers in twos and threes, a few lone wolves.
Seeing Frida approaching an empty table, Ms. Gibson steers her toward a group of young Black mothers. “Mealtimes,” she says, “should be used for community building.”
The mothers look like cool girls. Several are remarkably attractive. They don’t look as haggard and defeated as some of the older women. As Frida. Some cast withering glances in her direction. One whispers behind her hand.
Frida’s cheeks burn. She sits and empties packets of sugar into her oatmeal. The mother across the table, a wiry young woman with a nearly shaved head, wide-set eyes, and an inquisitive manner, comes to Frida’s rescue. She’s a dead ringer for early-career Lauryn Hill, though Frida doesn’t mention the resemblance. She’s probably too young to get it.
“Lucretia, endangerment.”
“Frida, neglect and abandonment.” They shake hands.
“Hi, Frida,” the mothers mumble without looking up.
“Frida, like Frida Kahlo?” Lucretia asks. “She’s one of my favorite painters. I love her style. I dressed as her for Halloween a few times.”
“My mom picked it out of a baby-name book. It was either going to be Frida or Iris.”
“You’re not an Iris. I mean that as a compliment. I’m going to call you Frida Kahlo, okay? You can call me Lu.”
Lucretia has an easy laugh that seems like it belongs to a bigger woman. She wears her uniform with the collar popped, touches the nape of her neck as she talks. She tells Frida that she cut off her twists just before coming here, figured it would be easier but feels naked with her hair so short. Short hair without earrings isn’t cute.
“What did you do?” Frida asks.
“To my kid?”
“For work. Before this.”
Lucretia’s smile becomes strained. “I taught second grade. In Germantown.”
“I’m sorry.” Frida wants to ask if Lucretia will return to teaching next year, but the table has resumed gossiping. About the guards and the women in pink lab coats. Their roommates. How they miss their parents and sisters and boyfriends. The phone calls they wish they could make to their children. The stupid fancy plants around the campus.