“Like preschool,” Linda says, staying close to Frida.
The mothers form a circle. Their instructors are Ms. Russo and Ms. Khoury, both around Frida’s age, both wearing pink lab coats over dark sweaters and tailored trousers and nurse’s clogs. Ms. Russo, the taller of the two, is a plump, plummy-voiced white woman with a brunette pixie cut who talks with her hands. Ms. Khoury is petite and bony and Middle Eastern–looking, with sharp cheekbones and wavy salt-and-pepper shoulder-length hair, a lilting accent, and the bearing of an Eastern bloc ballet master.
They ask the mothers to introduce themselves by stating their names and offenses and a few pertinent details about how they harmed their children. There are five women, including Frida and Linda. Frida is pleased to see Lucretia, the friendly mom from breakfast. Lucretia goes first, tells the group that her daughter broke her arm after falling off a slide. Frida nods warmly. Lucretia and Linda exchange a hostile glance.
A white teenager, Meryl, is here for bruises on her daughter’s arms and drug possession. A young white woman named Beth lost custody after she checked herself into the psych ward. Since she was a danger to herself, she couldn’t be trusted with her daughter. Lucretia and Meryl were reported to CPS by ER doctors. Beth was reported by her ex-boyfriend.
At first glance, Frida thinks Meryl and Beth look alike, but there’s no actual resemblance, only a similar petrified expression. Both girls have dark hair. Meryl’s is wavy and dyed black, a blue-black that doesn’t occur in nature and doesn’t match her pale eyebrows. Beth’s hair is straight and glossy, chestnut brown. Meryl seems like she shouldn’t be messed with. Beth has the glittering haunted air of Will’s broken birds, her black Irish coloring well-suited to blushing and tears.
Frida and Linda are the class elders, both here for neglect and abandonment. As Frida tells them about her very bad day, she notices Linda watching her, gloating.
Ms. Khoury thanks them for sharing. Ms. Russo excuses herself and slips inside the equipment room. There’s movement behind the frosted glass, the sound of shuffling feet, peals of laughter, the high-pitched murmur of small children.
The mothers hold their breath and listen, hoping for the impossible. Lucretia pulls her knees to her chest and whispers, “Brynn? Are you in there?”
Frida looks away. These must be recordings designed to taunt them into submission, to keep them desperate and drooling during these months when they have no child to hold. The judge would never allow it. Gust would never allow it. Harriet is on the way to the airport. Frida doesn’t want Harriet anywhere near this place or these people, but if, somehow, a fissure has opened in time and space and delivered her baby, she’ll do anything they ask. If she could hold Harriet right now. Holding Harriet for ten minutes could last her the long winter.
When Ms. Russo opens the equipment room door, she’s trailed by five toddler girls of different races. There’s one Black girl, one white girl, one Latina. Two of the girls are mixed: one looks to be half Black and half white; the other looks Eurasian. The girls are mirror images of the mothers, dressed in navy blue jumpsuits and sneakers.
The circle constricts. They sit close enough to touch shoulders, becoming, for a moment, one mother, a hydra of disappointed faces.
Harriet felt so close. Frida was imagining what she’d say, how she’d clutch the back of Harriet’s head and stroke the downy hairs at the nape of her neck. Though the girls are the right age and the right size and the little half-Asian girl is looking right at her, she’s not Harriet. Frida could punch herself in the face for hoping.
The instructors herd the girls into a single row at the front of the classroom. The children giggle and wave.
“Settle down,” Ms. Russo says, guiding one of the wayward toddlers back in line. “Class, we want to start with a little surprise we prepared for you.”
Ms. Khoury raises her arms. “On the count of three. Ready? One… two… three!”
“Hello, Mommy!” the children shout. “Welcome!”
* * *
The building fills with sound. Voices travel through the air vents. In other classrooms, there are older children, adolescents and teenagers. Except for the guards, all the voices are female.
Throughout the building, mothers are crying. There’s a commotion in the hallway, a mother shouting at a guard, another being ordered back to her classroom, mothers arguing with instructors.
Frida’s classmates shout questions. Beth demands to speak to Ms. Knight, the executive director. Lucretia wants to know where the children came from. Where are their parents?