Linda worries her children are going hungry. “You don’t know the kind of people who sign up to be foster parents,” she tells the group. “People do it for the money.” She doesn’t know where those foster parents live, doesn’t know how many other kids they’re fostering, if her kids are getting into fights with them, fights at school. For Sunday phone calls, she has to choose one kid to call each week. How’s that going to sit with the others? She wanted her social worker to place the kids with Spanish speakers, wanted someone to take all six. The older kids take care of the younger ones.
Beth tells Linda about a lesbian couple who live near her in Mount Airy, who foster kids with special needs. “There are good foster parents too,” Beth says.
“Unhelpful,” Linda replies. “Unhelpful.”
Frida is thinking about money. Private school and summer camps. Music lessons and tutors. Trips abroad. Everything her parents gave her. The more she hears about deprivation, the more she wants to give Harriet luxury.
Ms. Knight asks everyone to stand and give thanks. The first mothers to speak are shy. One mother thanks God. Another thanks America.
Frida’s parents must be at her aunt and uncle’s house in Burr Ridge. At least twenty relatives will be there. Frida is the eldest of the cousins on her mother’s side, her late grandmother’s favorite. She begged her parents not to tell the rest of the family, but her mother has probably broken down and told one sister, who told the three other siblings, who told their children. The aunts and uncles will blame her parents. Or her liberal arts degree or not finishing her PhD or waiting until she was thirty-seven to have a baby. Or marrying a white man, and what kind of name was Gust? She shouldn’t have married someone handsome. Handsome men can’t be trusted. She lived too far from home. If she’d moved home, her parents would have helped with the baby. The problem was Frida’s choices. Her aunts and uncles will tell their children, If you ever do something like this, I will throw myself in a river.
Lost in her immigrant-daughter guilt spiral, she doesn’t notice when Ms. Knight arrives at their table. Ms. Knight first passes the microphone to Linda, who gives thanks for the school.
“For all of you. My new sisters. You’re beautiful. All of you, man.”
They go around. There is gratitude for food, shelter, second chances.
Teen Mom doesn’t look up from her plate. She hasn’t said anything all night, has consumed only cranberry sauce. She asks to skip her turn. Undaunted, Ms. Knight presses the microphone into her hand.
“Lady, get that microphone out of my face. Aren’t there enough fucking rules?”
“Meryl, language! One more incident like this and I’ll make sure you get sent to talk circle.”
Teen Mom takes the microphone and says, “I give thanks for the truth.”
She hands the microphone to Frida, who hesitates, looking to Lucretia for guidance. Lucretia makes a heart with her hands.
“I give thanks for Emmanuelle,” Frida says, taking the cue. “My doll. I mean, my daughter. My precious, beautiful daughter.”
At the next table, the trio of middle-aged white women stand together. They pass the microphone, finish each other’s sentences. They give thanks for Ms. Knight. For science, for progress. The instructors. Lucretia tells Frida to notice the way Ms. Knight is smiling at them. Maybe those three aren’t even moms, Lucretia says. Maybe they work for the state. Maybe they’re moles. There’s talk of throwing dinner rolls their way, but before anyone can try, the ass-kissing of the middle-aged white women is cut short by a burst of flame. The room fills with the scent of burning plastic.
* * *
Mothers are interrogated. Surveillance footage is reviewed. Though no one can prove that the fire was intentional or identify who knocked over the candle, the next morning, there are dozens of new guards.
The new dining hall guard is a youthful, ruddy-faced blond with the soft, lumpy body of a drinker. It’s their fifth day in the world of women, and even Linda, who declares the guard to be the whitest white man she’s ever seen, gives the guard a coy glance.
The mothers stand a little straighter. They giggle and blush and point, the dining hall guard unruffled by their leering. Reasonable, Frida thinks, that a man wouldn’t be aroused by a room of two hundred women who have mistreated their children.
It is Black Friday, and the mothers are grouchy and restless. They should be sleeping late and eating leftovers and spending money they don’t have.
Lucretia says they should cause more trouble. Get themselves more guards. “A year is a long time,” she says. Who knows when co-ed training is going to happen, if it’s going to happen like Ms. Knight promised at orientation. They’re not going to hang with those dads anyway.