An undecorated Christmas tree is wheeled into the entrance of the dining hall. The floor around the tree is littered with pine needles. Angry mothers have been stripping the branches.
The upcoming winter holidays provide fodder for lessons on intermediate and advanced motherese. Frida tells Emmanuelle about Chicago winters. Lake-effect snow. It’s not like Philly, where the whole city shuts down after two inches.
“When I was little, the snow came up to my shoulder. We have pictures of my dad pulling me in a baby bathtub. He was supposed to use a sled.”
“Sled?”
“It’s this thing people use to go downhill. And people get in it with their kids or by themselves and they go whoosh, whoosh.” She mimics the motion with her arms.
She teaches Emmanuelle about Christmas, explains the ritual of decorating trees and giving presents. She’s not sure of the school’s policy on Santa Claus, so she skips that part.
“My family celebrates on Christmas Eve. No one told my parents that you’re supposed to open presents on Christmas morning, so the next day, we didn’t have anything to do. We’d usually go to the theater to see a movie.”
“Mov-ie?”
“A movie is a story. Something you watch on a screen. Make-believe. Entertainment. People watch movies to escape. Don’t worry, I don’t think you’ll ever need to do that. You have Mommy to entertain you.”
* * *
The next week, a sense of normalcy sets in. The mothers practice reading aloud from picture books on Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Hanukkah. Frida reads to Emmanuelle from a book about Rita the Reindeer.
“Pay attention to your vocal variation,” Ms. Khoury says. Rita the Reindeer and her reindeer friends and Santa and Mrs. Claus all sound the same. “You have to treat each phrase as a burst of light, Frida.”
She tells Frida to name the things and people on each page, point out shapes and colors. Frida should ask Emmanuelle to repeat the words back to her. She must stimulate Emmanuelle’s curiosity with developmentally appropriate, loving, and insightful questions.
“Remember, you’re building her mind,” Ms. Khoury says.
Requiring the dolls to sit still during reading practice presents a major hurdle. As promised, too many noes cause the dolls to beep like a car alarm. Alarms are going off throughout the building, especially for mothers with younger dolls.
Frida has Emmanuelle point to the red things in the picture. The reindeer noses. Santa’s outfit. The stripes on the candy canes. She would like to tell Emmanuelle that Harriet is in McLean, Virginia, that Harriet will wear a red dress at Susanna’s parents’ house.
Susanna took the last call from the car. She was sitting in back with Harriet while Gust drove. The connection was fuzzy. Harriet’s face kept disappearing. Susanna prompted Harriet to say that she missed Mommy, that she loves Mommy. Harriet wouldn’t do it, but there was one brief smile.
No one told Frida about the trip. No one asked her permission. They never discussed Harriet meeting Susanna’s family. She’d never have agreed to it. Had they asked, she would have told Gust that one white family is enough.
* * *
As Christmas approaches, the dolls become surly. One doll’s bad mood can spread through the group like a fever. Emmanuelle tears off a whole page of flaps from her lift-the-flap book. When Frida reminds her to be gentle with toys and books, Emmanuelle locks eyes with her and says, in a matter-of-fact tone, “Hate you.” She hits the consonants extra hard. It’s her first two-word sentence.
Though she knows it’s not personal and Emmanuelle isn’t human, the insult still stings. Did it happen to you? they ask at dinner.
Lucretia thinks the dolls have been programmed to be harder to manage around the holidays. “Like real kids,” she says, but besides Linda, no one knows what toddlers are like at the holidays. Last year, their daughters were easily placated infants.
The mothers have been in uniform for four weeks. They’re messing up each other’s cycles. The women in pink lab coats dispense thick, hospital-grade maxi pads two at a time so the mothers are forced to keep asking. It’s unclear what harm could be done to themselves or school property if they were given more. They have too much respect for the cleaning crew and janitorial staff to stuff anything down the toilets.
In the midst of the latest doll hostility, Frida’s period arrives early and Emmanuelle begins to pucker. Dimples form on the doll’s cheeks and the tops of her hands. Emmanuelle scratches at her mottled skin.
“Hurt,” she says.