“I’m Mommy. I’m your mommy.”
They talk for fifteen minutes at a time between check-ins, the longest Harriet can sit still, rushing through two months of news. They’re going to have her party at home. They’re getting a pi?ata. Susanna will bake the cake. They’ve bought Harriet a balance b-i-k-e. They’re on the wait list for the Waldorf School in Germantown and the Montessori in Center City.
Susanna says hello. She and Gust both comment on Frida’s weight loss, though they kindly resist saying anything about her gray hair. One hour is lost to the mothers’ lunch break. Three more hours to Harriet’s nap. Gust lets Frida watch Harriet play in the living room with Susanna.
Frida has to say goodbye whenever Emmanuelle gets unruly. It’s an impossible choice—talk to Harriet, get penalized for ignoring Emmanuelle. Ignore Harriet, and maybe not live through the spring or summer. Frida feels guilty in every way. Guilty before her daughter, neglected on her mother’s one very bad day, guilty before her doll, who looks at her reproachfully. Guilty before the instructors when she turns up late to the last check-in.
* * *
On Wednesday morning, she comes to class prepared to toggle between her daughters, but she doesn’t have to toggle, because the test proved far too effective. All four of them neglected their dolls. They forgot their first priority. They gave in to distraction. Clearly, when given a basic freedom, this group will run wild, regress into selfishness and narcissism.
“We can’t let your progress go to waste,” Ms. Russo says. As quickly as the mothers were given a lifeline to the outside world, that lifeline is severed.
* * *
Frida and her classmates are bused to an off-site location. They reunite with their dolls in the parking lot of a warehouse by the side of the highway. Inside, there are four model homes, matching yellow bungalows with green awnings. The warehouse is freezing. The dolls have never seen a building of this size. They’ve never seen houses. They cling to their mothers’ legs and scream, their voices echoing through the cavernous space.
The instructors call the lesson “Preventing Home Alone.” To hone their supervision instincts, the mothers will be tested with distractions. At the sound of the whistle, the instructors will measure the time it takes them to notice their doll and carry her out the front door. As with the phone lessons, they’ll be learning how to focus: to maintain eye contact with, and close physical proximity to, their child. To have their child’s safety be their first desire and only priority.
The instructors make the mothers repeat after them: “An unsupervised child is a child in danger. I must never leave my child alone.”
The building could host lessons for fifty mothers, maybe more. Emmanuelle strokes the goose bumps on Frida’s cheeks. Frida could cry. She’ll relive her one very bad day over and over, but now timed and filmed and scored, with phone privileges hanging in the balance. How often has she thought of Harriet home alone, how often has she considered every single thing she should have done differently?
The houses are equipped with phones and televisions and doorbells, all of which come into play during the drills, switching on at the same time at frightening volumes. The noises begin without warning, startling the mothers and dolls.
In between drills, Frida teaches Emmanuelle the words for awning, front door, doorbell, curtains, sofa, armchair, ottoman, kitchen, mantel, television, remote control, coffee table, sink. The inside of the model home is painted butter yellow and decorated with fake-wood knickknacks. Their house has a nautical theme, with anchors and rope accents. Every item smells as if the plastic wrap has just been removed.
Her very bad day had been stifling. It had been unbearably hot all weekend. Frida remembers being desperate to shower, remembers running the air conditioner, looking up at the dusty ceiling fans, thinking she should clean them. She remembers craving caffeine, something sweet and cold, stronger than she could make at home. She remembers wanting to walk outside with her arms free.
Had she come home an hour earlier. Forty-five minutes earlier. Talked to the neighbors herself. She would have offered them money. She would have pleaded with them. But Susanna would never leave. Gust would never leave. None of the grandparents would leave. No babysitter would leave. Only she would. Only she did. If Harriet hadn’t been in the ExerSaucer, she could have walked to the basement door, opened it, tumbled down the stairs. She could have opened the front door and wandered into the street.
“Harriet isn’t safe with you,” the judge said.