“She’s a kid.”
“She’s nineteen. I mean, she will be soon, right? That’s three years younger than me.”
“Nineteen is a kid. You’re way more mature than she is. You’ve been to college. You’ve left Pennsylvania. She’s been on a plane maybe twice. And she likes guys, you know.”
“You have a such a one-dimensional view of this shit. Everyone my age is fluid. Put in a good word for me, okay?”
Frida is noncommittal. She wants to tell Roxanne that Meryl already has the green-eyed guard, that if Meryl were to choose a woman, she’d choose Beth. They might already be kissing in secret. Meryl calls Beth “babe.” Beth calls her “darling.” They’ve talked about getting matching tattoos. The girls are always casually touching in a way Frida has never done with anyone. She envies women who touch like that.
Lately, Frida and Roxanne have been talking more. They’ve bonded over being only children, shared stories about their pregnancies and labors and breastfeeding ordeals, connecting through stories of pain.
After Isaac was taken away, Roxanne had to go to the ER because of mastitis. She’d been feeding on demand, had to have an abscess surgically removed.
Isaac would have been given to Roxanne’s mother or aunt, but her mother is getting chemo for stage three breast cancer, and her aunt lives with a boyfriend whom no one trusts. Her mother had been putting her through college with little help from Roxanne’s dad, who lives in Jersey with his new family. Her mother had been seriously pissed about her pregnancy, thought Roxanne would have been smarter, but it turns out she loves being a grandmother.
“She likes to say that every woman has a kid so she can have a grandkid one day,” Roxanne said. “That’s the reward. She needs Isaac too.”
Frida only asked about Isaac’s father once. Roxanne said they met at a party. They don’t ever say his name out loud. When Isaac is older, she’s going to tell him she used a sperm donor. “Of course my baby looks exactly like him,” she admitted.
Roxanne asked Frida about New York, how New York compares to Philly. She was shocked by how little Frida knew about Black neighborhoods in Philly, that she’d never heard of the MOVE house, had never been to North Philly, had never been west of Fiftieth Street, had no idea that Sun Ra lived in Germantown, had never listened to Sun Ra, that she stopped listening to music once she moved to New York because the city was too noisy.
A guard comes by to do final checks. They hug good night.
Frida pictures Roxanne and Meryl in a closet, in the showers, outside, in the dark. She should be thinking about her daughter. The next phone call. Preschool. Potty training. What Harriet is eating. Whether Harriet is acquiring Susanna’s mannerisms. When she gets home, she’ll teach Harriet that the way Susanna touches people is rude, will make people assume the wrong things about her when she’s older. But Harriet might grow up to be a flirt. She’ll think her mother is the one who’s cold and strange. She’ll know that locked here with two hundred women, her mother could not start a lesbian affair if she tried.
This is the longest Frida has gone without a man’s kiss or touch. She used to think she’d die without it. No mother has looked at her that way, and her interest in other women has always been purely theoretical, but she fears the day, or night, or furtive afternoon when loneliness will get the better of her, make her want to take risks. She’d like to be kissed again before she dies, and if she’s going to die here, an idea that feels more real all the time, she might have to choose another mother. She’ll insist that they keep their clothes on. She’ll explain that this is not her normal self. She is dying; perhaps she should find another dying woman.
* * *
Nearly five months in, glitches still occur regularly. Instructors receive programming changes at the last minute. Lessons are skipped at random. Bath time lessons are hastily scheduled for April, then canceled. All the cohorts are given extra outdoor time while the instructors figure out what to do.
The dolls are supposed to be waterproof, but the infant cohorts had issues with loose blue knobs. When the dolls were submerged, water seeped into their cavities. Mold grew. The mold smelled like rotting broccoli. Moldy infants from Roxanne’s class had to be sent to the technical department. One mother asked for her doll’s cavity to be cleaned with bleach, but the instructor said that bleach was tested at the doll factory in China. It corroded the internal machinery and wore down their silicone skin. Noses and eyes disappeared. If that happened here, it would look very bad for their files.