“Let your thoughts come naturally,” the woman says, handing Frida a set of headphones.
On-screen, it’s the first day of class. The pairing of mothers and dolls. For the next half hour, Frida watches clips from the past six months. A highlight reel of her failures. The affection drills. The first evaluation day. The first time changing the blue liquid. The pinching incident. Talk circle. The cooking classes where she kept cutting herself, the medicine she administered incorrectly. The warehouse. Easter. Talk circle again. Emmanuelle crying in the equipment room.
Her throat is parched. Her pulse races. Her stomach cramps. No one told them what the scans would involve. When she asked the counselor how to prepare, the counselor said preparation wasn’t possible.
“Everything you need should already be inside you,” the counselor said.
When Emmanuelle is pinched or hit, or particularly frightened or distraught, the camera zooms in on her face and shows her response in slow motion, giving Frida time to consider her suffering. Her anguish pierces Frida almost as much as Harriet’s does. She feels responsible. Some clips are taken from the camera inside Emmanuelle, showing Frida exactly as the doll sees her. Frida watches herself age. She watches herself struggle.
The reel ends with a montage of affection, but even in scenes of them hugging or kissing or playing, Frida looks stricken and sad. She returns to class with imprints on her face from the sensors. Emmanuelle loves Frida’s “dot-dots.” She presses her thumb into each circle, laughing.
By dinnertime, all the mothers have been marked.
* * *
On Mother’s Day, phone privileges are canceled for everyone, a decision that’s only announced at breakfast. Between meals, the mothers must remain in their rooms and write in their atonement journals. They’re encouraged to reflect on their remaining shortcomings and their missing children, to remember last Mother’s Day and think about next year’s, as well as giving thanks to the women who raised them.
“I am a bad mother because,” Frida writes. She quickly fills five pages.
She tries to visualize success. It is June and she’s calling Harriet. It is December and she and Harriet have been reunited. Harriet is tugging on the flaps of Frida’s fur hat. Harriet no longer likes owls, has moved on to penguins. She takes Harriet to get a flu shot. Gust lets Harriet spend two weeks with her. They fly to Chicago for the holidays to see Gonggong and Popo. On the plane, Harriet’s poise and good manners impress the flight attendants.
She tries to imagine what Harriet will look like in December, but the Harriet she imagines is the one from last summer, before her very bad day, when she had time to study Harriet’s face. She doesn’t know what Harriet looks like right at this moment, and this in itself seems the crime. She’s not there to watch her daughter grow.
They have the windows open this morning. There’s a breeze. The clear, dry day beckons. Some Sundays, she and Roxanne try to walk the length of the campus to see how far they can get. What will the family court judge do with her mistakes and her trips to talk circle and Emmanuelle’s wounds? The doll’s arm is still dented. Her bruise is still visible. The woman in the videos has nothing to do with how she parents Harriet. How can the school expect her to love Emmanuelle like her own? To behave naturally, when there’s nothing natural about these circumstances?
Roxanne keeps tearing pages out of her journal and pushing them onto the floor. She’s crying. Frida goes to the bathroom and gets a wad of toilet paper, leaves it on Roxanne’s desk. Isaac turned one this week. Roxanne wanted to sing to him today.
“Don’t cry,” Frida whispers, hugging Roxanne around the shoulders.
Roxanne thanks her. Frida picks up the discarded papers and stacks the torn pages. When Roxanne tries to get back into bed, Frida won’t let her.
In her atonement journal, Frida writes that Susanna deserves to be celebrated today, that she is Harriet’s mother too.
Harriet can probably say her own name now. She might be speaking in complete sentences. Mommy, I love you galaxies. Mommy, I love you best. Mommy, come home. You are my only mommy. You are my real mommy. Mommy, I miss you.
* * *
The school reviewed Frida’s brain scan to see which neural pathways lit up, looking for flickering in the pathways for empathy and care. Though they detected a few muted signals, results suggested that her capacity for maternal feeling and attachment is limited. Her word count remains one of the best in class, but analysis of her expressions, pulse, temperature, eye contact, blinking patterns, and touch indicated residual fear and anger. Guilt. Confusion. Anxiety. Ambivalence.