The School for Good Mothers(22)

“Come here.” Frida holds her arms wide. Harriet is both bigger and smaller than the Harriet of her daydreams. It feels like she’s aged a year. She’s grown more hair. It’s darker and curlier, tangled. She’s barefoot, wearing a sleeveless beige cotton dress that’s too light for the season.

“Big girl,” Frida says, her voice chirpy and strangled. “I missed you, I missed you.” She kisses Harriet, touches the blotches of eczema on her cheeks. “Hello, beauty.”

They press foreheads and noses. She apologizes for disrupting the evening routine. She asks if Harriet understands what’s going to happen, why Mommy is here, what they’re going to do, why they need to play for a little while.

“Visit,” Harriet says, hitting the consonants hard.

She doesn’t want her daughter to learn these words, not in this way.

“Miss Mommy,” Harriet says.

Frida hugs her again, but their reverie is short-lived. The social worker has asked Gust and Susanna to leave them alone for a bit, to return at 6:00 p.m. sharp. When Harriet sees them heading toward the door, she takes off running and hurls herself at their legs.

She grabs Susanna by the ankles. The social worker suggests that Gust and Susanna leave quickly. As Harriet screams, they extricate themselves, promising to return soon, careful not to close the door on Harriet’s fingers.

Harriet bangs on the door, demanding Daddy and Sue-Sue come back. Frida pleads for cooperation. She tries to carry Harriet back to the living room, looking like she’s trying to catch a fish with her bare hands.

“Ms. Liu, she can walk,” the social worker says. “You should let her walk.”

This evening’s sustained face-to-face interaction consists of negotiation and refusal, chasing and begging, a steady uptick in Harriet’s fury. The contents of her toy chest are strewn across the floor. Harriet behaves like a child who is secretly beaten, working herself into a frenzy that surges until it erupts in a nosebleed.

“Bub, please calm down. Please. Oh, please.”

Harriet flails and chokes on her tears. She wipes blood across her face, then wipes her bloody hands on the ivory rug. The blood keeps coming. The social worker films Frida ministering to Harriet, twisting tissues and stuffing them into Harriet’s nostrils. She presses one hand on Harriet’s forehead to make sure she keeps her head back. She tries to remember what her parents and Popo used to do. This is Harriet’s first nosebleed.

When the bleeding finally stops, Frida asks permission to take Harriet to the kitchen for some water.

“As long as she walks,” the social worker says. The wobbling walk and searching for a sippy cup and filling it and coaxing Harriet to drink from it and wiping her wet chin consume more time. Harriet’s dress is soaked. She’s shivering.

Frida takes off her scarf and wraps it around Harriet’s shoulders. “No, bub, please don’t do that.” Harriet is licking the blood off her fingers. “You can go to bed so, so soon. No. No. Don’t cry. Sit down with Mommy.”

They’re cross-legged on the kitchen floor, their backs against the oven, Frida sitting in a puddle of spilled water. The social worker tells them they have five minutes left. Time for one game.

“She’s exhausted,” Frida says. “Look at her.”

“If that’s how you’d like to use your visitation.”

“Please, Ms. Torres, be reasonable. We’re doing our best.”

Frida asks Harriet if she’s hungry. Harriet shakes her head. She babbles instead of using her words. She climbs onto Frida’s lap. Frida has been dreaming of this moment, Harriet making her mother’s arms a home, her body a home, like it was at the very beginning, mother and child going back in time together. She kisses Harriet’s hot forehead. She wets her fingertip with saliva and tries to remove the rest of the dried blood. Harriet’s eyes close.

“Ms. Liu, please wake her up. This isn’t appropriate.”

Frida ignores the warning. She loves feeling Harriet wriggle and make herself cozy. Harriet trusts her. Harriet forgives her. She wouldn’t fall asleep in her mother’s arms if she didn’t feel safe there.



* * *



As the days pass, Frida thinks of the social worker as much as she would a new lover. She carries her phone with her everywhere, has the ringer on the highest volume. Any day is a day the social worker might call, and then she does, and then she cancels.

The social worker claims to be swamped. There may not be time for a third visit. “Don’t worry,” she says. “They’re taking good care of her.”

Every night, Frida kneels in the dark nursery, thinking about the child who was cut out of her body, who should be beside her but who hasn’t been beside her, not really, for eight weeks. Nine weeks. Ten. It is November, and Harriet is twenty months old.



* * *



On the morning of her hearing, Frida wakes up frozen. Her comforter has been kicked off the bed, the sheets are tangled around her legs. She slept with a window open, inviting the cold into the house of her mind and the house of her body, into the room where she’s been waiting every night for her daughter to be returned. It’s 5:14. She closes the window and puts on a robe and pads downstairs and forces herself to eat. An entire bagel with cream cheese. Ten flatbread crackers. A chocolate sea-salt protein bar. Coffee and green tea. Yesterday, she stocked her fridge with organic whole milk and string cheese, locally grown apples, organic chicken breasts, blueberries. She bought avocados and teething crackers and rice cereal.