The School for Good Mothers(26)

The college was founded by Quakers. The bike racks are still here. Recycling bins. Bulletin boards with staples. White Adirondack chairs. Blue emergency lights and call boxes. Frida supposes she should feel relieved. She’s been picturing windowless rooms and underground bunkers and solitary confinement and beatings. But they’re minutes from a major highway. A campus is a world she knows. The guards don’t have guns, and the mothers aren’t in handcuffs. They’re still part of society.

The mothers are told to form a line. The woman in the pink lab coat asks for each mother’s name and offense. Frida stands on her tiptoes and listens.

“Neglect.”

“Neglect and abandonment.”

“Neglect and verbal abuse.”

“Neglect and malnutrition.”

“Corporal punishment.”

“Physical abuse.”

“Abandonment.”

“Abandonment.”

“Neglect.”

“Neglect.”

“Neglect.”

The line moves quickly. The woman in the pink lab coat has impeccable posture. She looks to be in her early thirties, wears her curly brown hair in a bob. She has freckled skin and small teeth, smiles with too much gum showing, seems oppressively cheerful. Her voice squeaks. She overenunciates in the manner of someone who works with non-native English speakers or small children. Her lab coat is the shade of palest blush pink worn by girl babies. Her name tag reads: MS. GIBSON, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR.

“Please take those off,” Ms. Gibson tells Frida. “I need to scan your eye.”

Frida removes her glasses. Ms. Gibson holds her by the chin, uses a pen-shaped device to scan her retina.

“Name and offense, please.”

“Frida Liu. Neglect.”

Ms. Gibson beams. “Welcome, Ms. Liu.” She consults her tablet. “Actually, we have you down for neglect and abandonment.”

“There must be a mistake.”

“Oh, no. That’s not possible. We don’t make mistakes.”

Ms. Gibson hands her a canvas sack, tells her to fill out the label and put her personal clothes inside once she’s settled in her dorm room. The sack will be collected later. All the mothers will be living in Kemp House. Everyone will be wearing uniforms after today.

So it begins, Frida thinks. She is a bad mother among other bad mothers. She neglected and abandoned her child. She has no history, no other identity.

She enters Pierce Hall, passes through a carpeted lobby to a foyer with a gold chandelier and a huge circular glass table that must have once held floral arrangements. There are signs for the offices that used to be here: career services and financial aid, study abroad, the bursar’s office, admissions.

In the foyer, she senses the cameras before she sees them, feels a faint tickle, like someone is drawing his fingers across the back of her neck. There are cameras mounted on the ceiling. She knows there will be cameras in every hallway, every room, on the outside of every building.

She finds a spot against the wall and counts heads and tries not to stare at faces. She fidgets with her scarf, doesn’t know what to do with her hands, can’t remember the last time she was among strangers without her phone.

She catalogs the mothers by age and race, as she imagines the state does, as she always does when she suspects she’s the only. Gust used to make fun of her for counting how many Asians she saw in one week when they first moved to Philly.

The mothers eye one another warily. Some sit on the stairs leading to the old provost’s office. Some clutch their purses and cross their arms and toss or pat their hair and pace in ferocious little circles. Frida feels like she’s back in junior high. She surveys the new faces, hoping for another Asian, but none appear. Some Latina mothers have moved to one side of the foyer, some Black mothers to the other. Three middle-aged white women in fine wool coats huddle in the far corner next to the guards.

The trio of white women are getting dirty looks. Frida regrets her skinny jeans and ankle boots, her wool beanie and fur-trimmed parka and hipster glasses. Everything about her reads as bourgeois.

Once all the mothers have been checked in, women in pink lab coats herd them through Pierce and out a side exit. They pass a stone courtyard, a chapel with a bell tower, two-and three-story gray-stone classroom buildings. There are trees everywhere, acres of rolling lawn now bordered by a high fence topped with barbed wire.

The trees are labeled with English and Latin names. Frida reads the signs. AMERICAN LINDEN. MOSSY-CUP OAK. JAPANESE MAPLE. NORTHERN CATALPA. HIMALAYAN PINE. TULIP POPLAR. EASTERN HEMLOCK.

If her parents could see this. If Gust could see this. If only she could tell Will. But she’ll never be able to tell anyone. The mothers had to sign nondisclosure agreements. They’re not allowed to talk about the school after they leave, can’t say anything about the program during the weekly calls. If they do, regardless of the outcome of their cases, their names will be added to a Negligent Parent Registry. Their negligence will be revealed when they try to rent or buy a home, register their child for school, apply for credit cards or loans, apply for jobs or government benefits—the moment they do anything that requires their social security number. The registry will alert a community that a bad parent has moved into the neighborhood. Their names and photos will be posted online. Her very bad day would follow her. If she says anything. If she gets expelled. If she quits.