The School for Good Mothers(55)

“Yeah, that.”

The buzzer rings. Twenty mothers file out. Another twenty enter. The mothers who just said goodbye weep silently. It’s a technique Frida needs to learn. No wetness, no ugliness, just a brief face crumple and a sag of the shoulders, a dignified, private aching. The mothers hug and hold hands. They talk about how their children looked, if their children seemed healthy, whether their children were happy to see them, what they would have said if they’d had more time.

Frida needs Gust to check on her parents. She needs to know what’s happening with Harriet’s diet, if her second birthday party will have a theme or decorations in a particular color, if Harriet has a favorite color now, how Gust and Susanna will explain her absence.

Life has carried on without them. Relatives have had strokes. Children have responded to their mother’s absence with aggression—with pushing, tantrums, even biting. Linda’s oldest, her sixteen-year-old son, Gabriel, ran away from his foster home. He’s been missing for five days. It’s not his first time running away or the first time she’s worried that he’s dead, but it’s the first time she can’t look for him.

Though they haven’t forgotten what Linda did to Lucretia, they’ve been trying to be nicer, given the circumstances. They say, I understand. They say, I can’t imagine. Was Gabriel having problems at school? With his foster parents? Did he run off to be with a girl? Is he getting into drugs?

Linda covers her ears. She says, “Goddamn it, shut up!” Can’t they leave her alone?

“Stop making this about you,” she snaps when Beth tries to hug her.

Linda’s sorrow makes their already tense mealtimes unbearable. Others have been saying their class is cursed. Beth suggests a moratorium on news from home. They try not to discuss their children. No talk of babies or birth, their bodies, how long it’s been since their children were taken away, no whining about phone calls, what they’re permitted, whether they’ve forgotten their child’s touch or smell. Instead, they talk about gas prices and the latest natural disaster, stories gleaned from the women in pink lab coats, who check their phones when they think the mothers aren’t looking. They try to keep their conversation substantive and focused on real-world concerns. Thinking of themselves to the point of pathology is one reason they’re here.



* * *



As in all institutions, germs are a problem. There have been cases of bronchitis. Stomach bugs. Colds. For a place claiming to simulate parenting, there’s a distinct shortage of hand sanitizer.

This week, the mothers share the flu. It is, as Frida imagines, how the plague worked in a boardinghouse. One cough, one sneeze, another mother goes down. Roommate infects roommate. Whole classes get sick. Roxanne’s dream laughter has been replaced by hacking coughs. Frida finds that her entire brain has been reduced to thoughts of mucus. Linda proves to have a remarkably strong immune system.

With illness comes small rebellions. Some mothers try to cough on the women in pink lab coats, but after a few episodes of targeted coughing and malicious hand shaking, all punished with trips to talk circle, the staff starts wearing face masks and keeping their distance. No masks are provided for the mothers, who, even at their sickest, are not allowed to miss class. Beth unwisely asks about sick days and has the request added to her file.

“It’s not like you can request sick days at home,” Ms. Gibson says.



* * *



Unit 2 covers the Fundamentals of Food and Medicine. Cooking, the mothers learn, is one of the highest forms of love. The kitchen is the center, and the mother the heart, of the home. Like any other aspect of mothering, craft and attention to detail are paramount.

The dining hall chefs have the week off while the cohorts rotate through the kitchen, cooking children’s meals for the whole school. Some nights, the mothers are served purees. Other nights, jam sandwiches with the crust removed, oatmeal with raisins arranged in a rainbow. They eat overcooked omelets, meat cut into child-size bites, mushy sautés, an array of bland vegetables and casseroles. They’re only allowed to cook with a pinch of salt.

Several mothers sustain burns. One has a cast-iron pan dropped on her foot. One purposefully cuts her hand on a cheese grater. Allowing the mothers to handle sharp objects is risky, it’s been decided. Before leaving the kitchen, they have to turn out their pockets and unroll their sleeves and pant legs. The guards wave metal detectors over their uniforms. They pat the mothers’ hair and shine lights in their mouths. The known cutters in the community are taken to another room and subjected to cavity searches by the women in pink lab coats, a change in disciplinary procedure that dampens morale. Beth is searched twice a day.

The mothers go to bed hungry. They lose weight and become dizzy and irritable. When they’re not on a cooking rotation, they report to the auditorium for lectures on kitchen safety, nutrition, and mindful eating. In the kitchen, they compete to see who can prepare the fastest, healthiest omelet, who can crack an egg with one hand, whose cake is the most moist and flavorful, who can juice an orange and butter toast at the same time. Beth impresses the instructors with her chocolate-chip banana pancakes, which are decorated with smiley faces and hearts. Linda tries to one-up her by whistling as she prepares batter.

Frida’s father was the one who cooked. The family court judge should know this. Her father’s specialty is seafood. Steamed fish. Red snapper. Halibut. He’d carve tomatoes and carrots into garnishes, plated every dish. Her grandmother cooked too, but her mother didn’t have the time or inclination. Some women don’t. Some families don’t eat American food. Not once did her parents ever prepare pancakes.