The School for Good Mothers(77)

Everyone’s uniform has salt stains from perspiration. No hats or sunglasses are provided. Despite the trees, there’s not enough shade. The sunscreen they’re given is insufficient for the amount of time they’re spending outside. Some parents succumb to heat stroke, others to dehydration and dizziness. During meals, they chug water. They can no longer drink any during class. One of the four-year-old girl dolls got her hands on some bottled water and malfunctioned.

The possibility of seeing Tucker distracts Frida from her thirst, as well as from her parenting. The instructors catch every mistake. She doesn’t move fast enough when Emmanuelle runs in front of the swings. She pushes Emmanuelle too high. She isn’t spotting attentively enough when Emmanuelle climbs the jungle gym. She’s chatting too much with Tucker, preventing other mothers from working with him.

Tucker tells terrible, long-winded jokes, dares to make fun of the instructors and the program. Emmanuelle likes going for rides on his shoulders. Frida spirals into the great beyond of November. She imagines introducing him to Harriet, introducing him to her parents, but not saying where they met.

“You need to find a man who loves you more than you love him,” her mother once told her.

Gust wanted her to start dating again. Will has moved on. He’d want her to be happy. He’d like Tucker. There’s a softness in both of them. A generosity. She always noticed this when she saw Will with his broken birds.

The counselor wants to know what happened. Last week Frida was doing fine. Now, her word counts have declined, as have her attachment levels. What happened to no eligible bachelors?

“He’s only a friend,” Frida says.



* * *



Someone found a dead section of the fence. One couple romped in the woods. Another broke into an empty cottage on the north side of campus. Another found a blind spot behind the art gallery. Another laid down next to the duck pond. The mud on their uniforms gave them away.

The explorers return with information for the rest: which cameras seem to be broken, which sections of campus seem to have no cameras at all, which women in pink lab coats and which guards are always checking their phones, the classes most likely to be visited by Ms. Gibson or Ms. Knight. Constant location changes make it hard to keep track of everyone. A mother and father are caught in the field house. Another couple is caught in the bushes. Another underneath a bus in the parking lot. The mothers lose phone privileges and are sent to talk circle. The fathers are assigned additional exercise on the weekends.

The next lessons are about consent. Ms. Khoury demonstrates with Colin’s doll.

“Can I kiss you here?” she asks, pointing to the doll’s cheek. The other doll must wait for Colin’s doll to say yes. If the doll says no, then no kissing, hugging, or hand-holding.

They’ve returned to the pediatric wing. There are larger area rugs but no toys. The dolls have been programmed for body curiosity. The boy dolls unbutton their uniforms and grab their penises. The girl dolls rub against chairs. The dolls pet each other’s blue knobs tenderly.

In instances of inappropriate touching, the parents must separate the dolls and teach them to say: “No! You do not have permission to touch me! My body is sacred.”

The dolls have little patience for this exercise. Most can say “No!” and “You do not” but not the rest of the sentence. They repeat “body body body” ad nauseum so it sounds like a pop song.

Frida wants to know if anyone has been kissing Harriet, what Gust and Susanna do about these kisses, if Harriet has a playground boyfriend the way Emmanuelle has Jeremy.

It’s becoming harder to ignore Tucker. She would like to tell him about the house of her mind, the house of her heart, the house of her body. Isn’t the school teaching them that what they really need is a partner who earns the money? Aren’t they being trained to be stay-at-home mothers? Where else is the money supposed to come from? The instructors have never mentioned jobs outside the home or day care or babysitters. She once heard Ms. Khoury say “babysitter” in the same tone as some people say “socialist.”

What job can she find that would be worth the time lost? In grade school, she envied the classmates whose mothers baked and volunteered for field trips and threw them elaborate birthday parties. Having her grandmother there was lovely, but not the same. If she and Tucker were together, she might only have to work part-time. He’d provide them with health insurance. Harriet would go to preschool only on Gust’s days. During her half of the week, she’d spend every minute with Harriet. They’d make up for their missing year.



* * *



Emmanuelle believes she’s blue. “I’m blue” is her response to Frida’s explanations about being biracial, how Mommy is Chinese and Emmanuelle is half Chinese.

“No, blue,” she says. “Half blue I am.”

They’re three days into teaching racial difference, part of a subset of lessons on racism and sexism prevention. They’ve been using picture books to facilitate conversations about skin color, telling their dolls about the difference between inside and outside, how inside everyone is the same, how outside differences should be celebrated. However, harmony isn’t the focus. Within a few days, the dolls are programmed to hate.

“Adversity,” the instructors say, “is the most effective teaching tool.”