The School for Good Mothers(78)

The dolls take turns playing oppressor. They’ve been programmed to understand and speak derogatory language. White dolls have been programmed to hate dolls of color. Boy dolls have been programmed to hate girls. White parents of white boy dolls spend the week apologizing, ashamed. Some are cited for excessive reprimands. In classes with older dolls, there have been fistfights. The technical department has seen an influx of dolls with facial bruising and chunks of missing hair.

The parents practice comforting their dolls after they’ve experienced prejudice. Some parents of color are triggered. Some get emotional and scold the racist dolls. Some yell. Even Linda seems shaken. Stories of bullying and violence and microaggressions and police harassment are shared during meals.

Black parents don’t appreciate having the entire issue framed in Black and white terms. Latinx parents don’t appreciate having their dolls bullied in terrible singsong Spanish or being called “illegals.” White parents don’t appreciate having their dolls play the racists. Frida doesn’t appreciate having Black, white, and Latinx dolls harass Emmanuelle.

At lunch, Tucker tells Frida that he’s tired of playing the white devil. He’s tired of hearing his doll use the N-word. His real son would never use that word. Silas’s mother buys picture books depicting children from different backgrounds. They rotate these every few weeks, so Silas is never only looking at white faces.

“Studies have shown that even eighteen-month-olds can express racial bias,” Tucker says.

“Don’t let them catch you complaining.” Frida resists asking if Silas has any Black friends. She’s been over this with Gust and Susanna. What did playing with Black dolls matter if Harriet has no Black friends? When is Harriet ever going to meet another Chinese kid?

The dolls call Emmanuelle a chink. They pull their eyes into slits. Frida recalls people laughing when her parents spoke Mandarin, mimicking their accents. A long-buried memory. Two teenage Black girls laughing as her parents gossiped with the Chinese owner of the local ice cream shop. She was six or seven. She glared so hard at those girls, wanted to scream at them, but they didn’t notice her and wouldn’t stop snickering. The girls worked there, but they were making fun of their boss. That woman allowed them to laugh.

Maybe that hurt was less dangerous, maybe it wouldn’t result in a child being killed, but when it happened in her childhood, she wanted to disappear. Sometimes she wanted to die. She hated the sight of her own face in the mirror.

Susanna won’t know how to comfort Harriet if anything like that happens. She’ll deliver platitudes about racial equality, but she won’t be able to say, It happened to me too. I survived. You’ll survive. She won’t be able to say, This is our family. Everything Susanna knows about Chinese culture comes from books and movies. Without her real mother, Harriet may grow up hating the Chinese part of herself.



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Racism practice has strained friendships. Roxanne has been telling Frida that she doesn’t understand.

“You can’t,” Roxanne says. “I don’t care how much you’ve read about intersectionality. You won’t have to worry about Harriet getting shot. You can take her anywhere. She’ll never get hassled.”

When Isaac is older, Roxanne will have to teach him how to handle himself around the police. She can’t ever let him play with toy guns or weapons or make gun shapes with his hands.

Frida has no room to argue. She is to Roxanne as Susanna is to her. The most palatable kind of Asian. Academic class, not business owner, not restaurant owner, not dry cleaner, not greengrocer, not salon worker, not refugee.

The lessons have made her feel ashamed for desiring another white man, but only white men have ever pursued her. She’s moved in white worlds, has only had two Asian lovers, both of whom she attempted to turn into serious boyfriends to please her parents, one of whom thought she was too damaged, another who thought she was too negative, both of whom felt she wouldn’t get along with their mothers or bear healthy children because of her depression. She shouldn’t have told them about taking medication. Shouldn’t have mentioned seeing a therapist. When she was younger, she used to think that if she ever had a child, she’d want that child to be entirely Chinese, but she didn’t realize how difficult it would be to find a Chinese man who wanted her.

She’s started fantasizing about another baby. A clean slate. Though she worries that a bad mother plus a bad father would produce a sociopath, that the new child would contain all their negligence and selfishness and bad instincts, the new child might also be just fine.

Loneliness has its own strange, insistent heat. She hasn’t thought about the bell tower even once since meeting Tucker. She no longer dreams of murdering her counselor. She’s regained her appetite. Watching her comfort Emmanuelle on the playground, Tucker said, “You know. I think you’re a good mother, Frida. I really do.”



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July ends with joint evaluations at the mothers’ school. In their classroom, Frida is paired with Colin. The fathers have to take several turns so all the mothers can have partners, though only their first turn will count.

After they shake hands, Ms. Russo starts the clock. At the first station, their dolls fight over a truck. Buoyed by her new happiness, Frida outtalks and outsoothes Colin. Emmanuelle outshares Colin’s doll.

At the second station, Colin’s doll kisses Emmanuelle on the cheek without first getting permission. Frida and Colin deliver speeches on appropriate and inappropriate touching. After this month of playground fights and unwanted touching and racial bias, Emmanuelle has a short fuse. She smacks Colin’s doll in the face. She apologizes for hitting, but only after eight prompts from Frida. Frida steels herself for another month without phone privileges.