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Her parents would help her if she asked, but she can’t ask, would hate herself if she did.
She’s stuck in the smallest city she’s ever lived in, a toy city where she has no support network and only a few acquaintances, no real friends of her own. And now, because of joint custody, she has to stay until Harriet turns eighteen.
The social worker smiles coldly. “But you did harm her. Tell me, why didn’t you take her with you? What mother wouldn’t realize, If I want or need to leave the house, my baby comes with me?”
What she can’t explain, what she doesn’t want to admit, what she’s not sure she remembers correctly: how she felt a sudden pleasure when she shut the door and got in the car that took her away from her mind and body and house and child.
The playground mothers frightened her. She couldn’t match their fervor or skill, hadn’t done enough research, stopped breastfeeding after five months when these women were still cheerfully nursing three-year-olds.
She thought that becoming a mother would mean joining a community, but the mothers she’s met are as petty as newly minted sorority sisters, a self-appointed task force hewing to a maternal hard line.
She’ll teach her daughter to be different. To be brave and wise. To have dignity. That fucking a man who doesn’t love you, who decided he doesn’t want you, even the father of your child, is no better than a fork in the eye.
Before she met Gust, she would make herself anonymous and numb, convinced that all she wanted was a few hours of touching. She doesn’t remember many names, but she remembers bodies, and the rare compliment, as well as the one who choked her. The one who played porn while she went down on him. The one who tied her wrists so tight she lost feeling in her hands. The one who called her timid when she refused to attend an orgy. She’d been proud of herself for saying no that time, for having limits.
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.
“Now, repeat after me: I am a bad mother, but I am learning to be good.”
The mother across the table, a wiry young woman with a nearly shaved head, wide-set eyes, and an inquisitive manner, comes to Frida’s rescue. She’s a dead ringer for early-career Lauryn Hill, though Frida doesn’t mention the resemblance. She’s probably too young to get
The mothers must narrate everything, impart wisdom, give their undivided attention, maintain eye contact at all times. When the dolls ask why, why, why, as toddlers are wont to do, the mothers must provide answers. Curiosity must be rewarded. “The dolls have an off switch,” Ms. Khoury says. “You do not.”
12.
