The School for Good Mothers(2)

“So your toddler… Harriet is her name? Harriet was alone for two hours. Is that right, Ms. Liu?”

Frida sits on her hands. She’s left her body, is now floating high above.

They tell her that Harriet is being examined at a crisis center for children. “Someone will bring her—”

“What do you mean, examining her? Look, it’s not what you think. I wouldn’t—”

“Ma’am, hold on,” Officer Brunner says. “You seem like a smart lady. Let’s back up. Why would you leave your kid alone in the first place?”

“I got a coffee, and then I went into work. I needed a file. A hard copy. I must have lost track of time. I was already on the way home when I saw that you called. I’m sorry. I haven’t slept in days. I need to go get her. Can I go now?”

Officer Harris shakes his head. “We’re not done here. Where were you supposed to be today? Who was in charge of the baby?”

“I was. Like I told you, I went to work. I work at Wharton.”

She explains that she produces a faculty research digest, rewriting academic papers as short articles with takeaways for the business community. Like writing term papers on subjects she knows nothing about. She works from home Monday through Wednesday, when she has custody—a special arrangement. It’s her first full-time job since Harriet was born. She’s been there for only six months. It’s been so hard to find a decent job, or any job, in Philly.

She tells them about her demanding boss, her deadline. The professor she’s working with right now is eighty-one. He never sends his notes by email. She forgot to bring his notes home with her last Friday, needed them for the article she’s finishing.

“I was going in to grab the file and then come right back. I got caught up with answering emails. I should have—”

“This is how you showed up to work?” Officer Harris nods at Frida’s bare face, her chambray button-down, stained with toothpaste and peanut butter. Her long black hair tied in a messy bun. Her shorts. The blemish on her chin.

She swallows. “My boss knows I have a baby.”

They scribble in their notebooks. They’ll do a background check, but if she has any prior offenses, she should tell them now.

“Of course I don’t have a record.” Her chest is tight. She begins to cry. “It was a mistake. Please. You have to believe me. Am I under arrest?”

The officers say no. But they’ve called Child Protective Services. A social worker is on her way.



* * *



Alone in the mint-green room, Frida gnaws at her fingers. She remembers retrieving Harriet from her crib and changing her diaper. She remembers giving Harriet her morning bottle, feeding her yogurt and a banana, reading to her from a Berenstain Bears book, the one about a sleepover.

They’d been up off and on since 4:00 a.m. Frida’s article was due last week. All morning, she went back and forth between Harriet’s play corner and back to the living room sofa, where she had her notes spread out on the coffee table. She wrote the same paragraph over and over, trying to explain Bayesian modeling in layman’s terms. Harriet kept screaming. She wanted to climb onto Frida’s lap. She wanted to be held. She grabbed Frida’s papers and threw them on the floor. She kept touching the keyboard.

Frida should have put on a show for Harriet to watch. She remembers thinking that if she couldn’t finish the article, couldn’t keep up, her boss would rescind work-from-home privileges and Harriet would have to go to day care, something Frida hoped to avoid. And she remembers that she then plopped Harriet in her ExerSaucer, a contraption that should have been retired months ago as soon as Harriet started walking. Later, Frida gave Harriet water and animal crackers. She checked Harriet’s diaper. She kissed Harriet’s head, which smelled oily. She squeezed Harriet’s pudgy arms.

Harriet would be safe in the ExerSaucer, she thought. It couldn’t go anywhere. What could happen in an hour?

Under the harsh lights of the interrogation room, Frida bites her cuticles, pulling off bits of skin. Her contacts are killing her. She takes a compact from her purse and examines the gray rings under her eyes. She used to be considered lovely. She is petite and slender, and with her round face and bangs and porcelain-doll features, people used to assume she was still in her twenties. But at thirty-nine, she has deep creases between her brows and bracketing her mouth, lines that appeared postpartum, becoming more pronounced after Gust left her for Susanna when Harriet was three months old.

This morning, she didn’t shower or wash her face. She worried the neighbors would complain about the crying. She should have closed the back door. She should have come home right away. She should never have left. She should have remembered the file in the first place. Or gone in over the weekend to grab it. She should have met her original deadline.

She should have told the officers that she can’t lose this job. That Gust hired a mediator to determine child support. He didn’t want to waste money on legal fees. With Gust’s rewarding but poorly paid position, his student-loan debt, and her earning potential, and the fact that custody would be shared, the mediator suggested that Gust give her $500 a month, not nearly enough to support her and Harriet, especially since she gave up her job in New York. She couldn’t bring herself to ask him for more. She didn’t ask for alimony. Her parents would help her if she asked, but she can’t ask, would hate herself if she did. They already funded her entire life during the separation.