“Here’s the sewing room,” our group leader said, opening a set of double doors and motioning us inside. “Each girl—once she’s old enough to work the machines without pulling a Sleeping Beauty”—he laughed at his own joke—“will have her own digital Singer. Really amazing equipment, these.” He stroked one of the sewing machines as if it were a pet. “Now, if you’ll follow me, we’ll have a peek at the kitchens before heading outside to the gardening area.”

It was home ec on drugs, and not much more.

I wave to Sonia as the bus pulls away from the curb. Today, she’ll be in a room with twenty-five other first graders, all girls. She’ll listen to stories, practice her numbers, help the older students in the kitchen as they cut cookies and knead dough and crimp pies. This is what school is now, and what school will be for some time. Maybe forever.

Memory is a damnable faculty.

I envy my only daughter; she has no recall of life before quotas or school days before the Pure Movement took off. It’s a struggle to remember the last time I saw a number greater than forty on her fragile wrist, except, of course, for two nights ago when I watched that number creep upward to one hundred. For the rest of us, for my former colleagues and students, for Lin, for the book club ladies and the woman who used to be my gynecologist and Mrs. Ray, who will never landscape another garden, memory is all we have.

There’s no way I can win, but there’s a way I can feel like a winner.

In the minute it takes to walk back across the street and climb the steps to our porch, I decide.

Patrick has the television on, and Reverend Carl is holding a press conference. The White House room looks much the same as it always did, except there are no women, only a sea of dark suits and power ties. All of the reporters nod as they listen to Reverend Carl’s updates on Bobby Myers’ condition.

“We have someone who can help,” Carl says.

A chorus of “Who?” and “Where did you find him?” and “Wonderful news!” rips through the press hall. Patrick interrupts his watching and turns to me. “That’s you, babe. Back in business.”

But I don’t want to be back in business, not for Bobby Myers’ sake or the president’s sake or the sake of any of the other men in that room.