Half an hour later both Rachel and Anna were sitting in the office waiting for the principal to get out of a meeting. As soon as she saw Anna, Mrs. Thompson heaved a great sigh and said "Not again, Eruanna. Can't you stay out of a fight for just one day." While beside her Rachel snickered. "Eruanna, your full name's Eruanna," almost doubling over in laughter, "Wait until everyone hears this," at which point Anna shot her a glare that ought to have made her turn cold. "Girls, that's enough, I've called both of your parents… "You called my mother!" Anna cut in horrified, "but she's working." "I realize that," the principal replied, "but this has got to stop, I cannot have the two of you in my office everyday." Meanwhile Rachel looked just as horrified, though for different reasons, "You've called my parents too!" she wailed, "They're going to kill me." "Well, maybe you should have thought about that in the first place, Miss Southland"
While this was going on, Anna's mind was reeling, her mom coming here in the middle of the school day and meeting Rachel, she would be the laughingstock of the school. Her mom was kind of unique, to put it mildly. She acted as though they lived in the middle ages. And the way she dressed most of the time! Rarely did she wear anything but floor length white skirts. In fact, she could count on one hand the number of times that she had seen her in any colour but white, not counting her work uniform, of course. Anna could only pray that her mother didn't stop to change out of her uniform. Hopefully that would convey a normal enough impression that both Rachel and the principal could ignore her other oddities. For although the principal knew Anna pretty well she had never met her mother. And for some people that experience was mind blowing. For one thing, she wore her "wedding" ring on her index finger! Until Anna started school that was how she thought it was supposed to be done but there was no place that she had ever heard of where it was done that way. And she had even done a research project for her history class last year on different marriage customs around the world. This was the least of her mother's oddities. Eva, the social worker who checked in with them regularly said that something must have happened to her when she was younger that caused her to invent a culture of her own in order to escape from the real world. That was why she checked in with them every month.
When it was first discovered that her mother was going to have her they had debated whether or not to take her away for her own safety. Fortunately her mother had managed to convince enough people that she had been telling stories to gain attention. The social workers estimated that she had been about seventeen when they had found her although they had never heard a word about her "real" past. They thought that something terrible must have happened to her the way her eyes looked so much older than she did, as if she had seen too much. So, in light of what they thought must have been an awful past experience they had let her keep Anna and contented themselves with checking up on her once a month.
The last time Eva had visited she had taken Anna aside to ask her some questions about her mother although she had called it a personal evaluation. Supposedly, to see how her mother's health had affected her, to see if they should take her away. But she hadn't asked Anna those sorts of questions at all. Instead she had asked her a bunch of questions about her mother. Apparently, they were suspicious because, as far as they could tell, her mother hadn't aged a day since having her. So the social worker asked her a bunch of questions about whether her mother was doing drugs or ingesting any illegal substances.
