I've noticed that the children of other nations always seem precocious. That's because the strange manners of their elders have caught our attention most and the children echo those manners enough to seem like their parents. (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Nichole was sitting on the kitchen floor, entertaining herself by pressing buttons on her toy cell phone. Then she put it next to her ear, babbled a question into the receiver, and nodded at the imagined response.
"Who are you talking to, baby girl?" Moira asked her.
"Oli," the two year-old informed her seriously. Oliver was Emily and Syl's little boy. He was eight—quite old, but he was always nice to her. She'd like to have a real phone, so she could actually call him. But her parents didn't trust her with such responsibility yet. Nichole twisted her lip and considered the problem, while still 'talking' to Oli on her toy. Somehow, she'd have to convince them of her maturity. Her daddy was clearly the weakest link here, the most easily converted. She'd start with him.
Just when she thought of him, he appeared in the room. "Hi, daddy," Nichole began, as cheerfully as possible, preparing her attack.
"Good morning, supergirl," he greeted her. He started making coffee. She liked the smell of coffee.
"Daddy, I love you." Always a good way to butter him up.
He paused to look down at her. "Well, thank you, sweetie. I love you too." He glanced at Moira. "Glad someone around here does."
"Did June have a bad night?" Moira asked him quietly.
"Yeah, you could say that."
Nichole tried to steer them back to the matter at hand. "Wanna go see Oli."
"You want to visit Oli today?"
"Go to park," she suggested.
"Well," Luke countered, "today's not such a good day for the park. It's raining really hard." He picked her up, taking her to the big bay window to look outside. "See?"
"Oh." Nichole already knew it was raining, of course, so the park was out of the question. She wasn't a dummy. "So, call Oli?"
"Sure, we can call him later."
Nichole smiled to herself. The conversation was progressing just as she wished. "Daddy has a phone, Mommy has phone, Momo too." She paused dramatically and spread her hands. "But me, I has no phone."
Her mother came into the kitchen, looking tired and sad. She stared out the window at the pouring rain like she was surprised to see it, and brushed imaginary raindrops off her arms. Sensing her melancholy, Nichole graciously offered her a sippy cup. "Juice?" she asked. She didn't like to see anyone sad, but juice sometimes had a positive effect.
Sure enough, her mommy smiled down at her. "No thanks, baby, but that's a really nice thing to do. Very thoughtful of you." She picked Nichole up, kissed her cheek and forehead. "My sweet girl."
"I have no phone," the child repeated, trying to get back to the previous topic.
"No, you don't," mommy agreed. "You're a little too young for a phone." She gestured at the toy on the ground. "Except you do have this one."
Moira stopped cutting up fruit long enough to grin at Nichole. She admired the girl's tenacity. "Now, who are you gonna call, Nichole? A phone is for calling people. And using the internet, which you can't do until you can type. And read."
"I wanna call daddy at work," she answered sensibly. "And Momo at work, and Oli."
"You can use my phone to do that," her mommy said.
Nichole played her trump card. "And I wanna call First Daddy."
In response, she got a very strange look from mommy. It was sort-of like the look Nichole would get on her face just before she burst into tears. Or when the bathroom door had slammed on her finger that one time: shocked surprise followed by pain. Mommy put her back down on the floor, but knelt next to her. "You want to call First Daddy in Gilead?" she asked softly, stroking her daughter's hair. Daddy and Momo traded a glance.
Nichole knew this tactic would get her mother's attention. Mommy told her bedtime stories about First Daddy, and showed her his picture, and reminded her of the day they went to the cold building at the Canadian border to see him. To show off how much she remembered, she said, "I wanna say thanks for Dolly, and ask for bears." Nichole had several stuffed animals, but was lacking a traditional brown bear. She hoped that her father might come through with one. Several children on the playground had brown teddy bears; they seemed pretty common.
"Okay," her mommy whispered hoarsely. "We can call him."
Nichole was unsuccessful at getting the adults to buy her a cell phone. Apparently, according to Oliver, you had to be at least twelve before anyone would let you have one.
She did, however, get to talk to First Daddy a few days later, using Mr. Tuello's special phone, the one that had a cord and connected to a box. Her mother had followed through on that promise, surprising Nichole, who had believed it was impossible to call Gilead. Her parents first discussed someone called "Fred": Mommy had some big plan for him. But just when Nichole was getting bored with the conversation, her mommy began talking about the teddy bear request. She put Nichole on the phone to ask her father personally. He took her suggestion seriously, asking which color and size teddy she'd prefer and saying he'd try very hard to find the perfect bear. Hoping he was as malleable as her other daddy, Nichole mentioned Dolly (still a favorite toy) and assured her father that she loved and missed him.
In truth, Nichole didn't really love her first daddy. She barely knew him. She did remember meeting him; he had made a very positive first impression on her compared to most grown-ups. Yet most of her knowledge of her father was through bedtime stories. And in those, mommy told her how very hard his life was in that terrible Gilead place, and how much he loved and missed her. So Nichole felt it couldn't hurt to tell him this little lie in order to cheer him up.
In any case, her words seemed to affect him. He choked up while telling her how he wished he could live in Canada with her and "be a real daddy, not just a father from a distance." She appreciated that.
A few weeks later, a box, addressed to J. Osborne, arrived at the US Embassy in Toronto. The box contained a long letter for her mother, which wasn't particularly of interest to Nichole. Then she removed a colorful magic-marker sketch of a forest with lots of nice animals, drawn by First Daddy; this went into a frame on her wall. (She hadn't known he could draw. Her mommy seemed surprised by that as well.)
The best gift in the box, though, was a brown teddy bear with kind eyes. It wasn't a very big bear—only about a foot high, a little smaller than ideal—but it was extremely soft and had a nice light-blue ribbon tied around its neck. Deciding the bear was a boy, Nichole named him Edward. Her mother had explained that Edward was the more formal version of Teddy; Nichole felt that Teddy, though appropriate, was overused. Many bears on the playground had that appellation.
Edward met Dolly, Panda, Flopsy Bunny, and the rest of the menagerie on Nichole's bed. He fit in well. She decided that even though her other animals wore no accessories, Edward should keep the ribbon around his neck, as a reminder of his exotic origins and special backstory. And when she snuggled with him, Nichole felt a tiny bit closer to her far-off father.