At the bend each folder goes one place left. The woman with the umbrella takes a girl's against her ribs, warm from another coat. Two hands along, her son's face goes under a stranger's thumb. The pale notch through his eyebrow. They sign with one shoulder up; the ballpoint pens are chained short. Each mother kindly confirms a name, a date, a photograph. Every detail true. None of them hers.
The screens think. Not one shakes its head.
Renewals are Thursdays. The licensing hall opens at eight. By seven the mothers are there with their old tickets and their folders. They know each other from the school gate. Twelve windows. Wet coats and toner. Over each counter: Kindly confirm the details below are true.
Their children are the ones the school still reads out. The free term ends in June. At the bend a woman studies the fee schedule.
"They never take a thing off."
At window seven a payment taken twice in April is returned before the mother asks. The screen prints a slip. She holds it up to the queue.
On the last Thursday of term forty mothers exchange folders. That afternoon the register holds forty renewals. The hall closes on time. No invoices go out.
Over the weekend the register puts itself right. On Monday their printouts agree with the files, not with Thursday. At the gate they compare pages that have stopped being the pages. One name more than there are mothers. Nobody asks it out loud.
The next form has a second signature box: confirmed in the presence of the person confirming. Four more seconds, forty times a year. The woman who thought of the Thursday says that is what it cost.
The one with the umbrella is written to first. Her son's renewal is paused pending confirmation of identity. She brings every photograph. The notch crosses the same eyebrow in each.
The screen shakes its head.
Thank you for helping us keep the record true.
At school his name is still read out. Somebody answers it.
He stops going in the third week. Nobody tells him to. His friend keeps his chair eleven days. Then a smaller boy sits in it. Nobody tells the smaller boy anything.
By spring her son has grown an inch that no form measures.
A man at the gate offers her a companion with new staple holes. Beside the account of the exchanged folders: OUR FIRST VICTORY. She makes him read the paused line in her son's file. He asks if he may copy it. She shuts the folder.
The woman who thought of the Thursday comes round. The mother gives her the boy's folder.
"Four more seconds," the mother says.
The woman holds it against her coat. The mother takes it back. "He eats at one."
She leaves them together and takes another ticket. His renewal is still paused. Her feet have swollen into the shoes she wore to the first appointment. The seated are asked again for forms they have already produced. She stands.
On the last Thursday the queue reaches beyond the hall. The mothers have brought their sisters. The woman who thought of the first Thursday tells them her name is Esen.
They call this the Second Thursday. The hall calls it obstruction. Esen wedges her shoe in the closing door. The guard stamps on the leather. A sister keeps pressing the ticket button while two others drag the machine across the threshold. The numbers keep coming. The women pass them down the queue.