Huvi says, “I don’t really like chocolate,” but Chayala says, “Yeah, maybe!” and smiles brightly at me.

The other girls begin to filter in as Aviva appears downstairs, and I note with grim dislike how few of them even say hello to Aviva. There are 12 of them in all, and I plaster a smile on my face for Aviva’s sake and play the attentive mommy, blowing up floaties for the pool and laughing when they splash water everywhere.

Once they’re settled, shrieking with laughter, I think, This. This is why we opened the pool. Poor, painfully shy Aviva will never put herself out there. But when she’s the only girl in her class with a pool, she finally has a shot. I never got any of that. I remember my mother telling me once, after I’d been left out of a party, Rena, you’ll find the girls who appreciate you someday.

I don’t know if I ever did. I have some casual friends now, but nothing like those childhood friendships that last forever. I’m determined to change that for Aviva.

And Chayala will be the perfect best friend for her. I watch the girls play in groups, Aviva distracted by a new-to-the-neighborhood redhead, who tosses a ball to her, and Chayala climbing out of the pool to try the slide. I know that I need to urge them toward each other.

When Chayala walks past, I say, “Aviva just got these great new scented stickers. I don’t think she has enough for everyone, but if you stick around a little later, I think we can arrange something.”

Chayala grins, and I sit back. Mission accomplished.

Aviva doesn’t want to invite Chayala back at first. “I liked baking with her,” she admits when I press her. “But she took some of my stickers!”

“We gave them to her,” I remind Aviva patiently. She’s so black-and-white sometimes that she misses out on things that might seem clear to a girl who’s more with-it. “Sometimes, sharing something cool is enough to make a friend.”

“I guess.” Aviva frowns. “I was thinking about asking Shana if she wanted to play in the pool with me. We were playing this new game we made up called Shark. You have to pinch the other person underwater, then they’re the shark and they can chase you.” She grins her gap-toothed smile. “If Esti and Miri come swimming with us, we can play Secret Shark, where you don’t know who the shark is until it’s too late!” She makes little pinching motions with her fingers.

I try to imagine new-girl Shana in my head. Red hair, big and tall, and with a shrill voice that made the other girls recoil. No, Shana will not help Aviva make more friends in school. “You can swim with your sisters,” I agree. “But better to invite Chayala. She lives closer, so she can get here faster. It’s getting late.”

“Okay.” Aviva looks reluctant, but she’s still happy to see Chayala when Chayala arrives, freckled and grinning with the same towel flung over her shoulder.

This time, we don’t bake cookies. We play Rummikub, all three of us together so I can supervise Aviva’s interactions. Aviva can be stubborn when we play games together, too rigid and insistent on the rules. “It’s okay,” I calm her when her voice grows strident. “If Chayala plays that you can go out before you have thirty points, we can play that way, too.”

“But that’s not how it goes.”

Chayala looks at me for backup. “It’s stupid to play the other way,” she says. “We’ll have, like, ten rounds before anyone puts anything down.” I see her eyes flicker to her swim bag, already packed by the door.

Is she thinking about leaving? “We can play with Chayala’s rules,” I inform Aviva. “If we don’t like it, then next game can be our rules.”

The girls are finally satisfied, and soon, they’re giggling together as they sabotage me, whispering tips to each other while I dramatically act as though I’m wounded by their deceit.

They run through the house after the game, playing hide-and-seek while I schmooze with Tehila, a friend from the next block who’s using the pool. “That’s Mindy Rosen’s daughter,” I say, jerking my head toward Chayala.

Tehila looks impressed. “I didn’t know you were friends with the Rosens.”

I shrug modestly. “Oh, you know. You kind of naturally become friends with the other mothers.” It hasn’t happened with Mindy and me yet, but there’s still plenty of time. The summer isn’t even half gone, and pool season can go well into September.

The game of hide-and-seek has dissipated when I go back inside, but the girls are happily building a fort in the basement, and I’m relieved to have a break from refereeing.

Befriending a fourth grader is hard work, as it turns out. But I’m confident that I’ve made some headway.

Aviva asks about Shana the next day after camp, and I agree reluctantly. There isn’t really anything I can do to dissuade her, and I don’t want to come on too strong and turn her against Chayala. With Shana, at least, there’s no pressure. If she doesn’t have a good time here, what’s the worst that can happen? She won’t come back?

We could be so fortunate.

I take a break from policing my daughter’s social decisions for the day — I barely see my daughter, actually, because she and Shana are in her room for hours, talking and playing together. Shana seems high-maintenance to me — she informs me that she doesn’t like dinner and only eats spaghetti — but Aviva lets all Shana’s complaints just roll off her back and is only thrilled to have her over.

Shana’s mother is a lot like her — quick to complain about the traffic coming to us, her shrill voice sending echoing bands of pain through my temples. But Aviva invites Shana back, and the two girls excitedly discuss what they’ll do together next time.

At least it gives me a couple of days between when we last invited Chayala and the next time. Mindy doesn’t reach out at all, so I send a text, careful and measured. The pool is open this afternoon for you and your daughters, if you’d like to swing by.

That’s so sweet of you! Let me see who wants to come. It’s 90 degrees, and I’m sure that every single Rosen will be thrilled to swim. Chayala has three older sisters and one younger, plenty of girls to fill up the pool with Aviva and my little ones.

A neighbor appears at the door, not for the first time today, and I have to turn her away. “I think the Rosens are coming by soon,” I say apologetically. “They get dibs on the pool.”

“The Rosens?” the neighbor squints at me. “Baila Rosen?”

“Mindy Rosen.” The idea of sharing my hard-earned Mindy time with my neighbor, who has a much better sense of fashion and is much more sociable, leaves a sour taste in my mouth. “I think they were expecting for it to be just us.”

“Right, of course. Mindy Rosen,” the neighbor says, and I might be imagining it, but I think she looks at me with new respect.

I’m unsurprised when all the Rosen girls appear at the door 20 minutes later, but where is their mother?

“Gila’s a certified lifeguard,” Mindy calls to me from the car, pointing to her 16-year-old. “She can supervise.”

I really had assumed Mindy might stick around, too, but I quash my disappointment. Instead, I work on persuading Aviva to get in.

“I don’t even know them,” she protests. “Just Chayala, and barely her.”

“You and Chayala are friends,” I say, nudging her toward the back door. “Esti and Miri are swimming, and they don’t know any of the girls in the pool. Go! Have fun!”

“Ugh.” Aviva sulks, and when she gets in the pool, she floats listlessly, uninterested.

Fine. I shed my sheitel, put on a bathing cap and my swim gear, and step into the cool, refreshing pool.

Aviva is thrilled to have me in there with her, and I rope Chayala into a game with us, a spirited Marco Polo that has even her older sisters entertained. I bang into walls and nearly hit a shoulder or two before I finally catch Esti. She flails around in her puddle jumper, peeking through half-closed eyes, and one of Chayala’s sisters lets Esti get her. “Wow!” she exclaims. “You’re so good at this!”

When it’s Chayala’s turn, she swims in circles and whacks her head, hard, against the filter. I fuss over her, checking her head and offering her some warm cocoa on the side of the pool. Chayala beams up at me. “You’re sooo nice, Mrs. Mandel. My mother never puts whipped cream in my cocoa.”

“It’s a special pool treat,” I promise her. “Some for you, and some for Aviva.”

I imagine the two of them lounging in front of the pool in five years with their hot cocoa, about to be sophomores in high school and still best friends, Aviva’s social standing never called into question. It feels so attainable now, like it’s finally a real possibility.

I just need to keep at it.

Every mother wants to make her daughter’s life easier. Every mother wants her daughter to be adored, to be treasured by the people around her. And then, along comes school, and suddenly, your daughter’s happiness is completely out of reach, dependent on a gaggle of girls with an endless capacity for cruelty.

It’s a terrifying thought. If I could march into her school and stare down all those girls until they’d hold Aviva in the same high esteem as Huvi, I would do it in a second. Instead, I have to carefully engineer a perfect social concoction: pool, parties, popularity. I have to make these girls want to come to my house.

Even Huvi, as little as I care for her or her mother. But Huvi turns down our next invite, which bewilders Aviva. “She said she went to her aunt’s pool in Monsey yesterday,” Aviva says, frowning. “I don’t understand. We don’t have to go in the pool.”

Ugh. Huvi reminds me too much of the girls I’d trailed after in school. I don’t know Shifra Kaganoff well, but I do know that she isn’t even part of Mindy’s clique. Aviva’s better off without her.

“Forget Huvi,” I say, wrapping an arm around Aviva’s shoulders. “How about you call Chayala and invite her out for ice cream? We’ll all go. Miri’s also going to bring a friend,” I improvise quickly.

“Ice cream?” Aviva cheers up in an instant, and I put aside the work I’d been planning to do that afternoon and plan a pizza-and-ice-cream trip. I can always do another 50 laps this evening to make up for the fries I’m about to consume.

Aviva is quiet at the pizza store, Esti and Miri are squabbling over who gets to sit next to Miri’s friend, and I see with alarm that Chayala’s eyes are starting to glaze over with that death knell to any outing: boredom. “So Chayala, what do you usually do in your free time?”

Chayala shrugs. “I don’t know. Usually, Huvi and I just hang out. We go on our scooters to the park or to Gitty’s house. Gitty has a trampoline,” she adds in explanation.

We’ve spent a ridiculous amount of money on the pool this summer. Yaakov and I live pretty comfortably, but it does seem like overkill to also spend on a trampoline… though it would be another draw for Aviva.

“You like trampolines?”

“I’m really good at gymnastics,” Chayala says proudly. “I’m working on my back tuck now.”

“Whoa,” Miri says, her eyes round, so I’m guessing it must be pretty advanced.

Aviva sighs. “I can’t even do a cartwheel.”

I can see the telltale settling of Chayala’s face, the reminder that Aviva is far below her on the social echelon, so I quickly distract them with a story of my own ill-fated attempt at gymnastics, which ended with a broken arm and leg. “The instructors were so stressed that we’d sue them that they offered us the whole year of classes free when I recovered,” I remember, and Chayala’s jaw drops. “But my mother said no! She didn’t want me going there ever again. That was pretty much the last time I exercised before we got the pool.”

“That’s so sad,” Chayala sighs. “I love gymnastics.”

Chayala loves a lot of things it seems, and she tells me about them as we finish our pizza and head to the ice cream shop, Miri and her friend running ahead. She loves swimming, clearly, and butterflies like the one that nearly lands on her outstretched finger, and their Hebrew teacher from last year, and camp trips, and Willow sweaters like the one worn by a teenage girl who walks past. “They’re gorgeous. Huvi has three,” Chayala says wistfully.

“It’s super hot outside,” Aviva points out, unimpressed at high fashion. I can’t blame her, but Chayala launches into an explanation of how the material isn’t even that warm, it’s like a T-shirt.

Chayala is just adorable. I’ll have to tell Mindy, though I haven’t seen nearly as much of her as I’d hoped since Chayala had begun to spend time with us.

I send her a text instead that she marks with a heart emoji. So cute that you took them out together, Rena! Super mom!!!

And with the Mindy Rosen seal of approval, I really feel like I might be.

WE make our final breakthrough the next Shabbos.

Chayala comes over. Without being invited. She appears at the door just after we’ve finished dessert, and she sits down on the couch like she belongs here, which she does, at this point. I find myself craning my neck as she enters, seeing if I can spot Mindy walking away from the house. I don’t see her.

Still, I’m ecstatic that Chayala’s here. My friend Tehila is over for the meal, and I nudge her as we spoon out the mousse. “That’s her,” I hiss. “Mindy Rosen’s daughter.”

“I can’t believe that Mindy Rosen’s daughter hangs out in your house,” Tehila says, shaking her head. “What’s next? You join her six a.m. walking group? You chip in with the Bais Yaakov Chinese Auction?” She laughs. “Think you’ll ever talk to me again once you’re in with that crowd?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. The girls are just friends,” I say, scowling at her, but my heart gives a traitorous thump when I think about being in Mindy Rosen’s clique. “Chayala comes over all the time.”

But this time, it’s Shabbos. She can’t even swim! She just came to spend time with Aviva!

Aviva isn’t nearly as enthusiastic as I am. “I was going to read this afternoon,” she complains. “I didn’t want a friend over.”

“This is what having best friends is like,” I whisper to her in the kitchen. “Chayala feels comfortable here! She just likes spending time with you! Bring her some mousse.”

Aviva shrugs. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she says, dragging her feet.

I sigh. I get the mousse and sit down on one of the recliners, clearing off another for Tehila to sit down, too. Chayala beams when she sees me. “Hi, Mrs. Mandel. This looks so good.” She spoons it out. “I like to make desserts at home. I have a bunch of sisters, so sometimes, we make the whole Shabbos and give Mommy a break.”

“Your mother really has all of you trained, huh?” Tehila asks, spooning out some of her own mousse. Her eyes gleam with curiosity at this portal into the inner workings of the Mindy Rosens of the world. “What’s her secret?”

Chayala looks confused. I roll my eyes. “Tehila, give the nine-year-old a break.” Though I am kind of curious. How do I get Aviva to start thinking about making Shabbos?

Only Mindy Rosen, honestly.

We chat together while Chayala listens, chiming in on occasion as though she’s part of the conversation. Aviva still hasn’t emerged from the bathroom. She must have brought her book with her, because it’s a good 45 minutes before she appears again. I have to swallow back my exhale of relief. Chayala is cute, but I didn’t sign up for a playdate with a fourth grader.

Though I guess Aviva didn’t, either. I leave the girls alone with a game and some treats, but ten minutes later, I hear a door slam shut and see Aviva retreating to her room, book in hand.

“What happened?”

Aviva shrugs. “We didn’t really want to play. Chayala said she had to go home. Now I can read.”

I want to dig my face into my palms and scrub off every last bit of skin until I am reborn, a newer, wiser person who can guide her daughter toward good decisions. “Okay, but you also could have read after it got dark, when Chayala left.”

I can feel Chayala slipping through our fingers, this friend Aviva so desperately needs. What is she going to tell Mindy? How am I going to convince her to come for another Shabbos when this one was such a dud?

I contemplate all through Shabbos, until Sunday morning, when it finally hits me.

“IT doesn’t fit Aviva,” I tell Chayala a week later. Her eyes are very round at the sight of the Willow sweater in my hands. “It’s just a little too small. I got Aviva a new one, but the return window already passed.”

Aviva loves her new Willow sweater. “It’s purple, Mommy,” she tells me. “I don’t even care that it’s gonna get gross with my sweat!”

And the matching one that I’d gotten, one size too small, is exactly what Chayala must have dreamed of for all this time. “But… Willow sweaters are super expensive!” she says. “My mother said I couldn’t get one until Chanukah!”

They’re cheaper than a trampoline, I’d justified the purchase to myself. “It’s not a big deal,” I promise her. “And I’m sure it’d fit you perfectly. It’s really just a hand-me-down.”

“Wow.” Chayala seizes the sweater and crumples it against her chest. “You’re the best, Mrs. Mandel.” She looks up at me hopefully. “Do you want to swim with us today? We could play Marco Polo again.”

“I don’t really want to swim,” Aviva says, but I give her a significant look. We’ve gotten Chayala back on Team Aviva, and I am not willing to give that up so quickly. Not when Mindy had actually waited until I came to the door to wave and drive away this time.

Aviva sighs. “Fine. Can we play Secret Shark, at least?”

I am not allowing my daughter to play a game that involves pinching Mindy Rosen’s daughter. “Let’s put up the pool basketball hoop,” I suggest instead.

We play basketball, Esti and Miri trying to knock the hoop over each time someone throws the ball. I give them each five-minute out-of-pool time-outs that they promptly ignore — my kids are no Rosens — until Mindy texts me that she’s coming to get Chayala. Chayala is beaming from ear to ear as she folds her Willow sweater and puts it in a separate bag, lest it get wet. Aviva waves goodbye and then runs off to color, and I count it as a stunning victory for Operation Social Hierarchy.

At least, I do at first.

The next day, the pool cleaners are scheduled to come at five, so none of the kids can have friends over to swim. Aviva doesn’t seem to care, happy to have a break. “Shana and I are reading the same book,” she says. “We’re each going to make up a quiz on it tonight and then we’ll test each other tomorrow.”

I’d forgotten about Shana. Is she in Aviva’s bunk? I hadn’t realized they were still spending time together. “Do you hang out with Chayala in camp?”

Aviva shrugs. “Not really. She’s always with Huvi.”

I need to somehow sever that friendship. No, that’s too extreme. But somehow, Aviva has to supplant Huvi as the Best Friend even in camp, to break the spell of that swishing ponytail.

Is it Machiavellian? No more so than any kind of fourth-grade drama, I decide. I’m just looking out for my little girl. No mother would blame me for it.

And it’s working, because I see, with a sudden rush of excitement, that Mindy Rosen’s car is pulling up in front of the house. Did Chayala know there was no swimming today, and asked to come here anyway? I can’t believe it. It’s another breakthrough.

This time, Mindy steps out of her car. Mindy Rosen! In my house! Is it too late to cancel the cleaning crew? We can sit by the pool while the girls swim, get to know each other in that friendly, effortless way that comes with mothers whose daughters get along.

I don’t even bother to wait for the doorbell to ring, for Mindy to make it all the way up to the door. Instead, I pull the door open and stride out toward her. “We’re scheduled to have the cleaners come today, but I can make a call if Chayala—” I begin.

Mindy’s perfect forehead creases. “Chayala isn’t coming over today,” she says, and her words have a sense to them, like they’ve been carefully chosen.

And then I see what she’s holding. A bright orange shopping bag, the one Chayala had scurried out with yesterday. The one with the Willow sweater.

“Oh,” I say, suddenly wrong-footed. “That’s… did Chayala explain it to you? We had missed the return window—”

“I’m really not comfortable with you giving Chayala expensive gifts,” Mindy says frankly. “With the ice cream and pizza dates and the nonstop attention.”

I blink, bewildered and guilty at once. “I… I was taking Aviva out anyway. It wasn’t a big deal.”

“Chayala adores you,” Mindy says, and I smile — and discover, from Mindy’s frown, that it’s the wrong reaction. “She talks constantly about coming to visit Mrs. Mandel, who listens to everything she says and plays games with her and swims with her. It’s really verging on inappropriate, and I’m not comfortable with Chayala coming over here anymore.”

I stand stock-still, at a loss. “I’m so sorry,” I manage. “I was just… my Aviva, she doesn’t have a lot of friends. Chayala means a lot to her.” It feels humiliating to admit it to perfect Mindy Rosen, who has more friends than I’ve done laps today, whom I’d hoped, just a little, might add me to that roster. “I’ve just been trying to—”

“I understand,” Mindy says, because she really is that sweet. “And I’m sorry that the girls can’t play together here anymore. Aviva is welcome to come to our house.”

She hands me the bag. “I checked it up online,” she says, and it’s almost gentle, almost pitying. “Willow allows returns for up to a year, and this sweater has only been out for five months. I’m sure you can speak to a representative there if they give you any issues.”

She turns and strides back to her car, and she doesn’t look back. There’s no hesitation in her step, no uncertainty about any of the words that she’d spoken.

It’s like being ten again, faced with the reality that I don’t matter very much to the popular girls, that I can give them my snacks and cheer them on but I’ll still be dismissed at the end of the day.

I am seized with the unpleasant urge to run back inside and hide in a bathroom like Aviva had on Shabbos, to jump on a trampoline and break some of my own limbs again, to sink deep into the pool and hide there for an eternity rather than face Mindy Rosen ever again.

I could hate her for it. Could write her off as another stuck-up mother I’d never wanted to befriend anyway. Who had dropped her daughter off at my house a dozen times and not once stopped to schmooze.

But the facts, splayed out in front of me, are dire. I clutch the orange bag and walk slowly inside, my heart thudding with pounding regrets.

Aviva is sitting on the couch when I come in, writing on a paper that she’s laid against a big picture book. She looks up. “Was that Chayala? Is she coming over?”

I don’t think Chayala is going to come over again. “Not today,” I say.

WE hear about the party the next week secondhand, from Tehila. She lives on the same block as Trampoline Gitty and had to walk over, because she couldn’t get her car out.

“I think it’s cute when all these kids get together,” she says, setting her things down on one of the pool chairs. “And it’s not like my own kids aren’t shrieking in my yard all the time. But would it kill these mothers to actually pull over when they get out to schmooze? The only one who even apologized was Mindy Rosen, because she’s actually—”

“Wait.” I sit up, my book falling to the side. “Mindy Rosen is there? This is Aviva’s class?”

Tehila looks apologetic. “Some of them,” she hedges. “I kind of figured Aviva would be there, too, until she opened the door.”

“Uh. No.” It’s like nausea, this sense of humiliation that washes up, this certainty that I’d done this to Aviva. I’d pushed too hard in my quest for her popularity, gone too far, and she’s a pariah now.

Or, almost as bad, completely forgotten.

I peer over at her. She’s sitting on the side of the pool with Tehila’s little daughter, their legs dangling into the water, and I know she’s listening to us. I know she’s heard about the girls in her class, having a party without her.

It would have destroyed me at her age. If I’d known that my mother was the one who sabotaged me, I would have resented her forever.

But, I think, it’s also not fair for her to bear this alone, to wonder why it is that Chayala stopped coming over and blame herself. I was the one who let this get out of hand. I need to talk to her about it.

I wait until Tehila has left, and I sit down next to Aviva, wrapped in her towel, and choose my words carefully. “I know you liked spending time with Chayala,” I start.

Aviva interrupts me. “Chayala’s okay. It’s kind of annoying that she kept coming over, though. But she’s at a Gitty’s trampoline today. Can I call Shana? I want to show her my gel pens.” And I see how her eyes get brighter at the possibility, how little she cares about the party that would have ruined me.

“Remember,” I say carefully. “I told the Schechters they could use the pool at five. So you won’t be able to swim.”

Aviva scoffs. “I don’t like swimming so much. And Shana isn’t into it at all. We’re going to play Risk after we color.” She says it with confidence, with the certainty that Shana will want to do exactly that, and the regret is like a hammer against my chest, a constant warning of wrong, wrong, wrong.

I’d gotten it all wrong.

The convenient thing about little girls is how transient their drama is, how something can fade away and be replaced with something new in an instant. Must be nice to be in fourth grade.

“Go ahead,” I say, and I offer Aviva a smile. “Give her a call.”

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 951)