Tuesday was rice night in our house. One pack of chicken thighs, a handful of carrots, half an onion. I had it timed. Sliced the carrots a certain thickness, cooked the rice to a specific volume, portioned the chicken so that dinner fed three people and tomorrow’s lunch was already in the plan. Every Tuesday I did this math without thinking, the way you do math that you’ve run so many times it’s no longer math but instinct.
I was running that math when my daughter Sam burst through the back door with someone I had never seen before.
“She looks like she hasn’t slept.”
“I know. I’ll talk to her. Gently.”
Over the weekend I tried to find out more from Sam.
Sam shrugged. “She doesn’t say much about home. Just that her dad works a lot. The power gets shut off sometimes for a few days. She pretends it’s not a big deal, but she’s always tired, Mom. And always hungry.”
On Monday, Lizie arrived looking paler than usual. When she pulled out her homework at the kitchen counter, the backpack tipped off the chair and hit the floor.
The Backpack Burst Open and the Papers Scattered Across the Linoleum — and I Knelt Down to Help and Saw What She Had Been Carrying
Papers everywhere. I moved to gather them and that’s when I saw it.
Crumpled bills. An envelope with coins. A shutoff notice stamped FINAL WARNING in red ink. And a battered notebook that had fallen open to a page covered in careful handwriting.
The word EVICTION was written at the top.
Beneath it, a list. What we take first if we have to leave.
“Lizie,” I said. I could barely get the words together. “What is this?”
