The apartment was very quiet.

It is a particular kind of quiet, the quiet of a home where an adult is doing arithmetic that will not come out right, and does not want a child to wake and see her face while she does it.

I counted, in my head, what was in that refrigerator, and what was in my purse, and what the rent would be at the end of the month, and no matter how I moved the numbers around, they would not fit.

I had given eighteen years of steady, faithful work to a rich man’s house, and I had, at the end of it, four hundred dollars and a cardboard box, and a grandchild who was going to need groceries on Tuesday.

“What am I supposed to do now, Lord?” I whispered, leaning my forehead against the cold door of the refrigerator, keeping my voice down so it would not carry to the boy.

“How am I going to take care of my little one, with no work?