That she had learned to make a chicken feed the two of them for a week.
She had done it, she said, so as not to be a burden to her boy who was struggling so far away.
They signed the authorization that afternoon, both their hands unsteady on the pen.
What struck Ezra most, watching them, was not their poverty but their dignity inside it.
His mother had folded the stale bread into a napkin so it wouldn’t look like leftovers.
His father had a way of arranging himself in a chair so that the worn patch on his trousers didn’t show.