"I'm sorry, Ivy. We have to let you go."
I stood there with a dish towel still in my hand, staring at Mr. Okafor as he spoke in a language I didn't understand.
"Let me go," I repeated. "As in… fired?"
"As in the diner's closing at the end of the month?".
He wouldn't look at me.
He was folding the same napkin over and over, creasing it into a smaller and smaller square.
"Rent went up. I can't keep four of you on."
"I can take fewer hours. I can take less pay. I'll clean the grease trap myself if I have to… "
"Ivy."
He said my name the way you say it to a kid who won't stop asking for candy. Gentle, but final.
"I already cut Danny and Priya. You're the last one. I'm sorry."
I nodded, because what else was there to do? I untied my apron, folded it the way he'd taught me my first week… in half, then in half again… and set it on the counter as it belonged to someone else now.
Outside, the cold slapped me in the face, then the math.
Six hundred and forty dollars.
That was rent, due in eleven days. I had two hundred twelve dollars in my checking account and forty-one in the jar on my counter that I told myself was for emergencies, which was a joke, because my entire life had become one long emergency since Mom got sick.
I pulled out my phone and did the subtraction anyway, like the number might change if I stared hard enough. It didn't.
Six hundred and forty minus two hundred and fifty-three left three hundred and eighty-seven dollars I did not have.
And that wasn't even counting Mom.
Six months ago, I never imagined I'd hear my mom's name and hospital bills in the same conversation
She was still humming while she watered her tomato plants on the fire escape, still calling me twice a day just to ask if I'd eaten.
Then came the diagnosis, the treatments, the specialists who spoke in numbers instead of names, and somewhere in all of that, the woman who raised me alone became a line item on a bill I couldn't pay.
My phone buzzed in my hand before I could shove it back in my pocket.
Westbrook Medical Center.
My stomach dropped the way it always did now, every single time that name lit up my screen.
"Hello?"
"Hi, is this Ivy Bennett? I'm calling from billing at Westbrook regarding your mother's account."
"Yes. That's me."
"I wanted to let you know the balance on file has increased following her latest treatment. We show a current total of four thousand, one hundred and twelve dollars, and we do need to see some movement on that this month, or we'll have to refer the account to… "
"I know. I know, I'm working on it."
My voice came out sharper than I meant it to. I softened it, because none of this was her fault, this woman reading numbers off a screen somewhere.
"Can I call you back tomorrow? I just need a day."
"Of course. I'll make a note that you're in contact. Just so you're aware, after ninety days… "
"I understand. Thank you."
I hung up before she could finish the sentence I already knew by heart.
Ninety days.
Collections.
My mother's name, the same name she'd spent forty years keeping clean, handed over to strangers who'd call at dinner time and make her feel like a number instead of a person who used to sing off-key in the kitchen and iron my uniforms at midnight so I'd never feel embarrassed in front of the other kids.
I stood on the sidewalk outside the diner for a long minute, watching my breath turn to fog, feeling the weight of the phone still warm in my palm.
Four thousand, one hundred and twelve dollars.
Six hundred and forty for rent.
Zero dollars coming in, as of an hour ago.
I laughed. It came out wrong, half sob, and an old man walking his dog gave me a look like I'd lost my mind.
Maybe I had.
I could have cried right there on Fifth and Union. Some small, tired part of me wanted to. But crying didn't pay rent, and it definitely didn't buy my mother more time, so I wiped my face with the back of my sleeve and started walking, because walking was free and my apartment was twenty-two blocks away and I needed the time to think.
The city kept moving around me like nothing had happened, like I hadn't just lost the only paycheck standing between my mother and a stranger reading her account balance out loud.
A bus rushed past and sprayed slush across my shoes.
Somewhere behind me, someone laughed into their phone, easy and light, the kind of laugh that comes from a life where rent is already handled. I couldn't remember the last time I'd laughed like that.
By the time I got home, my hands were numb and I had a plan. Not a good plan. Just a plan.
I would apply for everything. Every job, every gig, every ridiculous posting on every app I could find, tonight, before I lost my nerve or my Wi-Fi got shut off, whichever came first.
I sat down at the kitchen table… the same one Mom and I had eaten at for fifteen years, the one with the wobbly leg propped up with a folded napkin… and opened my laptop.
The screen was cracked in the corner, a spiderweb of white lines from the time I dropped it during finals, but it still worked, and that was all I needed it to do tonight.
I scrolled through listing after listing.
Barista, no.
Overnight stocker, my back couldn't take it, not after the last warehouse job.
Dog walker, only three dollars an hour above nothing.
I kept scrolling, past ten postings, past twenty, my eyes burning, my coffee gone cold beside me.
And then I saw it.
Live-in Nanny Needed… Cross Family Residence. Two boys, ages four and six. Competitive salary, full benefits, housing included.
Housing included.
I read it three times to make sure I hadn't imagined it.
Full benefits.
A salary listed in a range that made my chest go tight, in a good way, for the first time in weeks. I clicked on it so fast I almost knocked over my mug.
The company name at the bottom of the posting stopped me cold.
Cross Enterprises.
I knew that name. Everyone in this city knew it… it was on buildings, on the sides of buses, in headlines about a man worth more money than I'd see in ten lifetimes.
My hands hovered over the keyboard, my heart doing something strange, some mix of hope and a fear I couldn't name yet.
I had eleven days to find rent, four thousand dollars I didn't have hanging over my mother's name, and a job posting on my screen that felt too good to be real.
I hit apply before I could talk myself out of it.
Three minutes later, my phone rang. Unknown number.
I almost didn't answer it.
