the afternoon, I waited tables at the Sunrise Diner on Broadway. The regulars were truck drivers and nurses coming off night shifts and retired men who ordered the same eggs every single day. The tips were small but steady.
From six until eleven at night, I cleaned offices downtown. I had a contract with a company that cleaned the twelfth through fifteenth floors of the Riverview Tower. It paid almost twice what the diner did.
Together, the two jobs covered rent, groceries, and Nolan’s school supplies. Barely. But it was
enough. I was always tired. My feet always hurt. But I believed that if I kept working hard enough, things would get better.
EzoicThen Grant took the cleaning contract away.
I didn’t know it was him at first. One night in September, my supervisor called me into her office and told me there had been a complaint. Someone in the building had reported that I’d been going through people’s desks. That I’d been seen taking things.
It wasn’t true. I’d never taken so much as a paper clip.
But the
building manager wanted me gone, so I was gone. Just like that.
EzoicTwo weeks later, our landlord, Mr. Pruitt, knocked on our door.
He said he’d received reports that the apartment was dirty and unsafe. He said he’d have to inspect it. When he did, he walked through every room in five minutes. Then he wrote a letter saying the apartment was “cluttered and unsanitary” and “not appropriate for a minor child.”
My mother keeps a cleaner house than anyone I’ve ever known. She irons the dish towels.
EzoicThe letter
