After Heart Surgery, I Woke Up to Learn My Three Children Had Gone Home Because Hospital Parking Was Too Expensive. I Lay There in Tears Until a Well-Dressed Stranger Entered,

sixteen, working at Franklin Elementary in South Seattle because my father’s shipyard back injury left us short of money. Three afternoons each week and every lunch period, I helped teachers and monitored the cafeteria for $1.90 an hour. Lunch cost forty cents, though Malcolm remembered three dollars; to a hungry child either could seem impossible. On my second day I bought tickets myself, thereafter slipping one beneath his elbow daily.

“The cafeteria made extras today,” I told him. “Somebody needs to eat them, or they’ll go in the trash.”