I’ll tell you the truth about those ten days.
I had my door. I had my two brass keys and my porch swing and my violets. And every evening I sat on that swing in my denim jacket and watched the trucks pull onto the scale. And I wondered if I had paid too high a price.
Because it was never the basement I minded. I’ve lived plainer than that. It wasn’t even the eight hundred dollars, though the arithmetic of it stung.
It was that I’d have been down there on terms.
Every sack of groceries, I’d have been reckoning my share. Every Thursday I was tired and wanted to sit, I’d have heard it in my head. Earning your keep.
A grandmother who lives in the house on wages isn’t a grandmother anymore. She’s the help who loves them.
And when the children got big and the daycare bill went away, what would my keep be worth then?
