Maid - Stephanie Land Page 0,17

types of conversations with him, the ones that ended in him yelling the way he used to. This time my chest started to get even tighter, making it hard to take in a full breath. My therapist at the domestic violence program, Beatrice, told me to breathe into a paper bag when it happened. I closed my eyes and breathed in through my nose for five counts, exhaling through my mouth for the same amount of time. I tried it two more times before I opened my eyes to see Mia standing in front of me—staring at me. “Whadddssssdddttt you doing?” she asked me, her voice garbled through clenched teeth that held her binky.

“I’m fine,” I said and reached down to pick her up, making my fingers into claws. The tickle monster. I roared, and Mia squealed in delight, running around the kitchen table with me close behind. I caught her at the couch, tickling her so much that the binky fell out of her mouth from laughing. That’s when I bent my arms around her, picked her up, and hugged her little body close, feeling her warmth, smelling her skin.

She started squirming. “No, Mama!” She laughed. “Again! Again!”

She ran to her bedroom with me close behind, without anyone yelling at us or hitting the underside of our floor with a broom.

5

SEVEN DIFFERENT KINDS OF

GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE

My hand reached for the hood of my raincoat to pull over my head, but the late-summer rain had started so heavy and fast my hair was already soaked. I walked over to the cobblestoned wall where my partner stood, his face engulfed by his raincoat’s hood. “Well, what do we do now?” I shouted, straining for my voice to carry through the pouring rain.

“We go home,” said John, my friend Emily’s husband, who had hired me to help him with landscaping six months earlier. He gave me a shrug and attempted a half smile, even though his forest green raincoat was still peppered with the hail that had pelleted us before the rain started. He took off his glasses, wiping the fog and drops of rain from them before putting them back on.

I drooped my head in defeat. We’d been doing that a lot lately, cutting our jobs short due to rain. The season’s end was near, and so was my main source of income.

We loaded the garbage cans, trimmers, and rakes into the back of John’s yellow pickup, and he smiled at me again before getting in and driving away. I watched him go, before my eyes returned to my car, parked on the side of the street. The front windows were open. Shit.

When I got home, I balanced on one foot in the linoleum square that marked the entryway, struggling to pull off my rubber Xtratuf boots. I unbuttoned my Carhartt pants and pushed them down to my knees so I could step out of them. They were so thick with mud and rain they didn’t fall flat to the floor and remained standing in their accordion-like shape. Real Alaskans have a saying that that’s when, and only then, a pair of Carhartts are ready to wash: when you’ve taken them off and they still stand on their own.

Mia was with Jamie that evening until seven, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with my time. A few textbooks sat on my kitchen table, reminding me of the homework that had become part of my daily life. I had begun the painstakingly slow process of earning a degree and had registered for twelve credits: two online classes and one that met in a building close to Mia’s day care. When I’d met with the admissions counselor, I’d told her I just wanted to get an associate of arts transfer degree. Most of the classes I’d taken in high school through the Running Start program, which allowed me to take college classes for high school credit, and at the University of Alaska counted toward that. A two-year degree at a community college would be the easiest place to start, and I’d have my core classes completed in the cheapest way possible. Then, I could transfer to a four-year university with some ease. But, like most single parents with not much support, it would take me years to get to that point.

Since I’d already claimed Mia on my taxes, getting a government grant to pay for school was sort of an easy process. Claiming her as a dependent, and having the tax forms