Sloan was at the counter laughing at something my father had said. She turned. She saw the letter in my hand. She did not look surprised. I put the letter on the granite island face up. I got in too. Sloan’s smile did not move. I thought you didn’t apply. I had applied with her. We had sat in the same college counselor’s office. She knew. My mother set down her glass. Sweetie, even if that’s real, and we’d have to verify. We cannot pay for two. I can apply for financial aid. My father shook his head. No.
Sloan is going to need our full attention. She’s going to need us to be present. We can’t split that. He paused. He did not look at me. We’re paying for your sister. She has a future. You don’t. My mother nodded once. The way she nodded when a contractor told her a number she had already agreed to.
Sloan said gently, “Mom, she’ll figure something out. She always does.” My father drank.
There was a printed spreadsheet on the countertop. I had not seen it before. Sloan, Harvard cost of attendance 2018 to 2022. Tuition, room, board, books, travel, spring break visits. Total at the bottom, $237,000 with a column of estimated annual increases. My mother had used red font for the increases. She had used green for the savings projections from my father’s brokerage. There was no second sheet for me. I picked up the letter. I went upstairs. I did not eat the lasagna.
When I came back down an hour later to call my grandmother, the letter was no longer where I had put it. I had folded it, slid it under my keyboard. Sloan had been in my room. Sloan did not look at me when I passed her on the stairs. I did not find that letter again for almost seven years. I called my grandmother from the landline in the basement. I closed the door so my parents could not hear. She listened. She had Parkinson’s. Early stage. Her voice did not shake yet.
Her voice was the calmest thing I had ever heard. Honey, she said, get on the next bus. I have a room. I have your name in my will. They cannot take that. Don’t argue with them. Don’t beg. Don’t explain yourself. Come here.
I packed in 3 days a navy Jansport backpack, two pairs of jeans, five shirts, a toothbrush, the Susan Sontag paperback she had given me at 16 dogeared on the page about courage, my driver’s license, $43 in babysitting cash, a Greyhound ticket from Bridgeport to Boston that I bought online with a debit card I had opened at 16 with a librarian’s reference, $63. $3 seat 12 B. The night I left, my father did not come downstairs. My mother stood at the glass door and watched me drag my backpack down the driveway.
She closed the door before I reached the street. 3 weeks later, my grandmother died. I got there 11 hours late. The bus from Boston to Hartford had been rerouted around a fire on I 91. By the time I reached the house, she had been gone since dawn, and my mother was already there organizing the kitchen the way she organized every kitchen she walked into. She did not look up at me. My sister was in our grandmother’s bedroom, going through the dresser. I did not say anything to either of them.
I sat on my grandmother’s porch in the dark. The flannel shirt she had left out for me was folded on the rocker. It still smelled like her. I went back to Boston with the flannel. I had no apartment. I had $36 left after the bus.
I walked from South Station up to Cambridge with my backpack on both shoulders and asked at the YW.
CA whether they had a bed. They did $36 per night. I almost laughed. 3 days before she died, my grandmother had wired me $300 through Western Union. I picked it up the next morning at a Stop & Shop on Mass Avenue with my driver’s license and the confirmation number she had texted me. The cashier slid the cash through the slot in an envelope. There was a printed receipt with the date and the amount. There was also a handwritten line on the slip in her handwriting. Don’t go home. I kept that slip.
I have it now in a fireproof box in my apartment. It is the first piece of evidence I ever stored without knowing it would matter. I called my mother from a pay phone in the YWCA lobby. Hi, what? I just wanted to let you know I’m okay. Sloan is doing well at Harvard. Don’t bother her. She hung up. I did not call again for 6 years. I enrolled in the certified nursing assistant program at Bunker Hill Community College in early January. six weeks of coursework, a clinical placement, a state exam.
I passed it in the first week of February 2019. The next Monday, I had a badge that said Arlene Mortensson, CNA, and a position on the night shift at Mount Auburn Hospital, $19 an hour, scrubs from a uniform supply store on Cambridge Street. I worked seven nights on, two off. I slept on a futon in a shared apartment in Allston with three roommates I rarely saw. I did not eat in restaurants. I did not buy anything new for 2 years. In the spring, I applied to the BSN program at UMass Boston.
I wrote my essay about my grandmother again because she was the only person who had ever told me plainly that I would have a future. The admissions office offered me a seat with a financial aid package, a MassGrant, a Pell Grant, and federal loans totaling $34,000. I matriculated in the fall of 2019. For three years, I did three jobs at once: aide, math tutor, weekend phlebotomist. I slept four hours on weekdays. I slept eight hours on Sundays. I did not have hobbies. I did not have a boyfriend.
I did not call home. I did not call Sloan. Once in the second year, I saw a woman who looked like my mother in the produce aisle of the Stop & Shop in Quincy. I left without buying anything. I sat in the bus shelter for 40 minutes until the trembling stopped. Above my dorm desk all four years was a piece of printer paper with one line in blue ink. Courage is as contagious as fear. Susan Sontag. My grandmother had underlined it the year before she died. I graduated summa laude in May 2022.
