The Aunt Who Took the Daycare Job

“Because I watched you in this building for twelve weeks when you were twenty-one,” she said.

“And I have hired a lot of girls in thirty years, and you were the one who sat on the floor. You can call me Patty now. You work here.”

I drove home. I paid Joan with ten dollars of my two hundred and twelve, even though she tried to wave it off.

Then I fed the kids supper and bathed the twins and waited for Brandon to come home from his shift and Kayla to wake up for hers.

They were both at the kitchen table at six-thirty, Kayla in her laundry scrubs with her hair still wet and Brandon in his work jeans, eating the meatloaf I made.

I sat down across from them. Hunter was in the living room watching a cartoon about trucks.

“I took a job,” I said. “At Little Acorns, across town. I start Monday. I’m going to move out Saturday.”

Kayla put her fork down. Brandon kept chewing for a second, and then he stopped.

“What do you mean, a job,” he said.

“A teaching job,” I said. “Opening a new room. Fourteen fifty an hour. Mrs. Ostrander has a room over her garage I can rent.”

“You have a job,” Brandon said. “You have a job here.”

I had practiced what to say, in the van and in the laundry room and in my head all through supper, and I had decided I would not raise my voice and I would not say anything I could not take back later. I kept my hands flat on the table.

“I have been watching your kids for three years, Brandon,” I said. “I love them more than anything in this world. But it’s not a job. A job pays. And last night it was nine degrees and you took the heater out of the room where I sleep.”

Kayla turned and looked at him. “You took her heater?”

“It’s forty dollars a month, Kay,” he said. “I showed you the electric bill. You said we had to cut something.”

“I said we had to cut something,” Kayla said. “I didn’t say her heat.”

I could tell she was hearing it for the first time. Kayla worked three to eleven most nights and slept late, and she and Brandon passed each other in the hallway like two people on different trains. She hadn’t known. I believed that then and I believe it now.

“I’ll keep the kids through Friday,” I said. “I’m not going to leave you stuck. I made a list of every center in town that takes infants and the phone numbers. Little Acorns has openings in my new room. The others all have waitlists.”

I slid the list across the table. It was on a piece of notebook paper from Hunter’s drawing pad, with my handwriting and the numbers and the addresses. Kayla picked it up. Brandon didn’t look at it.

He laughed, a small laugh, not a mean one. He looked tired.

“You’ll be back by February,” he said. “You don’t even have a car, Jo.”

“Patty’s place is four blocks from Little Acorns,” I said. “I’ll walk.”

That was the whole conversation. Brandon got up and put his plate in the sink and went out to the garage.

Kayla sat with me for a long time without saying anything, holding my list, and then she had to leave for her shift.