Emma had wanted to be a nurse since she was fourteen. Her grandmother died of cancer at home, in a hospital bed set up in the front room in Windsor, and the hospice nurse who came every afternoon was a woman named Gail.
“She washed Grandma’s hair in a basin,” Emma told me once. “She did it like Grandma was the most important person in Henry County. I just stood in the doorway and thought, I want to be the one who does that.”
Her first year she got by on a Pell grant, a small student loan, and a summer at the nursing home in Windsor. Her mother filled out her part of the aid form that year without a word. Then, in the spring, Emma’s dad left.
He did not leave for anybody. He just left. He took a job driving for an outfit out of Joplin, sent money for a few months, and then sent less, and then sent it when he felt like it. The house in Windsor got very quiet.
Patrice went to nights at the plant because nights paid a dollar seventy more an hour. She worked ten-hour shifts four nights a week, came home at seven in the morning, got the boys on the bus, and slept until they came home again.
Get a new story in your inbox every morning.
Facebook doesn’t show you every story we post. Our free newsletter does. Join 2,500+ readers.
The part nobody can sign for you
I want to explain the rules here, because people always ask me why we did not just go around Patrice. I asked the same thing. Emma and I went to the financial aid office together in late October and asked a woman named Janet, who had been doing that job for nineteen years.
Janet had a candy dish of butterscotch on her desk and reading glasses on a beaded chain. She listened to the whole thing without interrupting, and then she took the glasses off and let them hang.
“Honey, I hear this every semester,” she said to Emma. “Until you’re twenty-four, or married, or a veteran, or you’ve got a child of your own, the government says you’re a dependent student. Your mother’s information has to be on that form.”
“Even if she won’t help me?” Emma asked.
“Even if she won’t help you,” Janet said. “A parent refusing to give their information doesn’t make you independent. If it did, half the kids in Missouri would have their folks refuse on purpose.”
She explained that there was one thing the school could do. With a letter saying her mother refused and was not supporting her, Emma could take an unsubsidized loan in her own name. No grant. Just that one loan, and it had a cap.
“It’s about a third of what you need,” Janet said gently. “And the private lenders will want a cosigner.”
I asked if I could cosign. Janet looked at me kindly, the way you look at a dog who has brought you a stick that is much too big.
“Are you married to her?” she asked.
“No, ma’am.”
“Do you have a credit history longer than your truck payment?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s not you. It’s the rules. And I’d tell you if I could bend them, but I can’t.”
Emma took the one loan. She set up a payment plan with the business office for the rest. She picked up Saturday shifts at the nursing home. And every time she drove home to Windsor, she brought the laptop, and every time her mother looked at it and said no.