“Write zero dollars,” Adisa repeats. “I know people who got rejected for SNAP because they had cars that were worth too much. You’re going to screw the system the way the system screwed you.”

When I don’t start writing, she takes the application, fills in the blanks, and returns it to the secretary.

An hour passes, and not a single person is called from the waiting room. “How long does this take?” I whisper to my sister.

“However long they feel like making you wait,” Adisa replies. “Half the reason these people can’t get a job is because they’re too busy sitting here waiting on benefits to go apply anywhere.”

It’s nearly three o’clock—four hours after we’ve arrived—before a caseworker comes to the door. “Ruby Jefferson?” she says.

I stand up. “Ruth?”

She glances at the paperwork. “Maybe,” she concedes.

Adisa and I follow her down a hallway to a cubicle and sit. “I’m going to ask you some questions,” she says in a monotone. “Are you still employed?”

“It’s complicated…I was suspended.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I’m a nurse, but my license has been put on hold until an impending lawsuit is over.” I say these words in a rush, like they are being purged from the core of me.

“It don’t matter,” Adisa says. “Imma break it down fuh you. She don’t got no job and she don’t got no money.” I stare at my sister; I had been hoping that maybe the caseworker and I could find some common ground, that she might recognize me not as a typical governmental assistance applicant but as someone middle-class who has gotten a bum deal. Adisa, on the other hand, has whipped out the Ebonics, pushing as far away from my tactic as possible.

The caseworker shoves her glasses up her nose. “What about your son’s college fund?”

“It’s a five twenty-nine,” I say. “You can only use it for education.”

“She need medical,” Adisa interrupts.

The woman glances at me. “What are you paying right now for COBRA?”

“Eleven hundred a month,” I answer, flushing. “But I won’t be able to afford that by next month.”

The woman nods, noncommittal. “Get rid of your COBRA payment. You qualify for Obamacare.”

“Oh, no, you don’t understand. I don’t want to get rid of my coverage; I want to just get temporary funding,” I explain. “That’s the health insurance that comes from the hospital. I’m going to get my job back eventually—”

Adisa rounds on me. “And in the meantime what if Edison breaks his leg?”

“Adisa—”

“You think you O. J. Simpson? You gonna get off and walk away? News flash, Ruth. You ain’t O.J. You fa sho ain’t Oprah. You ain’t Kerry Washington. They get passes from white people because they famous. You just another nigga who’s going down.”

I am sure that the caseworker can see the steam rising from my hair. My fingers are clenched so tightly into fists that I can feel myself drawing blood. I’m not quite sure what precipitated this transformation into full-on gangsta, but I’m going to kill my sister.

Hell, I’ve already been indicted for homicide.

The caseworker glances from Adisa to me and then down at the paperwork. She clears her throat. “Well,” she says, all too happy to get rid of us, “you qualify for medical, SNAP, and cash assistance. You’ll be hearing from us.”

Adisa hooks her arm through mine and pulls me up from my chair. “Thank you,” I murmur, as my sister drags me from the cubicle.

“Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” she says, when we are out of earshot, standing next to a potted plant near the elevator bank. She is suddenly back to her normal self.

I round on her. “What the hell was that? You were a total asshole.”

“An asshole who got you the money you need,” Adisa points out. “You can thank me later.”

—

MY TRAINER IS a girl named Nahndi, and I am old enough to be her mother. “So basically there are five stations,” she tells me. “Cashier, headset, coffee headset, presenter, and runner. I mean, there are people on table too, of course, they’re the ones who are making the food…”

I trail her, tugging at my uniform, which has an itchy tag at the neck. I am working an eight-hour shift, which means I get a thirty-minute break and a free meal and minimum wage. After exhausting all the temp agency office job positions, I’d applied to McDonald’s. I said I’d taken time off from work to be a mom. I didn’t even mention the word nurse. I just wanted to be hired, so that I could give up some of the benefits I’d received at the unemployment office. For my own sanity I needed to believe that I could still, at least in part, take care of myself and my son.

When the manager called to offer me the job, he asked if I could start immediately, since they were short-staffed. So I left a note for Edison on the kitchen counter saying I had a surprise for him, and caught a bus downtown.