Chapter 2
JADE
Twenty-four hours earlier, before the check, my life looks like this: I'm sitting at my kitchen counter, which is a generous term for the two feet of laminate that passes for a workspace, staring at my laptop screen and trying not to scream.
Another rejection email. The fourth one this week.
Dear Jade, Thank you for submitting "Waiting for Morning" to Granta. While we appreciated the lyrical quality of your prose, the piece lacks the narrative momentum we're looking for. We wish you the best of luck placing it elsewhere.
Lyrical prose. No plot. The story of my writing career.
I close my laptop before I can read the other three new rejections waiting in my inbox. There's only so much constructive criticism a person can take before breakfast.
My phone buzzes. Not a call this time but a text from the hospital billing department. Your payment of $500 is now 30 days overdue. Please contact us immediately to discuss payment options.
Five hundred dollars. I could almost laugh. That's not even a drop in the ocean of what I owe them. My mother's emergency surgery last month, appendicitis that turned into sepsis, three days in the ICU, two weeks of recovery, came to $180,693. She doesn't have insurance. I don't have $180,693.
I have $247 in my checking account and a drawer full of maxed-out credit cards.
The coffee maker gurgles, and I pour myself a cup even though I can't really afford the beans. Some luxuries like caffeine and pretending that I have my life together are necessities.
I don't.
My phone rings. Collections. I silence it. They've called six times already today, and it's not even nine in the morning.
The studio apartment around me is evidence of every bad choice I've made.
The furniture is secondhand, the walls are beige, and there's a water stain on the ceiling that looks like a judgment from God.
I moved here three years ago, fresh out of my MFA program, convinced I was going to make my living as a writer.
I am a writer. I write every day. I have seventeen short stories published in literary magazines that pay in exposure and contributor copies. I have a novel draft that's been sitting at 60,000 words for eight months because I can't figure out how to end it.
What I don't have is money.
What I have instead are three jobs that barely cover rent.
I tutor high school students for the SAT.
They are rich kids from the Boston suburbs whose parents pay me $75 an hour to teach their children test-taking strategies they could learn from a book.
Yesterday I spent two hours with a kid who'll probably score higher than I did, explaining to him why "between you and I" is grammatically incorrect.
He didn't care. His parents just wanted someone with a fancy degree to validate their expensive test prep program.
I work at a coffee shop four mornings a week, making lattes for people who don't say please or thank you. The tips are decent. The burns on my hands from the espresso machine are permanent.
And I write. I write stories about nothing, beautiful atmospheric pieces where people stare out windows and contemplate their feelings. Some people call it literary fiction. Others, like my thesis advisor, call it unmarketable.
"You have a gift for language," she told me at graduation. "But language alone doesn't sell books. You need plot. Stakes. Something that makes readers turn pages."
I've been trying to add stakes for three years. Turns out I'm better at describing the quality of afternoon light than I am at making things happen.
My mother would say that's because nothing bad has ever happened to me. That I don't understand real consequences.
She'd be wrong. Plenty has happened to me. I just don't know how to turn it into narrative momentum.
My phone buzzes again. This time it's a text from my mother's nurse.
Hi Jade, Sydney is asking for you. Can you visit today?
I have a tutoring session at three and a coffee shop shift at six, but I can squeeze in a hospital visit if I skip lunch. Again.
I text back: I'll be there at noon.
The truth is, I don't want to go. I love my mother, but visiting her in that hospital bed, seeing the machines and the IV drip and the exhaustion in her eyes, makes everything worse. She tries to hide how much pain she's in and I try to hide how terrified I am about the bills.
We're both pretending we're fine.
We're both lying.
My mother raised me alone. My father isn't in the picture. She's never told me who he is, won't talk about him, changes the subject every time I ask. "It doesn't matter," she always says. "It's always been just us. That's all you need to know."
She worked as a nurse for twenty-five years. Put me through private school on a nurse's salary. Helped me with college when she could, though I still had to take out loans. She never asked anyone for help, never accepted charity, never compromised her independence.
"I walked away from wealth once," she's told me more than once. "Family money. Trust funds. All of it. And I'd do it again."
She's proud of that choice. She thinks it makes her strong.
I think it makes her stubborn. There's a difference.
Because now she's in a hospital bed with bills she can't pay, and I'm working three jobs to keep us both afloat, and we're both drowning because she was too proud to accept help twenty-five years ago.
I don't say this to her. I don't say that I resent her choices, that I'm angry she dragged me down with her, that I wish she'd been practical instead of principled.
I just visit her and smile and tell her everything's fine.
Another text. This time from Chloe, my best friend from college.
Coffee tomorrow? I have gossip.
I respond: Can't afford coffee. Come to my place?
She sends back a middle finger emoji and: My treat, obviously. 10am at the usual place.
Chloe is in law school. Her parents are solidly middle class, not rich but comfortable. They have health insurance and retirement accounts and emergency funds. They don't understand what it's like to choose between groceries and electricity.
Chloe tries to understand. She offers to pay for things without making it weird. She's a good friend.
But sometimes I hate that she doesn't really get it. That for her, being broke is temporary. A student thing. Something that will end when she graduates and gets a job at a law firm.
For me, being broke is generational. My mother chose it. I inherited it.
I close my laptop and get ready for my first shift. The coffee shop is a fifteen-minute walk, which saves on subway fare. Small victories.
My reflection in the bathroom mirror looks exhausted. Dark circles under my eyes. Hair that needs washing but I don't have time. I'm twenty-five and I look forty.
This is my life. I have three jobs, little sleep and a lot of debt.
Something has to change.
I just don't know what.