Chapter 4

The memory of my mother' s struggle in my first life was a constant, driving force. It was a film that played on a loop in the back of my mind, a grim reminder of the stakes.

After the divorce, she had been so utterly lost. A single mother with a teenage daughter, no skills, and no safety net. She was vulnerable, a perfect target for the predatory nature of the low-wage economy. She was hired and fired from jobs for reasons that were never clear-a manager who didn' t like her face, a shift change she couldn' t accommodate because of me.

We were evicted from our apartment. I remembered sitting on a curb, our few belongings stuffed into black trash bags, watching my mother on a payphone, her voice getting progressively smaller as she was rejected by one shelter after another.

We ended up living in our car for three weeks until she saved up enough for a deposit on the mold-infested apartment that would become our home. My education became a casualty of our poverty. I missed so much school from being sick, from not having clean clothes, from the simple, crushing exhaustion of being poor.

My mother, consumed by a guilt that was entirely undeserved, blamed herself.

I remembered one night, after I' d been diagnosed, she had called Clifton again. I was supposed to be asleep, but I heard her muffled sobs through the thin wall.

"She' s your daughter, Clifton," she had pleaded. "She needs you. I can' t... I can' t do this alone."

There was a long pause. I heard the faint, tinny sound of another woman' s laughter in the background on his end. Karel.

"I' m sorry, Edna," he had said, his voice distant and annoyed. "Karel isn' t feeling well. I have to go."

The line went dead.

My mother didn' t cry. She just sat in the dark, a profound and terrifying silence emanating from her. After that, she never mentioned him again. It was as if he had ceased to exist.

She threw herself into work with a frightening intensity, taking on more shifts until she was a walking ghost, her face pale and drawn. But it was never enough. The medical bills piled up like snowdrifts, burying us.

Her greatest regret, the one she spoke of in quiet, tortured whispers late at night when she thought I was asleep, was my education.

"You're so smart, Blake," she would murmur, her hand stroking my hair as I lay listless in bed. "You could have been anything. A doctor. A lawyer. I failed you."

That failure became her obsession. In the brief period before my diagnosis, when our main problem was just poverty, she fought tooth and nail to get me into a good school. Our rundown apartment was on the edge of a wealthy school district. She saw it as my only chance.

She went to the school board, she pleaded with the principal, a stern, bureaucratic woman who looked at my mother' s worn coat and tired face with disdain. She was met with red tape and polite dismissals.

But my mother was relentless. She learned that the principal' s elderly mother lived in a nearby nursing home. On her one day off, my mother started volunteering there. She didn't do it to ask for a favor. She did it because she was a kind person, and she saw a lonely old woman who needed company.

She would read to the old woman, brush her hair, and listen to her stories for hours. She brought her cookies. She treated her with a gentle dignity that the overworked nursing home staff couldn' t always provide.

The principal started noticing. She would see my mother there when she made her weekly visits. She saw the genuine affection her mother had for this stranger. One day, the old woman grabbed her daughter' s hand and said, "That one. Edna. She' s a good soul. You help her."

A week later, I had an acceptance letter.

The day I started at Northgate High, my mother looked happier than I had seen her in years. It was a small victory, but it was everything.

I threw myself into my studies with the same desperate intensity my mother threw herself into her work. We were a team, fighting a war on two fronts. She fought for our survival, and I fought for our future.

And then, I got sick. And the war was lost.

Remembering that, remembering the pride on her face that first day of school, solidified my resolve. I would not let her sacrifice be in vain. Not this time.

This time, we would win.