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2
The next day, every single thing in the apartment had a price tag on it.
Washing machine, eight dollars a load.
Water heater, five dollars for a ten-minute shower.
Gas stove, thirty cents a minute per burner.
Living room TV, three dollars an hour.
Toilet flush, one dollar a time.
Looking at the payment QR code stuck on the toilet, I half thought I'd walked into a pay-per-use public restroom.
Lucia brought over a plastic basin.
「Mom, if you think flushing's too expensive, you can save your water in this basin and flush once a day.」
I asked her, : 「Do you do that too?」
「I'm the lady of the house. Obviously it's different for me.」
Said it flat out.
Didn't even bother with a fig leaf.
I'd moved in two months ago because Lucia had changed jobs and couldn't leave early during her probation period. She said she didn't trust a nanny, so she wanted me to help pick up and drop off the child.
I got up at half past five every morning.
I made breakfast for three, took Jim to preschool, then went to the market for groceries. Afternoons I picked up the child, did the laundry, made dinner. At night Jim slept with me, because Lucia said having the kid around got in the way of married life.
Two months, and I'd lost eleven pounds.
They hadn't given me a single cent.
And yet Lucia pulled out a ledger.
「These are the costs you've run up since you moved in.」
Room occupancy fee, eighty a day.
Air conditioner wear-and-tear fee, six hundred.
Sofa cleaning fee, three hundred.
Kitchen equipment usage fee, four hundred fifty.
Fridge, washing machine, and water heater, billed separately.
Seven thousand eight hundred sixty-six in total.
「I knocked off the loose change for you. Seventy-eight hundred.」
I turned to the last page.
Even the time I mended Jim's backpack with needle and thread, she'd charged me two dollars for living room lighting.
「You asked me to come take care of the child, and now you're charging me room and board?」
「One thing has nothing to do with the other.」
She leaned back on the sofa, the slippers on her feet the ones I'd bought her.
「You did help watch the child, sure, but you've also enjoyed the living conditions in our home. A place this size out there rents for six or seven thousand a month.」
Abner sat next to her, playing on his phone.
I asked him, : 「You think I should pay too?」
He didn't look up.
「Lucy's already done the math, so just give it to her. You get over six thousand a month in pension, it's not like you have anywhere to spend it.」
「Why don't I have anywhere to spend my pension?」
「You eat our food, live in our place, you don't wear more than a few outfits. Save it up and in the end doesn't it all come to me anyway?」
Something clogged up in my chest.
When he was very little, he'd had pneumonia.
I sat in a hospital hallway holding him for three nights, not daring to close my eyes.
When he went to college and complained the dorm was too hot, I ate plain bread and pickles for two months straight so I could buy him the most expensive evaporative cooler on the market at the time.
When he got married, I put up two hundred thousand in savings for the wedding banquet, and begged Maud to lend him the apartment.
Now he'd already arranged where my pension would go.
I couldn't spend it while I was alive.
After I died, it had to be his.
「Fine. I'll give you the money.」
Lucia immediately pulled up the payment QR code.
I didn't scan.
I took out the account I'd drawn up the night before.
Pickups and drop-offs over two months, forty-four times, fifty a time.
Breakfasts and dinners, a hundred twenty meals, figured at twenty a meal.
Laundry, cleaning, overnight care, calculated at the lowest housekeeping rate.
Nineteen thousand six hundred total.
「Subtract your seventy-eight hundred, and you owe me eleven thousand eight hundred.」
Lucia snatched the bill and tore it into four pieces.
「Are you done? Trading on family to squeeze out money, doesn't that make you sick?」
The scraps fell to the floor.
I bent down and picked them up, one by one.
「You set the rules. How come only you get to make money, but I'm not allowed to run the numbers?」
She kicked the coffee table aside. : 「I'm just not going to pay. What are you going to do about it?」
「Nothing.」
I tucked the scraps into my pocket.
「From today on, you cook your own meals, wash your own clothes, and pick up your own child.」
Abner finally put down his phone.
「Mom, there's a limit to throwing a fit. This afternoon Lucy and I both have work. Who's going to pick up Jim?」
「Whoever gave birth to him can pick him up.」
I went back to my room to pack.
The door had barely shut when I heard Lucia's voice outside.
「Who does she think she's fooling? Three days, tops, and she'll come crawling back to beg us.」
