The first time I met Carmen Rodriguez, she was sitting on the front steps of a small adobe house in an older neighborhood of Albuquerque, waiting for someone she had hired to help her clean.
That someone was me.
I was twenty-two years old, a university student working three part-time jobs while trying to maintain my GPA well enough to keep my scholarship. I had answered her Craigslist ad the same way I answered dozens of ads each month—with the kind of desperation that comes from needing money more than you need pride.
She was seventy-three, though she looked older. Her frame was small, nearly fragile, bent slightly forward in a way that suggested her body had spent decades apologizing for taking up space. Her silver hair was tied back in a simple bun. Her hands were weathered—the kind of hands that had done physical labor their entire lives and had the wrinkles to prove it.
