Anna’s Cabinets
by Laura Plummer

Section 8 apartments are all the same. Shady characters linger in the lobby, wearing too many layers for mid-July. When I visit, they speak to each other in code and tuck their hands into their pockets.

In unit 112, two toddlers sit naked on the cold linoleum tiles in front of a TV set, watching Jerry Springer. Their names are somewhere in my file. They greet me with popsicle-stained lips and missing teeth. The agency sent me to prevent their neglect. While Mom dries her hair in the bedroom—“I’ll be right there!”—I check the cabinets.

Open boxes of stale, food-pantry cereal. Goya biscuits. Empty calories. In the fridge, jugs of blue drink next to sugary yogurts. Nothing of substance. Not her fault. Logs of bologna, contents unknown. Loaves of white bread. Bags of air. 

Anna wants to work, but who will watch her girls? Not their fathers, who are in and out of jail. Not her mother, who is in and out of rehab. Not her sister, who is in and out of the shelter. Not her next-door neighbor with the strange men always in and out. Not her boyfriend, who only comes by for a quick in-and-out on his way to see his parole officer. And not me. I have thirty other Annas to see this week. So she sits in her kitchen and chain smokes Newports as she waits for her acronyms to arrive in the mail: WIC, SNAP, DTA, TAFDC, SSDI.

And when she tells me through tears that she’s pregnant again and wants to get rid of it, I call my contact at the clinic and schedule the appointment. A week later, her daughters doze in the back seat of my car as we wait for her in the parking lot. I’ve agreed to watch them for the day. It’s the least I can do. And the most.

Laura Plummer is an American writer from Massachusetts. Her work has been featured in numerous print and online publications, including The Sun and Chicken Soup for the Soul. Read more at lauraplummer.me.