She still drew houses. All the time. She took every art class her high school offered. She took drafting. She took geometry and got an A. In her junior year, she won a regional contest for high school students, designing a small, affordable house for a single family. Her house had big
windows everywhere. And a little reading nook under the stairs.
“Forty-two windows,” she told me, grinning, when she showed me the plans. “Well, fourteen. It’s a small house. But you get the idea.”
She wanted to study architecture. There was a good program at a university about two hours away. She’d been talking about it since she was twelve.
It cost thirty-two thousand dollars a year.
I was proud of her. I was so proud of her I thought my heart would burst. And I was terrified, because I knew exactly how much money I had, and it was nowhere near thirty-two thousand dollars a year. It was nowhere near thirty-two thousand dollars total.
We filled out the financial aid forms together at the kitchen table. Willa applied for every scholarship she could find. She wrote essays until two in the morning. I picked up two more cleaning jobs on Saturdays. I stopped buying coffee at the gas station. I told myself we’d figure
it out. Loans. Grants. Something.
I didn’t tell Mrs. Whitaker any of this. It wasn’t her business. I was her cleaner.
But she asked about Willa every Thursday. And one Thursday, in September of Willa’s senior year,
she asked me where Willa was applying to college.
I told her.
“Architecture,” Mrs. Whitaker said. She nodded slowly. “Of course. The windows.”
“The windows,” I agreed.
