I kept the running tally for years after that afternoon, did the math annually, out of habit, even after my mother had stopped requesting it, even after I had stopped thinking of the world as a place that kept track of what it owed people, even after I stopped thinking of myself as a person who had the power to make demands of the world and learned to be a person who came up with her own small daily answers like everyone else. There was something comforting about imagining I knew exactly what I’d been cheated out of.
