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lunch while she rushed through the streets, because she got dizzy in the afternoon from the heat of the factory and the smell of the strong glue on an empty stomach.
    Mattie couldn’t seem to save enough money to move. The babysitter cost her almost half of her weekly salary, and after she paid a week’s rent and bought some food, there was just enough left over for carfare. She stopped going to the movies on Saturday nights and only bought clothes or shoes when hers had reached the state where she was ashamed of being seen in the streets. Yet her bank account grew painfully slowly. And then Basil developed a stomach condition and couldn’t keep his food down. So her small reserve went for a specialist and expensive medicine.
    She thought about taking night courses at school in order to get a better job, but what with working six days a week, she hardly ever saw the baby as it was. It was heartbreaking when she missed his first step, and she had cried for two hours when she first heard him call Mrs. Prell “Mama.”
    One Friday night Mattie was asleep with Basil, and he had squirmed out of her arms and lay on his stomach near the edge of the bed. His bottle had fallen out of his mouth and rolled on the floor next to the blanket. A rat crept out of the hole behind the dresser and cautiously sniffed around the wall for crumbs. Finding nothing, it grew bolder in its search and circled slowly toward the bed. It had learned to fear the human smell but the stillness of the bodies and its hunger drew it nearer to the bed. It was about to turn away and begin a new search toward the wall when it smelled the dried milk and sugar. Giving a squeak of anticipation, it edged toward the smell and found the baby’s bottle. It licked the sweet crusted milk around the hole of the nipple and tried to gnaw through the thick rubber. Then the same smell drifted down from above its head, and, abandoning the nipple, it crawled up the blanket toward the fresh aroma of milk, sugar, and saliva. It licked around the baby’s chin and lips,and when there was nothing left, it sought more and sank its fangs into the soft flesh.
    Basil’s screams sent Mattie bolt upright in the bed, and in her sleepy confusion she instinctively hugged her arms to her and found them empty. She felt something leap from the bed and scramble across the wooden floor toward the dresser. She reached out blindly for the howling child, grabbed him to her chest, and stumbled toward the light switch. The sudden movements and brightness of the room frightened the child even more, and he kicked and fought her in his confusion and pain.
    “Oh, God!” she cried as she saw the blood dripping down his cheek from the two small punctures. She tried to calm the wailing child against her chest but he sensed her fear and continued to scream. She put him on the bed and cleaned his cheek with alcohol and rocked and soothed him down into a whimper. She reached for his bottle and, seeing the gnawed nipple, threw it against the wall in anger and disgust. The shattering glass frightened the child again, and he began to cry and Mattie cried with him.
    She sat up all night with the lights on, and Basil finally fell into a fitful sleep. The next morning she took him to the hospital for a tetanus shot and ointment for his cheek. She returned to the boardinghouse, picked up her clothes, and with her baby in one arm and her suitcase in the other, she went looking for another place to live.
    “We don’t take children.”
    “I’ll pay anything.”
    “We don’t take children!”
    She walked the entire day, and her hand became blistered from the handle of the suitcase. Basil was growing heavy and restless in her arms, and his constant whining and struggling was taxing her strength. She had thought that she would find another place within hours, but her choices were few. Aftercountless attempts, she learned that there was no need in wasting her energy to climb to steps in the white neighborhoods