Want, стр. 14

had an emergency C-section, and my student health insurance didn’t cover C-sections—or, it covered C-sections, but only partially. We owed the hospital thirty thousand dollars, and then I was up all night nursing and walking the baby up and down the hallway and eating handfuls of chocolate chips to stay awake and then never remembering to rebrush my teeth. I got two root canals and one of them abscessed and the tooth had to be removed and they said that if I didn’t get the tooth replaced my jaw would slowly collapse and I got a ten-thousand-dollar manmade tooth and another crown. We got too much takeout because we were both working and trying not to pay for childcare. My husband still owed more than a hundred grand in student loans from undergrad. I kept buying things: another breast pump because of the chafing with the first one, creams and ointments and sleep sacks and a noise machine and different types of swaddling blankets and a dehumidifier, in hopes that I could get the baby—the first baby, and then the second baby less than two years later—to finally go to sleep.

My body almost single-handedly bankrupted us. It also, with a little bit of help, made and then sustained the two best things in our lives. We were just privileged enough to think that we could live outside the systems and the structures and survive it, but we failed.

I think that there will be court but there is not court. There is a small, windowless room and those sad not-fold-out-but-also-not-quite-sturdy-or-comfortable industrial rows of chairs. There are eight of us there for the 10:30 am appointment. Six of us are clients of the same lawyer. Before we’re brought into that room that is the main room, he brings us into a similar room and prepares us all at once. The lawyer is Korean and three of his other clients are Korean, so he tells us the directions once in English, then he says them again in Korean.

We all nod, and then, one by one, he talks to us about our case. He ushers us all out, then calls us back in one by one.

You guys will be fine, he says, looking at us, smiling. He’s forty-something. He has this boyish, thick, dark hair that he has to sweep out of his face as he speaks. I wonder if he thinks it’s somehow cool or if he just never remembers that he needs to get it cut.

You sure you don’t stand to inherit any money in the next year? he says.

We look at one another, my husband and I; we shake our heads. This is not the first time he’s asked this question. We’re sure, I say.

And you don’t currently have anyone that you might sue, from whom you might stand to get a settlement? Any type of personal injury?

We look again at each other, though he has also already asked us this.

Sure, we say. No.

You guys are all set, he says.

We wait a beat too long and he has to nod toward the door, motion to us to exit, so he can take the next Korean guy.

We wait outside and the guy next to us asks us the ages of our children. I have four, he says, but they live with their mother. Expensive little fucks, he says, and laughs. He wears jeans and work boots. I am the only female in the room. I feel overdressed.

When we enter the last room, the room in which we will actually be questioned, I keep thinking we are going to get in trouble. I don’t have my phone because they made us hand them over after walking through the metal detectors. This whole building is for people going bankrupt, so, though I’ve gotten so dressed up, the security guards all know why we are there. I am convinced the school will call and I won’t be there to answer; I’m unsure how we will explain that we were in bankruptcy court and therefore could not come to pick up our sick kids.

The men who speak Korean go first. They call a translation service on the phone and ask to be patched through to a Korean translator.

That’s cool, whispers my husband.

I feel like we’re not supposed to think anything is cool right now, but I nod.

The first two cases are straightforward. The woman who asks the questions is middle in the way women are often middle: age and weight and height. Nondescript in all ways. Her voice stays at the same tone as she asks her questions and at the end she says, Good luck to you, in a way that both feels scripted and, I hope, only feels scripted because she says it every day, to everyone. She has a long face and a long nose and stringy blond hair that looks greasier than it should this early in the morning, but then the lighting in this room is awful, and she must spend so much of her time inside.

I pity her for this and for this job with all these people and their failures. I am one of these people with these failures, but still, I’m glad that I’m not her.

With the last Korean man—he lost a deli that he’d opened in Midtown with a partner—the logistics are more complicated. Another lawyer is there to contest his bankruptcy, a lawyer from the bank that gave him a second mortgage on his house on Long Island. The other lawyer is young and thin and wears an oddly fitting suit. We all lean forward as the woman asks more questions than she’s asked before this, as she lists the sums, which are bigger than the sums we’ve heard before.

Our lawyer, who is also this man’s lawyer, puts his forearms on the stack of papers he’s set before him and nods solemnly as the other lawyer talks.

You own a house, though? asks the middle woman.

He borrowed 1.6 million dollars against his mortgage