By the second year, the children had outgrown their first sets of cotton sleepers, and their small feet pressed against the tight seams of their socks.
The air in the Methodist church basement was cold, smelling of damp concrete, old cardboard boxes, and the sweet, musty scent of donated wool.
I stood at the end of a long folding table, sorting through a pile of donated infant shirts that had been delivered in garbage bags.
Each shirt was thin from too many washings, the small plastic snaps bent or missing entirely from the collar.
A few feet away, Helen, who lived three blocks down on Elm Street, smoothed her floral apron.
She whispered to the pastor’s wife, her head tilted toward my corner of the room while she folded a stack of small corduroy trousers.
“They say she has to buy six gallons of milk every single week,” Helen whispered, her high-pitched voice carrying easily across the quiet basement.
I kept my head down, folding a yellow shirt with a little blue duck on the pocket.
“It is a perfectly healthy presentation,” Dr. Vance said, his tone shifting to that formal clinical weight he used when a patient asked too many questions.
