When my dad spotted me on the subway with my child, he asked, “Why aren’t you using the car I gave you?” I told him my husband and mother-in-law had taken it and were using my family to pressure me. He paused and said quietly, “Leave the rest to me…”

The air inside Jackson Station tasted of stale ozone and damp wool. It was a biting, wet cold that seeped through the soles of my cheap boots—boots I had bought online for twelve dollars because my leather ones had been sold to a consignment shop three weeks ago. I stood near the edge of the platform, my body acting as a human shield against the wind for my four-year-old son, Miles. He was shivering in a snowsuit that was a size too small, the cuffs riding up his shins.

I kept my head down. Invisibility was my armor now. I had perfected the art of shrinking, of becoming a gray smudge in the background of a gray city.