Ms. Audrey Mae kept two coins and a $5 bill in her bra during her trip to the courthouse. This trip into town felt like her first day off in 9 months. After checking in, she was given two options: either wait inside or return after 30 minutes for case details. Mae decided to return in 30 minutes and headed towards a nearby hotel.

Mae entered the hotel lobby and was greeted by the fresh scent of flowers at the entrance. The floors were newly polished, and the lobby was buzzing with guests either checking in or out or heading towards the hotel’s cafe. The cafe had a large display of cookies, cakes, pies, and other desserts. Mae’s eyes were fixed on the large slice of bread pudding in the café’s display window.

Mae almost could not resist the tempting aroma and beautiful display, but the $5 she had left in her bra reminded her that it was neither worth it nor affordable. So, she took a deep breath, controlled her excitement, and walked away from the café, leaving her stomach and her desire for a new, exciting routine outside of work.

To resist temptation, Mae searched for a hotel payphone to call the Franks estate where she worked once a week. She noticed a phone behind a red service desk and approached the friendly attendant standing nearby to ask for assistance.

Jamie, a young woman in her late teens, was employed as a hotel attendant. When Mae approached Jamie, she was warmly greeted with a friendly smile. Jamie had beautiful mocha-colored skin, wore glasses, and had on a crisp, starched white dress shirt with a work vest. This vest had two buttons attached to it, one from the local high school and the other from a nearby college down the hill.

Mae held two coins she had quickly and discretely dug from her bra and asked Jamie if the phone was only for guests. Jamie informed her that the phone did not accept coins and permitted her to use it. Mae wasn’t sure if she was being allowed to break the rules by a kind young woman or being given pity as a perceived non-city-looking older woman. Either way, Mae was thankful to hold onto her coins. “I guess I’ll use this change to buy a cup of black coffee from the café,” Mae told Jamie with a smile.

Jamie smiled back and offered to treat Mae to some food from the cafe on her tab. “Just head to my friend Ruth’s register when you go to the cafe. I’ll tell her to look out for you,” said Jamie. Jamie mentioned that she gets free lunch at the hotel daily as a student employee. Jamie whispered to Mae that the cafe tends to overcharge and that their food and coffee are not as good as they smell or look on display.

Mae called the Franks estate and asked Jamie if she could return later in the day to make a few more quick calls. Jamie kindly agreed and complimented Mae on her orange scarf. She expressed her love for the color orange and mentioned how it made Mae’s cheeks look pretty. Mae left the hotel feeling grateful for Jamie’s kindness and headed to the courthouse.

The judge entered the courthouse, which was crowded with more than 60 people who had been summoned for jury duty. He announced, “If you have any legitimate reason to miss this summons, please form a line outside the courtroom and share your concerns at the podium. The summons will last for four weeks.”

Upon hearing the judge, Mae was filled with anxiety and panic. She couldn’t help but wonder how she would be able to afford to travel to town for four weeks. Additionally, Mae was concerned about who would take care of her grandchildren and adult children during her absence. Mae was also worried about how the Franks would react if she failed to show up for four weeks.

As a MawMaw to her grandkids, she was aware that her job wasn’t associated with any organization, tax return, or system. For more than 22 years, she has been growing fresh food for her family and working as an under-the-table paid caregiver. However, she has often felt that her work is not acknowledged as “real work” by traditional institutions such as credit card companies or courts.

When Mae was summoned for jury duty, she anticipated serving for a brief period, maybe a day or two, not four weeks.

As the judge left the room, 35 adults gathered outside the judge’s courtroom. Mae was absolutely certain that there were exactly 35 adults as she counted them twice. All 35 of them, including Mae, hoped that the judge would excuse them from their month-long duty.

During Mae’s turn to appear before the judge in the courtroom, she chose not to reveal that she had an unreported job cleaning for the Franks or her other elderly clients. Instead, she stated that she was self-employed and that most of her family’s food and produce was grown by her. She further explained that if she was away from home for a month, her family would have no greens. Mae avoided eye contact with the judge and others present in the room, fearing that her statement might be met with laughter. However, the judge simply nodded and dismissed her, saying, “You are dismissed, ma’am.”

After Mae received news that her jury duty assignment was dismissed, she accepted Jamie’s offer to order something from the cafe. After returning to the hotel’s cafe, she ordered a small slice of bread pudding to-go and tipped Jamie with the emergency five dollars she kept in her bra.

Mae then made three phone calls. The first two were to her adult kids, and the third was to the Frank’s estate. She told them that if she didn’t call back within a week, it meant that her duty had been extended. She promised herself that she would call them back in four weeks to let them know when she was returning to work.

After taking a long bus ride home, Mae slowly walked around her house. Her busy schedule for the last few months made her house feel like a train station with too much energy and movement but little groundedness. Mae made her way into her small bedroom and changed into comfortable clothes. She reserved the bigger rooms in her house for when her children and grandchildren came to visit, as well as for the elderly she occasionally took care of. Additionally, she used one room exclusively for growing seedlings for her garden. This room received the best sunlight from her front yard and was vital in starting all the plants in her garden.

After changing Mae removed her old bedding from her bed, walked to her hallway closet, and removed two orange wool blankets. She hand-washed the orange blankets and hung them out to dry on the line outside. She removed the TV and old stand from her bedroom and searched for the light brown two-drawer dresser and grey pillow gifted from the Franks estate.

She noticed that she had waited so long to use the pillow that the tiny hole Ms. Franks mentioned when she gifted it to her was more noticeable. Mae immediately found her sewing kit and sewed up the grey pillow before hand washing it and hanging it up next to her bedding on the line outside.

She then headed inside, removed the orange rug in the unused den, dusted it off, and laid it out in her room. The children rarely walked into the den room, and neither did she.

Exhausted from the day and all the cleaning, she fell asleep on the couch in the den. When she woke up the following day, she immediately ate her cold bread pudding. Remembering that she had hung the bedding and pillow to dry after coming home, she got up and took them off the line before the dew could reach them. She ironed the bedding, sprayed it and the pillow with her musk oil, and layered it over the bed to cover the uneven, mixed-size mattresses.

After rummaging through more of her belongings, she stumbled upon the orange wallpaper she had purchased in the city three years ago but had never used. She covered the walls with it, hoping to give the room a fresh look.

The room looked chaotic with all the colors and textures. But it felt new to Mae. During her stay at home, she spent most of her time tending to her garden, where she grew food for her family, only venturing outside for this purpose.

On the final Monday of her self-imposed four week break, Mae went to the hotel with the intention of making a few phone calls. She was hoping to run into Jamie, but instead, she bumped into her co-worker Ruth. Ruth kindly allowed Mae to use the phone to inform everyone that she would return to her regular schedule the following Monday.

Mae asked Ruth to deliver a note to Jamie before departing. On a hotel notepad, Mae wrote, “Jamie, please write to me once you finish school. I plan to treat you to some of my homemade bread pudding and a few apples from my tree. You were right; these folks here are way overpriced.” She left her address and signed her name on the note.

Upon arriving home, Mae put away the orange bedding and the gray pillow, removed the orange den rug, and left the orange wallpaper up.