My name is Marissa. I’m forty-nine years old, and last month I started working as a janitor at the same university where my son, Logan, is a sophomore.

He looked straight at me. Our eyes met for half a second.

Then he turned to his friends and said loudly, “Ugh, the cleaning crew always leaves streaks on the glass. Don’t touch anything, guys. You never know what they drag in.”

He said it while looking directly at me.

Like I wasn’t his mother.

Like I was something he needed to distance himself from.

His friends laughed. One of them made a face and muttered something about “gross.”

My hands trembled so badly I nearly dropped the cloth.

I kept wiping the same patch of glass over and over because if I stopped—even for a second—I knew I would fall apart.

I felt smaller than I had in years.