Three years have passed since my parents' divorce, and I was taken in by my mother in exchange for waiving alimony. Since then, life with just the two of us has been constantly strained by poverty. Yet, to my mother, this hardship seemed like nothing more than a normal part of daily life. As rent payment deadlines approached, my mother and I would huddle together in our cramped home like fugitives, holding our breath and hiding from the world. Though I'd grown accustomed to this routine, somewhere along the way, I began seeing my mother not just as a parent, but as a woman. Everything changed the day we had a confrontation with the landlord. That incident sparked an entirely new emotion within me—one that would irrevocably alter the relationship between my mother and me.