I wonder about my Mom sometimes, and all the other black mothers who got up at 6 a. m. to go to the white man's house with sacks over their shoes because it was so wet and cold. I wonder how they made it. They worked very hard for the man. They made his breakfast and they swept his floors and they took care of his babies. They didn' t have too much time for the three of us. I wonder about my Mom, who walked out of a white woman's clean house at midnight and came back to her own where the lights had been out for three months, and the pipes were frozen and the wind came in through the holes in the wall. She'd have to deal with the rats : leave some food out for them so they wouldn't bite the doors or the babies. Oh, they were just like part of the family! I wonder how she felt telling those white kids she took care of to brush their teeth after they ate, to wash their hands after they finished bathing. She could never tell her own kids because there wasn't soap or water back home. I wonder how my Mom felt when we came home from school with a list of vitamins and pills  the school nurse said we had to have. Mom would cry all night, and then go out and spend most of the rent money for pills. A week later, the white man would come for his eighteen dollars' rent and Mom would beg him to wait until tomorrow. She had to lie to him that she had lost her wallet or the relief check was coming soon or the white people had some money for her. Tomorrow I'd be hiding in the closet because there was only supposed to be two kids in the flat, and I could hear the rent man shout at my Mom and call her a cheat. And when he finally went away, Mom put the sacks on her shoes and went off to the rich white man's house to dress the rich white kids so that their mother could take them to a special baby doctor. Why did the writer hide in a closet when the landowner came for rent?
The closet could only hold two kids. Only two kids were allowed to live in the house. They should pay more rent for two kids. There was only one bedroom for the two kids.