With the house finally rented, Inez moved to the basement where she slept on a cot in a corner; she would later acquire a twin-sized bed. She hung her clothes next to the dryer; sometimes she helped Rosie with the laundry. Her only stipulation as landlady was that at seven o’clock every morning she would go upstairs and water all of the plants around the house; she had removed the plants from all the bedrooms so she wouldn’t have to enter them. In the summertime she would work the garden and give her new tenants whatever harvest she couldn’t eat. In the wintertime she borrowed library books about houseplants. There, in the darkness of her slightly cold corner with a lamp right next to her, Inez read one book after another, trying to ignore the racket of children’s feet running right above
