“Oh, those sheets.” She half lifted an apathetic shoulder. “As if any of that matters now. He thought—the pastor thought, why not sell towels, sheets, pot holders, things like that, through the churches? Something good for the community, making sheets in the community, buying, selling, it was a dream of the pastor, that we have a buying cooperative—he was thinking maybe in time we could buy and sell everything, clothes, food, even drugs, and save money and make money. He started with Mr. Zamar, and Mr. Zamar, he tried, he really did, even though the pastor, he accused him, that Mr. Zamar didn’t want the cooperative to work. But I was there, I was sewing, we made five hundred sheets, a thousand towels—and only seventeen people bought them, mostly the mothers of the girls who play basketball. Who can make a living when only seventeen people buy what you are selling?”

“So was that the second shop where you were working?” I asked, puzzled. “Making sheets for the cooperative?”

She gave a crack of hysterical laughter. “No and no and no. The second shop, it was right where the first shop is. Only we did it in the middle of the night, so the pastor wouldn’t see. As if he doesn’t hear everything going on in the neighborhood, he’s like God, the pastor, what he doesn’t see he knows anyway.”

I squatted next to the boys, who’d been watching us nervously. “Betto, Samuel, your mama and I have to talk. Can you go into the dining room?”

They apparently still remembered me as the woman who could get you charred, because they scuttled off the couch into the back of the apartment with just one frightened look at their mother. If only I had that effect on Pat Grobian or the pastor. We sat down, the baby sleeping between us.

“Why didn’t Zamar want Pastor Andrés to see the second shop?”

“Because we were using illegals!” she shouted. “People who are so desperate for money they work for nothing. Now do you understand?”

“No.” I was completely bewildered. “You need money; you can’t afford to work in a sweatshop. What were you doing there?”

“Oh, if you are this stupid how did you ever go to a big university?” She waved her hands wildly. “How can I believe you can find my daughter? I wasn’t working, I mean, I was working, but I was supervising, he was paying me to supervise, to make sure people stay at the machines, don’t steal nothing, don’t take long breaks, everything that—that I hate!”

Maybe I was too stupid to find Josie, but not so stupid that I asked her why she did it, not a woman who’d been feeding six mouths on twenty-six thousand a year. Instead, I asked how long it had been going on.