Should she send Jacob, who has had disciplinary issues, back to the military academy in the fall? Would he hate her if she did? If he remained in Roanoke, she wanted him staying with her, and how could that happen in a one-bedroom apartment? Why was she always failing him? Why couldn’t she act like an adult? Why was she so weak?

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said, beginning to cry, and again, “I don’t know what to do.”

Fear and insecurity: These emotions dominated in her life. She had been afraid to be alone, so she married a man she knew she shouldn’t have. She had been afraid of not providing enough for her children, so she ran up so much credit card debt that she had to declare bankruptcy. When her therapist told her about disability, she had been afraid then, too, of what might happen if she didn’t apply. And once she started receiving the payments, and was living alone, she had been afraid that this would be the rest of her life, so she decided to get a job.

Her phone went off again.

“Hello?” she said to Betty, who had agreed to help pay for Jacob’s schooling. “No, you can talk to me now.” She put her hand to her forehead. She gestured with her left hand. She sat cross-legged, ankle jiggling. She tried to steady her voice, to hide that she had been crying, to be strong, but then it was coming back again.

“I just don’t know what to do about Jacob!” she said into the phone. “I don’t even know if I’m going to have a place to live!”

And that was another fear. Walmart, which had raised her hourly wage from $9 to $10, paid her about $1,000 every month. She had recently asked her landlord if that would affect her housing subsidy, but she still didn’t know the answer to that question, or many others. Under the Ticket to Work program, her disability benefits would terminate if she made more than $1,170 per month — “substantial gainful activity” — following the completion of both a nine-month trial work period and a consecutive 36-month period, and who knew if she’d ever make that much at Walmart. Even if she did, or found another job, would it be worth sacrificing the certainty of a government benefit for the uncertainty of the labor force? Where would she find the confidence for that, when she couldn’t even talk to her son’s teachers in person?

“I can’t do face-to-face. I can’t do it!” she told Betty. “After I talked to [one teacher], I felt like a fool. . . . I felt ridiculous. Like I was being mean and ugly. I was upset, and I try not to do that. I still feel bad about myself when I do that. And that’s just me. I guess I just got to work on that.”

“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” she said.

“It hurts me,” she said.

“Oh my gosh,” she said.

“I just don’t know,” she said.

She got off the phone, promising Betty she’d talk more the next day, then put her face in her hands and breathed as deeply as she could. She did it again. And again.