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You checked the mirror in your car for what felt like the millionth time. Every hair had to be in the right place. Your makeup must be even and professional. Your clothes could not be anything but in their absolute best shape. Your glasses had to be clean and on straight. Today was the first job interview you had been offered in your months of job searching. You could feel the sweat beginning to push out of your pores.

My makeup! you anxiously thought. You needed to calm down. You took a breath. In through your nose and out through your mouth. La confianza es la clave- confidence is key. You remember reading that somewhere but it escapes your mind. You looked in the mirror again. You felt it was hard to be confident with your looks. You were a thirty-plus-year-old woman who had pushed out two kids leaving you with fat all over and large boobs that seemed to sag more than the tits of the models your age did. Where your figure was once small and humble now you hips and butt bumped into everything. Your short, chubby stature didn’t impose power over anything. But pointing out flaws wasn’t going to make your body go back to before you met your husband, nor was it going to get you that job.

Now that was a train of thought. Your husband and the job. You were sneaking behind his back with this whole job hunting business, but better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission. Oscar was a traditional man, didn’t like his woman to do jobs outside cooking and cleaning. And while you’d been raised with a similar mentality, necessity called for a change. Bills had been stacking up and your husband’s job wasn’t covering them well enough. It became clear how big a problem this was when your youngest told you he couldn’t get lunch at school anymore because his lunch debt was too large.

“A ver, nuestro hijo no puede pagar por comida en escuela,” you remembered pleading, trying to start the conversation for you to work as well. But no use.

All he would reply with was, “Isaac tiene dieciocho años. Tiene la capacidad por trabajar como nosotros trabajábamos cuando teníamos cinco menos años que él.” A disheartening sentiment. You couldn’t imagine how much more tough it’d be to have more kids with a man who finds it okay to have his kids go through the same thing you both went through.

And that’s why you need to keep taking birth control, a voice in the back of your head reminded you. You nodded. You hadn’t just gotten a job to at least pay for your son’s school meals, you had to pay for birth control to make sure you didn’t have any more kids. After your first kid, Laura, your husband would talk about having three, four, five, even more kids with you. But after your second kid, Isaac, you started doing the numbers; more kids would start bankrupting you. So you had taken necessary action back then too; take birth control without your husband knowing. And since you couldn’t afford a fertility clinic visit, you could reasonably sew the idea that one of the two of you had become infertile. But, money was running dry and you hadn’t taken your birth control in a while. You’re sure you were still fertile enough for more children, but you couldn’t bring more children into a house that could barely keep the lights on.

You had arrived thirty minutes early since you had given yourself so much time to avoid any kind of potential lateness. But there was still fifteen minutes before the interview would start and it’d be weird to come in now. You just stared at the sign to pass time. Marty’s Pencil Store in an ugly font on a fading board. The store matched the aesthetic of its billboard, old and out of its time. It was under a highway as the city had built around it and the other stores with it at the time, though it had outlived them. You remember doing basic research on the company, and it seemed to be a local mystery how it stayed open after all this time. You personally noted that the location wasn't very inviting to customers, the parking lot was partially a space for parking and partially a camp site for the homeless with a couple having knocked on your window to ask for change in the past fifteen minutes.

You thought of your daughter too, the worn look of the sign contrasted with your daughter’s job’s aesthetic. Neon sign, self-opening doors, wealthy area, a cellphone store for the future. Laura had landed herself a pretty nice cashier position with her high school diploma and now had a handsome boyfriend to go with it. You couldn’t help feel a sting of jealousy that she had a better life than you, but you guess it was good to have given such opportunities to her.

Another knock on the window from a homeless person took you out of your thoughts. You didn’t even pay attention to what they were saying as you checked the time and saw it was now nine minutes until your interview. Coming in now would make you seem less weird while still seeming on time. You opened your car door, locked it behind you, and walked through the door.

Everything was so bland in this store. You could’ve sworn you stepped into a monochrome tv show. Everything was some shade of gray, the only real color was from the yellows of the pencils that lined the shelves. The air felt stagnant and one sniff revealed that the store had the smell of faint cleaning chemicals, like it was barely used but maintained some cleanliness. The store was also eerily quiet after the bell went off when you entered besides that all you could hear was the buzzing of the fluorescent lightbulbs above and the muffled sounds of homeless outside. You turned around concerned if the noise had something to do with your car.

“Don’t worry. We’re in mutual agreement that break-ins are unhelpful,” a voice from behind said in a monotone manner. You jumped a bit and turned but they just continued, “they don’t want us to call the police on their little hangout spot here and we don’t want our cars touched so we have an uneasy peace, plus we use a few other tricks...”

“Oh, that’s good... my apologies, I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Zoe Barrera and I’m here for an interview, I had gotten a call after sub-“

“Of course. Let me get Jacob. He’s the one conducting interviews today,” the odd man cut you off, before walking in large strides behind a counter and through a set of doors. A few seconds pass and an awkward-looking man comes out. He was a tallish lanky white man who had a noticeable slouch, a bulging Adam’s apple, hair that stretched to his eyes, and acne covering his face.

“Hi, I’m Jacob,” his voice was low and gravelly. You could probably guess this man was the same age as your son. He definitely had the same young adult hormonal tendencies as his eyes were glued to your breasts as he continued, “I’m an HR assistant and I’ll be doing your interview today, if you’ll follow me...”

He began to walk to the other side of the store, but you just stood there. You felt frozen. This man was checking you out? Your husband hadn’t even looked at your boobs that way in a decade, calling them “saggy flaps”. Were these “saggy flaps” worth looking at even under that ultra-modest turtle neck and suit jacket? Putting aside being checked out there was a nervousness that ran through you. This would be your first step into a new job and thus a new lifestyle.