Her first self-coerced thought was of Nathaniel and needing to be responsible for him. She was compelled to perform her newly delegated responsibilities of guardian despite not really knowing what they should consist of. This role of guardian, as she saw it, consisted of the same cooking, shopping, and cleaning she always did plus maternal functions that varied with each woman like checking on him at strange hours even if, fettered in language barriers and stumbling about in her illegality, she might not know what to do if something were really wrong. Resenting the fact that this had been thrust upon her, she nonetheless was able to drag herself out of bed to see if he was okay for the maternal instinct to attend to the young during a storm was in the collective consciousness of all female fauna. She knew that the true challenge would be for her, who had no family or friends in this country, to perform this maternal role without caring for him inordinately. She put on a bathrobe and snuck down the hall to his door where light slid under the crack like an urgent note. He was chatting with one of his Internet friends, seeking an affinity with those acrimonious others who construed themselves as being abandoned and neglected but hid it in cynicism of all other matters. But to her who knew nothing of chat rooms or anything in particular about computers the boy was simply writing a report for a class and so she was hesitant to knock on his door and tell him to go to bed. Hearing the pecked tapping of the keyboard, she imagined the sliver of light at her feet as a computer printed note that said, "Mind your own business, Betty, and go back to bed"; and, smiling from an amusing end to her ambivalence, that was exactly what she did. From her bed, her lair (if she could call it hers), she ruminated about what had happened to her recently: Gabriele having picked her out of the homeless shelter from the other strays; the proud and sagacious confidence, if not hubris, which Gabriele possessed in bringing her into this home without even asking her to forfeit her passport; the loyalty generated from such trust; fear that the ringing of the telephone was the attempted connection of immigration authorities; barely getting around on the crutches of the English language, which she had ineptly cobbled together from scraps; the fear of the six and sometimes seven day a week servitude in this remote home diminishing what little chance she, a homely 22 year old, might have of creating her own family; this fear motivating her to get a cheap efficiency downtown although she was rarely ever there; and how the imposition of taking care of someone else's child was a calamity waiting to happen.