But I’ve had woman after woman sit in my office at the resettlement agency and answer my questions about transportation with shame in her eyes. No one specifically asked me to invent more work for myself on weekends. These Congolese refugee women’s support groups were my doing, after all. I am sleepy, and I am missing Saturday brunch, but I’m glad these work hours will buy me out of some time during the week.

I am holding the littlest baby on the back steps and stabbing straws into successive juice boxes for the eager toddlers who have formed a queue. The sun starts to peer through the overcast sky. The volunteers are now in the backyard refereeing the older kids’ ball game. I put on my best hostess smile and thank them profusely for their patience. Soon children start to toddle in ahead of their mothers, shoes missing or on the wrong feet, followed by retired white ladies carrying booster seats and toys and looking frazzled. I am interrupted by text messages from volunteers telling me that the clients aren’t home or aren’t ready or don’t have a car seat the language barrier precludes them from coaxing the ladies to the car. I arrange the clementines on the table next to the store-bought croissants and juice boxes this has now become a ritual, though not a meditative one. I am at the Birdhouse, an old Victorian home in the Fourth and Gill neighborhood that has been repurposed as a community meeting space, and I am tearing open a mesh bag of Cuties.

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