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A mixture of dead leaves and sleet blew down the lonely street, stinging hard against Rachel's back. She hunched her shoulders farther into her thin coat, trying to keep warm. A lone car rumbled past, one of its tires hitting a puddle of melted sleet, and sending a sheet of freezing water towards Rachel. She shied from it, but still felt the splash of droplets, soaking through her coat, through her dress, stabbing cold needles of chill into her skin.

She once again held her coat closer, and headed up the cold sidewalk. She could feel the cold stone through her thin-soled boots, its chill numbing her feet. She hurried towards home.

'Home' -for lack of a better word- was a tiny apartment in Chicago. Nestled above a small grocery store and a liquor store, the three-room apartment housed Rachel, her little brother, Nick, and her mother and father. She reached the grocery store, and went in. The shelves were nearly bare, and lacked much. The Depression had hit even here.

Winding her scarf from her neck in the blissfully- comparatively- warm indoors, Rachel smiled at the grocery owner. "Hello Mr. Neal. Sorry about the floor. I got hit by splatters from a car."

Mr. Neal- a tall, wizened man- stared at her. "You'll clean it up." the remark took the form of a command. In absence of rent, work in his store would do just as well. Rachel knew better than to argue. "Yes sir." she headed as quickly as possible to the door that led to the stair.

Once on the stairs, she breathed a sigh of relief. First the store, then the street, then Mr. Neal...and now, home. A blessed bit of cheer in an all too horrible world. She hurried up the dreadfully cold stairs, regretting she had taken off her scarf. The moment she opened the apartment door, she was enveloped in a hug from Mother.

"Hello dear! We were beginning to think you weren't coming!" Rachel stared up into Mother's face- horribly thin, yet cheery, a beautiful smile curving over it. Dark brown hair, limp from exhaustion, but neatly pinned up behind her head. Rachel touched her own brown hair, cut short barely two months earlier. She still regretted that now, in December.

Mother gently took the can Rachel clutched, tugged off her coat, and pushed her towards a chair. "Sit. You look tired."

Rachel, looking at her mother, bit back a "So do you" that was forming on her lips. No need to make the woman feel bad. Something was cooking on the stove- a pitifully tiny pot with a bland-looking (and smelling) soup in it. Nonetheless, Mother tried

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