She mailed me one clean shirt before every interview

Dear Delyara, After leaving prison, I owned two shirts, both too worn for job interviews. My childhood friend Aisha lived three hours away and could not afford to visit often. Whenever I had an interview, she mailed me a clean ironed shirt in a padded envelope with a return label inside. Blue for the warehouse. White for the hotel. Gray for the council position. I was rejected seven times. Each time, I washed the shirt, mailed it back, and told her not to send another. She always did. On my eighth interview, I got a maintenance job with the local school district. Today, three years later, I was promoted to site manager. I mailed Aisha the same white shirt, now too small for me, with a note saying, “It worked.” She called laughing and crying. She said it was never the shirt. She was wrong. The shirt carried more than fabric. It arrived each time as proof that one person still believed I should keep showing up in rooms where my past entered before I did.