Alicia Black’s four-year-old daughter, Rain, chats with her, trying to speak over the phone conversation her mother is also having. Black keeps up the two conversations while driving through rush hour traffic after working a shift at a factory in Milwaukee, where she makes lead acid batteries for cars and trucks and marine batteries for submarines.
Black sends her daughter to childcare three days a week because it is all she can afford. It has led to an intensely complex and fragile high-wire act to look after her daughter while keeping her job. While Black works day shifts, her husband works night shifts at the same factory. Her mother-in-law looks after their daughter on days when there is no childcare.
