Excerpt from The Unsettled by Ayana Mathis, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Ava's eye twitched. She was so tired she could have lain on the floor. Miss Simmons led them on a tour of the facility. The TV room is locked at nine p.m. The door to the right is one of five family bathrooms, each with five shower stalls, sinks, and toilets. Was Miss Carson all right? She should come for a mental health assessment at one p.m. tomorrow. She should come for her general intake at ten a.m. They'd finish the tour tomorrow. The boy looked a little tired. They descended a half flight of stairs and went down a long corridor to arrive at room 813. Miss Simmons produced a key from the pocket of her blazer. No drugs. No alcohol. No men. Then she was gone.

The walls in room 813 were dingy mint green. High rectangular windows faced a yard of trampled grass, beyond which a parking lot was just visible across a busy street. Ava's sandals stuck to the gummy linoleum. The room smelled of dirty mops and all the bodies that had lived in it: kids with flaky rashes and years of women giving their armpits a quick rub in the little sink in the corner—­how many women over how many years?—­and dirty clothes and an ammonia stink over all of it. Toussaint stepped forward. Ava put her arm across his chest to stop him from walking farther into the room. A wooden desk stood at the back with a couple of plastic hard-­bottomed chairs alongside. A metal shelf and mirror were mounted on the wall over the chipped, shallow sink. There were two single beds on metal frames pushed against opposite walls. A half-­dead roach on the mattress. Toussaint leaned against her arm.

"Sit on the chair, honey," she said. "Don't sit on that mattress. Don't touch anything. We can't stay here. We're not staying here."

After a few hours, the traffic on Tulpehocken slowed. Ava and Toussaint had not moved from the chairs by the battered old desk. A baby cried somewhere down the Glenn Avenue hallways. A wall clock ticked into the silence. Ava looked up to check the time only to discover that the hour hand quivered over the 10 like a fluttering eyelid. Ava climbed up on the chair, then onto the desk. She grabbed the greasy clock with both hands and tugged. "Come on," she said out loud.

Toussaint jerked awake and looked around red-­eyed.

"Ma?"

Ava climbed down. Toussaint sat with his head leaned on his palm, but his elbow kept slipping on the desk. "Ma," he said. "Ma, can I please lay down?"

"Soon, honey."

"I feel sick, Ma. I think I need to lay down."

"I know, baby. I know. We'll lay down soon."

The next minute he was sprawled across the desk again. Ava bent over him and rested her cheek on his head. His hair was damp. He did need to lie down. But not here. Only there was nowhere else to go. She had, they had, no place and so they were in this place instead of a park bench or a subway station. She leaned on the desk to steady herself. Maybe we could . . . a thought leapt across her brain like a cat over a wall. It might have been a good idea, the one that could save them, but Ava was too slow to catch it.

Toussaint yelped like he was being kicked in his dreams. Okay. Okay. Ava stood. She didn't have anything to clean the mattress so used both sets of sheets to make the bed that didn't have the roach. Her back ached, but she managed to heave Toussaint up from the chair with both arms and guide him to the bed. She draped him over the sheets like Abraham's Isaac.

Ava angled her chair toward the bed to guard her son against anything creeping out of the corners to crawl over him or lay its eggs in his ears. She shivered with exhaustion but as soon as she closed her eyes, she felt legs skittering on her ankles. The overhead light buzzed and the room was suddenly bright white and washed out, like an overexposed photograph. Another vision coming down on her. Or the Holy Ghost or her pop's spirit streaming through the fluorescent light on the ceiling. Whatever it was calmed her. Ava rested her head against the wall and after some time, she slept.

Excerpted from The Unsettled by Ayana Mathis. Copyright © 2023 by Ayana Mathis. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.