I didn’t dare open it right there. I looked around. Two young guys passed by laughing and didn’t even look at me. A janitor dragged a broom further down. Still, I felt my back wet with nerves. I closed the locker, tucked the box into my grocery bag, and went to the women’s restroom. I ducked into the furthest stall, lowered the toilet lid, and put the box on my knees.
The metal lid creaked as I opened it.
The first thing I saw were bundles of cash wrapped in rubber bands. I ran out of air.
Underneath were two old bank books, a yellowed envelope with documents, a pair of gold earrings with a small red stone, and a medal of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The bills smelled of dampness, of being locked away, of years of fear. I touched one with the tip of my fingers as if it might crumble.
It wasn’t a soap-opera fortune. But to me, it was. I counted roughly, my head buzzing. There was much more money than I had ever had together in my entire life. Enough to fix the house. To start a small business. To pay for school. To breathe.
I felt like crying, but I held it in. I still didn’t understand anything. I opened the envelope.
Inside I found copies of a sales contract for an old plot of land, a receipt for the sale of two calves from years ago, a school notebook with accounts written in pencil, and a letter. That one was addressed to me.
“Maria:
If you are reading this, it’s because I’m gone and God wanted me to last long enough to let you get here. I gathered this little by little over the years. Some things from selling, others from saving harvests, others they paid me for land that I never wanted my children to sell off cheaply because they were drunks or lazy. It’s not stolen, and it’s not a sin. It’s mine from my work and your mother-in-law’s, may she rest in peace.
I didn’t leave it to them because money doesn’t fix what one didn’t sow. I gave life, food, and school to several of them as much as I could, and even then they forgot. I didn’t give birth to you, but you were the one who stayed. You were the one who cleaned me when it was shameful. You were the one who heard my stubbornness and didn’t throw me in a corner.
Forgive me for not telling you sooner. I was afraid they would hurt you or force you to share it. I love Tom, but he is soft with his siblings. And Rick has already been poking around the armoire for months. That’s why I wrote “not the armoire.”
What is here is for you and the boy. If you want to give anything to Tom, let it be because you feel like it, not because they force you.
There is another truth you must know and it weighs on me to take it with me, but it weighs more to keep it from you: the house where you live wasn’t properly settled on paper. Your husband isn’t the owner as he believes. The property taxes and the possession are still in my name, and there is an old will at the County Clerk’s office that they never picked up because Rick wanted it to disappear. I couldn’t move anymore to fix it. Go to the lawyer I’ve written on the back. He knows.
Don’t trust everyone.
Ernie.”
