Twenty Dollars

Faith Miller

Every week an envelope arrives in my mailbox with a twenty-dollar bill inside.  Never more.  Never less.  No note.  Post-marks from all over the country.  Twenty dollars is not enough. Even before the pandemic it wasn’t enough.

There are five of us: four children and one woman, who is me.  The children are nine, five, three and seventeen months.  Three of them are girls.  The oldest one, Abbygayle, is not mine, well not mine by birth, but I am all she has.  The others: Taylor, Tommy, and Taryn, I did give birth to.  I am still breastfeeding all of them because I still have milk and twenty is not enough.

A bag of mandarins on sale, two cans of black beans, a box of Giant spaghetti pasta, 52 ounces of orange juice, a box of elbow pasta, Pasta Sauce, Wonder Bread, Giant Concord Grape Jelly, Cheddar Cheese Pringles and one Hershey Bar.  That’s twenty dollars and everything but the jelly was sales priced.

Everyone is hungry.  Abby and Taylor get free school lunch and I have trained them to steal, we call it “borrowing” as if that makes it okay, toilet paper from their school’s bathrooms.  Even if they get caught, and they have, it’s toilet paper and they’re kids and they explained it was only borrowing.  And what was the school gonna do? Ban them from the restroom?

Weekends are the worst.  When I had a car we’d sometimes turn up like unwanted relatives at church suppers, but he sold my car.  Or hid it.  Or crashed it.  Or did something else that I don’t know about.

He pays the electricity, the water, the mortgage.  We are never cold or left in the dark.   Twice a year he swoops in with new clothes for the older girls.  Like he was Santa or the kind of father who spoils his kids instead of the kind of father who starves them.

“I can’t trust you with money, Jane,” he told me after he’d told me there’d be twenty dollars every week rain or shine come what may.  He told me that was plenty.  There were only two children then and Tommy was a baby, but it still wasn’t enough.  And it was less once Taryn was born and when Abby came to live with me after her mother ended up back on drugs.

I can sort of understand that inclination: reality is just so terrible.  So terribly hard.

Every so often a case of beer will appear on the sagging wooden porch, a fifth of Jack, a bag of weed.  I know then he’ll be back soon: I am not a mean drunk, I am docile, sweet, the way he likes me.

He, yes, he does have a name, but I don’t like it, and I don’t like him, and I don’t like saying his name.  It’s worse to me than the c-word or the n-word or all the other bad words combined.  “Twenty dollars is just enough,” he said.

Almost enough to keep us from starving.  Certainly enough to keep me from leaving, because where could I go when I had nothing?  No money.  No car.  No outdoor clothes.  No shoes.  No phone or cell-phone or computer.  My family and one-time friends had all written me off long ago.  “Stay away from him, Janie,” my dad had said and my mom and my step-father and step-mothers one and two.  “He’s bad news,” said my assorted siblings, half-sisters, and step-brothers.

But the heart wants what it wants.  Tommy pulls my nightgown down, demanding to be nursed.  He is voracious.  His teeth are sharp.  He will grow up to be like his father, telling women things are enough when they aren’t.  I can feel it in my bones and my aching breasts.

During the pandemic he brought a cat home on one of his semi-regular visits: an orange tabby with brilliant green eyes.  The children had loved him.  Twenty dollars is not enough for cat food let alone visits to the vet.  I hope the cat found a better home, one with food and care as well as love.  I tell the children that’s what happened and I can see them wondering if they, too, should seek out such a home.

I don’t think he’d care.  I’m not sure he’d notice.   He never mentioned that cat, never asked after it, not once.

Abby says, “My teacher asked if you or my dad would be coming to the parent-teacher’s conference this year.  She said they want to speak to you.”  She looks uncomfortable.  Her blue smock dress turned top is tight across her chest.  There is dirt on her cheek.  The soap at their schools is in dispensers so they cannot borrow it. I can’t afford soap any more than I could afford the pet food or that I could afford bus tickets for all of us out of this town.

Twenty dollars is not enough.

Abby and I look down at my slippers, one of which has a sole that flaps, look at my stained red and white housecoat, her eyes continue up to my chapped lips.

“Don’t worry, Mama, I told her no.”

I don’t remember when Abbygayle started calling me Mama instead of Jane. I don’t mind.

For dinner I will heat up some pasta, one small cup each, with sauce.  For dessert one of those little squares of chocolate.  I wonder if the children have rickets or scurvy.  I don’t know what rickets or scurvy look like and twenty dollars does not buy health care.  Or Ubers.

In the garage, that does not garage a car, there is an old lawn mower, some clippers and a huge freezer.  In season, and sometimes out-of-season, he hunts and sometimes the freezer is filled with venison.  Then I use some of the money to buy oil or margarine so I can cook it up.  Then the children’s stomachs are full and so is mine.

The freezer is empty now, but there was whiskey on the porch so I know he will be coming by for one of his visits.  To check I haven’t seduced the mailman or murdered his children and run off.  I used to like whiskey with cola, but twenty dollars doesn’t buy soda, so I open the bottle and drink a glassful neat.  And then a second and part of a third before I put the spaghetti on to boil.

Abby is helping Taylor with her homework, which is coloring a picture of a house that looks nothing like our house because it is nice looking and Taylor has given it pink “paint” and drawn smiling parents looking on approvingly as a fantasy Taylor eats an apple.

“Beautiful honey,” I say, “Is that me?”  I point to the woman, who seems to be wearing a pink dress that matches the house.   

Taylor nods. “And Daddy.”

“Where are my shoes?” 

Taylor grabs her drawing and looks down at my feet.  “You tell me,” she says, sounding more like my mother than my five-year old daughter.

“Shush,” says Abby and I feel my eyes water.  I am coming to a boil just like my store-brand bargain pasta.

More whiskey, I think, more whiskey I want, but then I won’t be able to nurse and the children will go to bed even hungrier.

*

He comes the next night when I am half asleep, the bottle of Jack half-empty.  He is looming over me, frowning.  “You’re a mess, Janie, and here I am in my best clothes ready to take you dancing.”

It’s a joke, not a joke, on our first date he took me dancing, two-stepping in a self-consciously honky-tonk bar.  He is a sharp dresser, he always has been, black jeans with a crease down the middle, a chambray shirt in sky blue, a color he knows is my favorite.  He hands are so clean, his nails look like he’s had a manicure, his breath is sweet with the smell of weed and his eyes are deceptively warm and kind.  “What’s it going to take?”

“Take?” I say, siting up, moving Taryn off my lap where she’s fallen asleep.  “Go off to bed now, honey.”

She starts to say something, but toddles off, ignoring him, her baby-radar on full alert.

“To get you presentable.  Jeez.”  His tone is steel light as he sits down beside me, hand reaching into his shirt pocket for a spliff.  “Any of the whiskey left?”

“A bit.” I hope that’s true.  I have been nursing myself on it all day.

“God, you’re a wreck.”  His tone has sharpened, but he passes the spliff to me and I inhale.  “Little soap and water, bit of shampoo, bit of me time and you could still turn heads.”

I take a deep hit, before passing it back.  “Soap and shampoo aren’t in the budget, hon.”  I NEVER say hon, but it’s better than saying his name and the whiskey and the weed are working their magic.

He laughs.  “Give us a kiss.”

He’s Irish, this man, although he’d lived in the US so long his accent has nearly vanished.  He came here as a boy. I met him when he was a bad man and now he’s worse.  I kiss him like I loved him though because if I don’t the twenty dollars might vanish.

Or I might.

He fucks me hard.  In my pussy.  In my ass.  In my mouth.  He doesn’t touch me with his manicured hands.  He doesn’t speak: not lies about love or even encouraging c’mon babies as he used to when we were new to each other.   It hurts.  The not talking hurts; the not touching hurts; and the sex hurts.  He is gone when I wake up, the twenty-dollar bill on the bedside table.  And, somehow, that hurts too.

Two boxes of rice, orange juice (because that will keep us from getting rockets!), two cans of tomatoes, a pound of onions, Cha-Ching White Bread, Food Lion Apple Jelly, Colgate Toothpaste (a splurge, but a must), and a Nestle’s Crunch Bar.  It seems like less than last week.  Every week seems like less.

I have less milk today too, because he insisted on suckling at my breasts, like I was a sow and he was the baby piglet.  Tommy strikes me in frustration and Taryn just wails as Taylor and Abby take a sip of orange juice each and share a piece of the cheap bread, toasted with the leftovers of last week’s jelly.

The sun is out and I sit on the porch watching Tommy and Taryn who sit on the ground watching an earth worm.  I wonder if they would like it for a snack.   They don’t play anymore: they are listless and hollow-eyed despite my milk.  My hair is so brittle, I think it might all fall out.  It won’t matter, it will be better, more proof that no one else will ever want me like he does.

A car pulls up: poorly painted hot pink with a muffler so loud we all cover our ears. A woman get out, tentative smile on her face: her teeth are bad.  “I’m Gina,” she says.  “Abbygayle’s mother.”  That is unnecessary because the two look so alike I knew it at jump.

Gina, Abby’s mother, looks better than I would have expected.  She is not scratching her arms or face.  She looks better nourished than I do: her hair is lank, but looks clean.  She looks over at Tommy and Taryn.  “Yours?”

I nod.

“And Declan’s?”

Hearing his name makes me jump as if I’d been prodded with something electric.  “Yes.   His.”

Gina looks sympathetic.  “Is Abby here?”

“School.”

“Of course!”  She lightly slaps her face.  “Silly me.”

Taryn has crawled into my lap and I cuddle her as a mother should.  “Do you want some water?  There’s really nothing else.”

“Christ,” Gina says, but I know she believes me.  We look into one another’s eyes and we know.  “I’m all right,” she says.  “It took me a long time to find you.  Couple years.”

I nod.  “You’re taking her?  Abby?”  I keep my face closed; my tone flat.

She nods.  “It’ll be okay.  I’m clean now, fourteen months, and my mom…she would have taken care of Abbygayle but Declan took her…. thank you, thank you, Jane.”

I nod again.  “She’s a good girl.  It wasn’t a problem.”

“I’ll wait in the car,” Gina says, after we’ve both silent for a long while.  “Does she have a suitcase or….no…. I’ll just…just…”

“Okay,” I say, wishing that he had left me another bottle of whiskey or some weed.  I don’t say goodbye.  Taylor comes into the living-room where Tommy is drawing on the wall and Taryn is whimpering in her semi-fugue state.

“Abby left with that lady,” Taylor tells me.  “Is she coming back?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe.”  Taylor starts crying, but I don’t move to comfort her.  I can’t move.

She reaches out a grubby hand, holding a grubby bill.  “The lady said to give you this.”

It’s another twenty.  I think: a pound of butter, a bar of Ivory Soap, a pound of hamburger, a pack of my favorite Little Debbie Brownies, Cha-Ching Peanut Butter, a gallon of sweet tea, a box of penne pasta and a single perfect Red Delicious Apple.  I think what a difference that money would make with only four mouths to feed.  Four mouths instead of five.

I fold and unfold the bill, then stuff it into the pocket of my housedress.  Twenty dollars isn’t enough.