The Passbook in the Pink Purse

I looked out through the window at Maddie. She was sitting on the back steps with her cards still in her lap, her tiara still on, watching her daddy pick up plates. She had not let go of those cards since he handed them to her.

I understood something, watching her. If I left that money in a drawer in my house, Joanne would ask about it. Maybe not that week, but soon. There would be phone calls and hurt feelings and somebody would tell me I was keeping a grandmother from her grandbaby over five hundred dollars.

And if I let it sit there long enough, I would start to wonder if I was wrong. That is what happens in families like ours. The person who says no ends up being the person who has to apologize.

I did not want it in my house. I wanted it in her name, somewhere nobody could talk their way into it, and I wanted it done before supper.

I work the drive-up and the front window at a branch of the same bank over in the county seat, about twenty minutes from our house. I have opened more children’s savings accounts than I could count. I know the paperwork by heart.

For a child Maddie’s age, it is a savings account in her name with a parent on it. You need the child’s Social Security card, a birth certificate helps, and you need the parent’s photo ID. Our bank still offers a passbook for the kids’ savings club, a little blue booklet, because the old-timers on the board like it and the kids love it.

It was a quarter to three. Jan was on till five.

I went to the hall closet and got down the fireproof box where we keep the important papers. Maddie’s birth certificate was in the envelope from the hospital. Her Social Security card was behind it, still in the little paper sleeve.

I put them both in my purse with my driver’s license. I did not change my dress. I thought about it. I stood in the bedroom doorway and looked at my closet and thought, no. I am going like this.

I went out the back door and sat down on the step beside Maddie.

“Hey, birthday girl,” I said. “You want to go open a bank account?”

She looked at me. “Right now?”

“Right now,” I said. “It’s your money. Let’s go put it where it belongs.”

Her whole face changed. She stood up so fast her tiara slid down over one eyebrow. “Can I keep my crown on?”

“You can keep your crown on,” I said.

Pete looked up from the trash bag. “Go on,” he said. “I’ll finish out here. Then I’m going back over to Mom’s.” He said it with a look I had not seen on him before. “I’ve got some things to tell her that she needs to hear sitting down.”

Maddie sat in the back seat the whole drive with the cards in her lap. She did not open them. She did not count them. She just held them with both hands, flat on her knees, like they might blow away.

“Mama,” she said, about halfway there. “Did Grandma Joanne need the money?”

I did not know how to answer that. I did not know the answer myself, not yet.

“I don’t know, baby,” I said. “But it was given to you. When somebody gives you a gift, it’s yours. That’s how gifts work.”

She thought about it. “Even if Grandma’s sad?”