2: 2
2.
The private room went silent all at once.
It was Grandma who had spoken.
Eudora Salazar stood in the doorway, leaning on her cane, her gray hair combed flat and neat, her cloth shoes caked with mud.
Nancy Cox's face changed fast.
The woman who'd been crying her heart out a moment ago now went hard.
“Mom, what are you doing here? Didn't you say you weren't well enough to make the trip?”
Grandma looked at my swollen face, her fingers tightening on the cane.
“Zoe got into college. I'm her grandmother. Can't I come?”
The maternal grandmother swept the peanut shells off the table.
“You came, fine, but why bring up a bankbook? Today is a happy occasion.”
Grandma ignored her and dug an old envelope out of her cloth bag.
“When Joseph Salazar died, the factory compensation was split into two shares. One for Nancy to live on, one for Zoe's schooling. The neighborhood association and the factory workers' union were both there. It was written down plain as day.”
Nancy shot to her feet.
The chair legs scraped across the floor, harsh and grating.
“Mom, have you gone senile in your old age? Zoe was six when Joseph died. If it weren't for me, do you think she'd have lived to see today?”
“Lived to see today, so you could beat her in front of everyone.”
Grandma's voice wasn't loud, but it pressed down over the whole table's reek of liquor.
Warren Cox set down his glass and gave a little laugh.
“Now, ma'am, that's not right. My aunt hitting her own daughter, that's the natural order of things.”
“No one asked you to speak.”
Warren's face darkened, and the maternal grandmother slapped the table at once.
“Old lady of the Salazars, don't think you can push the Cox family around just because we've got no one to stand up for us. Your son is dead, Nancy has kept faith all these years, and you still have your eye on the money?”
The relatives started in with their coaxing.
Not at Nancy.
They closed in around Grandma, telling the old woman not to make a scene, saying it wasn't easy for a child to get into college, saying money matters could be settled in private.
In the confusion Nancy pulled me out into the hallway.
One of the restaurant's lights had gone out, and half the wall lay in shadow.
“Zoe Fox, what did your grandmother tell you?”
“Nothing.”
“Don't play dumb.”
She gripped my chin, her thumb pressing into the spot she'd just hit.
The pain went white behind my eyes.
“You've had your eye on that money all along, haven't you? Let me tell you, it's long gone. Feeding you, your schooling, tutoring, buying you clothes, which of those didn't cost money?”
I thought of the school uniform in my closet washed pale, of the winter in my senior year when the seams of my cotton shoes had come apart.
“Mom, I never asked you for that money.”
Nancy stared at me like she was staring at a thief.
“It had better stay that way. And when you get to college, don't get too close to your grandmother either. She's got one foot in the grave, stirring up trouble between us, her own mother and daughter.”
At the end of the hallway, Grandma came out steadying herself against the wall.
She saw my face, and her eyes went red.
“Zoe, come stay with Grandma a couple of days.”
Nancy blocked me.
“She has to go take care of her student loans tomorrow. No time.”
“What loans?”
Grandma froze.
“What about the money her father left her?”
Nancy sneered.
“You're so capable, you pay for her, then.”
The words were barely out when she grabbed my hand and slapped that hundred dollars against Grandma's chest.
“I paid her back for those ten slaps today. If the Salazars have any shame, don't come crying poor in front of me again.”
Grandma was shoved back half a step.
The old envelope slipped from her hand, and out of it slid a yellowed sheet of paper.
On it was my name, and an amount.
Two hundred thousand.
