"What's in your wallet?"

published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend, December 10th, 2010 as "How much cash do you have on you?"

“Do you have any money on you, Vin?” my sister asks me. She doesn’t need any cash. She’s just checking up on me, like any good older sister would.


Isn’t that funny how, even though I’m 44 years old, in the presence of my sister who is two years older, I can instantly revert to my status as The Baby of the Family: the one who needs to be checked up on.


I’ve always been her pet project. I was her first charity case when she was 16 and I was 14. The first job my sister had was as a cashier at a grocery store. She was making the big bucks, with minimum wage being $ 3.35 an hour. By working every chance she wasn’t in school, she could sometimes bring home paychecks that exceeded $100. That was big bucks.


She worked at a store called Bi-Lo, which proudly advertised itself as “Bi-Lo Quality Foods.” The names of the stores used to crack up my cousins who would visit from New Jersey. Everything about the South would crack them up. “Ha, ha,” they would roar with laughter, “Who wants to buy low-quality foods?” The humiliation of living in such a backward place as South Carolina could only be heightened when we drove past the “Piggly Wiggly.” They had never heard of a stupider name. And yes, I’m allowed to say “stupider.” I grew up in rural South Carolina. Remember?


My sister would buy me circus peanuts at the end of her shift. I loved those gigantic, overly orange, super-sweetened fake things. They even tasted good if they got stale, if ever I could leave them alone long enough to get that way. I come back to reality.


“Oh, yes – actually, I have $15!” I say with a measure of triumph in my voice, knowing I just aced this particular test. This is vastly more cash than I normally have on hand, because it’s so much easier just to swipe and pay for things, and then reckon with a single bill at the end of the month.


My sister rolls her eyes. “No, really. Do you have any money on you?” she asks in exasperation. I think she means money with a capital M.


What am I going to need money for? I am in the hospital, waiting for my husband to regain consciousness, and at most, I say to his intubated and IV-laden body, “I’m just stepping down the hallway to go get a cup of coffee, okay?” I say this in an abnormally loud voice. Is it because I want him, somewhere deep below all the medications and tubes, to hear my voice and make a recovery that would be fitting for the final four minutes of a made-for-TV drama? Or is it because I want the medical staff in the ICU to hear and know that their patient, who is the sum of all their readings and measurements and charts, is my husband, and I would not normally just walk off and leave him without saying where I’m headed and when I’ll be back. “I’ll be back in five minutes, okay?” I again say too loudly. At most, I will need two dollars for the coffee. So fifteen dollars can last a week. Besides, they take cards at the hospital canteen.


My sister starts fishing around in the bottom of her handbag. “Here,” she says as she starts counting large denominations into my hand. In all, she presses two hundred dollars into my hand and refuses to take it back or to be thanked for any of it.


“Now, you always, always, should keep a hundred dollars with you – just in case.” So one of the hundreds is for spending – just in case. And the other hundred is for keeping, also just in case.


I had to laugh, remembering the time last year when I had to dispose of an hour and a half after school before a classroom potluck dinner. I planned to take my two youngest who attended school with me to a corner McDonald’s and have them eat and tackle their homework.


Inside, I saw the signs indicating that the debit/credit card readers were down. We would have to resort to primitive methods, like using cash. I had just unloaded my children and their homework folders, and I wasn’t about to reverse the process as minutes ticked away. I fished about in my purse. All I could come up with was $1.54. They each got an apple pie and they shared a cup of water.


It wasn’t exactly the fries and chicken nuggets they were hoping for, but on the bright side, they appreciated what they got, had more time to get all their homework done, and actually had an appetite for the potluck dinner.


You would think I would have learned my lesson about needing to carry cash. But like with many things in life, this was an ambivalent lesson. It worked out.


And don’t worry about my carrying too much cash around. I don’t have a hundred dollars in my purse.