The Piggy Bank - 1930s (1202 hits)
Category: NoneLabels: short_stories, The_Dead
Rating: 2 on 30 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Axolotl (View user info) at 2006-11-30 11:20:38 EST
The quarter glinted half-buried in the snow, a spark of silver in a sea of dirty white, and Susan looked around to see if anyone had dropped it. She knelt down, huddling in her maroon winter coat, and plucked the coin from the curb, staring into the eyes of George Washington. Susan looked up once more to check if anyone had seen her take it, and with a quickly-pumping heart she stuffed it into her front pocket.
"Come on, Sue," her father said from the crowded Manhattan sidewalk. Susan turned to see her tall, stately-looking dad calling to her from the entrance to the movie theater. "You don't want to miss the show."
Susan always thought her father was so noble and prestigious, even among other men, and it wasn't just because he was her dad. He commanded respect, with his lined face, and calm, easy tone. Even so, things had changed in the last year. He used to wear suits and go to parties in the city all the time, and come home with records and dance with Susan's mother in the living room. Now he wore a beaten jacket and a flat cap instead of his black bowler.
"I'm coming, daddy," Susan said, clenching the cold quarter, taking pleasure in its iciness, making sure she could really feel it. Her father was standing proudly, next to a red-bearded street-dweller, holding a bottle of scotch and crumpled at the foot of the wall. She stopped cold, noticing the similarities between the homeless man and her father's dress, and growing slightly angry.
"Why don't any of these men go home?" Susan asked, pointing vaguely at the rows of homeless men lining the crowded street. "Nothing but old bums..." A despondent man forcing crackers into his hoary lips looked up, his eyes as cold as Susan's quarter.
"Susan, shhh..." her father said, putting an arm around her shoulder and leading her into the theater. "Some of these men lost everything, I don't want any daughter of mine to talk like that about them."
Susan said nothing, playing with a strand of her short blond hair as they sat down in the packed theater. The projector started.
The film was good, and Susan and her father stayed for the whole hour. It started with a raucous and raunchy Betty Boop cartoon, to the whoops of the young men in the audience, and Susan looked up to see her dad chuckling, his arms folded. Susan laughed too. Next was a newscast of goings-on in America and the world. Footage of deserted hovels in the Alabama countryside were interspersed with inner-city Boston and New York slums plagued with drinking, homelessness and heroin addicts. Susan drifted off, mildly perking up at a clip of Soviet soldiers marching in lockstep and a public service announcement called "The Dangers of Marihuana", and waited for the Bugs Bunny Technicolor she knew would be coming at the end.
Sue uncrossed her legs, taking off her jacket. It was a freezing January outside, but the body heat from the hundreds of people in the theater was stifling. Her dad laughed along with the rest of the people at Elmer Fudd having his face blasted with a shotgun, and looked down to see his daughter fondling the quarter she held in her hand.
"Susan, where did you get that?" her father whispered.
"I...I picked it up on the street," Susan said defensively. "It was buried, I made sure nobody dropped it. Honest, dad."
Her dad was silent. Up on the screen, Bugs Bunny frolicked around in drag. "Are you sure nobody dropped it? You're twelve now, I'm not raising any daughter of mine to steal from the homeless."
"I'm telling the truth, dad. Maybe it was a gift from God," said Susan.
"Then keep it safe. Hide it away somewhere where your mother can't find it, she'll use it to pay the electric bill I'm sure," he said. Susan looked at him, and saw that he was smiling. She smiled along with him.
The film was over, and Susan and her father walked out of the theater. Susan pulled the jacket tight around her again and said, "In school, Betty said her dad's in the Bonus Army, and—what's that?"
The crowd was "oohing" and "aaahing," gathered around a place at the wall. Her dad craned his neck in interest, and Susan pulled him along by the hand toward whatever it was the crowd was staring at.
"—lost it all, he couldn't take it anymore—"
"—wife and no kids, that's a relief—"
"—somebody call the police!"
Susan moaned in shock as she pushed past the crowd. A severed human hand lay at her feet, its muscles and tendons pouring out of the glove-like skin. Her eyes were drawn up and she saw a middle-aged man with broken spectacles on his face, lying on the ground in a soaking pool of blood. Some people were looking up the side of the high-rise and pointing, and others were pointing at the horrific sight of the blood-drenched wall, and the suit tore apart, his skull near crushed—
"Susan, come back," her father said, covering her eyes and leading her away.
"Dad, what happened?" Susan choked, nausea rising in her throat. "Why—why...did he do it?"
"Life insurance, I expect," her dad said disgustedly. "Lost it all in the crash, and wanted to...Susan, let's just go home. We'll talk later. Do you still have that quarter safe?"
"Yes," breathed Susan.
"Well, don't think of that man anymore. Think of your quarter, and the great things you're going to spend it on, all right?"
"I'm not going to spend it," Susan said defiantly. "I'll keep it safe in a jar, and have money, so I won't have to jump out of a window, ever. I'll keep it in the piggy-bank."
"You do that, then," Susan's dad said, grasping her hand and leading her away from the scene. They walked toward the Upper West Side, the police and ambulance speeding in the other direction.
***
Susan seized the quarter from the dusty ground and shoved it in her pocket before any of the other girls and boys saw. Her breath was shallow and she exhaled heavily through her nose, looking around her like a cornered dog. Her hands squeezed the metal, sweat beading on her white knuckles, staring at her friends as if daring them to say a word. They didn't notice.
Mrs. Sievers, being half-deaf, spoke in a slurred voice on the glories of the American Revolution, of the bullets at Bunker Hill, and how John Andre twisted on the rope as he hung in North Jersey a hundred and fifty years ago. In front of Susan was Becky, a beautiful girl with golden-blond hair and red cheeks.
Susan coughed; Becky's cough was worse. Her father had lost his job on Wall Street, and her entire family fortune. When she was younger, Susan used to play at Becky's house—more of a mansion, her family had been one of the richest in the town. The kids never talked about money before the depression except in fleeting childish tones, but it was common knowledge in the class that Becky's dad, like others, had taken lines of credit to invest without collateral, and lost it all when the bottom fell.
"Shh..." Tom said, his closed pale fist blocking his lips, eyes fixed on the deaf Mrs. Sievers, blathering onward about Yorktown. With the covert whispers of a trooper ordering a night attack, Tom called "Lizard!"
The girls gave sarcastic eye rolls and sighed sophomorically as the sixteen boys in the class began rapidly clicking their tongues, the immediate and fruitful noise bursting like typewriter keys over Mrs. Sievers' good ear. She paused her lesson, and the boys stopped, giggling to themselves.
Susan smiled, trying to hold in her laughter. Mrs. Sievers stared at the class for a long unblinking moment, and then continued on as if nothing had happened. The class only laughed harder, and Becky scoffed tritely at their immaturity. She wore a scratchy brown dress. Susan knew that her pretty clothes had been turned to food for their family.
***
The chalice glinted, the priest holding it aloft above his flaky scalp and intoning, "Introibo ad altare dei." Susan held her head high, eyes focused on the shaky man, black cassock spilling onto the floor over his thin frame.
Twenty-four young little Catholics stood in the nave of the church, primped by their parents and standing with stiff collars and high chins. Susan wasn't the only one without a communion dress; she might have been wearing a simple white frock, but Becky's wasn't even white. Its ugly shade of puce had elicited hissed remarks from the cattier girls, but the priest had said nothing.
"Let them come forward," the priest said, and the two lines of girls and boys shuffled forward slowly and without conceit. Susan thought of what the priest had said, about suffering the little children, and wondered what that could possibly mean, her mind on the syllables as the priest held the Body before her eyes, and Susan replied amen, taking in the host. Susan turned swiftly, the taste of paper and grain in her suddenly dry mouth, and took the wine from the cup.
Susan drank. The blood, or wine, or whatever she had been taught, touched her tongue, and she made a face, turning back to her family. Her dad remarked the grimace on Susan's face and chuckled, while her mother eyed her sternly, eyebrows arched.
"You're in the club now, kid," Susan's father said, kissing her on the forehead. "Your mother and I are very proud of you."
"We're very proud of you, Susan," Susan's mother agreed.
When the family got home, the walk having taken a quarter-hour, her father stated that as long as they had hot water, he was going to make use of it in the shower, while Susan's mother took her aside into the master bedroom. Wondering if she was going to be scolded for making a face at the Blood of Christ, Susan walked on eggshells down the bare hallway. The master bedroom was cramped, fitting only the bed and a bureau dresser; Susan's mother opened the dresser and pulled out a crumpled note.
"Susan," her mother said. "This is for you."
Susan reached out her hand and took the five dollars in shock, taken well aback by the sum. It was one from before the crash; the bill was bigger than normal, with the words The United States of America encircling Abraham Lincoln's face as though he was sticking his head out of a porthole.
"Put it in your little piggy bank, and save it up, it might be handy some day. You are still saving, aren't you?"
"Yes, mother, thank you, mother, I am, thank you,"
"I'm very proud of you, Susan," said her mother, blessing the room with a rare smile. "Don't tell your father, now, you hear? He'd use it...he'd take it away."
Susan held the beat-up downtrodden bill and ran back to her room, her shoes clattering on the hardwood. She threw open the door and sunk down to the hem of her quilted bed, holding the bill to her breasts while lunging under the box-spring mattress for her bank. Feeling the cold porcelain of the white piggy bank, Susan stuffed the folded bill through the slit and let it fall to the bottom. Susan shook the bank softly before replacing it back deep under the bed. Eighteen dollars and twenty-six cents now. She had made a fortune.
***
The door opened and slammed, and a droplet of blood hit the tidy floor; Susan leaned forward to look around the parlor wall to see her father, his hands bloody and swaddled in gauze.
Susan's mother met him at the door, holding his split hands in hers, gazing up into his ragged, lined face. "What happened...?"
"I got the job,"
"You didn't!"
"I did."
"Oh, that's wonderful, love," she cooed, clutching his hands tighter; he winced. "But what of your hands?"
"Nothing,"
"What do you mean, nothing?"
"Nothing happened, love, I got the job," he answered, looking older by the very second. Susan realized she was unconsciously fingering the two nickels in her pocket as she listened to her parents.
"I'm sorry," Susan's father said.
Susan's mother loosened her grip on her husband's hands and backed up slightly, looking down at the dry trickle of blood congealed into a dark brown film on his wrist.
Susan added the money up, her mind concentrating fiercely, staring at the blank space on the wall where the wireless had been. Ten more cents made, that would be twenty-five dollars and eighty-one cents. The coins clicked together, but she held them muffled, keeping them secret.
"I'm sorry, I just don't know what we're going to do," Susan's father said, collapsing into the rickety kitchen chair. Susan got up, and silently walked into her room, coins in her palm.
***
Susan walked through the door, eyes adjusting to the dim interior of her apartment, and walked across the kitchen into the parlor. She had only a scattered handful of pennies in the entire week, but she wanted to add it to the piggy bank, at least to stop carrying it on her, and not to worry about it.
"How was school, Susan?" the voice of her mom called, echoing down the hallway.
"I didn't see you there, mother," Susan replied, strolling into her bedroom. "It was fine."
Susan eased herself down to the wooden floor, grasping blindly under her bed, the tips of her fingers brushing porcelain. She reached a little further, and pulled the piggy bank from the bed, laying it on the floor in front of her.
The pig's complacent smile was shattered, and a gaping abyss was laid in where its face should be. It looked as if someone had bashed the poor pig on the ground. Susan feverishly looked inside the piggy bank—it was empty. The money was gone.
"I'm so sorry," her mother said, suddenly walking into the doorframe. "But...Susan, try to understand...we could go without heat for the summer, but they were going to cut off the electricity..."
Susan dropped the couple pennies into the shattered mouth of the pig, listlessly dropping her hand to her lap. It wasn't as if she was ever going to buy anything with the money anyway. Her chest tightened inexplicably, and a sharp hint of tears burned afresh in the corners of her eyes. She probably wouldn't have gotten anything with the money anyway. Susan choked, replacing the broken pig under the bed, the six pennies clattering friendless in the jar. Her mother sighed and hugged Susan, clasping her hands in hers.
When her father came home, Susan carefully eyed his footsteps across the kitchen from the next room, watching him sit down at the table, drumming his fingers in concentrated circles on the flimsy table. Her mother spoke light conversation with him, asking him about his day, telling him of hers; he said no word to Susan.
As her father sat blindly at the table, Susan wished with all of her heart that he would say a word to her. He stared into his coffee, not acknowledging her presence. With a slight sob, Susan got up and walked brusquely into her bedroom, and closed the door.
She had failed him, she knew. While the family barely had enough money to eat and pay bills, Susan had nearly thirty dollars hidden away, an illicit secret. Susan slammed her fists down onto the bed and buried her streaked face in the quilt, breathing awkwardly and shuddering. But please, let him speak to me, she begged an invisible Dei.
The wood creaked outside the door, and her mother's rosy voice breathed through the slats, "Susan, your father always knew about the bank. He knew of it all along."
Susan stopped, her sobs eking away as she thought about what her mother had said. Her mother's footsteps faded away, unwilling to enter into her daughter's space of privacy, and Susan stood up, brushing away the droplets of salt on her face. She thought.
She pushed her door open and walked out, making her way down the hall into the kitchen where her dad sat listlessly at the table, depressed and dejected. He would have looked bored if not for his pained, stiff movements and twitching fingers.
Susan exhaled audibly, and leaned over and hugged her father tightly around his neck. He patted her arm, mouthing something Susan couldn't hear. Susan loosed her gritted teeth and buried her nose in her father's hair.
User Reviews
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2008-09-28 14:12:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Wow. I was watching a documentary on, of all things, Warner Brothers Productions; they spent a lot of time talking about the era from which you've drawn this story. A very sad and strange time.
Well done.
Submitted by lungfish (user info) at 2006-12-03 03:45:24 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Long, but i liked it.
Ew...that didn't sound good.
Submitted by Amontillado (user info) at 2006-12-03 02:32:30 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-12-01 23:44:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
no problem beauxjizzle / slowlyrotting etc. Glad to have an old troll back, I thought you were Koolmang for a bit.
Submitted by beauxjizzle (user info) at 2006-12-01 16:14:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
i must apologize for my cold hearted dickery on your last post.
this was good.
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-12-01 14:37:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
attn retards
Submitted by spontaneous (user info) at 2006-12-01 06:43:10 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
-2DIE
ONLY CAUSE I HATE 2
WOOOO
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-11-30 17:36:32 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
it's appreciated
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-11-30 17:36:23 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by DonovanMD (user info) at 2006-11-30 14:25:49 (#)
Ranking: 2
Wow, this was awesome.
-----
thanks. this might be my opus on Uber.
Submitted by EatMeCompletely (user info) at 2006-11-30 15:07:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by DrogoRoch (user info) at 2006-11-30 11:48:51 (#)
Ranking: 2
I really do like your stuff. I may not always review it but I always read it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Same here. Good job on the calc test.
Submitted by DonovanMD (user info) at 2006-11-30 14:25:49 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Wow, this was awesome.
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-11-30 14:12:31 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Too bad The_Yellow_Dart assassinated me in Ubermadness ;(
Submitted by HotWillie (user info) at 2006-11-30 13:17:37 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by wijormiclat (user info) at 2006-11-30 13:11:24 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I didn't read it but... uh... cool picture!
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-11-30 13:07:09 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
test
kekekekeekekekkekekekekeeekeeke
kekekekeekekekkekekekekeeekeekekekekekeekekekkekekekekeeekeeke
kekekekeekekekkekekekekeeekeekekekekekeekekekkekekekekeeekeekekekekekeekekekkekekekekeeekeeke
kekekekeekekekkekekekekeeekeekekekekekeekekekkekekekekeeekeekekekekekeekekekkekekekekeeekeekekekekekeekekekkekekekekeeekeeke
Sorry if that fucks up the page, I saw Rad1101 do the same thing on a post a while ago.
Submitted by BLITZKREIG_BOB (user info) at 2006-11-30 12:58:57 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-11-30 12:52:20 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by The_Cyst_Master (user info) at 2006-11-30 11:22:51 (#)
Ranking: 2
Fuck you and your "words."
----
Fuck you and your big piece.
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-11-30 12:52:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Thanks everyone, I've been reading a lot of James Joyce lately, I have to say I love his style of writing, a lot of influence on me.
By the way, I most definitely owned the calculus test.
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2006-11-30 12:49:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
wow...
this is awesome.
Submitted by TigerLilly (user info) at 2006-11-30 12:31:37 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Axolotl (user info) at 2006-11-30 12:24:05 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
arrrgh fuck calculus test in 30 seconds
Submitted by hour_man (user info) at 2006-11-30 12:12:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by JMG114 (user info) at 2006-11-30 12:08:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Great, great stuff.
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2006-11-30 11:52:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by ih8u2man (user info) at 2006-11-30 11:50:43 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Another drop by the Axeman.
Submitted by DrogoRoch (user info) at 2006-11-30 11:48:51 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I really do like your stuff. I may not always review it but I always read it.
Submitted by St_Jimmy (user info) at 2006-11-30 11:47:05 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I read it. Very nicely done.
Submitted by spontaneous (user info) at 2006-11-30 11:28:53 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I didn't read it, but I like peener so +2
Submitted by EhyehAsherEhyeh (user info) at 2006-11-30 11:27:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
hmm. yeah.
Submitted by The_Cyst_Master (user info) at 2006-11-30 11:22:51 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Fuck you and your "words."