"She was four," my mother said.
"She's not four now."
"What comes on Wednesday?" I said again, louder, and my voice did something embarrassing in the middle.
Abuela put her hand over mine on the table. Her hand was warm and dry and rough as a cat's tongue. "Your father worked, mija. Every job he had, he paid into Social Security. A little bit out of every check. And because he paid in, when he died, the government pays you. Every month. Until you're eighteen, or until you finish high school. It's not charity. It's not welfare. It's his. He earned it, and he left it to you, the way you'd leave somebody a house. Twelve hundred and fourteen dollars, every month, in your name."
I thought about the envelope with the eagle. NOEMI ARRIAGA. C/O JOANNA VAIL. Oh, that's just government stuff about your dad. Paperwork. It's boring.
I did the math. I couldn't help it. I'm a kid who does the math. Nine years. A hundred and eight months. A thousand dollars a month, roughly, averaged out. I got to a hundred thousand dollars in my head and then I stopped, because the number didn't mean anything. It was like trying to picture the distance to the sun.
I looked down at my foot. The bare one, on the cold linoleum. The red line across the toes.
"There's no money," I said. I didn't say it to anyone. I just said it. It was the thing my mother had said, two weeks ago, holding my shoe. Tape it.
"Noemi—" my mother said.
"You said there's no money."
"There isn't! There isn't any money, there's never any money, that's what I'm trying to—" She stopped. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. When she took them away, her mascara had smeared in two gray half-moons and she looked like someone I didn't know.