"I've sold twenty-six," I said. It was twenty-six then.
"Twenty-six." She picked the toast back up, and put it down again. "Anca, how much money do you have?"
"Eleven hundred and something," I said. "In the credit union. In the savings."
The savings was an account at Crawford County Federal Credit Union that she had opened for me when I was seven, with my name and her name on it, because you could not have your own account until you were eighteen. It had had forty-one dollars in it for most of my childhood. Birthday money from Dad's mother in Kentucky, mostly. I had been riding my bike to the branch on Mary Street every few weeks since the first summer and handing cash and checks across the counter to a teller named Mrs. Pelfrey who kept a dish of butterscotch candies and called me the mower girl.
"I didn't know that," Mom said. "I didn't know you were depositing."
"You get the statements."
"I get the statements in the mail," she said, "and I put them in the drawer with the other statements, and I do not open them because there are not enough hours in the day to open the statements." She laughed, a little, and rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand. "Eleven hundred dollars. Holy cow. Holy cow, Anca."
"Eleven hundred and something," I said. "I need sixteen-forty by May first."
"You'll get it?"
"Mowing season starts in April. People put them out in April."
She came around the counter then and hugged me, which she did not do very often, not because she didn't want to, but because she was usually holding something, and that morning she was holding toast and her keys, and she hugged me with her elbows so she wouldn't get butter on my shirt. She smelled like the mint stuff they use at the office. "I'm proud of you," she said into my hair. "I'm really proud of you. I just wish you'd told me."