I knelt in the gravel in my bandana and rolled.
I’d bought penny wrappers at the bank Saturday morning. The bank teller, a young woman named Kayla, looked at me strangely when I asked for two thousand of them.
“Two thousand?” she said.
“I have a lot of pennies,” I said.
Fifty pennies to a roll.
One thousand eight hundred thirty rolls.
You learn a rhythm. Stack ten. Stack ten. Stack ten. Stack ten. Stack ten. Slide them into the paper. Fold the ends.
Noah figured out that if you stacked them in groups of five on a strip of masking tape, you could count faster. Lily figured out that if you hummed while you scrubbed, it went quicker.
She hummed the same song for three hours. A song from a cartoon about a dog who drives a fire truck.
The shoeboxes on the card table filled one row at a time.
I’d gotten them from the shoe store in town. Twenty-five rolls fit in each box, lined up like little copper soldiers.
By Saturday night, we had eleven boxes.
Part Six: The Cheese Sandwich
Saturday night, after supper, Noah asked me something.
We were sitting on the porch steps. The pile was smaller now, though not by much. The kids’ hands were red and wrinkled from the water. Mine were raw. My knees were scraped and bruised from kneeling in the gravel.
Noah was quiet for a long time. Then he said, “Mom, what happens when your lunch money runs out?”
I looked at him.
“What do you mean, honey?”
“At school,” he said. “When your lunch account runs out. What happens?”
I thought about it. I’d paid Noah’s lunch account on time every month since kindergarten. I’d never really thought about what happened when it ran out.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Why?”
He looked down at his hands.
“There’s a kid in my class,” he said. “Mason. He got the cheese sandwich this week. Three times.”
“What’s the cheese sandwich?”
“It’s what they give you when you don’t have money,” Noah said. “It’s just bread and one piece of cheese. In a plastic bag. And a carton of milk.”
He picked at a scab on his knee.
“Everybody can see it,” he said. “Because it’s on a different tray. A white one. Everybody else gets the green trays.”
I didn’t say anything for a while.
“How does Mason feel about that?” I asked finally.
Noah shrugged.
“He doesn’t eat it,” he said. “He just sits there. And Tyler Beckman calls him Cheese Boy.”
I closed my eyes.
“Did you say anything to Tyler?” I asked.
Noah shook his head.
“I didn’t know what to say,” he said quietly.
He looked at the pile of pennies in the driveway. Shining in the porch light. Half of them clean now.
“Mom,” he said. “Can some of the pennies go to lunch?”
Part Seven: What the Money Was For
I looked at that pile for a long time.
That nine hundred and fifteen dollars was supposed to be our cushion. My first co-op paycheck wouldn’t come for two more weeks. Jake’s check covered the mortgage and the truck payment and not much else.
That money was supposed to buy groceries. Gas. Noah’s next inhaler refill, which our insurance didn’t fully cover yet because my new plan hadn’t started.
I’d done the math in my head a dozen times that weekend.
But I kept thinking about something else.
I kept thinking about Dale’s face when he taped that pay stub to the bucket. Paid in full. Count it.
I kept thinking about my children on their knees on a picnic blanket, scrubbing motor oil off pennies with toothbrushes.
I kept thinking that I didn’t want to buy groceries with money a man had thrown at me.
“Noah,” I said. “How many kids in your class do you think get the cheese sandwich?”
He thought about it.
“Mason,” he said. “And Riley. And sometimes Kaden. And the twins, the Larsons.”
He thought harder.
“I don’t know about other classes,” he said. “But probably more.”
Lily had been listening from inside the screen door. She came out in her nightgown with her stuffed rabbit.
“Can the pennies buy pizza?” she asked. “For the cheese kids?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it.
“Maybe,” I said. “Let me make a phone call on Monday.”
Part Eight: Mrs. Fogle
Monday morning, before work at the co-op, I called the school.
Merrill has one elementary school, Washington Elementary, a long brick building on the north side of town. I asked the secretary who handled lunch accounts.
“That’d be Mrs. Fogle,” she said. “In the cafeteria. Let me transfer you.”
Mrs. Fogle had been the lunch lady at Washington Elementary for thirty-one years.
I’d met her once, at a kindergarten open house. She was short and round, with silver hair in a bun and glasses on a beaded chain. She called every child “honey” and remembered every one of their names.
She picked up on the fourth ring.
“Cafeteria, this is Edna.”
I told her who I was. I told her I wanted to pay off some lunch accounts.
She was quiet for a second.
“That’s very kind of you, honey,” she said. “But I can’t give you names. Privacy rules.”
“I understand,” I said. “Can you tell me how much is owed? For second grade?”
I heard her typing.
“Second grade,” she said. “Let’s see. Twenty-three students with negative balances.”
“Twenty-three?” I said.
There are only seventy kids in the whole second grade.
“Times are hard, honey,” Mrs. Fogle said quietly. “Fuel prices. The paper mill cut a shift in the spring. A lot of families are behind.”
She typed some more.
“The total for second grade is nine hundred eight dollars and forty cents,” she said.
I stood in my kitchen holding the phone.
Nine hundred eight dollars and forty cents.
Out of nine hundred fifteen.
“Mrs. Fogle,” I said. “I’d like to pay all of it.”
She was quiet for a long moment.
“All of it?” she said. “Honey, that’s a lot of money.”
“I know,” I said. “But there’s something you should know first. About how I’ll be paying.”
I told her.
The buckets. The motor oil. The driveway. The dish tub. Noah and Lily on the blanket. Eighteen hundred thirty rolls.
When I finished, she didn’t say anything for a long time.
Then she said, “Oh, honey.”
That was all. Just Oh, honey. But the way she said it made me sit down at my kitchen table.
