The Blue Piggy Bank*
“It’s money! Always money! That’s your alibi. Always!” That was my mother in one of her jealous fits whenever my father would come home late from work. My mother wouldn’t buy my father’s excuses that he was asked by his boss to stay at work, ostensibly to beat the deadline for an ad campaign. He was an account executive, a good one who could quickly sell ideas to his clients — banks mostly — but a lousy one when my mom was the client.
“Besides, you reek of alcohol. And when did you start smoking cigars?” That was my mother again.
“Honey, I had to invite this client to the fanciest bar in town. You don’t expect me to drink orange juice in bars, do you? And my client is a critical account! Big account, lots of money, you see!”
I didn’t understand a word. I was barely seven years old then. All I knew was that my mom wasn’t happy. She was crying. I didn’t see much of my father. He would be gone when I woke up in the morning and would be tucked in bed when he got home. I didn’t understand then why my mother would make so much fuss about my father being late for dinner, or for not being there with us at all. He would be away on weekends, too — earning money — so I thought. That was what he would tell us, his kids, anyway.
“So that you could have this bike you always wanted for Christmas,” he would tell me with a big smile, trying to excite me with the prospect of finally owning and riding that bicycle I saw in the only sports store in town.
“And money, too,” I was always aware of the power of money at that young age. I would consistently get coins from my uncles and aunties for Christmas, which they would tell me to keep in my blue plastic piggy bank.
Everything was vague. I wondered why I couldn’t spend my coins now instead of waiting until tomorrow, revealing my innocent view of money and the adult priorities I didn’t yet understand.
“Use for something that would make you happy.” Oh, yes, that bicycle would make me happy. I didn’t have to wait for Christmas. That would make me happy. Then I thought of my father. I could give my father all the money in that piggy bank, so he didn’t have to stay late at work or be away on weekends. So that my mom wouldn’t be mad at him and wouldn’t have to cry anymore. That would be the ultimate happiness. Oh, what money couldn’t do!
How naive children could be!
And cruel!
“Your father has a mistress,” my eight-year-old cousin told me once when we quarreled over a toy I wouldn’t let him touch. “I heard my mom talking about your mommy and daddy,” he added. He was evil, my cousin. I wanted to scream at him. That was a bad thing to say. I knew what a mistress was. She was this villain on a particular TV soap everybody loved to see before noon-time. She would make the heroine’s life miserable. Everybody hated her. She was pretty, though, I thought. But she was a home-breaker, our babysitter insisted.
.
“You’re just jealous because your father has no money to buy you a bicycle for Christmas,” I retorted. He hit me in the face, and I punched him back. I guess I was so mad I couldn’t feel the pain, and I did not want to cry.
“Junior, come here right now! “Junior was my cousin’s name, and that was my aunt, his mom, yelling at him to get inside the house. She was visiting my mom, her younger sister. “What are you telling your cousin, huh?” I should have felt vindicated when my cousin got a good spanking from my aunt, but the fact that he did not cry meant he was telling the truth about my father. He was maybe a congenital liar, but if he wouldn’t take back his words, then I knew he was serious. I knew it. I was like him, not a liar, though. Just tough.
When we left our house and moved to our grandfather’s, and stayed there for so many days and nights, was the time I realized my cousin was not lying after all.
“Oh, that woman has so much money.”
“Her parents have the money, not her.”
“But, of course, she would inherit all that money, sooner or later.”
“After all, she’s an only child, and she gets what she wants.”
“Oh, stop crying, you are so stupid to let him go like that!”
“Oh, the poor kids!”
Some of the talks I remember being discussed at home, day in and day out, ever since we moved into my grandfather’s house. Talk, talk, talk, and nothing but talk about that woman. About my father, too, of course! And the money would always be a topic. I did not understand why. They did not make sense. “Are we poor now? Is that what worries you?” I wanted to ask my mother. I wanted to know about the whole affair, but I could not. Children were not allowed to know about the sensitive issues grown-ups discuss. That was so. Period!
I hated my mom for crying all the time. I wanted to cry, too, but “boys don’t cry,” I remember my father telling me. It was not fair, though. I was just a child. Children cry all the time: in the church, at the Dentist’s, or when getting vaccine shots. I wanted to cry because I miss my father. Mostly, I wanted to cry because I was worried my mother had no money to buy that prized bicycle my father had promised me for Christmas. But that would be just for a fleeting moment. I still have my blue piggy bank with a thousand coins in it.
Who was that other woman? I wanted to know. Would she like me at all? Does she have more money than what I have in my blue piggy bank? I kept the questions to myself, and I forgot about them as time went by. Or maybe I didn’t care.
I did not get my bicycle at all, but it did not hurt much. Soon, I gave up waiting for my father to come home. He never came back; no news at all. Rumor had it that he and his mistress moved to America. America? I was only a child then, but I had always associated America with money. I heard people around me talking all the time about how you can find money all over the streets of America. Tales they repeatedly heard about migrant workers who would send money to their families back home. Wow! I wanted to go there one day, I told myself.
That was many years ago; I do not feel anything anymore for my father. We never saw him again. He would write from time to time, and my mom would be crying once more. Grandfather would be furious and would utter expletives. Then no more letters.
Funny, but I never hated him despite all the lies he told me. I grew up with just a mother making ends meet — of course, with a bit of help from her father — taking care of five kids. Sad as it may sound, I grew up thinking that money could change many things. No doubt, I told myself. I did not doubt it a second when my mother stopped crying. She said she had to work to earn money.
Did she ever miss my father? I’ve always wanted to ask her. I wanted to ask what made her stop crying. Was it because I gave her my blue piggy bank, telling her she could have all the money in it? So that she could find my father and tell him, “I have enough money now, will you come back to us?”
Mother just smiled at me. I wondered what my father would have told her.
*Reprinted from ECHO, Quarterly of the IAEA Staff
No. 222, Summer 2004 Illustration by Ulrike Herwig, IAEA Staff