“The Double-Count”

“Unfortunately, your loan application is declined.”

Angelica stared at the email. Her first year of university was set to begin in a week, but all her careful plans had come undone. Elena, her younger sister by a year, sat beside her on the bed.

Eight months prior, Angelica was awarded a well-earned scholarship to cover her entire university degree. The scholarship was well funded, and known for supporting determined, underprivileged students. For programs only available in certain parts of the country, this was the only way that some students would ever get their dream degrees. With only a week to go before moving, everything went wrong: the organization had accidentally awarded twice as many scholarships as they could afford, so half of the students were randomly selected, and the money vanished.

All those eager young minds, each with hopes and dreams, thrown into chaos with the flip of a coin.

Undeterred, Angelica moved into high gear, appealing the decision, applying for government and private student loans, and even to other scholarships. All but the private loan needed weeks or even months to process her application, so that was a dead end, while the Bank of Columbus was quick to decline her for not having full-time employment for a minimum of two years. Was she supposed to find a full-time job at sixteen in hopes of getting a student loan later? Since their mother had passed away five years ago, grandma took care of the bills, pushing them to study hard.

Elena too had tried her best to help her big sister, but in the end, all the doors seemed shut. Now they sat and stared at the screen, dejected, and drained.

The silence was interrupted by the creaking of the front door. Grandma Marta called out as she entered the apartment, “Girls, I’m back.”

Elena answered, too quiet for her voice to carry, but she made no effort to try again. Marta could be heard moving around, changing from her walking shoes to comfortable slippers, and removing something from the freezer to defrost in the sink for dinner. She poked her head into the room, cheerfully asking, “Any luck with the money?”

Both sisters looked at their grandmother, and slowly shook their heads. Grandma Marta, without missing a beat, nodded, and happily continued towards her bedroom. The girls looked at each other, their disappointment momentarily pushed aside by this strange reaction. Ever since Angelica’s plans began to crumble, grandma Marta had been as cheerful as ever, unconcerned with the stress of the last week.

Or so they thought.

Despite having shrunk a few inches over the years and being heavy set, her footsteps were always soft, even now as she came back down the hall, reappearing and carrying a large tin container of Tetley Earl Grey tea, with a small black notebook resting on top. The tin was a darker blue than the modern cardboard boxes of tea she bought at the grocery store, and everything was written in Spanish. The girls would one day learn that the tin was older than both of them combined and one of the few things she brought to Canada years ago.

“Make room, make room,” grandma said, gesturing towards the desk where Angelica had papers scattered in her efforts to find money. With the desk cleared, Marta turned to her granddaughters, “So, what did they say?”

Explaining all their attempts and failures did not take long, “The government student loan might have worked, but they take a few weeks to get back to me.”

Marta nodded and smiled, certain that her granddaughter had done everything possible with the little time she was given.

“You know, this is a great lesson,” she began, and both granddaughters looked up. “You did everything right: you worked hard in school and won that scholarship, but the rest was not your fault. You did not fail, my dear, life is simply unpredictable, and unconcerned.”

Angelica and Elena loved their grandmother, but a lecture was the last thing they wanted. Marta, having no plans to launch into a sermon about life, instead opened the notebook, its cover worn, and its spine creased from daily use,

“With tuition, books, moving and living expenses, and some money for fun, the cost for the first year is still around $20,000, correct?”

They nodded; the numbers fresh in their minds from days of scrambling. In fact, it was nearly thirteen percent less. Whoever created the scholarship’s sample budget had never been poor, not really. The recommendations called for dining out once per week and nearly daily trips to Starbucks, which over two semesters meant wasting nearly $2,500.

“Good,” she said, placing the notebook on the desk, “let’s get to work.”

She popped the lid off the tin, reached one hand in, and pulled out a handful of bills. Angelica and Elena’s eyes went wide as Marta straightened out the cash, all tens, twenties, and the occasional fifty. She licked the tip of her fingers and began flipping through the stack, counting silently to herself. In no time at all, grandma had finished.

“Seven-hundred and twenty dollars,” she said, bending down to write the number in her notebook before passing the money to Angelica. “Count this to make sure it's the same amount.”

“Grandma!” Angelica said, finally finding her voice, “Where did you get all this?”

“Count now, chat later,” she replied, pushing the money into her hands.

Angelica began counting, far slower than Marta, who had again reached into the tin and pulled out another assortment of bills. Once finished with the second set, she jotted down the amount and handed it to Elena, who began to count without being told, exactly as her older sister was doing.

Marta was well into a third stack of bills when Angelica finished double counting the first. Pausing her count, she looked to her granddaughter, confirmed that the amount matched, and made a small tick in the black notebook. She took the stack and placed it on the desk before returning to count.

The three ladies continued in this way, and when the task was finished, thirty-three stacks of bills were sorted on the desk in a way that grandma Marta could easily identify, each of a different amount. She began moving stacks onto one another, adding a few bills from the tin here and there, jotting down small adjustments in the black notebook as she went. When five large stacks remained, Marta nodded to herself and softly closed the notebook.

“$20,000,” she announced, taking several elastic bands from her pocket, expertly bundling the thick stacks of cash as if she had done a thousand times before. “The extra will cover the flight and some shopping.”

“Grandma, wait. Where did this come from?” Angelica asked, both excited but worried.

“You’ll apply for every scholarship you find, but no matter what, grandma always provides. Get your shoes on, girls, we’re going to the bank,” Marta replaced the lid of the tin container and disappeared down the hall as though no question had been asked.

Elena picked up one of the bill stacks, surprised by its weight in her hand. She had never held more than a few bills at once, and this was a strange sensation. Neither sister knew what to say, so they stood in silence, running their fingers over the oddities they held.

Neither knew who started sniffling first, but in moments they were overcome with tears of joy.

“Girls, are you ready?” Marta called from the front door, having put away the tin container.

The sisters smiled and wiped away their tears. In the kitchen, grandma Marta stood with a large brown envelope.

“Put it here,” she said. With the money tucked away, she placed the envelope into her purse.

Walking down the street, the sisters did their best to pry an explanation from their grandmother but were unable to glean even a single clue. When they began to repeat their questions, grandma Marta took out the black notebook from her purse, quickly examined a page, and then took charge of the situation.

“Listen, girls. I’m sure you have questions, but we have no time to waste, so I’ll make this quick,” she said, and both sisters waited eagerly for an explanation. “You see, I’m the world’s deadliest assassin, and-”

Elena and Angelica groaned and rolled their eyes. Whenever they touched on a subject that grandma did not want to discuss, she would not refute or ignore your questions, she would simply go off in this way.

“Why can’t we get a dog? I secretly have a lion, a tiger, and a bear under my bed, and they do not get along with dogs.”

“Why can’t you go to a party this weekend? I’m actually a centuries-old Vampire, and I need you to clean my coffin.”

“Why can’t we order pizza? Never heard of it. Go chop some carrots for dinner.”

Marta continued with this new story for a few minutes, even though both sisters had zoned out from the start, “…so I saved the Queen’s life, and she paid me with a beautiful crown, which I traded for a tin of cash down at the market.”

This not only distracted the girls, but it also filled the few moments they had to chat because there was truly little time to get everything done. Angelica was supposed to finalize the details of her move and be on a plane the next day, but everything grinded to a halt when the scholarship vanished. This week was meant to a buffer, but now she had the money, and nothing was going to stop her.

By mid afternoon, the three of them had visited the bank, deposited the cash, confirmed her spot with the university, and paid in full the first year of classes and lodging at the student residence. By the early evening they had also shopped for brand new clothes and shoes, with grandma Marta producing an assortment of bills endlessly from her purse.

Undeterred, each sister occasionally tried to bring up topic of the money, and grandma Marta would launch into a detailed story of love, conquest, and alien invaders. They eventually stopped asking directly.

Everywhere they went, Angelica and Elena whispered about where the money might have come from, but there was no time to flesh out their ideas. Despite their combined efficiency, there was simply too much to do, and in the blink of an eye, it was late into the evening.

Elena helped her sister pack, both laughing and enjoying their last night together. That same morning, they had all but given up hope, and now they were racing to the finish, having forgotten their earlier frustrations.

Early the next morning, far too early for anyone’s taste, Elena and her grandmother held hands at the terminal and watched the plane takeoff, as Angelica set off towards a brand-new adventure. They were sad to see her go, but also filled with joy.

Not one to give up, and not wanting to give into the sadness of seeing her sister leave, Elena turned to her grandmother as the taxi began to drive them home.

“So, about the money…”

Marta took a deep breath, but then reconsidered. Rather than tell a story of being a famous masked wrestler, she slipped the black notebook from her purse and handed it to Elena.

Elena grabbed the notebook in a flash, flipping through its pages. The columns of numbers were clear, but the words were neither English nor Spanish.

“Wait, this isn’t…what language is this?”

Grandma cackled with laughter, shrugged, and enjoyed the view outside her window while Elena tried to make sense of the black notebook. Frustrated, but also laughing, she gave up halfway and hugged her grandmother for the rest of the ride home.

“I’m going to find that tin, you know,” Elena whispered.

“Never in a million years, but try your best,” Marta said, a mischievous grin on her face.