Untitled 2026 oil on loose canvas by Bella Wu
I’ve got a story for you: my Mama—your grandma—never trusted banks. She never opened a bank account. I begged her to get one, but she wouldn’t budge.
“Only I know what to do with my money,” she would say.
She was as stubborn as anything. She didn’t pay her taxes either, but that’s a story for a different day.
I never knew where she put her money. She was like a magician. You gave her a little Christmas money, and poof, it was gone somewhere. And when she needed it, it would show up right in her pocket. She didn’t carry a big purse or have deep pockets either. At first, I thought she kept money in her pants pockets, but I’ve done her laundry before and never found a single cent. She was tight-lipped about money. With mama, you didn’t discuss finances. The moment someone talked about money, she’d ignore you or shut you up. The only time I ever heard Mama curse was when I asked to borrow some. She called her own child a son of a bitch over her money. Towards the end of her life, though, she finally had to talk about money. Mama said there was nothing to talk about. She had already written her will, and that was that. I was suspicious. Knowing Mama, there had to be some kind of catch.
I said to myself, “I’ll have to tear down her whole house to find her money,” but that was blasphemy.
You see, Mama kept her house spotless because she loved that house. Even though it was small, she never wanted to leave. I never understood why.
She just kept saying, “Because I raised you in it.”
Right after Mama died, I read her will front to back. Even though she willed everything to me, the only asset listed was the house. No mention of cash. I searched every nook and cranny. I couldn’t even find a penny in the couch cushions. I finally had enough and took a hammer to the living room wall. I thought, “What in Jesus’ name are you doing?!” but then some voice inside me said, “Where else would it be?”
I spent a whole day tearing that house to the bone: the living room where we played board games, the kitchen where Mama made her dumplings, the bedroom where we had countless fights. And could you believe it? I was still finding nothing. It made me mad as hell.
Every time I swung that hammer, I screamed, “WHERE! IS! IT!”
By the time it got dark out, I was so frustrated that I was sobbing. I hadn’t even cried when Mama died, mind you.
Then it hit me. You see, I’d always been bad with money myself. The moment I had some in my hand, it was gone the same day—sometimes within 30 minutes. Mama must’ve been the same way, but she must’ve been better at hiding it. I looked through that whole house and found nothing. I had already taken her furniture to the dump. There was nothing left in the house I grew up in, the house your grandma loved because she raised me in it. And I remember looking at all the destruction I had done and feeling my heart break. That was the saddest I’d ever felt in my life.
Make sure that doesn’t happen again, okay?
Nathan Nicolau is a writer and educator based in Charlotte, NC. His fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared across numerous publications. Find out more about him at nathannicolau.com.