Two weeks later, and we’re at the bank again,
again in line, again waiting as the tellers call up
servers still in uniform, shop owners, secretaries
whose makeup had faded early in the afternoon,
and who—away from anything that required
they maintain an appearance—are not concerned
that their hair is disheveled, that their skirts
are askew, that the band aids, bloodied from
the blisters on their ankles, are flaring from
the backs of their heels. And there are construction
workers, men in grease-stained blue jeans,
paint-smeared shirts, steel toes they shuffled
across the tile, as slow and impatient as my father.
He looks over. They look back. And I understand
from their silence that even if there’s mutual respect,
there’s also a wariness of the logos on their chests,
of the DH, LG, JD Incorporated, letters that mean
nothing to me, but that to my father equate
with a new Home Depot, Lowe’s, with contracts
their bosses vied for, and that if they got
led to at least another month of work. Slowly, the line
moves forward. My father peeks inside his envelope,
makes sure his name is still on the check,
and I look up, wonder if he’s worried the teller
will ask him for some ID he doesn’t have, proof
that he earned the money he’s requesting in cash.
And maybe this is why he’s begun walking into banks
the way the elderly do, mindful of the crowd and commotion,
of the bankers sitting at their desks, of an institution
with computers that hold so much information,
and with believing, as my grandfather used to claim,
that nothing can beat the knowledge that when
you went to bed, what you worked so hard for
was tucked beneath the same place you slept.