I started the engine and drove back toward the highway, the pain in my joint rising to a steady, hot ache.
The next morning, the sky remained a flat, metallic grey.
I parked in the gravel lot of a commercial strip center in Glen Burnie. The sign above the door was bright red and yellow, reading cash advance and personal loans.
The glass door was heavy, and I had to wedge my crutch against the frame to hold it open.
Inside, the air smelled of stale carpet cleaner and printer toner. A woman sat behind a thick sheet of plexiglass, typing on a computer that had a dusty monitor.
“I need a five-thousand-dollar personal loan,” I said.
She pointed to a stack of clipboards on the counter.
“Fill out the front and back,” she said. “Bring your last three military pay stubs and your military identification.”
I sat in an orange plastic chair and placed the clipboard on my lap. The pen was attached to the board with a metal bead chain.
The questions on the form asked for my unit, my commanding officer’s name, and my monthly housing allowance.
I filled in every line. My handwriting looked small and tight.
The woman behind the glass called my name ten minutes later. Her name tag said Brenda.
“We ran your credit,” Brenda said. “Your score is high enough, but because you do not have a co-signer, the interest rate is twenty-eight percent.”
“Twenty-eight,” I said.
“That is the standard rate for unsecured medical loans,” she said. “The monthly payment is three hundred and forty-two dollars for twenty-four months.”
I did math in my head. That was over eight thousand dollars in total for a five-thousand-dollar loan.
“Is there any other option?” I asked.
“You can bring in a parent or a spouse to sign,” Brenda said. “That drops it to twelve percent.”
I looked at the yellow linoleum floor. I thought about the notarized car contract on my mother’s dining table.
“I do not have a co-signer,” I said.
Brenda printed three copies of the contract. The paper was warm from the machine.
“Sign at the red arrow on pages two, four, and five,” she said.
I picked up the pen.
I signed my name on the payday loan, mortgaging my future for the right to walk.
The front door of my apartment did not latch right unless I gave it a hard pull, but that afternoon I left it unlocked. I sat on the edge of my hand-me-down sofa, staring at the blue payday loan paperwork on the coffee table. My right knee was a hot, throbbing weight that required both hands just to lift and reposition.
A heavy boot scraped against the welcome mat outside. Edward did not knock before he turned the brass knob and pushed the door open. He wore his grey work shirt with the name patch cut off, leaving a frayed rectangle of blue threads over his pocket.
He did not look at my leg. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a thick, legal-sized white envelope. The paper was smudged with dark, heavy crescent marks along the edges where his thumbs had pressed.
“You still need five thousand,” he said, keeping his voice down as if the neighbors were listening through the drywall.
“I signed the contract,” I said. “Twenty-eight percent interest. I have the cashier’s check right here.”
Edward walked into the kitchen, his boots loud on the linoleum. He set the grease-stained envelope on the counter next to my toaster.
“You only need forty-two hundred from them now,” he said.
I picked up my crutches and stood up, leaning my hip against the doorframe to keep the weight off my torn ligament. My watch read four minutes past three.
“What is in there, Edward?”
“Eight hundred dollars,” he said. He did not look up from the sink where he was trying to wash his hands with dish soap. “Take the other loan down to forty-two. It saves you three hundred in interest over the first six months.”
The water ran cold and loud against the stainless steel. I hobbled over to the counter and picked up the envelope. The paper felt heavy, thick with twenty-dollar bills that smelled of gasoline and old paper.
“Where did you get eight hundred dollars on a Tuesday?” I asked.
“I had some savings,” he said.
“You do not have savings,” I said. “You told me last week you were behind on your truck payment.”
Edward grabbed the dish towel and rubbed at his knuckles, trying to erase the dark lines of grease embedded in his skin. He did not make eye contact.
“I cleared out some things from my bay at the shop,” he said. “Stuff I was not using.”
“Your tools?” I asked.
“Just some duplicates,” he said. “I can always borrow what I need from Carl or Mike if a big job comes in.”
I looked at the black smudges on the white paper. A professional mechanic did not borrow tools, not if he wanted to keep his bay.
“You cannot work without your own set, Edward.”
“I have enough to get by,” he said, turning his back to me to hang the towel on the oven handle. “The knee is what matters. I need you walking, Carla.”
I counted the bills inside the flap. Forty twenty-dollar bills, all worn and soft at the corners, smelling of a metal cash drawer.
“Our parents bought a forty-five thousand dollar boat,” I said.
“I know what they bought,” Edward said.
“They have the money,” I said. “They are just holding it back to teach me some kind of lesson about my military pay.”
Edward picked up his car keys from the table, the brass ring clicking against his pocketknife. He looked toward the small window that faced the gravel parking lot.
“They do not have it, Carla,” he said.
He did not wait for me to ask what he meant. He walked out the front door, pulling it until the latch finally clicked into place.
By eight o’clock that evening, the kitchen was dark except for the amber light on the microwave. I sat at the table with the yellow legal pad, calculating the interest on forty-two hundred dollars instead of five thousand. It was still a mountain, but the peak was slightly lower.
I had the cashier’s check from the payday lender in my desk drawer, ready for the morning. The eight hundred dollars from Edward sat in the kitchen cabinet, tucked behind a box of tea bags.
The phone on the counter vibrated, the screen lighting up with my mother’s name. I let it ring five times before I picked it up.
“Carla, honey,” Beatrice said. Her voice was thin, the way it always got when she was calling from the passenger seat of Arthur’s car. “We were just talking about your schedule for tomorrow.”
“My check-in is at six in the morning,” I said.
“We have that lunch with the HOA board at noon,” she said. “But your father says he might be able to drive by the clinic afterward to see how the recovery is going.”
“The clinic is off-base,” I said. “They do not allow visitors in the recovery bay.”
“Well, we want to make sure you have everything you need,” she said. “We just want to put this family friction behind us.”
“I have the money,” I said.
The line went quiet for three seconds, long enough for me to hear the hum of the tires on the highway on her end.
“Your father is very glad to hear that,” she said. “He knew you would figure it out. You always were the practical one.”
“I had to sign a predatory loan, Mother.”
“We all have to make sacrifices, Carla,” she said, her voice dropping into that soft, instructional tone she used for bank tellers and grocery clerks. “Your sister had to take out a commercial line for her boutique, and she did not complain.”
“Diane is not facing a permanent limp,” I said.
“We will talk when you are feeling better,” she said. “The doctor said you should avoid getting worked up before the anesthesia.”
She hung up before I could tell her not to call back. I set the phone face down on the laminate table.
At five-fifteen the next morning, the taxi dropped me off at the outpatient surgical center in Glen Burnie. The lobby was empty except for an elderly man sleeping in a vinyl chair near the vending machines. The air was cold, smelling of floor wax and laundry detergent.
A nurse in blue scrubs called my name at a quarter to six. She led me back to a small cubicle divided by yellow privacy curtains.
“Change into the gown, opening in the back,” she said, handing me a plastic bag for my clothes. “Leave your watch and your boots in the locker.”
I kept the white envelope in my hand. When I lay down on the gurney, I tucked the grease-stained paper under the thin pillow.
“What is that?” the nurse asked, returning with an intravenous pole.
“My brother’s savings,” I said.
She did not ask another question. She took my left arm and tapped the vein until it rose, then slid the needle under my skin.
The surgeon, a tall man with grey hair cut as close as a drill sergeant’s, stepped into the cubicle three minutes later. He pulled back the sheet to look at my swollen right knee, marking the skin with a black felt-tip marker.
“We are going to tighten the lateral ligament,” he said. “You will be in a brace for six weeks, then three months of physical therapy.”
“I need to be back on duty in thirty days,” I said.
“You will be behind a desk for ninety,” he said. “Let us get you prepped.”
The nurse attached a small plastic bag to the intravenous line. The liquid was cold as it entered my arm, a sharp ache that traveled up to my shoulder.
I reached under the pillow and felt the outline of the forty bills. My fingers closed around the paper, holding the smudges of grease against my palm.
“Count backward from ten,” the nurse said.
“Ten,” I said.
The yellow ceiling tiles began to blur, the fluorescent lights stretching into long, white ribbons.