He took it. He held it up to the light. He turned it over. He looked at the picture. He looked at me. He looked at the picture again.
The picture was from three years ago. I’d had my hair done for it. I was wearing my blue church dress and my pearls. I looked like a nice old lady.
Now I looked like a nice old lady who’d been rolling around in a garden. Which I was.
“I’ll need two more forms,” he said.
“Two more? For forty dollars?”
“A utility bill. A passport. Something with your address.”
“Young man, I live four blocks from here. On Elm Street. The yellow house with the roses.”
He set my license down on his side of the glass.
He didn’t slide it back.
“Ma’am,” he said. “We have to be careful with people like you.”
The bank got quiet.
It’s a small bank. One big room. Four teller windows, though only one was open. Two desks along the side wall for loans. A little waiting area with three chairs and a rack of brochures nobody reads.
There were maybe six people in there. And every one of them heard it.
Behind me in line, a young woman with a toddler stopped bouncing him on her hip. I knew her. Kayla Brandt. Her grandmother and I were in the Garden Club together for thirty years. The little boy was named Wyatt. He had a drool bib with a duck on it.
At the loan desk, old Harvey Kessler, who’s been a loan officer at Farmers & Merchants since 1979, set down his pen.
The security guard, a big gentle boy named Tommy Ruiz whose mother I taught in Sunday School, looked at the floor.
People like you.
I wanted to ask what kind of people he meant.
