Revenge15 min read
The Five Thousand, the Bankbook, and the Exam Ticket
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I learned the truth six months before the college entrance exam.
"Grandma saved five thousand for my tuition," Alma told me on the phone. "Don't worry, Davina. As long as Grandma breathes, I'll help you go to school."
"I promise I'll study hard," I said. "I won't let you down."
"Good girl," she murmured, weak but stubborn. "Don't worry."
Then my mother and father said the money was gone.
"You're a girl," my mother said that night, chopping vegetables and slamming them into a sizzling pan. "Letting you go past high school is already generous. What do you want with five thousand?"
I looked at Cruz's shoes.
"They're limited edition," Cruz said with a grin, twisting his foot to show off the red stripe. "Five thousand. They say a kid in my art class paid five thousand."
"Five thousand," my mother repeated, like it was a joke. "What could five thousand buy? Not even a decent life for a girl."
My knees gave in.
"Please," I said to them in the kitchen. "Please lend me five thousand. I'll work. I'll pay you back."
"You'd better not talk to me like that," my mother said. "You think you're owed everything because your grandma scrimped? You think the world owes you tuition?"
"I didn't take it," I said. "It's Grandma's money. She told me herself."
"Don't make me laugh," my father said, pretending to be calm as he folded a newspaper. "We have two children. We can't afford two college tuitions. Your brother—"
"Stop," I whispered. "Stop using that like it's an answer."
Cruz looked up from his game and smirked.
"Why do you care?" he said. "Most girls get married. My friend’s sister married well. She never had to learn algebra."
"You're pathetic," I said, and my voice broke.
"She cried for me to give it back?" I heard him ask. He laughed. "Crying for five thousand. What a drama."
My mother slammed a ladle down so hard the soup sloshed.
"As long as I breathe," she spat, "you won't get a penny from me."
My father looked away.
When they left the hospital room where Alma lay with tubes and a slow twitch of breath, they said things like, "Maybe it's all a mistake," and "Maybe she forgot where she put it."
Alma had told me plainly. She had said, "I saved five thousand. For your school. Don't worry."
I had watched her count the coins, fold the notes into that small, wrinkled envelope, stuff the envelope into the old bankbook's pocket and smile. She had made jokes about pinching rusted cans and bargaining at the scrap depot. I knew how she rode far in winter to get leftover vegetables to cook. I knew how proud she was to say, "My Davina will go far."
And then the bankbook was gone.
"You should believe them," my aunt Hannah said gently over the phone. "They're your parents. Sit down and let them explain."
I knelt on the kitchen floor and begged like a child. I wanted to be small and safe and held. I wanted to trust.
"Please," I said. "Just lend me the money."
"Get up," my mother said. "Get up, and don't ever use our home like it's a bank. You are not a son. You are not our investment."
I left.
I walked to the train station with that hum in my chest. I almost stepped over the yellow line a few times. A conductor shouted; someone grabbed my arm; a small, kind man scolded me and told me to be careful. I came back to the dorm, breathless and raw.
At the dorm my three roommates did not ask questions that afternoon. They made tea and set my forehead with a cool cloth. At night, when the lights went out, the sobs came like a dam opening.
"How many points for a free ride to college?" I mumbled at the empty room.
"Who says there's a free ride?" Josephine said, turning the lamp on, stirring instant noodles. "But I know people who got scholarships. You can do this."
"Don't be dramatic," Antonella said, but she held out a pen. "Let's start tonight."
Melissa tossed a math book toward me like a lifeline.
"You're better at words," she said. "But math you can learn. We'll trade. You teach me history, I teach you algebra."
We studied that winter like our hair would catch fire.
"You're serious?" I asked Ewan Watkins one afternoon after class. He was the politics teacher who seemed to carry calm in his voice like a towel.
"Very," he said. "You can make up the gap if you work the right way."
"People say I can't do math," I said.
"People say many things," he said. "Sometimes they are right. Sometimes they're lazy."
"Teach me the lazy parts," I said.
He smiled, not cruel, just patient.
"We'll find the patterns," he promised. "Numbers always obey rules. You don't have to be afraid."
At the boarding school we made odd little pacts. On cold mornings, we stood outside shouting our goals until we could feel our lungs burn.
"I want to go to Tsinghua!" Melissa shouted once, and the stars overhead seemed to agree.
"Northstar," Josephine said, mimicking an old phrase.
"North—what?" Antonella asked, laughing.
"Never mind," Melissa said. "You just shout with us. Take the world by surprise."
We shouted together until our mouths tasted like iron.
"Who cares what other classes think?" Ewan said once when some students sneered at us for trying. "We have work to do. Education is private."
We learned formulas in the kind of way that made sense. We argued about the logic. We made flashcards and studied until 2AM. Melissa made me memorize the dates of history with the help of little stories. Josephine made me repeat algebra steps like a song. Antonella drew pictures.
"You'll get it," Antonella said, bringing me porridge one day. "You always do."
I did. The weeks became a ladder. Each rung felt carved by sweat.
"Look!" I said one morning, passing the practice test back.
"Wow," Melissa said. "You went from 520 to 640 in a month."
"You're doing what people call impossible," Josephine said with a grin.
"You'll break something," Antonella teased, "but make sure it's the ceiling."
At the end of that spring, our teacher Ewan went to bat for us. He argued so loudly the principal rearranged schedules. We moved into the class with harder questions, the class that never had time to be kind to the slower kids.
"You must do more in less time," he warned us. "But you have potential. Keep your eyes on the problem, not on how others talk."
I kept my eyes on the problems. I kept my hands in the work.
"Second place in the mock," Ewan said the day the test scores came out.
I smiled and the smile was a wrenched, wild thing that I could not stop.
"Third in the school," I said. "Isn't it—"
"You are the quiet thunder," he said. "You surprised us all."
The crush of the final exam approached like a wave. On exam day my hands shook. The clock's seconds marched like heavy boots. For a beat, memories rose—my mother's mouth, the red stripe on Cruz's shoes, Alma's wrinkled hands.
"Don't panic," I told myself. "One problem at a time."
"How's it going?" Josephine whispered through the hall. She had managed to slip a small note into my hand: "Breathe."
I did.
When the bell rang for the end, a weight lifted.
I wrote my answers and felt the formulas slot into place like pieces in a puzzle. In that brief bright space the numbers made sense, and I did not let them shame me into doubt.
Weeks later when the scores rolled out, I was sitting in the cheap internet café where I worked nights, clicking the page like someone trying to coax a sparrow to land.
"Don't," Benito Schroeder said behind the counter, wiping a cup. "You're sweating like it's the final match."
"Just help me if the page crashes," I said, voice tight.
Benito pretended to be casual and then his mouth made a small O when he saw the numbers.
"Seven—two—one?" he read aloud. "No, you are lying."
"It's my score," I said. I could hardly take the words into my body.
"Seven—two—one? Davina—are you—" He dropped the rag. The café became a little theater. Players poked their heads to look. I felt like someone in a slow-motion movie.
Benito slapped the news on his speakers. "Hey, everyone! Free drinks tonight. Our girl Davina scored 721!"
People cheered. They slapped my shoulder. They were loud. The world felt elastic and kind for a second.
The hospital heard. Alma's room filled with people. The nurses smiled like it was a small local festival. Someone taped a printed sheet that read CONGRATS 721 over the old wallpaper.
My parents came.
They appeared like actors stepping into a set late, hands clasped, eyes polished.
"Davina," my mother said, voice syrupy. "We are so proud."
"Congratulations," my father said. "We are proud of our daughter."
Cruz hovered near the doorway with a bouquet he had bought at the hospital gift shop. He held the bouquet like a prop.
"You should look at this," he said. "I saved one thousand from work. For you. Please take it."
I looked at the shoes on his feet instead.
"Thanks," I said, and my voice was steady.
I didn't need their congratulations. I had a new life coming. The scholarship offers, the teachers, the friends had torches and they lit a path.
Still, my heart heated when I saw Alma try to smile and fumble the wrinkled bankbook. I had asked for the bankbook back when I had confronted them. No one had returned it. The pages were missing, the edges ragged.
"Mom, Dad," I said, and the hospital room went quiet.
"Let them speak," my father urged, moving forward as if to take the stage.
"No," I said. "You don't get to speak to me like this."
"You're being unfair," my mother said. "We took care of the family. We—"
"You took five thousand," I said.
A nurse's face went pale.
My mother laughed, a brittle sound. "What are you saying? That's an accusation."
"Accusations," I repeated. "Grandma counted and put the money in her bankbook. The password was my birthday. The bankbook went missing. You bought Cruz those shoes."
The room looked as if someone had thrown ice at it.
"You can't say that," my father whispered. He looked suddenly small.
I had planned this moment in my head for months. I had practiced the words until they didn't cut me anymore. I knew what I wanted. I wanted the truth, the bankbook, and a clear line between us and whatever they thought family meant.
"Come on," my mother said, reaching toward Alma. "This is embarrassing. Please stop."
"Embarrassing?" I said. "You took my grandma's money."
"That's absurd," my father said. "You are trying to ruin us."
"Do you want a witness?" I asked.
There were people in the corridor. Nurses. The janitor. A cousin of another patient who recognized me from school. A friend. A gaggling of well-wishers who had come for my passing grades.
My mother nearly laughed. "If you make a scene here—"
"Good," I said. "Then make it a scene. I want everyone to hear."
A nurse, wide-eyed, set her tray down. "If this is true—"
"It is true," I said.
I opened my palm and handed over a small list of dates—times I had seen Alma count coins, notes of the conversations she had with me about the five thousand, a record of messages from Alma's phones where she had said, "Don't worry about tuition, I'll help you." I had even copied a note Alma had scratched on a piece of cardboard about the bankbook.
"You stole from the woman who raised me," I said to my mother. "You bought shoes for Cruz while my future was in an envelope you opened."
There was a crack of silence.
My mother made a face that started as denial and turned into anger.
"How dare you?" she hissed. "We raised you. We fed you. You are our daughter."
"I know how you raised me," I said. "You raised me so you could spend more on him."
A woman who had been waiting for discharge in the hallway poked her head in. "Did she say shoes?" she asked, voice alto against the hospital's soft weather.
"Those shoes," another voice chimed. "Five thousand for school shoes."
"It was a waste," a man whispered. "A child shouldn't be flaunting at the hospital."
My mother's face changed again. Denial gave way to the flush of panic. She tried to speak. Her words were small and scrap-paper thin.
"We'll—" she began. "We can pay her back."
"Tonight?" someone in the crowd said. "Why not before? Why not when it mattered?"
My father looked like someone who had been pulled suddenly from a warm bath into a cold corridor. He made small, trembling attempts to justify himself.
"It was the right choice," he said. "We needed to keep harmony. We needed to—"
"To what?" I asked. "Buy face? Buy pride?"
A nurse who had overheard stamped her foot.
"Everyone here has a phone," she said. "Everyone can film. This isn't a closed room."
A murmur rippled through the people. Someone took out a phone. Another. The sound of shutters, not of pride but of evidence.
My mother's mouth opened and closed like a fish's. She thought of the neighborhood gossip. She thought of her own mother's voice. She thought of the way scandal can strip a person.
"You're lying," she blurted finally, then backed up. "You are lying. You want attention."
"Attention?" I laughed, and the sound surprised me by how clean it was. "No. I want five thousand that belongs to my grandma. Please make them return it."
"I don't have it," my father said at last. He had been pushed to the edge. He looked at Cruz as if Cruz might transform and produce cash from thin air.
"Where is it?" I demanded.
Cruz looked like a child who had been caught stealing cookies. He shuffled his feet. "I don't know," he muttered. "I—"
"You saw the shoes," someone called. "We saw the receipt."
A neighbor who cooked for the alley came forward with something folded in her hands.
"She said she saw your wife take the bankbook," the neighbor said. "She saw her go into the cabinet."
Another voice: "The old bankbook's chain was on the top shelf. The woman took it when the old lady was asleep, she said."
My mother opened her mouth to cut them off but the crowd had widened enough to make a small square. The corridor had become a stage.
I felt the heat of humiliation sweep over my mother. Her face lost its color. She tried to smile, to use that passive smile she'd used for years to deflect blame.
"She's making a scene," she said. "You don't need to listen."
"People are listening," someone said. "And when people listen they remember."
My mother's demeanor began to crumble. She moved from defensiveness to frantic bargaining.
"It was for the family," she said. "I thought—"
"You thought?" I repeated. "You thought your son mattered more than my future."
"Stop!" my father shouted for the first time. "Stop embarrassing us."
"Embarrassing?" a nurse scoffed. "You embarrassed every one of us who cares for elders."
Around us strangers were taking sides. A man who owned the small corner store said, "I always liked them. I never thought they'd do this."
"It is a small town," said another. "None of this stays private. She should have thought."
My mother's face turned that washed-out white. Her hands were shaking and she began to cry, not big tears at first, but small salt leaking tears. They flowed like someone rinsing a wound.
"Please," she said, with the cadence of someone who had used that word many times. "Please, Davina. We'll return it. We can—"
"Return it," I said. "Now. No promises. No 'we'll see.'"
My father swallowed and reached into his jacket. He pulled out a worn billfold, flattened on one end. He turned it open and handed over a crumpled ledger of store receipts, nothing of real value.
"This is all I have," he whispered.
A woman in the corridor made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. "This is nothing," she said, and people around her chuckled and shook their heads.
"Do it now," I insisted. "Where is the bankbook?"
My mother wrung her hands. Her eyes darted like a bird. Then, quietly, her shoulders started to shake in a way that was not simply the sobbing of humiliation. Her face went slack. She put the back of her hand to her mouth. She stared at the crowd and broke.
"I can't," she said. "I can't—"
"You can't what?" I said. "Can't give it back? Can't tell the truth? Can't face what you did?"
She looked up and met my eyes. For the first time, there was a flash of something like remorse, a sliver of recognition that the horror she had caused had become a mirror.
"I… I took it," she said. The words were a small stone thrown into a pond.
The corridor went utterly still. A surgeon walking by with a patient paused. A child in a chair looked up from a comic book. Someone gasped.
My father took a step forward, as if to take the blame from her, but the crowd pressed in. No one let him.
"Why?" someone asked.
"I thought we needed it for Cruz," she said. Tears ran down her face like rain. "We thought he'd—"
"It was money saved for school," I said. "By Alma. She counted it into an envelope and called me."
She looked down. "I didn't think it would matter."
"It did matter," a woman in the crowd said, hard. "To the girl who only had you for part of her life."
My father fell to his knees then, in the center of the corridor, the crude wooden bench behind him, hands in his hair like a man who had finally understood the depth of his cowardice.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry, Davina. I'm sorry, Alma. I thought it would all work out. I thought if I kept quiet we'd keep the peace."
By then phones had recorded everything. Someone played the video aloud. My mother's voice was thin and frightened. The small square of hospital hallway erupted into whispers.
People had many faces—shock, anger, pity, ridicule. Some shook their heads. Some took pictures. Some patted my shoulder. One old friend of Alma's, who had known our family for twenty years, slapped my mother's back hard enough to make her flinch.
"How could you?" the woman demanded. "How could you take from the old?"
That slap was the beginning of a public unmasking. People spoke out with details: the shoes, the receipt, the nights when the house smelled like fish and new leather, and Alma tending to spare meals. Neighbors came forward to tell what they had seen—my mother at the market, my father leaving with two bags. Not all of it could be proven, but the rhythm of their story fitted.
My mother crumpled on a plastic chair and asked aloud, "What do you want from us?"
"Return the bankbook," I said. "Return the money if you have it. If you don't, tell the truth and take responsibility."
My father began to sob. "I will, I will. We'll work it out. We'll sell—"
"You sold my childhood," I said. "You sold my future for a pair of shoes."
He bowed his head. People in the corridor watched and recorded. They whispered about how a parent's small theft had become a public lesson.
That night the videos spread. A neighbor uploaded a clip. A nurse posted a short clip. My classmates shared the article with comments like, "What kind of parents?!" and "She didn't deserve that." The school principal called my phone and asked if I needed support. Ewan Watkins sent a message: "Proud of how you stood. You were calm."
My mother called my aunt and my relatives. Their voices were small and ashamed. My father went to the local store and took the money out of the register for weeks, working double shifts to make up for things. They never publicly begged forgiveness in front of me to the point of humiliation. They didn't deserve that kind of pity.
The punishment was not legal. The punishment was social and searing. Their names—my mother's and father's—began to mean something different in the neighborhood. People crossed to the other side of the street when they saw them. The cousins who once invited them to dinners suddenly had "other plans." The small scaffolding of respect around them collapsed. My mother sat alone on a bench outside the grocery store and cried. My father took on any odd job. Cruz was ostracized at school; classmates who had once envied his shoes snubbed him. He tried to sell the shoes in a whisper of market stalls, but no one wanted to be seen with them.
It was a harsh, public undoing. But it was also honest. The town had seen what my family had done. The neighbors debated and whispered and then acted. People asked my grandparents to the market and left my mother alone with her shame. That kind of communal judgment cut harder than any legal verdict.
"It should have been different," Ewan told me later, putting his hand on my shoulder. "Justice is messy, but truth has a way of shining."
I didn't gloat. I didn't dance on their ashes. I just took my grandmother's hand and held it tight. Alma cried when I brought her the first scholarship notice. She squeezed my fingers like someone clinging to the map of the only road left.
"I did wrong," my mother said once, quiet and broken, when she believed I couldn't hear. "I wanted security."
"You made that choice," I said later, when I found her in the laundry room. "And choices make consequences."
She nodded. She tried to look at me and found her eyes sliding away.
The months that followed were not simple vengeance. Regret floated like ash. People came to offer help to Alma and to me. The school gave me a scholarship, and the university followed with letters. My friends stood by me at every turn. They joked, they cried, they celebrated. They were my family now.
The final day before leaving for the university, the small group from school gathered. We posed for photos near the old banyan tree. We laughed and held each other's hands.
"Promise you won't change," Melissa said.
"Promise," I said.
"Promise you won't forget," Josephine teased.
"I won't," I said.
My mother sent a short message: "Good luck." It read like a postage stamp on a heavy envelope. It meant little and everything.
On the train to the campus I took Alma's bankbook out. It was in the drawer now—returned because the town had made it so. The envelope with the five thousand was folded inside; the money was there, pale like a half-forgotten sunrise.
Alma had written my name in the margin once, in shaky script: "For school. For Davina."
I pressed my thumb to that careful loop and felt the paper's grain.
I had walked a long road to get here. I had not become someone else. I had simply stepped into the shape I had always been.
When the university mailed my red admission packet and the small student handbook, I felt the letter press its warmth against my palm like a promise.
At the ceremony the principal read our names. "Davina Rahman," he said, and the crowd applauded.
I smiled, a soft careful thing. Alma clapped twice. My friends sang a small chant.
"Five thousand," someone whispered, and Alma winked.
I looked down at the bankbook in my bag and then at the folded exam ticket that had guided me through the storm. I slid both into the inner pocket of my jacket.
"Keep them close," Alma said. "To remember."
"To remember what?" I asked.
She tapped the bankbook. "To remember who stood with you. To remember who taught you how to count."
That night in the dorm I pinned a small note in my drawer. It read: "Alma's bankbook, exam ticket, and friends." I put the note there like a talisman.
I did not need my parents' praise. I only needed the chance to be more than what others had decided.
When I folded my clothes I found a small sticky note in my notebook. One by one, my friends had covered the margins of my study notes with tiny messages:
"Don't forget to sleep."
"You are fierce."
"Call me when you're homesick."
They were like small lights.
Before I slept I put the bankbook and the exam ticket onto my bedside table. I traced the number five thousand with the tip of my finger, a gentle, private ceremony.
"Goodnight," I whispered to Alma's photograph pinned above the bed.
"Goodnight, Davina," the world seemed to answer.
The End
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