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She was only ten years old, but she was already accustomed to the language and expressions of poverty.

“Maybe later” meant “no.”

“We can fix it” meant “we can’t afford a new one.”

“Let your food sit a while” meant “we can’t afford seconds.”

And so, when she said, “my birthday is coming up…” she knew what her father’s response meant when he said, “it will be nice to have time together as a family!”, which meant “please don’t ask for anything, we can’t afford to buy you gifts.”

Even though she desperately wanted a ceramic lamp, adorned with painted dogs playing in a field, the same lamp that she had seen sitting in a nearby yellow storefront window for months, she said nothing.

Her family owned a small pawn shop on a small street in a small neighbourhood of a very big city. Even at the age of ten, she understood the scope of the world and her family’s insignificant place in it. Even at her age, she understood the confines of their economic cage and the despair her father felt every day for failing to release them.

She helped him in the family shop, quietly, dutifully. She swept the floor and pretended not to notice the small bottle of alcohol under the register. She checked for price tags and never commented on her father’s short temper. She watched the front of the shop and never asked why her father often excused himself. This was her corner of the world and the only one she had ever known.

She was mesmerized by business and all of the zeroes and decimals. She loved how these numbers equated to value, even though they all seemed so arbitrary to her.

A customer would enter the shop with valuables. They would have a price in mind, a value they had assigned to an object. Her father would then argue with them why he thought the object was worth less than they did. They would then explain why their object was worth more (and it seemed as though it was often because of some personal experience), to which her father would then explain that the value differed from their experience.

They’d settle on a price somewhere in the middle, and once the customer was gone her father would turn to her and say: “What do you think?” and assign a new value even higher than the customer had originally asked for.

“If we get to pick what it’s worth, then why not ask for a million dollars?” she once asked.

“Because it’s not about what it’s worth – it’s about what it’s worth to a person, what someone will pay for it! (We need to make sure we can sell it quickly, bills are due!)" He would reply.

It was all about making more money than they owed, and everything else seemed fluid to her. Things were only worth as much as they could get – and making money was all that mattered.

The strange man in the long coat walked into their shop on a blustery afternoon. She scampered to her place behind the till and tried to look as old as she could. The man was tall – impossibly tall – and it seemed to her that if he should straighten his back his hair would touch the ceiling. His face was gaunt, with high cheekbones and large gums behind thin lips. His dark complexion was complimented by his even darker clothes. He looked like someone from a black and white movie, she thought. And with the exaggerated movements of a celluloid character from the 1930’s he widened his hands in greeting and approached the counter.

“Hello, my dear,” he said.

“Hello – welcome to our shop!” She said in her best adult-voice. She waved her hands like a circus stage-master.

“Where is your father?”

“He’s in the bathroom.” She replied.

“I have a gift for you.” The man reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small, black book.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s a book.”

“I have books.”

“Not like this book.” He cleared his throat and settled his weight on the counter. “This is a magic book.”

Her eyes widened as she looked at it, and then travelled up to his face, looking for any sign of deception. “What does it do?”

“It makes money.” He said. “You use it to sell what is valuable.”

She looked around. “We have the shop to sell things!”

The man stared at her – his eyes held a mixture of patience and tempered aggression. “Nothing in here is of real value.” He gazed around the dusty shop at the trinkets and old electronics and shook his head. “No, these are simply distractions.”

“What do you want more than anything in the world?” he asked.

And though she was only ten years old, educated by the meager conditions of her upbringing she replied quickly and without pause.

“Money.”

He explained to her that the book was magic, and that it allowed her to trade what she had for money. Not things – something more abstract than that. She could trade time. And being only ten years old, and with a lifetime ahead of her, that seemed like a good deal. The man handed her a pen, and she opened the first page. Inside she found a small accounting chart – the left column was titled “Days” and the right indicated money to be deposited.

She took the pen softly, and under “Days” in the first row, she marked 2 in her best handwriting. As if by magic, the corresponding space filled itself with the most beautiful characters she had ever seen: $300.

The man motioned to the cash register with a small smile on his face, and she opened it anxiously to find three, fresh, one-hundred-dollar bills beneath the tray. Her face lit up as she grabbed the money and handled it.

He watched her before turning and leaving. She was too busy admiring her new treasure to see him leave, and when she did look up, she found herself alone in the shop. She pocketed the bills and small book just as her father came from the washroom. His eyes were red.

She thought that time was abundant, infinite. Several days later, she finished filling the first page of the little black book. She marveled at her fortune. She had filled all twenty lines on the page, trading her days for dollars – sometimes five at a time – and now she held a small wad of cash in her tiny fist as she walked down the street.

She approached the yellow storefront and entered the store. Moments later, she left with her lamp.

She explained the lamp to her parents. She said she found the money on the street. Her father had commented that there were “other things that money could go towards (We have bills overdue).” But they had allowed her the small joy, secretly thankful she hadn’t stolen it.

The next day, her father excused himself again and was gone for nearly an hour. When he returned, his face was swollen and his expression more dour than ever before. He gave her a nod and left the shop, leaving an envelope on the countertop. She knew she shouldn’t snoop, but children are curious, so she opened the envelope and pulled out a piece of paper titled, “Foreclosure”.

After consulting the little black book and receiving the money, she slipped a wad of bills valued at $20,000.00 into the envelope and slid the black book into her pocket.

She would never forget dinner that night. Her father had come home raving about a good Samaritan who had saved their shop. He had purchased a real takeout dinner and the family sat around the kitchen table as he talked with excitement about what this gift meant.

The next week her father came home with a car. When her mother asked how they could afford it, he said that now with the bank paid off, he could now leverage the business – whatever that meant.

But three months later he came home on the bus, a scowl on his face as he explained that the building needed a new roof.

And out came the small black book.

One morning she woke up feeling more like a woman than a child. All of the bills were coming due. She went to the shop and found her father fussing over a broken window and cursing the neighbourhood kids.

And out came the small black book.

The next year her mother broke a tooth on some stale bread.

And out came the small black book.

And then her father was stressed about savings and retirement. He said he would work himself into the grave. She loved her father and wanted him to be happy and comfortable, and so she took out her small black book and made her largest withdrawal yet.

Years went by, and she aged in accordance with her agreement. Her mother and father passed away, and she found herself working in the small shop by herself.

She remembered her final moments with her father. He had looked her in the eyes with a knowing expression as his face had glistened with tears. Those were the first and last of his tears she had ever seen. In his condition he had been unable to escape to the bathroom to hide his humanity. He was gone not long after that, finally at rest where collectors and bills couldn’t reach him.

She hadn’t looked at her small black book in a long time, but as her back ached and hands cramped, she began wondering when she would be allowed to rest. She reached into her jacket and began adding the days, weeks, and months. When she was done looking at the years behind her, she looked at all the possessions around her and prepared to make one last withdrawal.

On a Wednesday afternoon, she went to a bank to check on her life savings. The teller was a sweet young man, who barely concealed his expression when printing out the balance.

When she got home, she walked into her living room, turned on her ceramic lamp and pulled out the papers from the bank.

She smiled at the zeros and the commas in the account. Pride filled her old bones. She placed the papers on the table and looked at the dogs playing in the field. With effort, she lifted her treasured lamp with her shaking, wrinkled hands, and her grip slipped.

And as it shattered into dust, she saw that all it held was darkness. Painted dreams of ceramic, the glass was sand again.