Rent was coming up and she felt like she'd just barely scraped by to pay the last month's set of bills. Papers littered her small apartment's table (scuffed up and chipped, a cheap find at the local Goodwill), black and red numbers glaring back at her from the slew of opened envelopes she'd finally gotten together to go through.
She hated bill time. Hated bill time. Numbers and math were just confusing as could be and she felt as useless as tits on a warthog. She'd never done well at math but there was no one else to keep things straight, no one else to remind her of when the cell phone bill needed paying or when electric was due or how to file taxes.
The taxes were a problem on their own - she hadn't bothered filing it because she didn't know how and couldn't justify spending extra money to have some guy in a suit tell her she was poor - she already knew that crap, don't need nobody else reminding her of it. But thanks to her decision to fly under the IRS's radar, she found herself on the receiving end of yet another threatening bill and letter and it just…
Gawd. Everything just somehow managed to get overwhelming and Margaret Butler didn't know what on earth she was gonna do.
Well...that was a lie. Mags knew there was one person who could help solve all of these problems and then some. A person who had more money than she probably knew what to do with. A person who'd turned Mags out by her ear not a month after Pa passed.
She didn't want to talk to Auntie but...if she was ever gonna make it through this sea of bills with her head still above water, she was gonna need some help. Some rich people help.
So, after stomaching her pride, Mags took a pen to her yellow notepad paper and began writing her letter.
Quote:
Dear Auntie,
I hope this letter finds you well. I know we haven’t spoken in a while and I don’t want to bother you but
Mags swallowed. How on Earth did people write this all fancy-like without making it sound like begging?
Quote:
I was hoping that I could ask for a favor. While I have my own place and I’ve kept a job since leavin school, I can’t seem to find a way to get all of my bills paid every month. Now I know I ain’t very good at math and I promise I don’t buy stuff that I don’t need but for some reason things just don’t add up the way they should.
She took a moment to include some numbers into the letter - her rent amount, her electric and water bill, her phone bill and a general guesstimate of her eating expenses. They weren’t a lot, really, ‘specially since she worked at the Waffle House nearly every day and made sure her big meal came from there every day. If she ate enough waffles with fruit, she’d be pretty full and not need much for later. It wasn’t a big deal -- and it saved on money.
Quote:
I promise that if I could get a loan to help things covered that I will pay you back every last cent and it’ll be my first priority. I’ll do whatever it takes to make it work, I promise. I don’t really know how much would be needed so I’ve added some numbers and my last couple of check stubs so maybe you can help me figure out what to do?
I would be very grateful. Thank you.
Margaret
There were ink smudges throughout the sheet of paper and crossed out words dotting the sentences like sprinkled confetti. It wasn't a letter she was particularly proud of but her wrist was hurtin’ from writing so much and she didn't think she had the energy to rewrite it all over again. Not that she really knew how she would rewrite it, since she wasn't nearly as fancy as most other people were.
It woulda been a lot easier to email it to Auntie and she'd considered it but...
Well, Auntie was an old fashioned woman, Mags wouldn't be surprised if the woman refused to own any piece of electronic equipment she didn't actually need. She still preferred to cook off of her wood burning stove (or rather, make those she hired do it), the lights looked about as old as the house itself and the few times Mags had stepped foot into the overly large home, she hadn't seen hide nor hair of anything that looked remotely like a television.
Plus, she didn't own her own computer, either, but for more financial related reasons than bein' an electronic hater like her aunt was.
Taking one of the return envelopes that had been enclosed with one of her many bills, Mags stuffed the folded yellow paper into the container and tucked in the check stubs after it before she licked the sealant, creasing it shut. Finding a stamp was another task but she still had a couple from last month's bill paying, so she slapped one on the front (it was a little lopsided, shoot) and stared down at it.
Crap. She needed her address. Well, not her address - she had that handy, thanks to all of the bills addressed to her name, with the apartment complex's information listed below it. It was easy to refer to one of the many printed letters when writing her from address on the envelope but re-finding Auntie's information was a task in itself.
It wasn't an address she had memorized like her's and Pa's... which she guessed didn't really count for nothin', now that nobody lived there that she knew. The land had been divvied up and sold and the money had gone to those that had come collectin' for Pa's own bills. She'd only stayed with Auntie for a short while before getting shipped off to Crystal - far too short for her to have needed the address for any reason.
Thankfully, she still had some of the information tucked away in her Crystal registration paperwork. Why she'd bothered keeping some of that crap in her mess drawer (the drawer in her dresser affectionately named the "mess drawer" due to the fact she kept all "important" paperwork in there without any organization or filing standards) was beyond her but thankfully she still had it and could get the address from there. She just prayed that the woman still lived there.
Rising from the table, she made her way towards the front door of her apartment, the ink still drying on the address lines.
Not bothering with a jacket, she bounded down the stairs and made her way to the apartment complex’s main office, not stopping until she'd slipped the sealed envelope into the mailbox container by the front desk.
Here went nothin'.
