Betty practically skipped down the steps and walked briskly down Franklin toward the Chicago market. She went inside the A&P and her delight was sudden. The tomatoes, overripe and bruised, had never seemed so lovely, so full of seed and juice. She picked three of the best, almost girlishly glad for their weight, for the way they sat pregnant in her hand. For the first time she did not have to wait until after the frost to hack out a garden plot in the weak northern soil and plant the seedlings they got from the hardware store that they had had to keep alive next to the barrel stove in the thin spring. She did not have to cross her fingers and watch as they withered or grew, and wait sixty-five days for the fruit. For the first time she could simply choose which ones she wanted and have them.

She shopped with pleasure. After two years of scratching the city dirt for odd cash jobs, she had a regular income. After two years she was finally able to dig deep and plant a big meal on the table. Corn on the cob, pears, apples, stew meat, a ham, and a huge bag of potatoes. She carted the food breathlessly to the counter and put each item, one by one, on the conveyor belt. The clerk dutifully rang them up and gave her the total. She pulled the check from her handbag and presented it to him.

He looked at the check and back at her.

“This is a two-party check.”

“A what?” asked Betty distractedly.

“A two-party check. From someone else to you.”

“You take checks, don’t you?”

“Yes. But not this kind.”

“A check’s a check. The hospital wouldn’t pay me if it was broke.”

“Hold on,” said the clerk. He turned and waved to the manager, who knelt next to a display of canned pork and beans pyramided at the end of the first aisle.

“Problem?”

“Two-party.”

The manager took the check and looked at Betty.

“We normally don’t take these.”

Even if Betty didn’t understand the difference between a two-party check and other kinds, she knew what the rest meant. She knew how to read “normally” from a white man to an Indian woman, how to read the heavily lidded eyes and petty stare.

“I don’t see what the problem is,” she said innocently.

“You have ID?”

Betty rummaged in her bag and pulled out her enrollment card.

The manager took it and held it next to the check. He looked at Betty. “There’s a two-dollar charge.”

“Two dollars?”

“We normally don’t do it at all.”