When I was young, there was a man who regularly visited my mother’s house. I remember hearing his labored ascent of the steps to our door. He was a large man, who overtaxed the sofa my mother was buying on credit. I don’t know how long my mother had an account at the store this man represented, but I remember when it was closed, because I paid it in full.
I thought about that man when I was watching an episode of “The People’s Court” on TV. Judge Marilyn Milian said that the circumstances of the case were the “strangest (she) had ever heard.” A woman had visited an upscale furniture store and looked at some furniture. After thinking about it for some time, she decided to order the furniture. A representative of the store came to her home afterward, and took the balance of her deposit in cash, giving her a receipt on the store’s letterhead. The store’s owner claimed that the “salesman,” despite the fact that he had access to the store’s receipt book, had no association with his store and had stolen the woman’s money. The judge ruled for the woman, excoriating the store owner in the process.
My mother spent most of my growing years employed as a domestic. The income she derived from that was insufficient to support five children. My father was absent, so my mother did what many people in her circumstances do: she applied for, and received welfare. Contrary to the myth of the “Welfare Queen,” welfare does not provide for all that a family needs. When rambunctious boys have destroyed the family couch, a poorly paid domestic on welfare has few replacement options. Some merchants are willing to provide some of those options. I will not condemn them in this space: we needed a couch, and they allowed us to have one. We paid and they accepted, and the man who collected for them visited our home on a regular basis.
The collector was a jocular figure in my house; I would sometimes come home from high school to find him buried bottom-deep into the couch my mother was paying for. He never entered, accepted payment and left; he always visited for some time. I did not detect any discomfort in my mother because of this, and he was friendly to her children.
I moved from my mother’s house shortly after I graduated from high school, and started attending art school. I worked as a page in the closed stacks of the University Of Pittsburgh library until my soon-to-be brother-in-law got me a job at a psychiatric hospital. I was still working at the hospital when I married my friend, and she was working as a pre-primary teacher when we went to visit my mother, who told me that the collector had stolen her money.
The man had given my mother false receipts for her payments; a new representative of the store had come by one day and shown her that she owed far more than her own records showed. The store’s owners told her that her receipts were invalid.
My mother told me this in a conversational and accepting tone. She had never asked me for anything and she did not at this time. I left her house that day and drove to the store. I asked for the balance on my mother’s account and I paid it. I demanded and received a receipt signed by the store’s owner, which I witnessed.
When I gave the receipt to my mother, she cried; some of the tears may have been for the collector.