I Can't Use Money, Baby!

By Helen P. Batson

Helen Batson married a wonderful man, Barry Batson. Before they married, her husband asked her if she could move into his family’s building on the West Side of Chicago because his mother was wheelchair bound, and his father needed help with her until he retired. Helen had always lived on the South Side, but she happily agreed, and they spent the first five-plus years of the marriage living on West Adams Street in Chicago.

After Barry’s father retired, they moved into a home on the South Side where she still resides, and they had four children. Helen’s mother was her primary babysitter, and when Helen would receive her little teaching check, in the early sixties, she always shared it with her mother.

One day, her mother turned to her and gave her the money back and said, “I can’t use money, baby.” Helen was so busy then that she didn’t think about it at the time, but many years later, she did, and it became the subject of her first published book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662441677

Book preview

Where It All Began

I was probably in my midthirties when I heard my mother say these words to me, I can’t use money, baby.

At the time, she was doing some babysitting for me. My third child, Gia, would be dropped off at her house after a half day of preschool and during her kindergarten year. Both of her schools met for only a half day, and a small bus would transport her from the school to my parent’s home in the Woodlawn neighborhood in Chicago.

During this period, I worked at a school only a few blocks from my home in South Shore Valley, and my husband, a Chicago policeman, worked in a district on the West Side of Chicago. At one point, we had only one car, and I would pick Gia up and then head to the West Side to pick up my husband, Barry, before I’d return home.

Every other week was payday for me. I taught at a Chicago Public School. I would cash my check and then give my mother something for watching my child. I thought nothing of it until the day that she told me she could no longer use money, and she gave the money back to me.

I thought this to be a bit odd, but I never really slowed down long enough from my busy schedule to think about what she was really saying.

Now, nearly thirty-five years later as I sit in my living room staring out at the snow that has been falling off and on for two days, it finally has really registered on my little brain just what she meant.

Yesterday was New Year’s Day 2014. I could not believe that I would spend the entire day inside with my dog, Winter. The weather out was all but good.

I attempted to make a small pot of gumbo and stayed in the den much of the day after the gumbo was complete, watching the Rose Bowl parade and the football games. I reminisced about the many years that I made a huge restaurant-sized pot of gumbo, my husband watched the football games, and various visitors passed through our doors, not to mention that our four children were there also.

When the dinner hour arrived today, I ate my fake gumbo alone, watched some television (or was watched by the television), and then went to bed. Not one of my children was in the city. My two older girls, Jennifer and Gia, were at their homes in California with their families. My son, Barry Jr., was at work flying back and forth across the country; he’s been, for many years, a captain with a major airline. My youngest girl, Susan, was enjoying herself in Canada with one of her friends. I’d lost my husband, Barry, to cancer in 2005.

Who would have believed that one could have a reasonably large family, not to mention—with grandchildren, and after seventy-four years of life—you would be spending the entire New Year’s Day alone? Oh well!

Susan was due back in town early Thursday morning, but because of inclement weather throughout the entire area, she did not really get off of her plane in Chicago until after three that afternoon. She was due back at her job at 12:30 p.m. that day, so she took a half-day off and went directly into work. Luckily for her, no one got to work on time that day because of the weather conditions, so the half-day absence was excused.

Saturday morning, I had a ten o’clock appointment at the U of C Hospital for a repeat MRI of my brain. It had been discovered that I had a small aneurysm on the right side of my brain during one of my visits to Northwestern Hospital ER last August. I followed the doctor’s directive and connected with a neurosurgeon at the University of Chicago Hospital, my regular hospital. Both of my children who live in Chicago were home, but they told me early on what they had to do that morning. Oh well!

Susan came by later in the afternoon to visit for a few hours. She took out all of the garbage that I had that, usually, Barry would take out when he’d come on his quick Monday visits. I had one full bag of garbage and a full bag of paper and bottles for the recycling truck. I also had in a bag a large number of boxes, wraps, and other things from the Christmas gifts that I had gotten. Susan put those in the recycle bin. Before she left, I asked her to shovel a path from my back door to my garage and a narrow path from the front door in front of my house to the sidewalk.

The person who generally did my shoveling had been MIA for three or four days. It was unusual that he had not even come for his January payment. His telephone answering service was full, so…oh well! His check had been on the table since New Year’s Day, and I had put an extra twenty dollars with the check because I knew that his job gets more serious during snow season in Chicago.

The twenty dollars did not go to waste because on Sunday morning, when I looked out of my front window, I saw two men cleaning the snow from around my neighbor’s house across the street. They willingly did mine, and I paid them thirty dollars.

January 5, 2014

The telephone rang early Sunday morning. I had gone into the den to