077/2012 Inheritance

Word Count:  656

In my mother’s fine script, a note: This is your grandfather’s finger. Cut off right after he died.

First, shock. Then a giggle. My mom had been well known for her great sense of humor. I should have expected she’d leave a few tricks behind. I opened the small wooden box. Watched it fly in an arc across the room, crash into the dresser and land with a clunk on the floor. My hands hung on my mouth to muffle the streaming scream that slowly died down. When I’d moved the cotton layers and saw the glass tube with a finger floating inside I’d freaked out.

The tiny glass coffin rolled under the bed. I realized it had to be fake. A cigar tube with a Halloween rubber finger suspended in water most likely. Still, on hands and knees, it was not with the firm grip of confidence that I reached under the bed and grabbed it. I held the glass vial up to examine the finger more closely. It sure looked real to me. Bloodless, gray. Man-size with a neatly trimmed nail.

I picked up a paper that parachuted out of the box as it flew. Sat down on the bed, laid the glass tube back in the box, bedded down in its cottony fluff of filler. Unfolded the paper and read:

Dearest Jenny,

When your grandfather died, we were instructed to have the index finger of his right hand severed, embalmed, and secured in a safe place in case it was needed one day.

You see, your grandfather was a forward thinker, and in keeping with both his sense of rainy day savings and his admiration for technological advances he ensured that any inheritance he left behind would not be frittered away but available for any of his future generation should a downturn induce a need. I’ve never been forced into such a position, and so have handed this down to you. There is a safe behind this dresser that can only be opened by fingerprint match. That is why his finger has been preserved.

Jenny, while I sincerely hope that fortune is kind to you, and that you never find yourself in such desperate need, at least I can leave this life knowing that thanks to your grandfather’s foresight, my ability to weather the small storms, your intelligence and ambition to achieve success on your own, there is still this little cushion of kindness that will always be there to catch a fall.

Love Always,
Mom

Wow. I thought. Wow. I picked up the box, took out the tube, looked at the finger dancing in fluid–not water, I guess–from the movement. Held it still. But I’d have to touch it, no?

I got up and moved the dresser and sure enough, there was a small safe hidden within a hollowed out bottom. With an electrical cord. I plugged it in. A panel lit up on the front. But I still wasn’t going to touch the finger without something between it and me. I found a pair of my mother’s white cotton gloves and pulled them on.

It felt weird. Not the breaking into the safe before I needed the money. That moral dilemma was already made up in my mind. No, the finger felt weird. The gloves soon soaked through with what I guessed was formaldehyde from the smell. My own fingers sensitive to the bone and slight fleshy feel of my grandfather’s.

I took a deep breath and the formaldehyde stuck in my throat. I held the finger tightly, pressed its tip to the lit panel.

There was a slight clicking sound, as if gears turned within the safe and the panel blinked three times. I turned the small knob and easily opened the door.

And there, mom’s sense of humor or not but real as could be, was a note along with a glass dome holding grandfather’s head