The paper on the counter of my bakery said that my mother, Darlene Collins, had pledged the home place in Wayne County as collateral for eighty six thousand dollars, and that she had signed away the right to rest there if the loan went unpaid. I stood in the alley behind the shop, thirty nine years old, with my apron over my mouth, and I read it a second time. The home place was forty acres on the creek where my grandparents were laid to rest. The trailer where I grew up sat on it. It was the only thing my mother owned.
The loan had come from a ministry. Pastor Dale Whitaker of Harvest Triumph in Charleston, the one on the television every Sunday with the white suit and the diamond ring, ran a lending fund for church members, which he called a love offering. The interest was twenty nine percent. My mother had signed in the office of a lawyer in Huntington, in 2018, to get me to Florida, and she had never told me she had the paper. For six years she had been paying on it with the money she made from cleaning motels.
The lawyer for the ministry, Mr. Gray, was waiting inside, drinking coffee at my counter in his gray suit. He told me the balloon payment was due the first of the month, forty one thousand dollars, and that if it was not made, the ministry would take the land and the mobile home. He said it kindly, like a doctor with bad news. He said that he was sorry. I looked at the flour on my hands, and at the long line of morning customers, and at the face of my mother in my memory, cleaning a room at the Super 8.
A paper slid across a bakery counter gave one daughter the afternoon to bring herself back to her mother in Huntington.
I gave my terms across the counter in a voice I had learned in a church basement. “Mr. Gray, I am not going to pay this tonight. I am going to take it to Legal Aid at nine o clock tomorrow morning, and to the Attorney General of West Virginia, who has a consumer office that loves to read a paper like this. You may tell Pastor Whitaker that the daughter of Darlene Collins has four years of sobriety and a good memory. And then I am going to drive to Wayne County, and I am going to sit down with my mother, and I am going to say I am sorry.”
Mr. Gray set down his coffee. His smile was gone. “Miss Collins,” he said, “this is a legally binding contract.” At that moment the bell over the door jingled and a heavy man in a canvas coat came in, followed by two more, retired coal miners from the Tuesday morning crowd, with their lunch buckets. They had heard everything, I think. One of them was Mr. Haddad, my boss, seventy years old, who had given me my first job when no one else would. He wiped his hands on his apron and said, “Everything all right, Amber?”
Mr. Gray stood and snatched the loan agreement off the counter, folded it twice into his jacket, and walked quickly toward the front door of the bakery. He had almost reached it. Then the miners shifted, all three of them, as one, and filled the entrance, shoulders touching, lunch buckets in their hands, and the retired sheriff of Cabell County, who had been sitting by the window with a cinnamon roll, got up from his stool and stood behind them. Mr. Gray found himself facing a wall of coats.
“Sir,” said the old sheriff, quietly, “I believe you have forgotten something.” Mr. Gray stared at him. Slowly, he took the paper out of his jacket and put it back on the counter. Mr. Haddad slid it across to me with one floury finger. Nobody raised a voice. Mr. Gray went out the side door with his briefcase, and the bell jingled behind him. The miners returned to their stools. I looked down at the paper, and my hands, for the first time that day, were steady.
The money consequences were swift. Legal Aid reviewed the agreement the next morning and found it void under the usury laws of West Virginia, and the Attorney General opened an investigation into Harvest Triumph. Within the year, Pastor Whitaker was charged with fraud and tax evasion, and the lending fund was frozen. The land stayed with my mother, free and clear, and every payment she had made was ordered returned to her. It came to sixty four thousand dollars, and she cried when she saw the check.
In the name of my grandmother Opal, who passed in 2005, I started the Opal Collins Fund. It pays for legal aid against predatory loans, and for recovery housing for women, in Cabell, Wayne and Lincoln counties. In the first year we cancelled eleven predatory contracts and placed twenty three women in recovery housing. One was a mother of thirty from Kenova who had pledged her car to a church lender for a hospital bill. She drove it home from the courthouse with the windows down.
I drove up the creek road to the home place on a Sunday afternoon in May, with a pan of cinnamon rolls on the seat. My mother was sitting on the porch of the trailer in her Sunday dress, and she stood up when she saw the car. I got out and walked across the grass. I did not say anything for a long time. Then I said, “Mama, I am the one who is ashamed, not you.” She came down the steps and held me, and the creek ran past us, and I smelled the cut hay. Behind us, the old porch swing creaked in the wind, and I knew I would be coming home on Sundays from now on, with bread.