My Grandma Ellie had only one hand, the left one. When I was little I didn’t think much about it. Her right wrist ended in a tough lump of scar tissue, and she could do a lot of things that you’d think you’d need two hands for, like tying up my shoes for me, or rolling out dough. For a long time it didn’t occur to me to ask how she’d lost her hand, until I did one day when I was about seven years old.

Oh this thing, she said, laughing. That’s a story. When I was seventeen years old, and your Grandpa Frank was twenty, we fell in love and he wanted to marry me. In those days people thought a woman was an expensive thing to have in your household, and the tradition was that her father had to give a lot of money to a man to take a daughter off his hands. That was called her dowry. So Frank asked me to marry him, and I told my father, and my father asked the headman of the town how much the dowry should be.

My father had money, because he raised horses and sold them, so the headman knew he could afford a big dowry. He said it should be seven hundred fifty pounds, which was truly a lot of money in those days. My father thought Frank would be a good husband for me, so he was willing to pay it, but your Grandpa Frank was very proud and independent-minded, and had his own way of thinking about a lot of things, and he didn’t want to take a dowry for me. He said he could very well take care of me himself and didn’t need any help from my father.

But the headman said if there wasn’t a dowry there couldn’t be a marriage, and your Grandpa Frank and I were very much in love, so he decided to accept the dowry. But he didn’t want anyone to think he needed it, so what he did was, he took the money–a hundred and fifty five-pound notes–and he folded each of the notes into a narrow ribbon and wove them together into a sort of cuff or sleeve. It was like one of those finger-trap puzzles you used to get at festivals, the ones where you slip your fingers into the ends and the harder you try to pull them out, the harder it is to get them out. This cuff was like that, only big enough to slip it over my hand onto my arm. It reached from right above my wrist about halfway to my elbow. I could take it off again if I was gentle and patient with it, but if you tried to yank it off all at once it would just tighten down and not go anywhere.

I was so proud of my beautiful dowry cuff! The woven notes showed different patterns, like the lacy borders around the edges of the notes, or bits of the pretty lady’s face wearing a helmet, or bits of the lion on the back. It was like wearing jewelry, only better, because everyone knew exactly how much it was worth, and they knew it meant your Grandpa Frank could afford a wife without spending her dowry, and if we ever did need the money I wouldn’t have to sneak into the city and sell a piece of jewelry to get it, and hope I got a good price. I could just unweave my cuff and it would be money already, just like that.

So I wore my cuff anytime I wanted to show off, just like it was a piece of jewelry. Not when I was washing or cooking, but if we got dressed up and went out to the square in the evening, or to a party, or that sort of thing.

Then one day the bad men came to town from Up North. (Here my sister interrupted, not The Bad Men, they’re a band from the city that plays dance music, these were just bad men.)

No, my Grandma Ellie said, laughing again, these were just some bad men from Up North. They came to town looking for trouble, and it so happened that I had been visiting some friends of mine who lived over by the river and I was wearing my dowry cuff to show off in front of them. I was on my way home from their house, and your Grandpa Frank was still at work so I was by myself, and the bad men saw my cuff made of five-pound notes and wanted it. So one of them showed me a big knife and told me to give it to them, but I was scared and I wasn’t gentle and patient with it, and neither was he, so it grabbed my arm tighter and tighter the harder he tried to yank it off.

Finally he got so angry he just cut my hand off and slipped the cuff off my arm that way. I remember thinking how strange my hand looked, lying there on the ground, separate from me for the first time in my life. It didn’t look like part of me at all, it looked like, I don’t know, a starfish or something. Anyway, the bad men ran away, and I fainted, and when I woke my Grandma Angela had sewed up my wrist and wrapped it up in clean bandages, and gave me some special tea to drink to ease the pain, and it didn’t hurt so bad, really.

Then late that night your Grandpa Frank came home from work and found out what happened, and he was furious! He went and got your Uncle Marcus, and they went Up North and found the bad men. They had already spent my dowry money on rum and other things you’re too young to hear about, and your Grandpa and your Uncle Marcus found them drunk asleep in their hut, and they cut their throats so they couldn’t ever do bad things to anyone else ever again.

So that’s how your Grandma Ellie lost her hand. That was a long time ago, when life was considerably uglier than it is now. Now you can just call a policeman if someone does something bad to you.

That story made quite an impression on me, and the next time I visited, when Uncle Marcus and I were out for a walk, I asked him if he and Grandpa Frank had really killed the bad men who cut off Grandma Ellie’s hand back in the old days. He frowned at me and asked, what kind of story has your Grandma been telling you? So I told him, and he shook his head the whole time. That never happened at all, he said. She made up the whole thing.

Then how did she lose her hand, I asked him. He sighed and said, I don’t know. It was a long time ago, and she’s made up so many stories about it over the years, I don’t even remember what the truth is. But I promise you, your Grandpa Frank and I never killed anybody.