Guess How Much I Paid?

Every month, I eagerly awaited Saturday bargain hunting with my younger sister, Shelia. Not the kind of bargain hunting you did at the Dollar store or basement of Macy’s and Filene’s. Sure, those places have good deals, but nothing like those in the thrift shops on the north shore of Chicago. Here, you could discover new, never-worn clothes with tags intact at second-hand prices. I suspect they were gifts, which rich people discarded instead of exchanged. Finding a bargain was only one of the things I was certain would happen on our trip. The other was that Shelia would wander off, causing a delay in our travel plans. She insisted on hunting alone, but she couldn’t drive.

We started at our furthest destination in Winnetka. Then, we worked our way back towards home, ending at the Goodwill store in Evanston. Within its’ 46,000 square feet hid wonderful treasures waiting for those patient and persistent enough to find them. After nearly two hours of rummaging, I was empty-handed, and the store was closing in twenty minutes. Thankfully, I had found a bargain earlier in the day, so I went in search of Shelia. After ten minutes, I went to the car, knowing she would show up eventually. But there she was, standing next to the car, holding a shopping bag.

While I was curious about her bag’s contents, I knew that she would thwart my attempts to gain any intelligence. It doesn’t matter what is in that bag, I thought; I win 80% of the time. That didn’t mean I could count her out. Shelia is a fierce competitor and does not like to lose but, she would rather lose than let you win. Sometimes when we played our favorite card game, Bid Whist - like Bridge for black folks, she would place the highest bid, which if executed was called “ running a Boston.” That meant that she betted against the other team making even one successful play. She said she did it because she had a terrible hand and that meant the other team might run a Boston on her and her partner. If she lost, at least she stayed at the table. The weird thing about that was sometimes she would pull it off and win. Even she would be amazed.

Walking toward her, I uttered, too loudly, I realized later, “Hey, you beat me to the car; that never happens.” I’m tired and ready to go, she volleyed back. “Must be from carrying that bag full of stuff,” I jabbed. Her eyes fixed directly on my face and a soft hmm escaped her lips while she quietly put her shopping bag in the back seat, then collapsed into the passenger seat. The shortness of her sentence alerted me to her mood. I knew better than to try to pull her into a conversation. So, the ride home was quiet. Fortunately, we had the night to rest for our big reveal tomorrow.

The big reveal included a Sunday dinner and a fashion show with relatives, friends, and neighbors. Everyone bought a potluck dish for dinner, and we feasted, laughed, and caught up on life. After dinner, we moved to the living room for our fashion show. Shelia asked me to go first, so I changed into the red boucle knit designer dress with its crisscross fold in the back, which cost me only $8.00. As I strolled across the room, I noticed the smiles, nods, and admiration, boosting my confidence that the win would be mine. I smugly walked to my seat and turned to see Shelia enter the room.

She began strutting towards us in an ill-fitting, faded housedress with two huge pockets on the front. As she moved closer, I could see colorful flowers once bloomed there. Spinning around as if she was wearing a ballgown, “Guess how much I paid,” she asked. I thought she was joking and was wearing something else underneath that tent of a dress, so I said, It’s worth zero dollars, and even that is too much. Laughter filled the room. Undaunted, Shelia urged, “Really, come on, guess.”

“How about fifty cents,” our brother, Michael, offered. “No, lower,” she said, a broad smile breaking out on her face. “Twenty-five cents,” suggested her friend, Gwen. “No, lower,” she encouraged. “Oh, so it was zero, Michael joked. Shelia countered, “No, lower.” Remarks came from all directions. What? Huh? I don’t get it. Are we being punked? This is crazy. I queried, “How could it be lower than zero?” “It can, I assure you,” Shelia responded. “That is ridiculous,” I rebounded. Shelia reached into the right-hand pocket of the dress and removed a small black notebook. “It is less than zero when you gain,” she began as she gently removed a folded letter, opening it to reveal a check. “In this case, a gain of $19, 990, the check is for $20,000.” Mom loudly exclaimed, “Oh, my God, S20,000!, are you sure we can keep it? Overlooking our mother’s insinuation that she had found the check, Shelia shared how she came to find the dress.

“After spending more than an hour searching, I wasn’t finding anything. I remembered that the Goodwill Store lets you fill up a bag or take one already filled for one dollar per pound at the end of the day. So, I looked over some of the bags already filled. One was full of purses, another filled with what looked like stuff from a dresser drawer; I couldn’t believe that I was going to go home empty-handed. After all, my best finds to date have been in this store, how is it even possible that I can’t find anything. A notice came over the intercom that they were closing in 15 minutes. There wasn’t enough time to look through them all, so I randomly picked one and took it to the cash register. Then, I went to the car to check it quickly, and all I found were old, faded clothes. I felt like crap. Look, I know I’m not always the winner, but I think I have a good eye for a bargain. “

Someone laughed. I’m not sure who it was.

Shelia paused then continued. “My stomach began to churn slightly, and I thought of running inside to get another bag when I saw Karen coming towards the car. Damn, I thought, I guess I’m going to lose. I didn’t really feel like talking on the way home; I needed to strategize.

When I got home, I took a second look at the clothes, removing them one by one and inspecting them. There at the bottom of the bag, was the housedress. I threw the dress onto the pile and heard a thud. Grabbing the dress, I realized that one side was heavier than the other. In its’ left- hand pocket, I found a small black notebook. I thought, well, at least I got a notebook. As I checked to make sure all the pages were empty, I noticed a letter nestled closely between the book’s pages. I opened the letter, and a cashier’s check fell out. My eyesight must have gotten blurry as I reached to pick it up because I saw a lot of zeroes. I needed to sit down for a minute. I read the letter and here is what it said,

“As a woman, I did not have the power or permission to follow my dreams, to have some adventure beyond being a mother or a wife. I do not know what I could have accomplished or what I could have become. I want to give someone else the power to make a choice. Whoever you are, I hope you will use this money to have an adventure or two. Use the book to capture the memories. I’ll be watching from above.”

All I could say was, “Wow.”