From the Relief Society Magazine, June 1939 –

A Dime Is a Lot of Money

By Eva Willes Wangsgaard

Judith stood at the crossroads. Behind her lay the long, dusty road that led to home and on over the river to the distant mining towns. To the left lay the road that led to the state highway. Straight before her were two other tines of the fork; the left tine ran on into Main Street a few blocks away; the right one ran into the lower part of town, unless you did not turn with the bend and so went on down the farm lane to the lake.

But it was not the confusion of roads that had stopped Judith. These highways she knew as well as a horse knows its way home. What held her at the corner was a serious loss. She stood looking into her purse. She fingered the coins again. She hoped it was not so, but it was; there were only one dime and a nickel in that purse, and when she had left home there had been two dimes and a nickel.

She closed the purse and examined the steel clasp and its edges. That was what was wrong, she decided; dimes were so thin and her purse did not close tight. Dimes could slip out, and Judith’s dime had. Well, it was gone, she thought, and something had to be done about it.

Should she go home and get another? She looked at the market basket at her feet. There was not a single drop of water left on the large rhubarb leaves that her mother had held under the artesian well-stream before she put them over the bunches of asparagus to keep them cool. The sun was hot, the dust deep, the way long; and asparagus would wilt. Besides, if she did hurry down the lane to home a mile or so behind her, her mother would be cross because she had lost the dime and because she was late, she knew. Her mother would scold too; she might do worse than that. Maybe, she reflected, her mother did not have another dime, anyway. No, going back home was not the way out, she concluded.

Should she try returning to search for it, she wondered. Who could find a dime in all that dust? It would be like looking for a drop of ink in a lake. What could she do then?

Two bunches of asparagus at ten cents a bunch was to buy four yards of calico at five cents a yard. The two dimes and the nickel were for a quarter’s worth of meat for Sunday dinner. Should she get a dime’s worth less meat? A dime bought a lot of boiling beef, and without it there would not be enough. Should she buy less calico? No, her mother needed four yards of calico, not two. There had to be some other way out. What was it? Then suddenly she had it. She would charge more for the asparagus.

She picked up the basket and hurried on. Judith was not one to hesitate. She did her looking back as she hastened on. She usually decided and acted quickly, then faced the results squarely and bravely if need be.

Just over the rise which supported the railroad track lived Mrs. Anderson, her first customer. She swung up the path exhibiting no outward signs of the panic in her heart. “What if she makes a fuss?” she was thinking. “What if the plan doesn’t work?” She reached the door and knocked.

Mrs. Anderson answered the door and greeted her with her usual indifference. It was not her customer’s manner that bothered Judith. That was just Mrs. Anderson’s way, but she was a hard trader. Almost everything hinged on how she would react. If Judith got by here she was all right, she felt sure. She tightened her courage.

“I have your asparagus,” she said, and lifted the rhubarb leaves to take out a bunch. Mrs. Anderson took the thick bundle to the pantry.

“How much?” she asked when she came back.

“Fifteen cents,” Judith answered quickly. She had to speak quickly to get it out at all.

“Are you sure your mother said fifteen cents, Judith? I know I have had as much for a dime.”

Something was growing bigger and bigger inside Judith, and her collar felt too tight. She put her hand to her throat, but her neckband felt all right to her fingers. She’d have to see it through now, she thought. She met Mrs. Anderson’s eyes with a steady gaze.

“Fifteen cents,” she repeated.

Mrs. Anderson looked into Judith’s clear brown eyes and paid. Judith’s heart would have fluttered less if she could have heard her customer’s thoughts. Mrs. Anderson had no reason for doubting Judith. She was used to her. Judith’s mother was deaf, and the child always did the shopping and bill-paying for the family. The townsfolk seldom thought of her youthfulness. The large record book in the wardhouse of the church had it that Judith was eleven years old. Her slender body was, but her head in spite of its wreath of yellow curls was much older than that, and the townsfolk recognized the fact.

All the tradesmen knew Judith. They had found out that she could tell at sight the difference between serge and cashmere, calico and percale, lawn and dimity. Even the butcher had to consider her judgment and step sharply.

But Judith did not know that people considered her different. If she thought about such things at all it was to conclude that other children were queer.

Just now she was stepping along briskly toward Mrs. Harwood’s, the market basket swinging two pounds lighter from her crooked arm.

There was nothing about her appearance to indicate the tumult going on inside. She knew that she had acted without authority and against all she had been taught. She knew what grownups would think of that sort of conduct in a child, yet she felt that it was the only way to meet her difficulty without harm to anyone. The stores would soon be closed for the Sabbath, and the shopping must be done. If the women did not want her asparagus at Judith’s price, they could refuse and she could try elsewhere. They would take it, she knew, because the butcher would charge them more for less. She came to the Harwoods’.

Mrs. Harwood answered her knock with a quick jerk at the door. She always jerked. She began to talk in a steady stream as soon as she saw who was there.

“How’s your mother today, Judith? I declare, that dress is too short. What is your mother thinking of to let you go around showing your legs like that? There’s a deep hem in it, too.” She stooped to confirm the statement. “Tell your mother to let it down when you get home. Tell her I said so. How much is the asparagus?” Mrs. Harwood always ran her thoughts into each other that way, Judith reflected. She was so busy talking that she did not question the price of the asparagus. She just paid, and Judith slipped out of her house as easily as one of the chatterer’s words from her lips.

Well, Judith mused, there was another nickel, which with Mrs. Anderson’s contribution made the dime back; but there was still the shopping to do. She hurried to Main Street and the shopping.

Then she was on her way home. A long row of poplars cast their shadows down the side of the soft roadway. Judith swung into their cool depths, grateful for the respite from the afternoon sun. The chirping sparrows fluttered and cheeped overhead. Judith longed to put down the basket and explore the trees for nests, but there was meat in the basket. A dog might come along, she worried. The climbing would have to wait until some time when the basket contained only cloth. She trudged resolutely on.

At the crossroads that marked halfway home, Judith quickened her steps. Then she broke into a run. Her big sister had often told her stories about Indians who hid in these willows that filled a corner near the ditch. They were interesting stories but dreadfully scary. The faster she ran the more real the Indians became. Then she slowed to climb the rise over the bridge of the canal. As her feet slowed her heart quieted, and she no longer felt the Indian’s fingers reaching for her hair. She sauntered on after she had crossed the bridge, but she kept to the center of the road. The sides were dark with shrubs.

Soon she came to the second willows. That is what the children called that second clump. They were friendly willows, she remembered happily. No Indians hid there – only pollywogs. There was the puddle now. She could play with pollywogs in spite of the meat because she could keep the basket near her quick hands. She began to catch pollywogs.

Suddenly, she gasped! her nimble fingers reached into the mud and pulled out a thin dime imbedded there, all covered except one tiny silver arc.

“Well, of all things!” Judith gulped. “Here’s where it fell out. I stopped here on my way to town. Oh, dear! What will I do with it now?”

It did not occur to her to throw it away. A dime was a lot of money. She must keep it. She sat down on a tuft of grass to think over the new twist to her problem. She polished the dime on the grass and sat staring at its shining roundness. A dime was a lot of money, her thoughts repeated. It would buy a yard of lawn, two yards of calico, or a pound of beef – and now she was a dime ahead.

To charge more for her mother’s asparagus, she reasoned, in order to get the meat for the family’s Sunday dinner was one thing, but to do it to get a dime was quite another. She would have to give the coin to her mother, she knew, and what would her mother say? That depended, Judith judged, on what she told her mother.

Then a long chain of experiences began to drag across her brain. She had often been punished for having told family matters in the homes of relatives, like the time when she had told how much her father’s check had been, and Aunt Geneva had told her mother. There was the time, too, when Aunt Geneva had “pumped” her to find out what her father’s letter had said about the job and about Uncle Al. Of course, Judith reflected, her mother had not known about the “pumping” and about how Aunt Geneva had stretched what Judith really had told, so she could not blame her mother for the punishment. Now Judith remembered her mother’s often reiterated question, “When will you learn not to tell all you know?”

That was an idea, she decided. She would tell only what she was forced to tell. She would give the dime to her mother when she got home, she concluded, tell as little as she could, and then meet what came. She could not sit here any longer.

She opened her purse, wrapped the dime in her handkerchief, put it inside, and clipped the stiff catch. Then she arose and scurried to make up for lost time.

She had to pause on the porch to catch her breath. When she entered the house, she found her mother making cookies. Her mother went on working while Judith unwrapped the meat for her inspection.

“That’s a fine boil,” she said. “You strike a good bargain, Judith.”

Judith beamed with pleasure; the trip to town was paid for by that praise. She presented the calico.

“Oh, how lovely!” her mother commended her again. “The tiny red vine in the pattern will work up beautifully. I couldn’t have done better myself.” She wiped her hands on her full apron and threw the goods over her left arm, from which it hung down and nearly swept the floor. “There’s enough here for both you and Mildred. Put it in the sewing drawer.” She gave the goods back to Judith.

Judith turned to obey, but halted instead. She opened her purse, unwrapped the handkerchief, and silently handed her mother the dime.

“Where did you get this?” her mother asked.

“I found it.” The half-truth was out. Judith stood rigid and waited.

“Then you may have it,” was all her mother said.

“But I don’t want it.” Judith wondered if her mother could hear her heart beat.

Her mother made a sudden turn toward the oven and sniffed. If that was really a look of inquiry Judith had seen on her face it was quickly erased by concern for her cookies. She bent to rescue the too-brown cakes. Judith stood waiting. Her mother made no other comment.

Judith picked up a cookie and walked thoughtfully out of the kitchen. Like other children she looked for punishment for any action that deviated from the standard. After a scolding or a switching the responsibility slid to the shoulders of her parents. This way it remained with Judith.

She could not understand. She had expected to be questioned and lectured. She could not know that twice that day she had met absolute trust. That trust and her silence made a wall within which Judith wandered around and around alone.

She took the calico to the sewing drawer in her mother’s bedroom. She dropped the dime into a tray on her mother’s dresser. She heard it ring as it hit the bottom; she saw it lying flat in the tray; but, she discovered, it was not so easily gotten rid of. It had fastened itself more deeply into her consciousness than it had in the ooze near the puddle.

A dime is so thin; it is amazing how much one can weigh.