Time to Save Money

By Kenn Brody, 2024

Dorothea O’Connor worked as a cashier for a big box store in Greater Boston.  She got paid $20.25 per hour, which would not have been enough to make ends meet even if her manager did not twiddle her hours to make sure she never got a full work week.  Closing time, she spread out her coins for a final count, but she was really looking for old coins, those minted before 1921.  She pocketed those and replaced them with her own money.  She never stole.  Her cash register always balanced.

She finished in time to catch the Forest Hills train to Jamaica Plain, where her grandparents had built a gabled home with a large porch that wrapped around three sides.  She frowned at the weeds, at last year’s leaf piles.  But it was hers, having passed through three generations.  Lights shone through the glass paneled front door.  She threw her coat on the hall hook and her bag of coins on the coffee table in the living room.  Her oldest, Marcy, 14, was studying and/or watching TV.  Little Evan, age 4, was driving his Tonka truck along the wooden floor bordering the old rug, making engine noises.  That left the middle girl, Beth.  Dorothea found her upstairs in her room, reading and listening to something through pink earphones.  She petted her hair, kissed her on her forehead.  So far, so good.  No mayhem, no injuries, no screaming arguments.  She sighed.  Wished it was that way every day.  

“Beth, time for supper.  Wash up and come downstairs.”

Down the stairs, she yelled, “Marcy, Evan, suppertime.  In the kitchen.”

The kids showed up at about the time the mac and cheese was ready.  She doled the sticky stuff into three bowls, making sure that little Evan had his special kiddy spoon.  None for herself.  Food was expensive.  She would eat whatever the kids left over.  There was a pitcher of cold milk.  Evan had a milk moustache.  She wiped his face clean.

Dorothea put the dishes in the sink, opened the cabinets where she stored food, frowned.  Opened the refrigerator and scowled.  They were out of things the kids would eat.  They were out of nearly everything.  Food was just so expensive nowadays!  There was no way she could make ends meet.  In the mail was a real estate tax bill, which was higher every year.  

Next day, on her break, she went to the computer sales department and did a few Google searches.  Just how expensive was food today?  The answers were fascinating.  The Consumer Price index started in 1913.  Flat at about 25 until 1940.  It rose, like an impending flood over low ground, year by year.  By 1970 it was steep.  By Dorothea’s time it was a vertical cliff at 350. 

She sighed.  She knew what she had to do, but it would have to wait until the kids were asleep.  She washed dishes, swept the floors, gritting her teeth.  This was something she swore she would never do.  Her mother and her gramma warned her about it.  She picked up the real estate tax bill and swallowed the lump in her throat.  If she paid it. they would not have food.  Twice she went to the cellar door.  Twice she stopped in her tracks, turned and walked away.  The third time she turned the key and the knob.  The door opened like any door.  She pulled the chain on the ancient light fixture and was surprised to see the light come on.  The stairs, of course, creaked.  The cellar floor was concrete, the walls were plastered cement over bricks.  Planks covered the old coal scuttle at the far end.  She pried off the boards, one by one.  The nails made a screeching sound as they pulled out of the dry wood.  She flung them aside, working up a sweat.  

Inside, like a hole into another place, was a swirl of daylight colors.  

Good enough, she thought, it was still there.  She went back upstairs and changed her dusty clothes into an old frock, something her gramma would wear.  She hoped it was enough.  She fetched a flashlight, shook it when it refused to come on, grabbed her bag of coins and two old cloth satchels.

In the light of the flashlight she read the marks Liam O’Connor had scratched into the beam of the coal shuttle, “I built this house for Maisie.  October, 1922.  Liam O’Connor.”  Dorothea, three generations removed, smiled.  How old Liam knew about this…thing…was something she was never told.  He found it on land he owned and built the house around it.  

She poked a finger into the portal.  She felt nothing.  “What the hell,” she mouthed, shrugged her shoulders and lunged through. She emerged behind a large oak tree in a meadow.

It was a short walk along a path through the meadow.  There were horses and cobblestone streets, automobiles and hand carts.  Everyone wore a hat.  Dorothea did not wear a hat.  People stared.  

The main market was in the middle of the next block.  Goods were piled on tables with signs on wooden splints, pickles and fish were in barrels, milk was in glass jugs with paper disks for covers, bread was warm, the loaves heaped in pyramids.

Eggs were 35 cents a dozen.  Butter 52 cents a pound.  Bread, and it was good bread, 5 cents a loaf.  Cuts of beef and pork were carved to order and wrapped in paper.  Naked chickens hung from hooks.  

Dorothea was in heaven.  Why didn’t she do this sooner?  She filled both her satchels and spent most of her coins, less than $6.  She had food for a week!  She was light as a feather.  She passed a sign advertising a nice room for rent overlooking a pond, $60 a month with references.  Maybe she should move here with the kids?  No, that wouldn’t work.  Modern medicine, education, science – and wages here would be low enough to match the prices.  No, it only worked if she earned at modern rates and spent at 1921 rates.

The satchels were heavy, but she would endure that, gladly.  When she got back she would write a check for the damned real estate tax.

Just a few more minutes of trudging.  Her arms ached.  Her arches were bruised through her thin shoes over the cobblestones.  The portal was just behind that huge oak, the same one that shadowed her house.

Dorothea stumbled through the portal.  It was still dark in her time.  The kids were still asleep.  She was exhausted.  She would put the meats in the refrigerator and leave the satchels on the kitchen floor.  She went upstairs, flopped into bed and slept the sleep of the untroubled.

Sunlight streamed through her windows, as it did every morning, but the air was not fresh.  There was a ruckus downstairs, kids screaming.  She pulled on a robe and slippers and hurried downstairs.  There was a stench in the kitchen.  Two moldy satchels were leaking nasty fluids.  The refrigerator smelled like a charnel house.  

Marcy was trying to clean up.  She picked up one of the milk jugs, filled with clotted murk, said “Eeewe, why is this here?  The label says its over one hundred years old.”