Mirage Sale
It looks like a typical Sunday afternoon garage sale: card tables littered with disposable belongings, people standing around with baby strollers and dogs on leashes counting their change. But this is not a typical garage sale. I want everything they’re selling and I can buy it for cheap.
There is the sterling silver baby rattle my grandmother gave me when I was born: sixty four cents. The ratty, musty smelling stuffed animal I slept with until I was eighteen and then lost in a move: forty two cents. The beaded necklace my best friend gave to me in the third grade which my mother accidentally threw away: ninety seven cents. The first journal I ever wrote in: thirty three cents.
I watch the people rummage through these precious things. “The price tag says $1.96 but it’s all faded and worn. I’ll give you fifty seven cents.” A woman bargains for my prom dress with the pink taffeta and sequined collar.
“Daddy, I want this one!” A sticky-faced little girl pulls on her father’s shirt. He brings out his wallet and pays for my very first bicycle—the one with the training wheels and flower basket. Two dollars and three cents.
I start to panic as I watch these strangers leaving with my things. “Wait!” I shout, reaching for my purse. “I’ll give you whatever you want for all of it! I have plenty of money.” I fumble for cash, credit cards, checkbook, but all I find are receipts.
The woman behind the card table looks at me impatiently. “Looks like you’re out of luck,” she says.
A young boy pulls the crank on my old jack-in-the-box, the one that terrified me when I was young. The clown pops out and the boy starts to cry.
I can’t buy back my misplaced things. I can only stand back and watch as these people, these strangers, touch them and bargain for them, not knowing what anything is really worth. It’s painful but I can’t turn away.
The woman behind the card table counts the change in front of her. It isn’t much, but she appears satisfied. She looks at me again, suspiciously, as if I might try and steal something.
More people come up from behind me and push me away from the table, greedy for a sale. There’s nothing I can do now but watch, caught in the shuffle of these lazy Sunday afternoon shoppers.
