The Penny (7 page)

“Go to your room and read or something. Say you haven’t seen me if Daddy comes looking. That’s all you have to do.” She shot me an expression that would have curdled milk.

“Jean. It’s too
dangerous.
”

“I’m going now.”

“Jean, who
is
he?”

“I told you. Billy.”

“Billy Manning,” he said, following up for her, looking as uncomfortable as I felt, extending his hand.

I didn’t take his hand to shake it. I was too distraught for that. He stood by the window waiting while we discussed his attributes like he was a specimen.

“I met him at the Fox, okay? One afternoon when you couldn’t go because you were too busy working at your new
job
.” Then, exasperated because she knew I’d insist she give me every detail or I wouldn’t be satisfied, “It was that time I went to see
Mogambo
again, okay?”

Mogambo
was the Grace Kelly movie about a woman who became dissatisfied with her life when she and her husband went on safari in Kenya. Grace was nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for that one, and she should have been the winner, Jean often complained. It should never have been Donna Reed in
From Here to Eternity.
And of course, Jean told me, everyone thought Clark Gable must have fallen in love with Grace while they filmed the movie.

“It was the third time she’d seen it,” Billy volunteered.

I narrowed my eyes at him to make him be quiet. Of
course
she’d seen it three times. Every Grace Kelly admirer had seen it three times. To my sister I said, “You can’t just
run
like this.”

“You weren’t supposed to be here when Billy came anyway. He got here early.” She rolled her eyes at him, making it clear this was all his fault. “If you hadn’t been in here, you wouldn’t even know I’d taken off.”

“Yeah, but now I do.”

“I wasn’t going to tell
anybody.
” She slung her leg over the window ledge and grabbed onto a branch. She wasn’t taking anything with her, not her rhinestone-button sweater, not her purse, nothing.

“When will you be back?” I hissed.

“Maybe never.”

“Is there a phone where you’ll be?” I asked.

“No.”

“Where are you going, Jean?”

“I don’t have a place in mind.”

I clamped my mouth shut.
Does
he
have a place in mind?
I’d been planning to ask. But I stopped myself, it sounded so ridiculous. How odd was this? Me, acting like a mother.

Chapter Seven

A
ll that night, the walls of our flat jeered and sputtered with sounds I’d never heard before: walls shifting, bricks hissing out the day’s heat like a sigh. I turned my pillow every so often, trying to find another cool spot. I gave up after a while and let it grow warm beneath my head. It couldn’t have cooled off more than a few degrees outside since the sun went down.

Every crack of brush outside made my heart pound. Every creak of the floor inside was even worse. What if Daddy missed Jean tonight?

I strained at the slightest hint of noise. A lizard slipping through the grass became a footfall I needed to listen for. A rustle in the tree became my sister coming home.

The sheets weighed a hundred pounds on my legs. I sat up in desperation and kicked them off. It cooled me a little, freeing my toes.

I’d figured Jean would stay out all night and I wasn’t wrong. I didn’t know which frightened me more, that Daddy would figure things out or that my sister would come to some harm. Just before daybreak, I heard the stealthy scratch of Jean’s window rising. I slid low in my bed like I was sinking into a bathtub with relief.

Presently,
“Jenny,”
I heard her whisper at my door. She opened my door an inch, then lightly knocked, as if she suddenly thought I deserved privacy. “You awake?” As if I’d grown a little in Jean’s eyes just by association with her because, after this one night, she’d achieved her own pinnacle of maturity.

I felt limp with relief.
“Come in,”
I whispered back.

That was all the invitation she needed.

“I’ve got so much to tell you.” She sat down hard on my ankles, about wrenching them from the sockets. Her eyes, when she stared at my wall, looked way beyond what I could see. For once she wasn’t talking about Grace Kelly. She wasn’t going on about Grace’s trip to Cannes or about the filming of
To Catch a Thief
with Cary Grant or about how Grace had said the South of France was her favorite location. It was a rare moment when Jean forgot to talk about Grace Kelly and told me about herself instead.

“Do you want to know what we did? Do you?
Do
you?”

I clutched the sheet to my chin, feeling amused because, after all the times I’d begged her to let me know what was going on, I could see I wouldn’t be able to stop her now if I tried. “I didn’t think you wanted to tell.”

“We dust-bombed streetcars,” she gasped. “You scrape all the dust by the curb into a paper sack and swing it around your head and let it fly when the streetcar comes by. All the passengers start jumping around and coughing and dusting themselves off. Some of them are dressed so fine and they
holler—
”

Somewhere beyond her words, the faucet began to run. We both froze. From the kitchen, we heard the refrigerator door slam, the rumble of a chair scooting on the floor.

Jean looked like a trapped rabbit. “He’s
up
?”

I shook my head at her.
I didn’t know.

“Has he been up all
night
?”

I clutched the sheets clear up to my chin. I sure couldn’t answer.

“I’ve got to get back to my room”
is what she would have said if she’d had the time. But when she edged the door open and sidled out, I could see Daddy’s silhouette against the far wall. I knew then that her sidling out was exactly what Daddy had been waiting for.

Sometimes not knowing what to expect felt worse than getting belted. I listened to the surge of their quarreling voices with my head in defeat against the wall.

“Where’ve you been?”

“. . . in my room . . .”

“Don’t lie to me.”

I couldn’t see Daddy’s face, but I could imagine it. All twisted up like a rotted pear.

“You think I let anything in this house get by me? You think I didn’t hear what time you came in?”

We’d learned to be cautious around Daddy, picking out the right words like we’d pick the right change out of a coin purse. Daddy always needed to control what went on—when we went to bed, what time we had to get up. He decided what television programs we watched, how much money we spent, what clothes we wore, what we ate for supper. I cringed when I heard the flippant way my sister answered him. Billy must’ve gone to her head, made her feel too important. Jean forgot to be careful.

I couldn’t believe she’d lied outright to him. But then, in a fit of insanity, she told him the truth. “I met a boy and I was out with him,” Jean suddenly challenged. She sounded like she expected Daddy to be impressed. “He liked me.”

And just like that I heard something thunder across the floor and hit the wall. I heard her shriek—he must have grabbed her.

“Don’t you let any boy come close to you, do you hear me?” I heard his fist strike and knew he must have doubled her over.

“You being loose with boys, aren’t you?”

I heard her gasping for air.

“How many, Jean? How many have you had relations with?”

Another punch and, from the thud, he must have dropped her to her knees.

“Any boy gets close to you, I’ll kill him. You tell them to their faces for me, you hear?”

With sheets wadded beneath my chin, with fists trembling, I waited to hear another blow. The flat grew quiet, as still as all the other dwellings that crouched along Wyoming Street. Then, as if the sound came from very far off, I heard my sister sobbing.

Our lives are never going to be more than this.

“You tell this to any boy who so much as looks at you, Jean. You tell him you aren’t ever going to be free.”

Jean didn’t argue back anymore.

We’d learned never to argue back.

I pictured Daddy in the other room wiping the sweat off his upper lip with the heel of his hand. “You tell everyone who’s interested, you hear?” he said. “You girls belong to me.”

Miss Shaw decided to teach me the cash register. No matter how hard I tried to concentrate on punching the right numbers, my fingers kept hitting the wrong keys. The only thing more frustrating than trying to prove you’re not good enough for a job is trying hard to do something right and messing it up.

When I tried to add tax to $53, the register kept ringing N
O
S
ALE
. When I tried to make change for a $20 bill, I gave back $22. When I pulled the arm to open the drawer, it stayed stubbornly shut instead.

I stood morosely by the front window looking out, my fingers in my pockets, trying to pretend nothing was wrong. Daddy’s awful words resounded in my head.
Never going to be free.
The long night of listening for every crunch and clatter outside was taking its toll.

“Is that the one?” Miss Shaw asked.

She pointed at my palm. I looked down, too, not realizing I’d pulled it out. I tucked the penny away with false nonchalance. But not before she craned her neck to have a good look.

“You know what, Jenny?” she asked me. “The worst thing you can do is go into a day being afraid.”

“Afraid?” I asked. “Why would you think I was afraid?”

“I think you’re afraid that everything you do is the wrong thing. I think you’re afraid of all the good things you are.”

I’d learned to hold my tongue with my daddy. It wasn’t quite the same with everybody else. “I don’t know what makes you think that. You can’t think that—you’ve only known me inside your shop.”

“That’s one of the things about Jesus,” she said. “Once you know how to receive the love he’s pouring into your heart, then all of a sudden, out of the blue, you start knowing whom to give it to.”

My face shot up. It gave me a jolt, having Miss Shaw start talking about Jesus.

How did Miss Shaw know that, for one night, I believed all of Jesus’ promises? How could she know that I prayed the words at Aurelia’s church, but now I was starting to doubt I’d ever hear from him?

If there was anything I’d learned from Daddy, it was not to let anybody see me scared. He didn’t go easier on me if I didn’t let him see me afraid, but he didn’t quite get so much pleasure out of hurting me, either.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” I lied.

“Well, as long as you’re standing there, would you mind helping me rearrange the windows once we’re done here? I haven’t been happy with them in a while. Since that man grabbed those necklaces from my hand.” Then, “If not for you, Jenny Blake, I would’ve lost some expensive pieces.”

If not for the penny.

So here we came to the penny again. It seemed like every time I forgot about it, and about how many things had changed in my life since I picked it up, something came along to remind me again.

Miss Shaw draped a watch over the black velvet stand shaped like an arm. I draped another. The watch’s opalescent face and gold numbers glimmered against Miss Shaw’s glove. My hand looked small and grimy compared to Miss Shaw’s white gloves and perfect, refined gestures. I thought about how these timepieces were worth at least fifty times what Daddy kept hidden in the tin above the stove.

Miss Shaw must’ve seen me noticing because she laid her gloved hand across mine. “You know what I think? I think your picking up that penny was more than part of a random chain of events. I think God was giving you a message. I think he wants you to know that he’s watching over you all the time, that he has a good plan for your life.”

My eyes shot to hers. “You’re talking about me?”

She nodded. “Sure, I am.”

“Why?”

She began tucking each price tag behind each band so if a customer was interested, he would have to inquire. She ran her fingers beneath each clasp so every one lay at the same angle.

“Just a hunch, I guess.” Miss Shaw slid the cabinet shut with a firm click. “You’re a pretty girl, Jenny. Mind if I try something?” She opened her palm to reveal a sparkling barrette.

I nodded.
I mind.
I didn’t want her experimenting with her fashion ideas on me. But she looked so disappointed, I yielded.

“Go ahead if you want. I don’t care.”

She slid my bandeau off and gathered my unruly hair in her fist. When her gloves brushed my neck, I got the goosebumps. I wasn’t used to anybody being careful when they touched me. I wasn’t used to anybody touching me in kindness at all.

“Here. Let me show you.” She fiddled with my bangs, slipped the barrette in place and gave me a hand up so I could look in the mirror. “If you sweep it to one side, look there.”

I stared at myself.

“Your eyes are the color of that penny you carry.”

All I could see in the mirror was my chewed-up lips and too many freckles and a nose that looked about as sharp as a spout on a coffee pot.

“Copper comes from the same ore as iron, did you know that? Do you see that iron strength in your eyes? I sure do.”

I squinted, looked a little harder. If she hadn’t been Miss Shaw, I would’ve called her crazy.

“I see in you a determination that not everyone has.”

I looked at her instead of the mirror.

“You have the strength to trust, Jenny. You hang onto that, because it’s been given to you as a special gift. It’s the kind of strength that’s the most hard to find.”

I examined the toe of my shoe in discomfort. “My sister says Grace Kelly hated her first on-screen performance in
High Noon
.” Talking about Grace was the only way I could think of to redirect the conversation. “After Grace watched her own movie, she hired a new acting coach. Jean read it in
Photoplay
this week. Grace wasn’t happy with herself because she said she could look into Gary Cooper’s face and see everything he was thinking, but when she looked into her own face she couldn’t see anything at all.”

“With all the talk about Grace Kelly, it sounds like your sister wants to live someone else’s life instead of her own.”

“She’s obsessed,” I said, shrugging.

Then as if she’d given me free rein, I let everything go, all at once. “Lots of people want to live
your
life,” I blurted. “You should hear the things they say about you. They say all the same things about you that Jean likes to say about Grace Kelly.”

“Ah.” I could see her face behind mine in the mirror. I hadn’t expected this reaction. She laughed, but she sounded sad.

“They want to know why you always wear white gloves. They talk about how your manners are so good and how you lacquer your hair and how you put lipstick on so it never smears on your teeth. They all want to know about—”
The grave.

“People have a way of looking at other people and seeing things the way they think them to be, not the way they really are. You’ve got to remember that always, Jenny Blake.”

I’d taken Daddy’s money for streetcar fare and lied to Mama about seeing Aurelia and ferreted out details about my new employer’s life. If people knew what I’d done, there was no end to the bad things they could think about me.

It was easy for Miss Shaw to talk about messages from God and knowing who to love—her life had been completely different from mine. I would have bet she didn’t have a daddy who told her she’d never amount to anything. I would have bet she didn’t have a daddy who thought she’d never done anything right.

I’d give anything to live free like Miss Shaw.