Poor Jenny, Bright As A Penny

Chapter 11

Jenny’s red cap and sweater reflected in the store windows, and the sharp wind teased at her. The sky was a dark mass of rain clouds streaked with clear light; the colors of the city seen against wet concrete and such a sky were incredibly rich.

She could see the library long before she reached it, a stone building surrounded by horse chestnut trees in new leaf, their branches touching the tall windows. Rain came on the gusty wind sometimes, the day seemed made of light—light and wind.

She liked seeing her reflection flashing, wearing red made her feel bright and free. She must have been smiling, because people smiled back at her. She wanted to shout, to run and shout, I’m me! I’m Jenny Middle!

As she entered the library her feeling of exuberance quieted and she stared around the huge rooms with a feeling of expectancy. The tall windows ended high above with rounded tops, sky and clouds could be seen through them, and the rain-colored light fell down across the books and across people’s heads as they sat reading. Jenny began to choose her books, taking her time at it.

Then she searched the three floors idly, browsing in each room. She came at last to the top where the architectural books were kept, and found Bingo seated at a table piled with open books and magazines. The light washed over his dark, clipped head and over the pale ivory pages of his sketchbook. He was drawing the treasures he had found, making them his own. He did not notice her. He took off his glasses once and wiped them on his shirt, but she had to sit down at his table and stare at him before he looked at her. His face had a forlorn look. “I’m not nearly ready.”

“I’m not in a hurry.” She looked with wonder at the piles of books.

“Look at this fortress, look how thick the walls are, how it angles over the hill.” The towers and steep roofs sent sharp shadows jutting across the battlements. “And I found two dragons; I’ve drawn them,” he flipped the pages of his sketchbook. The dragons were obviously of stone; he had done a careful rendering. Under one he had written, “Goslar,” and underneath the other, “Neuilly-en-Donjon.” Goslar and Neuilly-en-Donjon, the words sang themselves in Jenny’s head.

“And here are African mud houses with the outside walls painted in designs.” He rooted through the magazines, then handed her one. “And I’ve never seen these.” Bingo’s eyes shone; he pushed another magazine over the top of the first so she stared down at curved concrete interiors that followed the same shapes as the African mud houses, curves that you would like to feel with your hands. Bingo hardly knew when Jenny left him.

When finally he came down with his drawings clutched beneath his arm, he found Jenny sitting quietly in the reading room. In the soft leather chairs all around her, drab old men slept or read. She was watching them.

She memorized the ill-fitting wrinkled clothes, the round-toed shoes, the stubbled, creviced faces. This must be a haven for the old men off the street, this reading room where the new magazines were kept lined against the walls and the radiators sent out their warm breath.

That night in bed Jenny wrote a sketch of the drab old men who came to shelter from the cold spring air, old men not wanted in their daughters’ houses in the daytime, or who lived alone in dismal rooms, lonely old men with nowhere else to go.

*

Maybe we’re all lonely. Maybe Crystal’s lonely, maybe she always was—and maybe Mama’s lonely too. What makes people lonely?

I don’t know.

She sat thinking about it, staring out at the lights of the city.

Maybe if you’re lonely inside yourself, Jenny thought, then being with people just hides it for a little while. She watched the lights of a jet streak over the city. But if you’re contented inside yourself, then you’re not ever lonely.

She thought about Bingo. Bingo’s never lonely with himself. And neither am I, really. Except sometimes—sometimes lately I have such a turmoil in me. Maybe it’s all the changes we’ve had. Or maybe it’s because we’ll have to go away with Mama soon. It’s going to seem worse now.

*

Ben was sprawled by the fire tonight with a book, and for some reason seeing him reading surprised me. I guess because he’s so matter-of-fact. He’s reading Steinbeck. I never have. Georgie says I should. Ben was reading Cannery Row and laughing, so I guess I’ll read it too.

Now I know something I will never do—I will never marry a policeman. I couldn’t stand it. When I get married and have a family I want my family to he safe. I could never stand what can happen. Tonight two young policemen were shot. They had been friends all their lives, in the Marines together, and rookies together. Someone had lain in ambush for them on a fake call. They were killed with a shotgun at point-blank range. All the Dermodys are tight-lipped. Jack looks very angry.

When the wind blows hard, the trees below my window look like a sea, like a roiling sea. Their shadows churn and thrash across the rooftops, so the roofs seem to be rolling in waves, a stormy sea, and houses are boats churning on it.

And I am Noah in a sturdy ark. Or Noah’s wife, I guess. We need more animals, though, two cats aren’t nearly enough. They’re both the same sex anyway.

Willy Grimm has been confined to his room after school for a week, and Bingo has been punished. Mr. Frazee caught them on the roof of the delicatessen, dropping raw eggs on people. I couldn’t help laughing, but I was shocked at Bingo. Maybe Georgie was right about Willy’s influence. Still, I didn’t like Georgie’s punishing Bingo, it’s always been my job to see he does right. He’s never done anything wrong before. I don’t like Georgie’s making him go without his allowance like that. It’s our money. Well, no, it’s county welfare money being paid for us.

But we’ve never had allowances before, it’s such a treat for us to have something to spend as we want. It hurt Bingo terribly, I could tell.

And that makes me wonder. I know it’s suspicious of me, but how much money do Georgie and Jack get for us? Do we really cost all that, or are they making money on us?

I’m an ungrateful creep. Why shouldn’t they keep it all. It takes more than food to take care of us, it takes time and all the extra things, laundry, my driving lessons. Part of it should be rent. Why shouldn’t they keep it all. It’s for everything, not just our food. I’m too used to Mama and Lud.

*

Now Georgie has a black eye. Jack and Bingo and I were eating breakfast when Georgie got home from working on the late night shift. Her eye was turning black. Jack just looked at her a long time, then said, “That’s not a bad shiner, but it’s a little off-center.” I thought that was funny, but Georgie told him to go to hell.

It happened at J.D.H.; five girls locked themselves in the craft room by wedging the tables against the door, then they pounded on the floor with chairs. Georgie said it shook the whole building. They broke out all the small panes of glass in the windows, and screamed and yelled—I can guess what sorts of things.

Georgie pried open the door enough to get the nozzle of the fire hose in, and she hosed them until they were willing to come out. The biggest girl called Georgie a slut and socked her in the eye before Georgie could pin her. And all Jack said was, “You’re really slipping.” When he said that, I didn’t blame Georgie for being mad.

I was very disillusioned by them. They were really getting angry at each other. They sat there drinking their coffee and not saying anything. Then suddenly Jack burst out laughing. Then in a minute so did Georgie and they collapsed together laughing.

I guess married people have things they understand without saying.

Oh, it is so good to be here. It’s Saturday, wonderful Saturday with no school. This morning I can smell pancakes and bacon and I’m starved, but I had to write this first. I had to write that it’s heaven to be able to jump out of bed, sit down at my own desk, and write what’s on my mind—without waking anyone, without anyone’s knowing or minding. It’s heaven to think that kind of thing is normal in this house.

And it’s heaven to lie in my bed and watch the morning shadows on my ceiling. When the sun first comes up, just behind the trees, it makes leaf patterns on my ceiling, and if the wind is blowing, they move and dance. It’s lovely to see the day begin.

*

Jenny threw on her robe and ran down the stairs, wild with hunger. Georgie looked up from cooking pancakes and grinned. Jack, in uniform, winked at her, “You’re an early one. Don’t you know it’s Saturday?”

“I couldn’t bear to sleep it away, it’s—” she wanted to hug them, she wanted to tell them how lovely it was. “It’s too good to waste time sleeping. And I’m starved.”

Then halfway through breakfast she thought, How can I be happy when I don’t know what’s happening to Crystal?

Was I responsible for making her run away? If Crystal hadn’t seen us leave, would she have come back to the apartment? Would she have gone to J.D.H. with us? Or run off anyway?

Oh, she thought, I promised to stop all that. There’s no way of telling what might have happened. It doesn’t help to worry.

*

Ben danced with me tonight. We made fudge and Georgie put some records on—they were by Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman, ancient 78’s—and Georgie has a record of “Poor Jenny” and I heard the words all the way through for the first time. So that’s the kind of song Mama was singing about me. Jack rolled up the rugs and we danced. Ben makes the boys at school look like babies.

I wonder how long it will take for me to look as old as Crystal does? Ben treated me like a sister, but I guess I shouldn’t complain. Bingo wouldn’t dance with Georgie. He blushed.

Jack and Ben have begun to talk to us about police work, about what happens on the street. Willy was here to dinner tonight, he doesn’t care what questions he asks. There has been a murder, it was on the news. A little girl was murdered, a four-year-old girl. And the questions Willy asked about it! He wanted to know everything. Jack didn’t want to talk about it, though. He was gruff about that, angry. The murderer had been convicted four times for molesting little children, and yet he was still free to rape and kill a little girl. Jack said people forget what the laws are for.

I’ve been thinking about Jack and Georgie and Ben. They’re a real family, the way a family should be. They’re together even when they quarrel. They’re together when it comes to the important things. And even though Jack is stern, when he looks at Georgie there’s a difference in his face. His eyes are different.

Bingo has been arguing with Sam, I can hear him through the wall. Sam insists on sitting in the middle of Bingo’s paper when he’s drawing, and it makes Bingo cross. He argues and argues but Sam won’t move, so finally Bingo picks him up and puts him somewhere else, and then in a little while he’s back again. I think Sam is trying to make Bingo argue with him, I think Sam thinks it’s funny. Sam loves Bingo. I’m sure of it. We’ve never had a pet. They’re just like people. I think Sam has a sense of humor, you can see it in the way he looks at you, the way he switches his tail and walks off, then turns around and stares. He plays hide-and-seek with Bingo up and down the hall. They run out from doorways and jump at each other—Bingo has never played like that. Sam sleeps on Bingo’s pillow. It’s going to be terrible for them both when we have to go with Mama.

Oh, I want to write. I have been thinking and thinking about stories. But I haven’t written anything. I’m trapped somehow—or I was until I went to Georgie with it. She didn’t say much, but she gave me some books on writing to read. I have been in my room all day reading. It’s sunny out, but I don’t care. Ideas are springing into my head. And the ideas I had are becoming more solid. It’s the truth underneath a story, the strong true idea, the bones of a story, that I have to think about. I have a lot of thinking to do.

*

Jenny began hurrying home after school and locking herself away, reading and thinking. Soon she was behind with her homework, so she set herself to doing that first, grimly determined, dispatching it as fast as she could.

Then she would sit in the window in the long evenings putting stories together in her mind, pulling them apart and putting them together in other ways. She began to make notes, she made hoards of notes, tore some up, filed others away in drawers with paper clips binding them together.

And she sat for hours thinking. What is it I want to say? I know but I can’t put it to words. And how shall I say it? The thing that bothers me more than anything else is that I know so little. Is what I want to say worth anything?

*

I used to think that when I tried to see the things around me truly, I was looking at life. But what I saw was nothing compared to what there is. Even the had things I saw weren’t the worst things. I haven’t seen the depths of that, or the really beautiful things—they’re still waiting for me. There are unimaginable horrors, and there is brightness. I guess I knew this was so, a little bit. But I didn’t see it. The ugliness is there, and awful. But the bright part is brilliant. And huge. As if the whole world has stretched!

*

She thought of the places they had lived, forlorn apartments furnished with the discarded refuse of other’s lives. But then there were the sharp flashes of beauty, rain-smeared windows, sun on an apple tree. A sweetness in Mama sometimes. The quick, beautiful things, shining across the drabness.

When her ideas for stories were winnowed and sorted, this kernel of what she wanted to say was left bare and plain before her: Ugliness, with occasional brilliance. And the most powerful contrast of all is within people. Beauty and ugliness. Love and hate. Kindness and cruelty.

She chose six ideas that seemed to her to deal strongly with the contrasts in life. And with the perverse, ugly things that people did to themselves. Maybe, Jenny thought, I can say something about knowing good and evil and not being afraid to see them, and about people who don’t want to see them.

She chewed on that for a day or two.

Then one day she was ready, an idea had grown solid in form, and she began to write. The story was set in an ugly place and the woman was a sour, unimaginative creature with a weasel-sharp expression and legs the color of skim milk. Jenny showed the woman’s thoughts sharp and twisted, and sometimes yearning terribly. Then Jenny lifted her up, turned her a quarter turn, and handed her a miracle. A shining miracle. She let the woman dwell with it, examine it.

Then she let the woman do what she knew she would do—turn her back on the miracle and not admit to it. Return to her squalor. Just as a captive bird returns to the cage.

When the stories began, they flowed out. Jenny could hardly bear to take herself away to school, she only suffered school, and when she could bear it no longer, she played sick and Georgie wrote a note for her. She stayed home for four days, which ran into the weekend, and two days the following week. She hardly left her room, except to eat.

She would write until she was exhausted, then eat or shower—anything to refresh herself—and return to read back what she had written, rewrite paragraphs, rephrase sentences, sometimes reconstruct many pages, slowly building, breathing life into the flood of passions and fears she had unleashed.

She would work well past midnight and was up before dawn. She worked until finally she was empty. And when her energy was spent she was quite willing to go to school, make up her homework, do ordinary things. But she was pale, and Georgie made her go for long walks to get her out in the air. Sometimes Bingo went with her, but more often she went alone and climbed until she was out of breath, then found a place under a tree where she could look down at the hills and dream.

Once Ben went with her. They sat on a log on the side of a steep bank where they could see a valley yellow with blossoms. He told her about his sisters, Barbara, who was a year younger, and Carol, who had taken care of Ben and Barbara when Georgie worked night shift, and the older boys were away at school.

She studied Ben. She was easier with him now, but still—perhaps it was his training. He did not talk lightly, he had to be drawn out. She was becoming more adept at that, though. “Don’t you get bitter sometimes, with the messes you see people get themselves into? Doesn’t it make you sick of people?”

“You get disgusted with them. But it’s the way people are. You just face facts, you see them without their company manners. And it isn’t all bad, you’re close to something basic, something real in people.

“And the men you work with, they’re pretty special. It isn’t just a job. A careless officer can get you killed. You depend on each other.”

“But if it’s dangerous, why did you join the force? Because your family is police? Or because it is dangerous, because you like that?”

He just looked at her.

“Or because it means something?” Jenny asked.

“Oh, I guess because it means something, sure. But you’re in the middle of things, things happen on the street you wouldn’t see anywhere else. Things that make you laugh sometimes, if you don’t lose your sense of humor. You see more in a week than most people ever see. I never thought of doing anything else. Sure, it means something, people couldn’t survive without it. Barbara is getting her law degree because it means something to her.”

She looked puzzled.

“A cop can’t do his job without the law to back him up.”

“Then it’s something you believe in as a family.”

He nodded.

“I think that’s kind of special.” She twisted a leaf and looked down at the valley. She could smell the honey smell of the yellow blossoms. “Were you and Barbara close when you were growing up, did you talk a lot?”

“I used to pass inspection on her boyfriends. I guess you could say we were close. We fought a lot when we were kids, but not mean fighting. We used to tell each other most things. Aren’t you and Bingo like that?”

“Yes, but—well, I have to raise him. Sometimes I’d like it the other way around.”

He was silent for a long time. Then he said, “Yes. I see.”