Poor Jenny, Bright As A Penny

Chapter 1

The alarm screamed. Jenny grabbed and silenced it, then lay not knowing where she was. She had been dreaming something frightening, but with the alarm it fled, leaving her confused. Her covers were off the cot and her long brown hair was tangled around her face.

Now in the dull gray light the room began to look familiar, threadbare and stained. Rain tapped sullenly at the windows. The dark furniture was jammed close together in the small space—day bed, wall bed, cots with sleeping people. She studied the mound that was Lud, sleeping next to her mother, with disgust. The air was heavy with the night breath of five people.

Her little brother slept curled up tight with his head under the blankets like a hibernating animal; the alarm never touched Bingo on school mornings.

Crystal’s perfect profile, pale against the dark shadows, showed a hint of a smile.

Jenny rose and made her bed at once. At fifteen Jenny was thin, but there was about her narrow face a watchful softness—dark eyes, dark lashes against her freckled cheeks. She woke Bingo by pulling the covers back. He snatched them from her, turned over, and was asleep again. She forced open his hands, peeled the covers off, threw them on the floor, then tickled him. When he laughed she covered his mouth so he would not wake Mama and Lud.

When Bingo was up she made the toast and coffee and set the toast on the steam radiator to keep warm. The rain was steady and depressing. She washed and brushed her teeth at the kitchen sink, leaving the bathroom to Bingo, he was so slow at it. Crystal was dressing, panty hose first, short red skirt, her naked back turned toward Lud in case he woke. She put on her bra by hooking it first around her waist, back to front, then turning it and pulling it up.

They had lived in this apartment four months. Time enough to get used to it—it was not so bad when the beds were made and the curtains open—time enough for Bingo to stop throwing up his breakfast in dread on school mornings. They had spent Christmas here with a forlorn tree dragged in from a pile of throwaways, and Mama and Lud so hung-over that they needed beer to come alive late Christmas morning. Jenny had tried to roast a stewing hen, but it was tough as a boot.

They ate their breakfast and drank their coffee huddled against the steam radiator, watching the rain surge against the windows. It was February and raining all the time. Bingo ate hunched over, drowsing. His feet dangled above the floor and his black-rimmed glasses made his nine-year-old face look too serious.

Crystal’s expression was still gentle with sleep. She smelled of Mama’s new perfume. Crystal, sixteen, looked years older than Jenny, she was filled out and sexy where Jenny was still child-shaped, with little thin bones showing through. When Bingo dug for the prize in the cereal box Crystal looked across at him tolerantly as if he were a baby. He examined the prize, a fake gold locket, then threw it down in disgust.

Crystal picked it up, smiled roguishly, and put it around her neck. On Crystal it looked good, Jenny thought. On Jenny it would have looked just ugly and fake.

The outer hall smelled of stale cigars. Bingo sat on the worn, greasy carpet to put his rubbers on. Jenny and Crystal leaned against the wall and pulled on their boots. They buttoned themselves into slickers.

On the school bus Crystal did not sit with Jenny and Bingo, but in back with the older boys, where they smoked behind the seats. Crystal had a beautiful smile. Jenny could hear her, the whole bus could, calling attention to the locket with her jokes and teasing the boys with it until one snatched it off amid a roar of laughter. Lud liked to say Crystal was stacked like a brick outhouse. When he said that, Mama would get a funny look on her face as if she was jealous and pleased at the same time. Crystal was Mama’s favorite.

Jenny and Bingo sat with their books piled between them. Jenny would not have sat with the boys even if she had been asked. She thought them a scurvy lot. Well, everyone to his own. Crystal had her own world at school. Jenny watched the rain make rivulets on the dirty windows so it smeared the neon colors of the stores. Those bright smeared reds and blues started a music in her blood. She wanted to write down how they looked.

During first period history she wrote it in her notebook—how the wet smeared colors changed that ugly town to something wonderful. Miss Natley thought Jenny was making careful lecture notes. The cool-looking boy across the aisle gave Jenny a sidelong scowl for working so hard. Jenny grinned and winked at him.

Skinny Jenny Middle. She had the reputation of a grind. But some of the more discerning boys looked at her and wondered; there was more than just a dull bookworm there. Still, she never gave a guy a chance to find out. That wink, it was just as impersonal as if he’d been a chair. But those big brown eyes of hers—they always looked as if they held a secret.

Bingo would have said, “Some magic secret.” He thought Jenny knew special things that no one else knew.

They met by the gym at noon; it was a half holiday. Bingo waited hunched against the brick wall, trying to avoid the rain. There was no sign of Crystal. Off in some boy’s car, Jenny thought. She pulled Bingo by the hand toward the little corner store. He was grouchy as a porcupine, thinking of something deep in his own world. She said, “Do you want spaghetti for lunch?”

He looked at her absently, then said, “Do we have enough money for bread sticks?”

She nodded, wondering where Crystal had gone. But who cared? I care, Jenny thought. Or do I? Sometimes I don’t know. There was nothing Jenny could do anyway; Mama let Crystal go where she liked. Crystal could have passed for eighteen. How far she went with the boys who took her riding in their fast little cars, Jenny didn’t know.

But today Crystal was waiting for them, huddled beneath an awning. She had lost her raincoat and was soaking and forlorn. Jenny dragged her into the little library and pushed her toward a chair. Crystal, dripping all over the table and the floor, spread out her scarf and mitts, her sodden notebook, her comb and lipstick. She found her mirror, dabbed with a Kleenex at her mascara and the line of her arching brows. Crystal looked a lot like Mama—a fine, sensuous face ready for fun. But Mama’s hair was bleached, Crystal’s dark and shining, coiled on top her head. She shook herself like a dog, spraying water on the books. The librarian’s stares did not touch her.

They ran home, Crystal and Jenny giggling and holding Jenny’s yellow slicker over them like a tent. At home Crystal changed her clothes, put on a red sweater and beads that hung down between her breasts. She took Jenny’s slicker and went out.

Jenny stuck her tongue out at the closed door. She turned on all the lights so the apartment was a yellow pool—Mama and Lud were out—then she put the spaghetti on to warm, stood the bread sticks in a glass, and kicked Lud’s dirty clothes into the closet.

They ate silently and comfortably, reading. Bingo cut his spaghetti into bite-sized lengths, and Jenny wound hers one- handed, awkward but determined. The bread sticks were dipped into margarine, making it soft and full of crumbs. It rained so hard that water was driven in around the window casing. The thunder roared and they pressed their faces to the window, watching the lightning flash across the sky—but it was not lightning. It was a dragon.

“He’s calling us,” Jenny whispered.

Wherever they went, from town to town, Turnock followed them. On his scaly back Bingo could ride into the storm and see the country below lit by his flaming breath. All the world might turn upside down for Jenny and Bingo, but Turnock would be with them just as he always had.

Papa had invented Turnock. When they were little he had told them stories about him and about the Dark Ages he came from. Jenny could never remember Crystal’s liking Turnock; as a child, Crystal had discarded stories and books for games and for Mama’s movie magazines. Her dolls had been grownup dolls with blond hair like Mama’s and sequined cocktail dresses. Crystal had said, “Make-believe is for babies.”

Jenny said, “Dolls in cocktail dresses and bikinis are make- believe too.” But Crystal did not agree.

After Papa died, Jenny told Bingo the stories of Turnock, making up new adventures and adding winged demons and centaurs and other creatures carved in stone and pictured in Papa’s books.

But Turnock was not of stone. When Bingo rode him the dragon’s great muscles rippled beneath Bingo’s legs, and his scaly wings beat the winds of the sky.

Now, faces pressed against the glass, they watched Turnock breathe fire into the storm. I can believe in dragons if I like, Jenny thought defiantly, knowing what Crystal would say.

*

Bingo glued heavy beams across the stone walls of the model abbey he was building. It was rather like the medieval ones in Papa’s books, but not like them. It was his own design. He leaned over the kitchen table in absolute concentration.

Jenny, curled in the one soft chair, her head bent over a book, looked small and frail, almost swallowed by the chair. Her dark hair fell over one cheek; she was not reading, but trying to remember her dream and what had caused the fear of the night before. Had Lud been in it? Perhaps he had, she could not be sure. But Lud had never engendered fear in real life, though she found him disgusting enough. What would happen if Mama and Lud got married? I wouldn’t like it, she thought angrily. But, still, they sleep together. It’s common and ugly and I hate him for it. But if they were married would we belong to Lud? Would he take Papa’s place then? But he never could. It’s best the way it is, I guess.

I guess he makes Mama happy. He can’t touch us. In two years and nine days I’ll be eighteen and we can leave them to themselves.

Bingo needs Papa, a boy needs a man to raise him. Not like Lud. A real man. I miss Papa. It gave her a sick feeling to think of Papa. She snapped the book closed and reached for her geometry. A geometry problem had one answer. Jenny’s problems didn’t seem to have answers at all.

The rain drummed softly. Jenny thought fleetingly, It’s nice here, it’s almost a home. We’ve never been in one place so long. I hope we stay here, at least until school’s out. Bingo had the roof finished on the abbey and was admiring it. She watched him possessively. He was completely single-minded and lost to the world when he was doing what he wanted. Bingo loved buildings. He loved the power of beams going up, the strength of stone, and the way spaces lay serene between columns. The lamplight on the abbey sent shadows from its mullioned windows across the inner floor.

The door banged open. Mama stormed in, threw her coat on the couch, and shook the rain out of her ragged blond hair; her brown eyes were angry. She swore at the room in general and kicked off her wet shoes.

“Get packed, you kids. Get the stuff together.” She glowered across at Jenny. “We’re getting out of this town. We’re moving up to the city.”

Jenny’s face went pale. She worked her mouth, but no words came. The feeling inside her was like an elevator dropping. She stared at Mama with all the fury she could muster. But it would do no good. She felt defeat before she could begin to fight back.

“Come on, Jenny, get started! We want to get out before dark.”

Jenny crumpled up her geometry lesson and dropped it deliberately onto the rug, staring at Mama now with flaming anger.

Mama watched her silently, then turned and went into the bathroom.

Jenny slammed her geometry book down on the trunk and started jerking empty boxes out from under her cot. “Hell! Double screaming Goddamn hell!”

Mama came out of the bathroom, found her cigarettes and lit one. In a few minutes she put it out and lit another. “Where’s Crystal?”

“Out,” Jenny said shortly.

“Don’t get smart with me, miss!”

“Well she’s out! What do you want, a fifteen minute speech?” Jenny turned away, seething. Mama never asked them, she never cared how they felt. Now Bingo would be sick again every school morning. He’d just gotten used to this school. But what did Mama care. An angry tear started and she bent her head over the packing.