The Penny (13 page)

It jolted me that she thought she knew what I was talking about. She thought she’d figured out what was going on. I read it in her eyes just as clear as I’d seen it the afternoon on the
Admiral
when the purser yanked her arm and said, “You’ll have to stick with your daddy, out of sight. Can’t have you running around on the boat like this. Only Mondays are for the coloreds.” She’d said, “My daddy doesn’t play Mondays.”

I had the chance to set her right. Maybe I should have tried to explain how mean Daddy would be. In those few seconds I could have yelped, “He’ll hit you, Aurelia. He’ll beat us both up, but good.” But back then I had no vocabulary, other than shame. The least I could’ve done was tell her she didn’t have any more sense than a Thanksgiving turkey, that she didn’t know what she was talking about, that I loved her.

If I could be an expert at hiding how scared I was, I could also be an expert at hiding how I felt about Aurelia, for her sake.

The Daddy-speck coming up the road loomed larger. He was growing into a square, dangerous tower of a man. I could see him good now, his face steely, his chest bloating out of his T-shirt. I leaped off the steps and did the only thing I knew to do.
Please Jesus, let her get away.
I shoved her.

“You go on back to your neighborhood!” I shouted. “I’ll just see you at school.”

“You ashamed, Jenny? You ashamed to be called my friend?” She started in on me, saying I didn’t know how it felt to be her, that I couldn’t know how it was to always wonder if what’s happening is happening to you because you’re colored. “How could you possibly know what that feels like? How could you possibly know?”

“Go.” I shoved her again. Hard. I stomped at her to make my point even clearer. “Get on out of here.”

I watched her back away with hollow eyes and willed her to cut between the two flats across the street, to disappear from sight. I wished she would vanish like a small dark shadow along the sunburned stretch of grass so, not having to look at her, I wouldn’t have to look at myself.

“He can’t play his horn, that’s what I come to tell you,” she said, turning back. “Not with the Six Blue Notes or anybody. Chick had to go out and hire somebody else to be the bandmaster.”

I stared at her, not understanding what she meant.

“It happened at the stove factory. You know, none of us wanted him to have that job anymore. We wanted him to play on the
Admiral
all the time. He could have gotten plenty of gigs if he hadn’t been thinking he needed to take better care of us.”

“What are you talking about?” I dared her to tell me that news-
paper article had been about her daddy. I dared her.

“Aunt Maureen’s taking care of him good as she can. He forgets his arm isn’t there. He wakes up trying to play music because he’s got something in his head. He could use some cheering from you, but I’ll go back and tell him, no, I guess not. I guess you won’t be over anymore.”

“No,” I said. “I can’t. Now get out of here before my daddy sees you.”

The hurt in Aurelia’s eyes hit harder and cut deeper than all the meanness my Daddy had ever flung at me. Just like that, the self-reproach I’d carried so long ripened into anger at my father. I thought,
Today is one more day I’ll never be able to forgive him for.

It did not occur to me that God had answered my prayer when Aurelia slipped away unnoticed. I made it clear to the porch rail before Daddy came stumping up from the neighbors’. Mama stood beside me with her Tupperware loot. With Mama on the porch and Daddy on a lower step, they stared at each other from the same height. “What have you gone and bought now? We can’t afford junk like that.”

“It keeps sandwiches fresh. It makes lettuce last longer.”

“How many heads of lettuce would we have to save to make up for what you’re spending on that?” I hated Daddy even more for beating Mama down when there was nothing more at stake than burpable plastic. I hated Mama, too, for letting him do it. “Now you go on inside there and get your money back.”

Mama did as he told her. When she returned from the Shipleys’ this time, she was empty-handed.

That night, I did not sleep. Eddie Crockett had never taken me to see the inside of his workplace, but I pictured it something like Aurelia’s preacher had described hell. I saw endless metal shapes moving along a conveyor belt overhead. A furnace roared and singed everyone’s faces. (Did they have furnaces in a stove factory? It seemed like they would.) There wasn’t any escaping the heat. Every time I closed my eyes, I heard the deafening clang of metal, saw the glinting sharp edges of what I imagined a punch press would look like.

I couldn’t stop picturing Eddie Crockett’s hands forming mouthpieces so thin and light that trumpet players waited in line for them. I couldn’t stop hearing the way those musicians in the Ville begged him to bring home extra stove tin.

My throat stayed clogged all night with something I couldn’t swallow. What must it have felt like for Eddie Crockett as he stood there bleeding in the noise, with metal pieces moving all around him?

I pushed my old wounds deeper inside, and forced myself to grieve solely for the fresh ones, for Eddie Crockett’s music and for what I had done to Aurelia. I wondered until the sky began to turn to soft grey velvet outside my window,
Is it different when life gets taken from you moment by moment than when it gets taken all at one time?

Chapter Fifteen

I
showed Miss Shaw the anger, pain, and darkness of my heart with every task I undertook. I wiped the displays with vicious circles of the rag, leaving wide patches of dust. I placed the tie clips in their case in a jumble without bothering to arrange them. I left the assortment of silver piggy banks and baby rattles in their boxes for someone else to take care of. But no matter how awful I acted at times, Miss Shaw remained the same with me. She was always kind and respectful.

Miss Shaw tried to draw me out, but I answered her with stern silence. She talked to me about everything from James Dean’s smoldering eyes to the army hearings of Senator Joseph McCarthy, but I remained aloof. She asked my advice on everything from how to arrange brooches in the front window to how she might convince Del Henry to stop in more often, to which I raised the dust rag like it was a battle flag and proceeded, with great intensity, to polish shelves.

On the day Mrs. Stella Fordyce came to look at belt buckles for her husband’s birthday, I let her wait so long that, had she been a silversmith, she could very well have hammered out a belt buckle on her own.

“Mrs. Fordyce.” Miss Shaw rose from her desk at last, sidled past with a confused glance in my direction, and offered the woman assistance because I wouldn’t do it. Once Miss Shaw helped her with prices, Mrs. Fordyce made a decision in no time. When Mrs. Fordyce asked if we offered gift-wrapping, Miss Shaw thrust the buckle at me. “Of course we do. Jenny, will you take care of this, please?”

Ordinarily I loved wrapping packages. All summer I’d taken pleasure in adorning small, elegant boxes with paper and ribbon. I’d taken pride in my perfect, mitered corners and my flawless fluffy bows.

When I ripped off a piece of birthday paper today, I took great satisfaction in tearing it from the roll. I wadded the buckle inside some tissue and smashed the box lid on. I went heavy on the tape, cut the ribbon with sharp snips, and tied knots so tight that Mr. Fordyce would have to go for a kitchen knife to get the thing open. When I handed it over, Mrs. Fordyce peeked in the sack and exclaimed, “My, but what a wrapping job. How creative.”

Miss Shaw stood beside me and watched while Mrs. Fordyce made her way outside. When she disappeared around the corner, Miss Shaw laid her hand on my shoulder.

“Jenny, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

Miss Shaw had plenty of paperwork left at her desk, but she followed me to the corner where I’d left the broom. She eyed me with concern.

“If there was anything I should know about your life, you would tell me, wouldn’t you?”

“I would,” I lied.

“You promise?”

I promised and went back to punishing the floor with stinging smacks of the broom. When Miss Shaw looked at me again, the lines around her eyes got deeper. She stared at me with such interest that I was tempted to relent and blurt out how dirty I felt. But ever since I’d chased Aurelia away from my house, I didn’t carry my penny around anymore. I’d stopped placing stock in what Miss Shaw said a penny represented. Miss Shaw’s life seemed so
right.
She would never understand. And I was tired of her telling me about God’s plan for my life and that he was watching over me every minute. I’d had plenty of hope once. Maybe I didn’t believe a word of it anymore.

My job with Miss Shaw had become so important to me, but I believed I was destined to lose it, just as I lost everything else that made me feel good.

“STUPID. STUPID,” the notes that Rosalyn and Cindy put in my locker had read. I thought,
I was stupid
,
all right. I was stupid enough to think that anything in my life would ever change.

But here’s the thing about Miss Shaw: she surprised me. She was different from anyone else I had ever met. When I took my anger out in the jewelry shop, she didn’t react the way I expected her to. Anybody else would have seen that I was no good for a jewelry store and would have fired me on the spot. I waited all day for her to chastise me, but she didn’t. She didn’t sit down and say, “I’m not satisfied with your gift-wrapping, Jenny,” or, “You need to look the customers in the eye when they enter the store,” or, “Could you be gentle with the cash register, please? I’d hate to have to send it away for repairs.”

I know now that God was giving me unconditional love through Miss Shaw—I just didn’t know what it was.

The day Jean left for secretarial school blew in with a violent windstorm. The wind blasted down the street with such force that you almost couldn’t stand up in it. Gusts came so hard that the old dilapidated walls along our street began to totter. Mortar crumbled. Chunks of our flat fell to the ground and shattered. Just walking outside with your neck bent into the weather, you ran the risk of dust blinding your eyes and trash clobbering you and bricks coming loose and randomly dropping on your head.

“We’re not driving to the bus station in this weather. I’m not getting the car out in this,” Daddy hollered each time he stormed past Jean’s door. “Doesn’t mean a thing to me if you miss going to school.”

She didn’t seem to hear him. She went right on folding her stockings and her nylon slip and her scarves. Piece by piece, she set them inside the round red travel case Mama had bought her at Kresge’s. It had a zipper all the way around its edge and a handle Jean could drape over her wrist like a handbag.

I watched my sister pack up her room and thought about the pictures in the
Post-Dispatch
of the ladies elected to the secretarial board—the scariest pictures I’d ever seen. There sat all the secretaries at their bimonthly meeting, the officers of the secretarial society—president, vice president, and secretary (would you want to be voted secretary to the secretarial board when you were already a secretary?)—with sharp, self-possessed smiles, glasses as big around as drink coasters, and white carnation corsages the size of small bunnies fastened to their collars. I tried to picture my sister in the midst of a scene like that, but I couldn’t.

I stood in the corner, moving when she needed something behind me, trying my best to stay out of her way.

“Got you a going-away present.” I held it hidden in both hands behind my back and bounced against the wall because I was so nervous about this. “You want it?”

Jean kept stuffing her belongings inside her bags and boxes. She stood a fistful of vinyl records inside a box that also held picture frames. My sister was taking her collection of Grace Kelly photos and all of her favorite male movie stars, too. Jean locked the tonearm and needle into place and latched the lid to her record player. She yanked the plug from the wall and coiled the cord around the handle.

“Well?” I stopped fidgeting and stood up from the wall. “Do you want a going-away present from me? You have to say if you want it or not. If you don’t, I won’t give it to you. It doesn’t matter to me.”

“Okay.” A great sigh of forbearance. “I want it.”

“Do you? Do you really?”

“Didn’t I say so, Jenny? Yes. I want it.”

After that, I couldn’t give it to her. I just stood there, waiting.

Jean zipped up the red travel case with great relish. “Never mind, then. If you don’t want to give it to me, you don’t have to.”

All the times Miss Shaw had offered to let me buy the two-strand pearl choker for Jean at wholesale price, I told her I didn’t want to. But when my sister started clearing her room of belongings that week, the sorrow hit so deep and made me so breathless, I felt like someone had socked me in the stomach.

“What are you thinking?” Miss Shaw asked when she saw me looking at the choker one day.

“Even wholesale, I don’t think I’ve got enough money to buy it.”

“You’re thinking about that again? Have you changed your mind?”

I nodded.

“So, your Jean is leaving this week?”

It was something about the way Miss Shaw said “
your Jean.”
I couldn’t get rid of the tears that welled up.

“You know what I’m thinking, don’t you?” Miss Shaw said.

“What?”

“That you and I can work something out.” She laid her gloved hand on my shoulder and the warmth of her touching me soaked clear down to my toes. “Let’s get the files and go over some prices, what do you say?”

To this moment, I’m not sure how she came up with the exact figure. Miss Shaw located the necklace in her paperwork, showed me the certificate of authenticity, and scratched so many numbers on a notepad that I couldn’t follow her calculations at all. The next thing I knew, she circled a figure at the bottom of the paper that matched exactly the amount of the paycheck she’d handed me that morning, sales tax and everything.

“You want to give it to me, or don’t you?” Jean demanded, pulling me from Shaw Jewelers back into Jean’s cluttered bedroom.

I handed over the narrow box which I’d wrapped myself. Jean gave the ribbon a cursory tug, like I was forcing her to do something she didn’t much want to do. I heard her breath catch as the choker spilled into her hand. You could see every shade of opalescent white glimmering in those pearls as she strung them around her neck and examined herself in the dresser mirror. She’d probably never use that dresser again.

When she struggled to fasten the clasp, her elbows jutted up over her head like wings. I saw the shine on her face and knew she liked them. Although I also knew she’d never tell me.

“They’re like—”

“—Grace Kelly’s. I know.”

I stared at our reflection in the mirror. Two sisters, one taller than the other but not by much. One with a glamorous hairdo and one with a pitiful scalped head. I’ll bet it surprised Jean how much we resembled each other in spite of all that.

She said to me in the mirror, “It’ll grow back.”

I said to her, “I’m
glad
you’re going. I’m
glad
you’re going and leaving me with him.”

Neither of us moved.

For one last moment, we fell into our pattern of contention. Challenging each other came so much easier than admitting we needed each other.

“Well, I’m glad you’re glad, Jenny, because nothing’s stopping me.”

“I’m not trying to stop you,” I said.

Outside, a burst of wind trapped itself between our building and the one next door. Unable to escape, it became a whirlwind in the corner and picked up everything in its wake. Some empty cigarette packages. Dozens of leaves. A napkin left from someone’s picnic. All of this swirled and tapped against Jean’s window as if it wanted inside.

Another brick came loose and shattered on the patio.

“That’s going to be a mess for somebody to clean up.”

The treetops bobbed together as if they were worshiping the windstorm. Flickers of lightning swept past, but the wind bore it away before the clouds could even threaten us. I asked her if she’d ever told Mama anything about what Daddy did to her.

Jean reached behind her neck to unfasten her pearls. She stashed them in their box and shoved the box inside her red travel case. I didn’t know whether to be disappointed or happy that she didn’t want to show them to anybody else. I wondered if she’d even heard my question at first. She said, “I’m going to marry the first boy who asks me. Daddy says I’ll come running back for help, but I don’t want any help from him.”

A whole stand of trash cans had blown over outside. They ratcheted to and fro in the street every time a gust got them, thundering hollow and loud.

“It took a while for me to get up the courage to talk to Mama, do you know that? When I finally got brave enough, you know what she did? She got all confused and teary and went right to Daddy and asked if it was true. Daddy flat-out told her I was lying. He told her my imagination must be running away with me. He told her I was spending way too much time listening to my friends’ gossip about
their
lives. And that’s the crazy thing, I don’t even have any friends. There’s nobody I can talk to but you. Daddy made
me
feel guilty. Daddy made
me
feel like I’d injured
him.
”

Maybe Jean could hold her ground against the wind outside when she left, but I suddenly felt like it might carry me away. It terrified me to think of stepping outside in it.

“I don’t know if she really doesn’t believe me or if she just doesn’t
want
to . . .”

The trash cans made so much racket, like somebody was out there hitting them. I couldn’t say anything. I saw the pain behind Jean’s words, and I couldn’t have felt more betrayed. Mama was supposed to take care of us.

“She walked in on us once, while he was in my bed. You were still so little. She saw us, turned around, and walked out of the house. She came back in two hours and never mentioned it. Mama seemed different after that. She avoided me as much as possible and even seemed to resent me at times. After that I never said anything again.”

We both jumped when Daddy showed up in her doorway just then. We’d been concentrating on her words, so neither of us had heard his footsteps thumping down the hall. If he caught us talking about this, he’d kill us.

“I’m not getting the car out in weather like this, Jean. Not getting the Packard out to get it sandblasted by this dirt or dented by a brick. The whole sky’s falling out there. Everybody’s so busy building in the outskirts that nobody’s thinking what the city needs anymore.”

Jean mouthed off, “If you won’t take me down to that bus station, I’m going to call a taxi for myself.”

Yesterday that would have provoked him to hit her. Today he stood in her doorway and took it. “Nobody’s got money to get you a taxi, Jean. Nobody’s got money to do anything like that.”

“I do,” I said.

“If you’ve got money, then you owe it to me,” Daddy blustered. “You know I didn’t let you take that job so you could amuse yourself. I expect you to chip in and pay your own way. I expect you to buy everything you need because I’m sure not doing it anymore.”

After he stomped off, I took my sister’s hand. I expected her to yank it away like she’d done a hundred times before, but she didn’t. She turned and held both my hands so tight I thought she might break my fingers off. “I bargained with him; do you know that? I told him I’d never bother Mama again if he just didn’t start doing it to you, too.”