Page 19 of The Promise of Jenny Jones
“Kid. Stop screaming! You hear me? Stop screaming this instant!”
Paying no attention, screaming and sobbing, Graciela splashed down on all fours, then she rocked up and flattened herself against the far wall of the tub. She wound her long hair into a dripping rope and held it as far from Jenny as possible. “No! I won’t let you!”
“Kid, listen to me. Damn it, shut up. They’ll think I’m killing you!”
At once Jenny understood that words were not going to stand against the storm of a full-blown tantrum. She wanted to smack Graciela as much as she had ever wanted to hit someone in her life. She’d actually leaned over the tub and raised her hand when something in Graciela’s expression reminded her of Marguarita. Scowling, she hesitated. She could not imagine Marguarita doing violence to a fly, certainly not to a kid. Jenny’s hand lowered, but the effort to do as she imagined Marguarita would want her to made her clench her teeth until her jaw ached.
“All right,” she said sharply.
Pressed to the side of the tub, holding the rope of hair protectively, Graciela studied her warily. Her chest heaved with suppressed sobs, but she’d stopped screaming.
“Listen, you little snot. I’m trying to save your fricking life! And mine. Why can’t you get that through your head?” Jenny met the kid’s glare head-on. “Now. Iamgoing to cut your hair. And youaregoing to dress like a boy and pretend to be one.” Graciela’s mouth opened, but Jenny spoke before the next scream emerged. “But, we won’t do it right now, so calm down. We’ll cut your hair in the morning. You’ll have all night to get used to the idea.” Her eyes narrowed and glittered. “But you have to do your part, got that? We’re in a tight situation here, and I can’t save your butt without a little help from you.”
“I hope you die! I hope Cousin Luis shoots you,” Graciela said wildly. Tears trembled on her lashes, and she gripped the rope of hair like a lifeline. “You’re mean and you’re rude and you say bad words.” Dropping her hair, she covered her face in her hands. “I want my mama, I want my mama, I want my mama.” She started crying, this time softly, and this time with quiet hopelessness.
Jenny rocked back on the stool, her lips pressed in a line. Naked and sitting in eight inches of grimy water, Graciela looked tiny and lost and helpless.
“It’s a real pisser to be a kid,” Jenny conceded, her expression easing. “I remember how that was. I hated it, too, having to do what grown-up people made me do.”
Graciela looked through her fingers. “What did they make you do?” she asked finally. A hiccup twitched her chest.
Suddenly Jenny felt Marguarita’s presence again, telling her that it wasn’t a good idea to relate how her pa had taken a strap to her and her brothers and sisters when they didn’t work hard enough, answer quickly enough, bring him the liquor jug fast enough. She gazed into space, seeking another example to show Graciela that she understood.
“Well, once I had to go into a dark cave by myself. My pa was a miner, see, and he wanted to know if anyone else was working a certain shaft. He figured if there were men inside the shaft, they wouldn’t shoot a kid, or maybe he didn’t care if they did. Anyway, he made me go inside. I hated that, let me tell you. It was cold and black as a murderer’s heart, and I kept hearing things moving in the dark and thinking I was going to get shot any second.”
Graciela clutched the soap to her chest, her eyes wide. “Did they shoot you?”
“They were hiding outside.” Jenny laughed, remembering. “They shot my pa. Didn’t kill him though. Anyway, I guess I know about having to do things you don’t want to do. That’s how it’s been all of my life. You probably won’t believe this, but adults have to do things they don’t want to do too. I sure don’t want to smear bootblack in my hair, no sirree bob, I don’t. But I’ll do it because changing my appearance will help us.”
This was where Graciela was supposed to say that she’d do her part, too, but she didn’t. Extending an arm, she ran the soap up and down, not looking at Jenny. “Do you know my father?”
“No,” Jenny said, frowning, “I don’t.”
“I don’t know him either.” She glanced up, studying Jenny’s face. “You said you wouldn’t cut my hair until morning.”
“And I don’t lie.”
Graciela tilted her head, her lack of trust as evident as the bits of grass sticking to her bare skin. “I need you to help me wash my hair.”
“You know the rules. I’m not going to do anything that you can do yourself.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not your fricking servant, that’s why. And because you have to learn how to do things for yourself, or you’ll never amount to a hill of beans.”
“I can’t get the soap out by myself.”
Jenny considered before deciding this was probably a legitimate request. She waited until Graciela had worked the soap into a thin lather, then she unbent enough to scrub places that Graciela had missed before she lowered Graciela in the water and gently rinsed the suds out of the long soft strands.
To her immense surprise, she got a funny warm satisfaction from helping Graciela bathe. She wouldn’t have believed it.
They ate supper downstairs at a table ringed by other boarders, none of whom spoke. Then they returned to their room, and Graciela sat on the edge of the bed silently watching while Jenny cursed and muttered and applied the bootblack to her whacked-off hair. The paste was lumpy, smelled bad, and was difficult to work with. “Too much beeswax and not enough syrup in it,” Jenny said between her teeth.
When she finished, her fingers were blackened, the sheet around her shoulders was spotted, part of her neck was black, and her hair was stiff and waxy. She looked like hell.
“Well,” she said finally, staring mournfully into the mirror on top of the bureau. The cut on her cheek had healed, and the scab had almost flaked away. But the black eye Luis had given her flared purple and yellow. All in all, Jenny decided she looked about as hideous as a woman could look. “I’ve done my part.” Pulling the sheet off of her shoulders, she slid a glance toward Graciela, who had gone rigid and stared at her with an appalled expression.
“You aren’t going to do that to me!” she whispered.
