Page 21 of The Promise of Jenny Jones
“My name is… Theodora,” Graciela announced solemnly. The girl slid an expressionless stare up from Graciela’s fashionable little boots to the ruffles trimming the throat of her jacket, but she didn’t speak. Graciela glanced at the corn husks peeled back from the tamale and swallowed hard. “What’s your name?”
“Maria,Señorita,” the girl said finally. Shy before the richness of Graciela’s clothing, she focused on a point somewhere above Graciela’s shoulder.
Graciela clasped her gloved hands against her skirt and watched two caballeros prance down the street. One had a saddle with silver inlaid on a wide pommel. Her cousin Emil had a saddle like that one.
“This is my first visit to Durango,” she said. “I rode on a train.”
Awe filled Maria’s eyes. “You rode on the train?” The tamale forgotten in her hand, she stared as if Graciela had fallen from the pages of a storybook. “Where is your duenna?” she asked at last. Even a street urchin knew a personage such as Graciela was never left unattended.
“I was stolen by an evil witch,” Graciela explained, watching to see if Maria believed her.
“Oh!” Maria’s eyes widened, and she nodded. “The same thing happened to my sister.”
“I escaped. I ran away from the witch because she wants to cut my hair to look like a boy’s.”
Maria did not disappoint. The girl examined the shiny hair falling nearly to Graciela’s waist and horror filled her eyes. A sense of satisfaction swelled Graciela’s chest. Even a child of the streets knew it was wrong to shear a female’s glory.
“I have an idea,” Graciela said, leaning to whisper in Maria’s ear. When she finished speaking, excitement danced in Maria’s dark eyes, and she nodded enthusiastically.
“Bueno.”Taking Graciela’s hand, she led the way into a narrow alley and ducked behind a mound of smoldering trash.
When they emerged, Maria wore Graciela’s finery and Graciela wore the filthy dress with the rips and tears, her gold locket pinned inside at the waist. Also, she had what remained of the girl’s tamale. She finished the tamale in four hungry bites, then dropped the corn husks on the cobbles. As she had no napkin, she hesitated, then wiped her greasy fingers against the folds of the skirt she now wore. The clothing stank.
“Thank you,” she said to Maria. Her traveling outfit was small for Maria, and a seam along the waist had already begun to unravel, but Maria gazed down at herself with blazing pride shining in her eyes.
When she finally remembered Graciela, she pointed to Graciela’s hair and then to her own. At once Graciela understood. Sighing, hating it, she bent to the street and filled her hands with dirt, powdery sun-baked dung, and rotting garbage. The stench made her eyes water, but she rubbed the refuse into her hair. With a weak smile and a wave, she moved away from Maria, who had lifted her new skirt to inspect the first shoes ever to grace her feet.
Before she had walked half a block, Graciela turned her attention to her own bare feet. Aside from the tenderness of unhardened soles, she felt a rush of disgust when she stepped on anything wet, anything that oozed up between her toes. Revulsion shivered down her body when her bare foot came down on something warm and soft and smelling of dog.
Shuddering, she hurried blindly forward, not pausing until Maria was lost in the maze of narrow lanes and twisting streets behind her. Only then did she stop to catch her breath and dare to lift her eyes and carefully examine the people moving around her.
No one looked at her. No one paid her the slightest attention. She had become as invisible as the wind.
A jubilant grin curved her mouth and she swallowed a shout, celebrating her own cleverness. “She will never find me,” she said aloud, pleased with herself. The town was too large and teeming with people, there were too many alleys and places to hide. And now, no one would remember her.
She had triumphed over her enemy.
Not ten minutes later a hand landed heavily on her shoulder, and a man bent to examine her face. “Hola, chica,” he said in a hoarse voice that made her mouth go dry and her blood turn cold. If snakes could talk, they would sound like this man.
“You and me,” he said, flicking his tongue at her, “we are going to be very good friends.Sí.”
Possessive fingers tightened painfully on her shoulder.
Heart pounding, Jenny raced to the end of the block, then halted, spinning around to scowl back at the hotel entrance. Graciela might have turned left instead of right.
“Goddamn it!” She struck her thigh with her hat, then jammed it on her head and glared up and down the crowded streets.
Not since childhood had she experienced panic this gut deep and overwhelming. Her heart galloped in her chest, she couldn’t breathe, her hands trembled as if she had the palsy.
Think, she commanded herself, calm yourself and think.
Graciela couldn’t have gotten far. Most importantly, she would be remembered, a kid alone wearing a fancy outfit that screamed wealth and status. That was the place to start; inquire about the outfit. Striding forward, she hurried from one vendor’s stall to another until she was satisfied that Graciela had not come this way. Reversing direction, she tried another street and another, her shoulders as tense as rock until she located a mestizo woman selling blankets. The woman remembered Graciela.
From that point, it was as easy as following the beads on a necklace that would circle her right up behind the little snot. When she found Graciela, she would wring the kid’s neck. Getting angrier by the minute, Jenny followed the trail until finally she spotted Graciela in the middle of the next block. Breaking into a run, she closed the distance.
And stopped abruptly when she saw the girl was not Graciela. The child wore Graciela’s clothing, but she was filthy and she didn’t move with Graciela’s ladylike prissiness and grace. At once Jenny understood what had happened, damn it to hell.
Removing her hat, she wiped the sweat from her forehead and scanned the traffic moving in the street, the women strolling toward themercado,baskets slung over their arms. Her gaze swept the street children and the ubiquitous dogs darting through carts and wagons, dodging among the flow of pedestrians.
