Page 54 of The Promise of Jenny Jones
“Jenny!” Indignant, Graciela drew wet knees up to her chest and stared out of the washtub. “You aren’t listening. I’m telling you about the frickingsnakes.”
That caught her attention. Rocking back on her bootheels, her wrists hanging limp over the edge of the washtub, she stared at the bruises around Graciela’s throat and felt her heart sink.
“Hand me the soap.”
She didn’t want to do this. But she was only as good as her word. That was all she had.
Graciela’s eyes widened as Jenny grimly rubbed the soap between her palms, working up a lather. “No!”
“Oh yeah,” she said firmly. The soap smelled rank and stung her hands. But either she washed the kid’s mouth out, or she threw away everything she was. Her credibility, her self-esteem, herself.
It was a fight. The kid was slippery and full of spit and vinegar. By the time Jenny won, enough water had splashed out of the washtub that she was soaked and exhausted. Sitting on the dirt—now mud—floor she rested her back against the washtub, caught her breath, and examined her hand.
“You bit my finger, you little snot.”
Crying and still spitting soap suds, Graciela shouted at her. “I hate you!”
“Your precious uncle Ty would have done the same thing.” She rubbed the teeth marks ringing her forefinger.
“No, he wouldn’t!”
“Listen, I don’t give a rat’s ass what falls out of your mouth. It’s your uncle Ty who insists that you act like a lady.” She hesitated, then turned around and said the rest of it. “And he’s right. You started out prissy enough. All you have to do is go back to being what you were.”
Graciela stood and snatched the towel Jenny held out to her. She wiped her wet eyes and nose. “Youcuss.”
“I know it, and I’ve been thinking about that.” She grabbed back the towel and dried the kid’s back, trying not to rub snot on her. Then she lifted Graciela out of the tub and stood her on one of the stools so she could drop a thin shift over her head. The shift had come from Senora Armijo. Anticipating the next demand, she automatically removed the heart-shaped locket from Graciela’s jacket and pinned it on the shift. This done, she tucked the kid under her arm and dropped her into one of the hammocks.
Pulling up a stool, she sat down and wiped sweat off of her forehead. “Look, kid.”
“Graciela. You promised.”
“Graciela. I cuss. I don’t talk nice, you’re right about that.” She looked into the kid’s eyes. “But you don’t want to be like me.” A pang pierced her heart. She hadn’t known it would be so hard to say this. “I’m everything you don’t want to be.” She drew a long breath and held it a minute. “I’m uneducated, crude, mean, mad at the world.” Dropping her head, she examined her large, callused palms, remembering Marguarita’s soft, smooth hands. “Until now, it didn’t matter what I was or how I talked or what I did.” She lifted her head again and frowned. “See, nobody ever cared what I did before.”
She hadn’t dreamed a time would ever come when someone might want to emulate her talk or behavior. Consequently, it made her feel tight and strange inside to hear her words on the kid’s lips. A small part of her was astonished and secretly flattered. But a larger part was appalled. Now that Ty had called her attention to the problem, it struck her as jarring and offensive to hear cuss-words on a child’s lips.
Graciela sat up in the hammock and leaned over her knees to rub a spot of mud off her toes. “It’s not fair that you can say things that I can’t,” she insisted stubbornly.
A long silence stretched between them while Jenny tried to concoct an argument against fairness. Actually, she came up with several winning rebuttals, the best being: Adults can do and say things that kids should not. But she could guess how well that would go down with the kid. She wouldn’t have bought that argument either if their positions had been reversed.
“I don’t know how we solve this problem,” she admitted, frowning. “But I can tell you this.” She jerked her head back at the washtub. “I don’t want to go throughthatagain. You have to stop cussing.”
Graciela’s chin came up, and that one irritating eyebrow arched. “I’ll stop if you will.”
A short bark of laughter burst from Jenny’s lips. “Me? I’ve been cussing since I was your age. It’s one of the things I’m good at.” Looking at the kid’s freshly scrubbed face, it was hard to believe she was capable of uttering a cussword. But she was, and the problem would get worse because cusswords were what she was hearing. Jenny’s shoulders slumped. She didn’t like the direction or the inevitable conclusion of this conversation.
“Uncle Ty doesn’t cuss.”
“He doesn’t do it in front of you, that’s all.”
And that, of course, was the solution. Seeing a partial reprieve, she immediately brightened. She didn’t have to change her whole person to accommodate the kid. All she had to do was make a few changes when the kid was right in front of her. Probably she could do that. The more she considered, the better the compromise seemed. It answered the fairness problem, and that was the largest stickler.
“All right,” she said slowly, “here’s the bargain. Neither one of us says fricking anymore.” Silently she added,in front of each other.
A mixture of triumph and disappointment gleamed in Graciela’s eyes. “We can’t say hell or damn or crud or Christ or son of a bitch either. Uncle Ty wouldn’t like it.”
Uncle Ty could jump in a tub of scum for all Jenny cared right this minute. Thin-lipped, she considered, then nodded with great reluctance. “This is going to be a pisser.”
“We can’t say piss either.”
