Ширли Мерфи - Poor Jenny, Bright As A Penny

“Oh, Mama.” Jenny felt sudden tears.

Bingo pushed Mama’s hand off his arm and faced her squarely. He saw Mama very clearly then, he saw that Mama did not care what her children expected of her. That hurt him deeply, and he lashed back at her. “All you want, Mama, is the welfare money—to buy Lud beer. That’s why you want us. If you try to take us to court, Mama, we’ll tell about Lud. We can tell a lot of things about Lud that a judge wouldn’t like.”

He thought Mama was going to slap him. But instead she turned away from him, and walked slowly to the door. Jenny ran ahead of her. “Mama, please listen and try to understand—”

“Understand what? Understand you’re too good for me now? A few weeks in a fancy big house and you’re too good for your Mama. Well, you can rot in hell!”

Jenny looked abashed.

“Snobs. Dirty, high-toned snobs. You’ve turned Bingo against me, haven’t you, missy? I hope you’re proud of yourself.” Mama jerked the door open and flung out.

Jenny stood staring dumbly. Then anger rose in her. When Mama was halfway down the steps, Jenny said, “Mama!” Mama paid no attention. “Mama, Crystal’s back!”

Mama turned and stared at her. “Well, you dirty little bitch. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Standing in the open door in the bright afternoon sun, Jenny told Mama about Crystal. She told her about Runga, and the way Crystal was living. And she told her about how Bingo had been given the Mickey. She described the house where Bingo had found Crystal, the way it looked, the way it smelled.

When she had finished, Mama looked at her for a long uncomfortable moment. Then she left silently.

And Jenny was ashamed. She knew she had done it for spite. She turned away from Bingo and went into the house. She had done a terrible thing to Mama.

Ben came into the hall to get his cap. She turned her face away and walked past him to the stairs.

“Jenny?”

“Yes?”

“You had to tell her, you know.”

“No. I didn’t have to. I did it for spite.”

Ben took her by the shoulder as he might his sister, as if he meant to shake her. “She’s Crystal’s mother, Jenny. She had a right to know. You didn’t do it spitefully. Now go have yourself a cry, then forget it. You did what you had to do.”

*

When she came down later she sat at the kitchen table in the sun, trying to sort out the emotions that had risen and pushed at each other. Her fury, her feeling of shame. Mama’s hurt. And Mama’s indifference to them. When Georgie got home from the market Jenny said simply, “Mama was here. She went away without us.”

Georgie studied her solemnly. “I can’t honestly say I’m sorry. It’s selfish of me, but I wanted you to stay. We all did.”

That made Jenny bawl all over again.

Bingo came and sat with them and looked solemnly at Georgie. “Georgie, do you think Mama can help the way she is?”

“I don’t know, Bingo. No one in the world can be perfectly sure what another is capable of, and what he is not.”

It wasn’t a very satisfactory answer. But it was an honest one. Georgie didn’t say that Mama couldn’t help what she had done. Jenny studied Bingo. She thought he knew, inside himself, that Mama could have helped it.

Chapter 15

Late that night Lud called. There had been a wreck. Mama was in the hospital.

Georgie drove Jenny and Bingo to county hospital where they were made to wait in a cold sitting room until they could talk to the doctor.

Mama had a broken hip and three broken ribs. The break in the hip was a straight fracture that had not separated. The doctor was concerned about keeping Mama still. She had been put in traction. She would be in the hospital three weeks. They were allowed to tiptoe into the ward where she was sleeping, and stare silently at her.

The ward was a long dim room with beds lined up close together, each lumped with the body of a sleeping woman, or a woman silently watching as they passed. Mama’s leg was wrapped in a white canvas-like material below the knee. This was attached to a board across the sole of her foot. A cord ran from it through a pulley on the footboard of the bed and dropped to end in weights. Mama looked uncomfortable. Next to her a woman moaned and tossed.

When they visited Mama the next day she was short-tempered with them. Jenny fished a cigarette from Mama’s crumpled pack and lit it for her. “Georgie sent you some.” She put four packs into the drawer of Mama’s night stand. “How did it happen, Mama?”

“That stupid Lud went to sleep at the wheel, plowed into something alongside the road, and skidded into the ditch. Threw me right out of the car against a goddamn culvert.”

“Oh, Mama.”

“I dunno who called the cops, but the first thing that snotty- nosed bluesuit asked me was, did I have hospital insurance.”

Jenny just stared at her.

“How did you know what happened?” Mama asked crossly.

“Lud called. He wasn’t hurt.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. Maybe getting the car fixed.”

“He won’t hang around,” Mama said bitterly. “I’m no good to him this way.”

Mama chain-smoked three cigarettes and had little more to say to them. Jenny tried to plump her pillow, but it only made her angry.

“Don’t they give you anything for the pain?”

“It don’t hurt now. I just don’t like being trussed up. I don’t like hospitals, I don’t like hospital food, and I can’t stand lying in the goddamn bed for two months.”

“You can come home in three weeks,” Jenny said. “We’ll have an apartment ready, with a hospital bed.”

Mama glared and said nothing.

“And we’re going to see Mr. Knutson and get you back on welfare.”

“He won’t do anything, no point in wasting your breath.” She took a long drag, stubbed out her cigarette, and lit another. “I can get along fine without your help, miss.”

“Come on, Mama.”

“You think you’ve got your way and I’m stuck in this city.”

When they were outside Jenny said ruefully, “She’ll be glad enough to have a place to go to when she gets out of there. Do you think we can get Mr. Knutson to listen to us? Do you think we can find an apartment? We don’t have anything, all our towels and kitchen things—except that trunk of blankets. Will someone rent two kids an apartment?”

“They will if you tell them about Mama and how she’s in the hospital. Make them want to help us. Make yourself look older. Pin your hair up and wear that plaid dress.”

At the welfare office Jenny told Mr. Knutson all about Lud from the beginning, and that Lud was gone now. “For the first time, Mr. Knutson, Mama needs some help.”

“And what about your sister?”

“The police are still looking for her.”

“I’m sorry, Jenny. Now you’re not to worry, I’ll have a check in the mail as soon as I can.”

“Will I be allowed to work?”

“As long as you’re a minor you can make as much money as you like without affecting the welfare check.”

*

Armed with the want ads and a map, Jenny and Bingo began by searching the neighborhood they knew, near the Dermodys and their schools.

But the apartments were the dirty, threadbare holes they had known for half their lives. “Why can’t a landlady keep something nice, it can’t cost all that much to clean and paint once in a while,” Jenny fumed.

“They don’t care.”

“Why don’t people care?” She didn’t expect an answer. The fusty apartments seemed so much worse now, after living in a house that was loved.

When they did find what they wanted it was not an apartment at all, but a house. It seemed to Jenny it had been waiting for them, almost as if she had conjured it up herself. It was a small cottage that might once have been white. It stood just a block from their old apartment. It was forlorn and shabby, almost lost in the center of the overgrown yard.