Ширли Мерфи - Poor Jenny, Bright As A Penny

Mama looked down at her hands.

“Are you listening to me?”

She nodded.

“You can have some beer when we’re home, I’ll have Georgie get it. But nothing during the day. Not any! Understand?”

“Goddamn it, Jenny, all right!” Mama flung up onto her crutches and hobbled out of the room.

Now that the nights were dark earlier Jenny walked home from work along the best-lighted streets. Sometimes when she saw Ben cruising, he would stop and talk to her. It gave her a funny feeling, confused and excited, to talk to Ben, and she knew she had been daydreaming too much. She got so it was hard to look directly at him, and this made Ben return a puzzled little grin. But he was just as friendly as he had always been, and it made Jenny feel rather special to be talking to a uniformed officer in a patrol car on the street. Then one night when he stopped he said, “There’s been a boy cruising real slow by the house lately in a red M.G., a dark-haired kid. He belong to you?”

Jenny blushed, then grinned back and said, “Maybe.” It must be Tom Riley, she thought. He had a little ’52 M.G. that he said was a collector’s car. She wondered how he knew where she lived. He had never asked.

Even though the thought of Tom Riley was interesting, she still caught herself dreaming about Ben. Daydreaming, she said to herself angrily. But in spite of her preoccupation, stories were beginning to swarm in her head.

One idea stayed so solidly there and reached out to touch her so often that she could not take herself away from it. It had to do with the battle between joy and heaviness that occurred when Mama came home; Jenny began to form a story in which such a battle took place.

She worked on it late at night by a lamp draped with a towel to keep from disturbing Bingo. She imagined a small child who was kept tied to his bed during the daytime. All joy had been killed in him. Then she created the woman who discovered him and took him secretly away; she was a morose woman, as without joy as he, and lonely. The woman tried to kindle some response in the child, some joyfulness. And because the child’s survival depended on it, the woman extended herself beyond what she had ever attempted. Slowly she began to see hints of joy in her own mind. But they were painful to her.

Slowly, gently, Jenny let the story take shape like a growing thing. She revised and rewrote as she went, adding dimension, breathing life into what at first had been but a nebulous idea.

The towel-draped lamp made a pool of warmth beside her. She stared out at the darkened windows of their old apartment, aware with a corner of her mind that she had not seen lights there for some time. Then she saw a light go on in the bedroom. It made a pale golden square behind the balcony railing.

A little while later the balcony doors opened. Now the square of light was deep gold. The balcony was like a stage. A figure stepped onto it.

Her hair was piled on top her head, and the curve of her neck and the curve of her breast were familiar.

Was it Crystal?

Jenny strained against the window, then opened the front door and stood on the porch, staring. Then she was running down the street.

Chapter 17

Jenny ran up the stairs. The apartment door was ajar, the rooms empty, as if they had been left vacant.

Crystal was standing on the balcony with her back to Jenny. How thin she was; her shoulder blades showed through the cotton dress. One hand gripped the rail and the other dangled a pop bottle; the coil of her hair had come unpinned so it hung crookedly with one strand brushing her shoulder.

“Crystal?”

Crystal turned, put her hand on the door frame, then moved unsurely into the room. “Where is Mama?” Jenny put her arms around her and they stood holding each other. Crystal’s body felt so frail, the cold bottle Crystal held pressed against Jenny’s back seemed more real than Crystal did. She slumped lightly against Jenny, as if she were very tired. “Jenny, my head hurts.”

Jenny stroked Crystal’s head, wondering how she was going to get her home—or if perhaps she would come willingly. Crystal pushed her face against Jenny’s neck. All her weight was on Jenny now, and Jenny felt a wetness. Was Crystal crying? She held Crystal away, then stared at her. Saliva was running from her mouth. “Jenny, my head hurts.”

Then her body went limp. She buckled to her knees and crouched with her head down. Jenny knelt, trying to hold her, but Crystal slipped and fell forward onto the rug. She lay there unmoving. Her saliva puddled slowly onto the worn carpet.

Cold fear gripped Jenny. Then she made herself move. She rummaged through her pockets, but they were empty. She dug into Crystal’s pockets, dumping out a handful of change and pills and a crumpled paper onto the floor. She fished out some dimes and ran from the room.

She reached the phone, found the number. The dial worked so slowly.

Finally it was done; she had given the address. She turned, and the landlady, a white wraith, stood blocking her way. Jenny shouldered past her and ran; she fell once on the stairs, grabbed the rail, ran headlong up the stairs.

Crystal’s body lay stiff, her head pulled backward as if her spine had been jerked taut. The neck of the bottle was between her teeth, crushed into slivers, and blood was running from her mouth. Jenny tried not to scream. She tried to remove the bottle, but Crystal’s mouth was like a vice. She hear a stir behind her and a whining voice, “What’s going on here? What’re you doing in my apartment?” The landlady stared down angrily at Crystal.

“Oh, please,” Jenny could hear the siren now. “Please, the ambulance is coming. Go and show them the way.”

“How did you get in here?” The landlady grabbed Jenny’s shoulder and spun her back so her hand grazed Crystal and the glass cut deeper.

“Leave us alone!” Jenny screamed with horror. “Don’t touch us again!”

Crystal relaxed and lay limp. Now Jenny removed the bottle easily, and began pulling shards of glass from Crystal’s mouth. The landlady stood staring. “Go show them the way,” Jenny screamed at her. She got up, turned the woman around, and pushed her toward the door. “Go—show—them—the—way.”

The woman went.

Jenny knelt beside Crystal.

Crystal stiffened again, her head jerked back, and Jenny bit her own lip in agony. Then there were footsteps and men’s voices mixed with the whine of the landlady’s voice.

Someone pulled her away from Crystal, Crystal went limp, and Jenny could feel hard, stubborn fingers on her arms. “Stop it, Jenny!” Then she realized she had been fighting to keep from being taken away; white-coated men bent over Crystal and lifted her onto a stretcher.

Ben was shaking Jenny and saying, “What did she take? Tell me what she took.”

“I don’t know. She had a pop bottle. She bit it and smashed it.” She was beginning to feel sick. “I don’t know what she took.” She pointed dumbly to the rug where shattered glass and pills and coins lay in a pool of blood.

“How many convulsions did she have?”

“I was at the phone. The first one I—I saw was when I got back. Then the one when you came.”

The men carried Crystal out and Jenny tried to pull away from Ben, but he held her.

“I want to go with her.”

“I’ll take you to the hospital in a minute. How long were you with her?”

“I don’t know. Maybe ten minutes.”

“Could she speak to you?” The siren screamed as the ambulance pulled away.

“She was standing on the balcony. Yes, she talked to me. She asked for Mama.” Jenny’s voice trembled. “She said her head hurt.”

A detective arrived, Ben talked to him, then led Jenny out and made her sit in the police car while he questioned the landlady. Then he came into the dark car, spoke over the radio, and started for the hospital.