Ширли Мерфи - Poor Jenny, Bright As A Penny

Their moves were always sudden. Every time Mama’s life hit a snag, every time she was confronted with a problem, she ran away from it. They packed and moved to another town, another cheap apartment.

Jenny watched Bingo put his abbey carefully into the red trunk. Three schools in one semester, she thought bitterly. That had to be some kind of a record. If Bingo ever finished a term in one school the world would come to an end. She could remember the time she had known only one school. But that was before Papa died.

She wondered what it was this time, making them move. Maybe welfare wanted Mama to go to work again.

She closed one suitcase and started on another. The luggage was a motley assortment of ancient suitcases from the Goodwill, cardboard boxes, and the battered red trunk that held Jenny’s and Bingo’s only private property.

“Pack for Crystal, too,” Mama said, pacing. Each time she passed the window she stared down at the street, looking for Lud, for Crystal, anxious to get going.

Crystal came in, pulling off Jenny’s slicker. Underneath, her sweater was soaked and clinging. She glanced casually at Bingo. “Stop staring, diaper baby.” Then she saw the packing and her expression changed. She whirled to face Mama. “What are you doing? We’re not moving again, Mama. Not again!” She looked with near defeat at the half-filled boxes, then her temper flared up stronger. “You’ve got no right! You never ask us! You’ve got no right to move us all over the place!”

By the time Lud wandered in, they were packed and waiting. He surveyed the room. “Now that didn’t take long did it?” he said snidely.

Crystal’s temper never lasted. She was in a good humor now, but still badgering. “Hell, Mama,” she looked just like Mama when she grinned, “Hell, I had a party all cooked up. You can’t do a thing in this family. What was it this time, Mama, you fight with your caseworker again? They find Lud in bed with you?”

Mama and Lud exchanged sheepish glances. So that was it. That would mean the welfare checks would stop; women on welfare were not allowed the luxury of free love. But they would move to another county and apply for welfare there. Someday, Jenny thought, someday we’re going to run out of counties. She could never imagine Lud’s going to work to support them.

Lud began stacking boxes, preparing to load the car. He had sagging jowls, Lud did, his shoulders sagged, and his eyes drooped down at the outside corners. Bingo picked up two suitcases and followed him silently.

When the old blue Plymouth was loaded, Jenny and Bingo stood in the drizzle and watched Lud tie a tarp over the trunks that were piled on top. The tarp was so crooked that one corner hung down over the door. For a grown man, he sure made a sloppy job of it. Bingo’s glasses were smudged with rain so he looked like a small blind owl. Standing there in the rain, they could have been standing in any of the small towns they’d lived in, packing to leave any cheap apartment building. Once, Jenny had read a story about a man who died and his soul wandered the earth forever homeless.

The three children crowded into the back seat, a stack of boxes between Crystal and Bingo, so Bingo was jammed against Jenny, and Jenny in turn was pressed against the door. In front, Mama slammed the door on her coat hem, then trying to get it out, banged her knuckle on the door handle. Jenny glanced at Bingo; he looked like he wanted to comfort Mama. Mama got pretty nervous when things went wrong. Jenny wondered suddenly if they might be running away from something else besides county welfare. Twice they had moved because Lud had gotten into trouble. The children never found out what kind of trouble it was.

Rain beat through the broken window next to Jenny. She shoved a wad of newspapers into it. The box beside her feet was filled with cereal boxes, extra shoes, a jumble of dishes and towels, and their library books. She wondered how much the postage would be to mail the books back. Bingo looked pale and miserable. He would look better when they were out on the road. Once they were gone, he liked the traveling fine, liked the feel of the car on the road. It was the stopping he hated, and having to face another strange town, a strange school. He seldom bothered to make friends, nor did Jenny. Crystal’s friends came and went easily enough.

Lud said, “I’d been thinking of going to work down to Whitey Miller’s. Now you’ve blown that, Lilly.”

“Thinking is all it would have come to,” Mama said shortly.

This would have led to a fight, but Crystal started complaining again, “What we have to move for, Mama? I liked it in that little town.”

“I just bet you did,” Lud said.

“Never mind, honey,” Mama said, and to change the subject she began on the welfare caseworker. “They can’t leave well enough alone. They always come snooping around, making life hard for a person.”

“You’d ought to be more careful,” Lud said. The cigarette in his mouth grew a long ash, then the ash dropped down his shirt front.

“I ought to be more careful?” Mama said crossly. “You’re the one came stomping out of the bathroom in your skivvies!”

Jenny watched the storm rage outside the car. She would remember the argument, and would be able to mimic Lud’s words if she chose. But her mind was out in the storm, feeling how it blew the rain against the trees, feeling the power of the wind.

She thought of Papa and wondered what they would be doing now if Papa were alive. Life had been secure then and full of happiness. John Middle had worked in the timber as a choke-setter. To his children he seemed tall as a mountain. He had black curling hair and laughing black eyes, and his skin was brown from the sun. He could be fierce. He could be tender. In the evenings when he hugged them his beard was a rough stubble and he smelled of new-cut wood and clean sweat. They had lived in a lumbering camp in a log house with a rock fireplace. At night before the fire he told them tales from history, stories as fierce and direct as Papa himself. He told them how Rome fell, rotting away from within. How the world lay in darkness for centuries. Then the Middle Ages grew up rich with a vigorous art; Bingo loved the fabulous carved beasts, the demons, and the winged lions. But best of all he loved the rugged stone buildings of that time.

Crystal had never cared for Papa’s stories. She loved being close to him, but she couldn’t sit quietly while he talked, and would squirm to obtain his attention. Papa would send her to Mama then; he did not like her fussing. And Mama would paint her fingernails for her, or let her try on necklaces and lipstick. Sometimes she sang with Crystal, teaching her the songs she liked to sing in the beer hall with a crowd of loggers and Papa too gathered around the piano. One song she sang went, “Poor Jenny, bright as a penny, her equal would be hard to find.” She sang it sarcastically, so it made Crystal laugh and Jenny feel hurt and angry.

Mama didn’t let Papa take Crystal fishing as he did Jenny and Bingo. She liked to keep Crystal pretty, with her hair curled; she didn’t want Crystal getting dirty in the woods. She didn’t care how dirty Jenny got, and Jenny was glad for that, though sometimes she would have liked to be made pretty too.

Still, fishing with Papa was better than anything, and Bingo, being a boy, could get as dirty as he liked without a glance from Mama. They fished in the stream that ran behind the village, and while their lines dangled, Papa told them stories. Sometimes they could feel the stir of Turnock’s wings on the wind and see his shadow move above the treetops.

Bingo was six when Papa died.

It had seemed to the children impossible that John Middle could die. He had been bigger and stronger and more alive than anyone. He worked at what he loved to do, pitting himself against the dangers of working in the timber—the dangers of falling trees and of the huge steel cables breaking or falling on a man. Papa’s job was to work with the choker cable. As he was setting his choker to a log the big steel mainline cable slackened and the butt rigging dropped on him and killed him.