Page 18 of The Promise of Jenny Jones

Jenny sat by the window, hoping for a cool breeze while she watched Graciela wolf down a plate of food the manager had sent to their room.

Between bites, the kid told of a harrowing day, about a man who had stroked her bare legs, about being chased by adults and street children, about falling and skinning her knee, about a wild dog that had terrified her and snapped at her bare feet.

The horror of what might have been robbed Jenny of any appetite. Her own supper sat untouched beside the tub she had ordered up to the room.

She wanted to shout and scream, wanted to beat the kid senseless.

She wanted to point out that Graciela deserved the scares she had received and was damned lucky that nothing worse had happened.

Through Graciela’s bath, and throughout her recitation of the day’s frightening events, anger and accusations burned on Jenny’s tongue.

“Kid,” she said, when Graciela’s torrent of words shuddered to a halt, “I’ve got a lot to say, but first… you did fine out there. You handled yourself a lot better than I ever expected you would.”

The praise came hard, but Jenny figured it would soften the kid for the harder discussion to follow.

Besides, she conceded grudgingly, the kid deserved a word of praise.

Jenny knew how hard it was on the streets.

Earlier today, she wouldn’t have given a centavo for the kid’s chances to end her escapade relatively unscathed.

“How’d you know to kick that bastard in the…” she paused and coughed into her hand. “How’d you know to bite and kick him?”

Graciela pushed a long strand of wet hair away from her face and her chin came up. “I thought about what my mama would do.” Her expression dared Jenny to scoff.

“Huh.” Jenny tried to imagine Marguarita kicking some son of a bitch in the cojones. Impossible. “Well,” she said finally, “your mother was a brave woman.” That much was true.

Graciela’s eyebrows lifted as if she hadn’t expected Jenny’s response. They studied each other. “How did you know I’d go to the train station?”

“That wasn’t difficult.” Jenny shrugged. “I guessed that you’d remember me saying your stinking cousins might show up on the seven o’clock.”

The kid frowned. “I forgot you would be there too.”

“It’s damned lucky for you that I was.”

“That’s true,” the kid admitted in a small voice. Sooty lashes came down on her cheeks as she closed her eyes and shivered. “I didn’t want you to cut my hair.”

“I figured.” Jenny pushed a hand through her own sticky, matted hair.

She wondered how long it would take for the bootblack to wear off.

“Look, kid, it’s good you got scared out there, because we can’t go through this again, you understand?

You wrecked our plan. I didn’t find us a new hotel because I thought you might come back here.

Now the clerk knows I’ve altered my appearance.

” Which meant that she’d rubbed bootblack in her hair for fricking nothing.

“Plus, you can’t imagine what it was like when I didn’t know where you were or what was happening to you.

” She looked out the window, up toward Marguarita’s star.

“I gave your mother my word. I promised that I’d take you to your father in California.

” She turned back to Graciela. “That’s what I’m going to do, so you just make up your mind to it.

The thing is, I need your help. You can’t be fighting me every step of the way.

That means we have to agree on a few rules. Such as, you don’t run away again.”

Graciela picked at the edge of the towel wrapped around her freshly washed body. “Why can’t you just take me home to Aunt Tete? You don’t want to take me to California, and I don’t want to go there. I want to go home.”

Lord, didn’t she wish she could dump the kid on Dona Theodora’s doorstep and ride away without a backward glance. “That isn’t what your mother wanted. Look, kid, I gave her my word. I promised.”

Graciela gazed down at her lap, pulled her napkin through her fingers. “Mama won’t know if you kept your promise…” she whispered.

“ I’ll know!” Jenny glared. “When Jenny Jones gives her word, by God the thing is as good as done! This doesn’t have anything to do with your mother anymore.

Here’s how it is, kid. After you give a promise, see, the person you gave it to is out of the deal.

It’s just you and the promise. If you keep the promise, then you’re somebody.

You did right. But if you fail, then you might as well stick a knife in your gut because you aren’t worth spit.

You’re a person with no fricking honor. Now that’s how it is.

And that’s why your butt is going to California. ”

Graciela lowered her head and stared at her empty supper plate. A tear rolled down her cheek and plopped on the table.

“Now, you wrecked our plan, you worried me half out of my mind, and something terrible could have happened to you. This tells me that we need some rules. I want your promise that you won’t run away again.”

“I won’t promise that,” Graciela said in a low voice.

“Kid, I’m not going to cut your hair. I changed my mind. Look over there on the bureau. I bought some hairpins. We’ll pin your hair up under a boy’s hat. I should have thought of this before. If you don’t take off the hat, it should be all right.”

“Stop calling me kid! My name is Graciela. I hate it when you call me kid.”

Jenny’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. She had to stop thinking that Graciela was a miniature Marguarita. Etiquette and convention were making inroads on the kid, but they hadn’t yet quenched her fire.

“All right,” she said slowly, thinking over the request. “I can agree to that… if you’ll agree to stop crying over every little damned thing.”

They measured each other, weighing their negotiating strengths.

“I’ll try,” Graciela finally conceded. “But you don’t think anything is worth crying over, and some things are. ”

“Maybe,” Jenny said doubtfully. “At your age anyway. You’ve got to agree to dress like a boy. And you’ve got to stop asking ‘why’ all the time because you’re driving me crazy.”

“I’ll dress like a boy if you’ll stop threatening to hit me. It scares me.”

Jenny considered. “Well, I can’t agree to that,” she said finally. “If ever I saw a kid who needs hitting, you’re that kid.”

“Why?”

“See? There you go with the why crap. Damn it!”

“I want to know.”

“You need hitting because you’re a superior, arrogant little snot and you think you’re better than…

other people.” Color rose in Jenny’s cheeks.

“You don’t do what you’re told. You think you know everything when you don’t know anything.

You wish I was dead. You don’t believe me or your mother about your greedy cousins.

You have perfect manners and prissy ways.

You don’t know how to do anything useful, and your hankie is always clean. Of course I want to hit you.”

Graciela’s lips pulled down at the corners.

“Well, you walk like a man, and you don’t say please or thank you.

You got in a fight with my cousins.” She shuddered.

“You’re always angry, and you don’t say your prayers at night.

You talk bad, and you smoke cigars when you think I’m asleep.

You don’t know my father, and you didn’t even know my mama.

You have hair between your legs, and the hair on your head is ugly. You aren’t a lady.”

Jenny stood and looked out the window. The night was soft and hot; a million stars spangled the sky. She saw only one.

“I guess we know where we stand,” she said finally. “That’s good. But I’ve had about as much negotiation as I can stand for one night, and judging from those yawns, I’m guessing you have, too. So get your butt in bed, and we’ll talk more about rules tomorrow.”

“Why do I have to go to sleep before you do?”

“Because I want to read my dictionary and get my thoughts settled down. And because I’m the adult, and you’re nothing but a kid. Listen… you promised to stop asking why.”

“I didn’t promise.”

Kids ran a person around in circles. Jenny didn’t know why any woman willingly became a parent.

Prior to this journey she had believed that skinning carcasses was the worst occupation in the world.

Now she was convinced that raising children made skinning carcasses look like a plum job.

When it occurred to her that she might have to spend the next ten or twelve years raising Graciela, despair nearly knocked her to her knees.

“Put on your nightgown and get into bed.” Scowling up at Marguarita’s star, she waited until Graciela was ready to say her prayers, then she sighed and crossed the room to sit on the edge of the bed.

“You should kneel,” Graciela reprimanded her.

“You’re the one saying the prayers, not me. So say them and get it over with.”

“At least close your eyes.”

“All right! My eyes are closed. Say the damned prayers.”

“Our Father, who art in heaven…”

Jenny heard a soft click and opened one eye, then she sprang to her feet in astonishment. The cowboy from Verde Flores stepped into their room, nudged the door shut, then aimed a Colt at Jenny’s chest. Her mouth fell open in disbelief.

“Unbuckle your gun belt. Slide it across the floor.”

Graciela screamed, then scrambled up on the bed and pressed herself to the wall. Her eyes widened in fear.

“What the hell?” Jenny tried to sort it out. The cowboy? Here? Moving slowly in case he had an eager trigger finger, she lifted the hem of the poncho and reached beneath it to unbuckle her belt. “If this is a robbery…” But somehow she didn’t think it was.

“You have a lot of explaining to do. Now drop the gun belt and slide it over here, or I’ll shoot. Don’t think I won’t. Until I hear your story, I’m assuming the worst. Give me the gun.”

The ice in his blue-green eyes told her that he meant it about shooting her. Reluctantly, she slid the gun and belt across the floor.