by Joyce Meyer
“Got you a going-away present.” I held it hidden in both hands behind my back and bounced against the wall because I was so nervous about this. “You want it?”
Jean kept stuffing her belongings inside her bags and boxes. She stood a fistful of vinyl records inside a box that also held picture frames. My sister was taking her collection of Grace Kelly photos and all of her favorite male movie stars, too. Jean locked the tonearm and needle into place and latched the lid to her record player. She yanked the plug from the wall and coiled the cord around the handle.
“Well?” I stopped fidgeting and stood up from the wall. “Do you want a going-away present from me? You have to say if you want it or not. If you don’t, I won’t give it to you. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Okay.” A great sigh of forbearance. “I want it.”
“Do you? Do you really?”
“Didn’t I say so, Jenny? Yes. I want it.”
After that, I couldn’t give it to her. I just stood there, waiting.
Jean zipped up the red travel case with great relish. “Never mind, then. If you don’t want to give it to me, you don’t have to.”
All the times Miss Shaw had offered to let me buy the two-strand pearl choker for Jean at wholesale price, I told her I didn’t want to. But when my sister started clearing her room of belongings that week, the sorrow hit so deep and made me so breathless, I felt like someone had socked me in the stomach.
“What are you thinking?” Miss Shaw asked when she saw me looking at the choker one day.
“Even wholesale, I don’t think I’ve got enough money to buy it.”
“You’re thinking about that again? Have you changed your mind?”
I nodded.
“So, your Jean is leaving this week?”
It was something about the way Miss Shaw said “your Jean.” I couldn’t get rid of the tears that welled up.
“You know what I’m thinking, don’t you?” Miss Shaw said.
“What?”
“That you and I can work something out.” She laid her gloved hand on my shoulder and the warmth of her touching me soaked clear down to my toes. “Let’s get the files and go over some prices, what do you say?”
To this moment, I’m not sure how she came up with the exact figure. Miss Shaw located the necklace in her paperwork, showed me the certificate of authenticity, and scratched so many numbers on a notepad that I couldn’t follow her calculations at all. The next thing I knew, she circled a figure at the bottom of the paper that matched exactly the amount of the paycheck she’d handed me that morning, sales tax and everything.
“You want to give it to me, or don’t you?” Jean demanded, pulling me from Shaw Jewelers back into Jean’s cluttered bedroom.
I handed over the narrow box which I’d wrapped myself. Jean gave the ribbon a cursory tug, like I was forcing her to do something she didn’t much want to do. I heard her breath catch as the choker spilled into her hand. You could see every shade of opalescent white glimmering in those pearls as she strung them around her neck and examined herself in the dresser mirror. She’d probably never use that dresser again.
When she struggled to fasten the clasp, her elbows jutted up over her head like wings. I saw the shine on her face and knew she liked them. Although I also knew she’d never tell me.
“They’re like—”
“—Grace Kelly’s. I know.”
I stared at our reflection in the mirror. Two sisters, one taller than the other but not by much. One with a glamorous hairdo and one with a pitiful scalped head. I’ll bet it surprised Jean how much we resembled each other in spite of all that.
She said to me in the mirror, “It’ll grow back.”
I said to her, “I’m glad you’re going. I’m glad you’re going and leaving me with him.”
Neither of us moved.
For one last moment, we fell into our pattern of contention. Challenging each other came so much easier than admitting we needed each other.
“Well, I’m glad you’re glad, Jenny, because nothing’s stopping me.”
“I’m not trying to stop you,” I said.
Outside, a burst of wind trapped itself between our building and the one next door. Unable to escape, it became a whirlwind in the corner and picked up everything in its wake. Some empty cigarette packages. Dozens of leaves. A napkin left from someone’s picnic. All of this swirled and tapped against Jean’s window as if it wanted inside.
Another brick came loose and shattered on the patio.
“That’s going to be a mess for somebody to clean up.”
The treetops bobbed together as if they were worshiping the windstorm. Flickers of lightning swept past, but the wind bore it away before the clouds could even threaten us. I asked her if she’d ever told Mama anything about what Daddy did to her.
Jean reached behind her neck to unfasten her pearls. She stashed them in their box and shoved the box inside her red travel case. I didn’t know whether to be disappointed or happy that she didn’t want to show them to anybody else. I wondered if she’d even heard my question at first. She said, “I’m going to marry the first boy who asks me. Daddy says I’ll come running back for help, but I don’t want any help from him.”
A whole stand of trash cans had blown over outside. They ratcheted to and fro in the street every time a gust got them, thundering hollow and loud.
“It took a while for me to get up the courage to talk to Mama, do you know that? When I finally got brave enough, you know what she did? She got all confused and teary and went right to Daddy and asked if it was true. Daddy flat-out told her I was lying. He told her my imagination must be running away with me. He told her I was spending way too much time listening to my friends’ gossip about their lives. And that’s the crazy thing, I don’t even have any friends. There’s nobody I can talk to but you. Daddy made me feel guilty. Daddy made me feel like I’d injured him.”
Maybe Jean could hold her ground against the wind outside when she left, but I suddenly felt like it might carry me away. It terrified me to think of stepping outside in it.
“I don’t know if she really doesn’t believe me or if she just doesn’t want to . . .”
The trash cans made so much racket, like somebody was out there hitting them. I couldn’t say anything. I saw the pain behind Jean’s words, and I couldn’t have felt more betrayed. Mama was supposed to take care of us.
“She walked in on us once, while he was in my bed. You were still so little. She saw us, turned around, and walked out of the house. She came back in two hours and never mentioned it. Mama seemed different after that. She avoided me as much as possible and even seemed to resent me at times. After that I never said anything again.”
We both jumped when Daddy showed up in her doorway just then. We’d been concentrating on her words, so neither of us had heard his footsteps thumping down the hall. If he caught us talking about this, he’d kill us.
“I’m not getting the car out in weather like this, Jean. Not getting the Packard out to get it sandblasted by this dirt or dented by a brick. The whole sky’s falling out there. Everybody’s so busy building in the outskirts that nobody’s thinking what the city needs anymore.”
Jean mouthed off, “If you won’t take me down to that bus station, I’m going to call a taxi for myself.”
Yesterday that would have provoked him to hit her. Today he stood in her doorway and took it. “Nobody’s got money to get you a taxi, Jean. Nobody’s got money to do anything like that.”
“I do,” I said.
“If you’ve got money, then you owe it to me,” Daddy blustered. “You know I didn’t let you take that job so you could amuse yourself. I expect you to chip in and pay your own way. I expect you to buy everything you need because I’m sure not doing it anymore.”
After he stomped off, I took my sister’s hand. I expected her to yank it away like she’d done a hundred times before, but she didn’t. She turned and held both my hands so tight I thought she might b
reak my fingers off. “I bargained with him; do you know that? I told him I’d never bother Mama again if he just didn’t start doing it to you, too.”
Then, “Is he doing it to you, Jenny? Did he keep his promise to me?”
I stood and stared at her in awe. It took long, precious seconds for the realization to sink in: Jean had tried to give herself for me.
Maybe Miss Shaw had been right; maybe things weren’t always what they looked like. All this time when I’d thought I didn’t amount to anything in Jean’s eyes, my sister had been trying to take care of me.
I hated to tell her, but I couldn’t hold it back. “I guess Daddy doesn’t keep many bargains.”
Her face crumpled like a paper bag.
“You got to go soon. You’ll miss your bus.”
She let go of my hands, and the next thing I knew, pedal pushers were somersaulting through the air toward me. “Fold those, okay? And you can stick those socks in that overnight bag, too.”
Not until she’d zipped up the last suitcase and filled the last cardboard box did she glance in my direction again. “Jenny?”
“Yeah?”
“All those things I said—how I told you I wished you’d never been born? How I told you I hated you?”
“You can’t expect her to be interested in everything you’re interested in anymore,” Mama had said when I asked if she knew why Jean and I were drifting apart, if she knew why Jean treated me the way she did. When girls grow up, they start needing time to themselves.
“It didn’t matter what you said,” I lied.
“All those times I quit talking to you.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“I couldn’t stop thinking—if you hadn’t been born, I wouldn’t have had to worry about you getting hurt, too.”
I found another pair of socks under the bed and gave them to her.
“I couldn’t stop thinking I should have been able to do something to protect you.”
Those last few minutes I bustled around Jean’s room in a bittersweet fog. After today I’d be alone with Mama and Daddy, but that didn’t matter right now. What mattered was this: I’d thought I lost Jean a long time ago, but I hadn’t.
Jean had to chase Mrs. Patterson and Miss Miner off the party line so she could call for a Yellow Cab.
“If you need money to get there, I’ll give you everything I made this summer,” I volunteered.
“You keep your money.” Her voice relapsed to its huffy tone. She’d turned snotty on me again, and this time I understood she did it because it was the only way to keep a safe distance, now that we were saying good-bye. “I got some saved up.”
She toted everything downstairs to wait for the taxi. Every time she opened the door, the wind blasted her skirt around her legs. Every time she came back inside, her hair looked like somebody had taken an eggbeater to it.
I lugged her record player down for her and set it beside the cardboard boxes with the records. When the taxi honked its horn, I ran to help the driver load the trunk for her. The wind plastered Mama’s blouse to her chest. She wrapped both arms around her middle like she thought the wind wanted to rip the blouse completely off. Even from where she waited at the porch railing, gusts blew her hair sideways and she could hardly open her eyes in the blowing dust. The Shipleys came out to wave Jean off. No telling where Daddy had gone to.
“Good-bye,” Jean called to everyone. “Good-bye,” over and over again. I’d never seen my sister so happy as when her cab pulled away. “Write,” she mouthed to me through the glass.
“I will,” I mouthed back. I couldn’t stop waving, even after the Yellow Cab started creeping up the hill. I held on to my own shirt then, too.
Shards of brick lay in the grass at my feet. Dirt pellets and tiny rocks pelted my legs as I waited at the curb and waved my sister off. I jumped around to keep them from hitting me so hard.
Oh, how I’d dreaded this moment when Jean would leave us for good.
I braced myself against the wind, letting the air-bound dust and pebbles sting my legs. I couldn’t bear the thought of going inside.
The time had come when I had to face life with Daddy alone.
Chapter Sixteen
Everywhere except on the thermometer, the hottest-summer-on-record seemed to be fading from its own heat. “Back-to-School Togs for the Fine Men and Women of Tomorrow!” the Post-Dispatch advertisement blared as I read it across the streetcar aisle. “Petticoats! The Perfect Autumn Accessory for Your Newest Dark Cotton Frocks!”
As the trolley made its regular jog to the south between Sarah Street and Delmar, I pressed my nose to the open window, thinking I was going to die before it ever cooled off. We passed a red Pontiac convertible crouching on the side of the road, overflowing with young people. Maroon and gold crepe-paper streamed from the antenna. The colors of Jean’s school: Central High. In another year that school would be mine.
The streetcar clanged its bell, and tires squealed as the driver floored the red Pontiac, smoke pouring from the pavement. The teen girls screamed from their perch on the back and hung on to each other as the car took off. The driver looked sideways then forward, sideways then forward, his tongue clamped between his teeth, as he pulled abreast of us. Two boys in the front seat twirled shopping bags in the air, the girls egging them on as they aimed and let the bags fly.
When the bags sailed in through our windows, they exploded in clouds of dust. Babies screamed. Flying dirt seared my nostrils and stung my eyes. Women coughed and tried to fan some of it out the windows. Businessmen brushed off their suits and shook dust out of their newspaper pages. The conductor swatted at the clouds of dust with his hat. The woman beside me tried to wipe off her glasses.
The car sped beside us, the girls shrieking with hilarity. I wondered what we must look like to them as we jumped and fanned and complained inside the trolley, trying to get away from the dirt.
“Hey, Billy!” I heard one of the girls holler as she leaned forward and grabbed the driver by the neck. “What time’s the next one come along?”
“Any minute, sweetie,” he bellowed back. “Don’t be in such a hurry. Enjoy this one. Look at all those people in there.”
The girl positioned her chin atop his shoulder.
Just then the streetcar slowed. With both hands, I lifted myself until I was standing inside the open window.
“Billy Manning!” I screeched, and it surprised me plenty that my voice carried so far. After the tales Jean had told me, I knew without a doubt which boy would partake in this activity. And I recognized him from the night he’d come tumbling into Jean’s window. “Billy!” I shouted. “Billy!”
He turned and looked my way, dislodging the head of the glamour girl who tried to stay plastered against him.
“I’m Jean’s sister!” I shouted louder, leaning out the window and waving frantically. “I’m Jean’s sister!” I declared to passing cars and pedestrians along the Hodiamont right-of-way and the passengers in the convertible flying Central’s official colors. My whole being wanted to jump out and join them, they were so carefree.
“Oh,” Billy shouted. “Oh, hi!”
“Hey,” the girl slapped him on the shoulder. I’ll bet she asked, “Who’s Jean?”
And then they were gone. They zoomed past. We were forgotten, the next trolley targeted. Still I hung out the window, calling after them. I called to the skyline of St. Louis and beyond.
“I’m Jean’s sister!”
Because calling out her name like that was the only way I could give credit to her, the only way I could make sense of the horrible bargain she had wrought with Daddy, trying to protect me. Jean and I belonged to each other. All those years I’d thought I was on my own. But now I knew my sister cared about me after all.
I couldn’t have guessed how much I’d miss Jean after she’d gone. Every time I walked into the house, I expected her sullen voice. Every time I passed her room, I expected her judgmental glance.
Only now that I knew what
had elicited her ill-temper, her absence left a gaping hole in my chest. I felt so lonely sometimes without Jean and Aurelia, I thought I might die. Whenever Jean phoned us, which wasn’t too often, I hung onto the receiver with both hands as if I were hanging onto my sister instead.
The details of my sister’s new life sounded spectacular, and I’ll bet even Mrs. Patterson was listening in. Jean had taken a Saturday job at a dress shop to make spending money. Every day at school they had timed drills in typing, and yesterday she’d clocked in at 47 words a minute with only two mistakes. Her roommate, Sarah, had spent a week in Chicago once, and now Jean thought she might look for a job in Chicago after she got her typing certificate.
Running across magazine articles about Grace Kelly or hearing reports about her on television made me feel worse than ever. Every time I heard Grace Kelly’s name, it reminded me that Jean wasn’t around to share movie-star stories with me. I started gobbling up the gossip magazines by myself instead, knowing the words would make me feel twice as alone when I read them, but reading them anyway. That’s how I grieved my sister’s leaving, I hung onto the details of Grace Kelly’s life the same way I would have left my feet planted too long on the searing pavement, knowing the hurt would be there, waiting for it to start soaking through.
When I picked up the party line to listen in one afternoon, I caught Mrs. Patterson in the throes of a conversation with Miss Mona about asking Daddy if he’d be willing to refurbish her scratched floors. She ran through at least three piqued imitations of my father.
“He said, ‘Now those aren’t my floors to worry about, are they?’ Can you believe he said that, Mona? ‘I’m not the one who has to walk on them.’ He said, ‘If you fix those floors yourself and make them all nice, I’ll have to raise the rent on you.’ Can you believe it?”
On the other end, I heard Miss Mona Miner laugh occasionally during this tirade. “Some people like to control everything, Lily. Just feel sorry for that man’s family.”
“I know,” Mrs. Patterson said. “Can you imagine?”
Listening in on the party line was yet another activity that kept me feeling closer to Jean. Just as I reached to silently disconnect myself—this certainly wasn’t a topic I hadn’t eavesdropped on before—the chitchat veered in a direction that made my hand pause. Miss Mona said, “Oh, I hear Opal Shaw was at it again at the cemetery. Sitting on the ground the other night and weeping over that grave like she thought nobody could see her.”
