The Promise of Jenny Jones (9 page)

After glancing at Graciela over her shoulder, she pushed up her sleeve and ran her fingers down her arm. The warmth was there, but not the silk. Stroking her arm was almost like rubbing tanned leather. Hell. Frowning, she opened her collar and dragged her fingertips across her breast bone where the sun hadn't baked her. Better. But not silky. Scowling, she decided her skin wouldn't be silky even if she bathed in a vat of fricking rose oil. Not that it mattered. No good looking cowboy was ever going to compare Jenny Jones's tanned hide to some rose scented, silky skinned woman who had never labored under a harsh sun.

Why was she thinking such foolish thoughts?

Sighing, she inhaled the smoky stench wafting from the tobacco factory,then carried a stool to the side of the tub. "Wash behind your ears." She paused. "Or is it inside your ears?"

Graciela gave her a withering glance.

"Just do it."

"Why?"

"Because that's what your mother would have wanted." Recognizing at once that it was a mistake to invoke Marguarita, she jumped to another subject. "All right, here's our plan. We're going to assume that your stinking cousins are chasing after us.Durangois large enough that we can hide from them as long as we have to, which won't be long. Every day I'll go to the depot when the southbound comes in, and I'll watch and see if Luis and Chulo get off the train. The day they do, and I'm guessing that will be tomorrow or most likely the next day, you and I will catch the next train north. While Luis and Chulo are searching for us here, we'll be heading for the border."

She had no idea if it was wise to share these plans with the kid. Since she didn't know how to relate to a kid, she spoke to Graciela as she would have spoken to an adult.

Graciela made a floating raft out of the washcloth and carefully covered it with grass and leaves. "They'll find us."

"Not if I can help it. We're going to make it plenty hard for them." A redheadedAmericanaaccompanied by a Mexican child was certain to be remembered. Unless Jenny made some changes, the cousins would track their whereabouts in about an hour flat.

"Here's what we're going to do." She drew a breath. "I'm going back to pants and a serape and a man's hat. And I'm going to dye my hair." An unconscious sigh dropped her shoulders. It would be her hair that she cared about. She hated it that her hair was chopped ragged, and, after her bath, she'd paint it with bootblack. It would work. God.

"I'm not saying anybody is going to mistake me for a man, not after a second look, but at least I won't fit the description your rotten cousins will be using."

Graciela studied her with interest, examining Jenny's head. A tiny smile hovered on her lips.

Jenny squinted. "Wait until you hear your part before you start feeling superior. We're going to hide you by turning you into a muchacho. We cut your hair short, and we dress you in pants and a jacket and a boy's hat and boots. Then tomorrow morning we move to a different hotel. The redheadedAmericanaand her daughter disappear, and the trail stops here."

Horror widened Graciela's eyes, and her hands flew to her hair. "No! You can't cut my hair! No, no, no, no, no!" Thrashing and splashing she tried to climb out of the tall-sided tub, then struck blindly at Jenny when Jenny reached for her. "I won't let you, I won't let you! No, no, no!"

"Kid. Stop screaming! You hear me? Stop screaming this instant!"

Paying no attention, screaming and sobbing, Graciela splashed down on all fours,then she rocked up and flattened herself against the far well of the tub. She wound her long hair into a dripping rope and held it as far from Jenny as possible. "No! I won't let you!"

"Kid, listen to me. Damnit, shut up. They'll think I'm killing you!"

Atonce Jenny understood that words were not going to stand against the storm of a full-blown tantrum. She wanted to smack Graciela as much as she had ever wanted to hit someone in her life. She'd actually leaned over the tub and raised her hand when something in Graciela's expression reminded her of Marguarita. Scowling, she hesitated. She could not imagine Marguarita doing violence to a fly, certainly not to a kid. Jenny's hand lowered, but the effort to do as she imagined Marguarita would want her tomade her clench her teeth until her jaw ached.

"All right," she said sharply.

Pressed to the side of the tub, holding the rope of hair protectively, Graciela studied her warily. Her chest heaved with suppressed sobs, but she'd stopped screaming.

"Listen, you little snot. I'm trying to save your fricking life! And mine. Why can't you get that through your head?" Jenny met the kid's glare head-on. "Now. I am going to cut your hair. And you are going to dress like a boy and pretend to be one." Graciela's mouth opened, but Jenny spoke before the next scream emerged. "But, we won't do it right now, so calm down. We'll cut your hair in the morning. You'll have all night to get used to the idea." Her eyes narrowed and glittered. "But you have to do your part, got that? We're in a tight situation here, and I can't save your butt without a little help from you."

"I hope you die! I hope Cousin Luis shoots you," Graciela said wildly. Tears trembled on her lashes, and she gripped the rope of hair like a lifeline. "You're mean and you're rude and you say bad words." Dropping her hair, she covered her face in her hands. "I want my mama, I want my mama,I want my mama." She started crying, this time softly, and this time with quiet hopelessness.

Jenny rocked back on the stool, her lips pressed in a line. Naked and sitting in eight inches of grimy water, Graciela looked tiny and lost and helpless.

"It's a real pisser to be a kid," Jenny conceded, her expression easing. "I remember how that was. I hated it, too, having to do what grown-up people made me do."

Graciela looked through her fingers. "What did they make you do?" she asked finally. A hiccup twitched her chest.

Suddenly Jenny felt Marguarita's presence again, telling her that it wasn't a good idea to relate how her pa had taken a strap to her and her brothers and sisters when they didn't work hard enough, answer quickly enough, bring him the liquor jug fast enough. She gazed into space, seeking another example to show Graciela that she understood.

"Well, once I had to go into a dark cave by myself. My pa was a miner, see, and he wanted to know if anyone else was working a certain shaft. He figured if there were men inside the shaft, they wouldn't shoot a kid, or maybe he didn't care if they did. Anyway, he made me go inside. I hated that, let me tell you. It was cold and black as a murderer's heart, and I kept hearing things moving in the dark and thinking I was going to get shot any second."

Graciela clutched the soap to her chest, her eyes wide. "Did they shoot you?"

"They were hiding outside." Jenny laughed, remembering. "They shot my pa. Didn't kill him though. Anyway, I guess I know about having to do things you don't want to do. That's how it's been all of my life. You probably won't believe this, but adults have to do things they don't want to do too. I sure don't want to smear bootblack in my hair, no sirree bob, I don't. But I'll do it because changing my appearance will help us."

This was where Graciela was supposed to say that she'd do her part, too, but she didn't. Extending an arm, she ran the soap up and down, not looking at Jenny. "Do you know my father?"

"No," Jenny said, frowning, "I don't."

"I don't know him either." She glanced up, studying Jenny's face. "You said you wouldn't cut my hair until morning."

"And I don't lie."

Graciela tilted her head, her lack of trust as evident as the bits of grass sticking to her bare skin. "I need you to help me wash my hair."

"You know the rules. I'm not going to do anything that you can do yourself."

"Why?"

"Because I'm not your fricking servant, that's why. And because you have to learn how to do things for yourself, or you'll never amount to a hill of beans."

"I can't get the soap out by myself."

Jenny considered before deciding this was probably a legitimate request. She waited until Graciela had worked the soap into a thin lather, then she unbent enough to scrub places that Graciela had missed before she lowered Graciela in the water and gently rinsed the suds out of the long soft strands.

To her immense surprise, she got a funny warm satisfaction from helping Graciela bathe. She wouldn't have believed it.

* * *

They ate supper downstairs at a table ringed by other boarders, none of whom spoke. Then they returned to their room, and Graciela sat on the edge of the bed silently watching while Jenny cursed and muttered and applied the bootblack to her whacked-off hair. The paste was lumpy, smelled bad, and was difficult to work with. "Too much beeswax and not enough syrup in it," Jenny said between her teeth.

When she finished, her fingers were blackened, the sheet around her shoulders was spotted, part of her neck was black, and her hair was stiff and waxy. She looked like hell.

"Well," she said finally, staring mournfully into the mirror on top of the bureau. The cut on her cheek had healed, and the scab had almost flaked away. But the black eye Luis had given her flared purple and yellow. All in all, Jenny decided she looked about as hideous as a woman could look. "I've done my part." Pulling the sheet off of her shoulders, she slid a glance toward Graciela, who had gone rigid and stared at her with an appalled expression.

"You aren't going to do that to me!" she whispered.

"We're just going to cut yours like a boy's. That's all," Jenny snapped, suddenly irritated. "It's time for bed. Get out of your clothes and go to sleep."

"I have to wash my teeth and say my prayers first."

"Then do it." When Graciela was finally ready for bed, Jenny waited while the kid knelt and basically offered up the same prayer as she did every night. Jenny made a face during the blessing of the cousins, and she spoke the last words in unison with Graciela. "And strike Jenny dead, amen. We don't need to suggest ways and means, all right? We can leave the details of my demise to God. Now, go to sleep."

She sighed when Graciela lifted her cheek for a kiss. She didn't think she would ever get accustomed to death wishes being followed by a good-night kiss.

"Don't get any of the black on me," Graciela warned. Not trusting herself to speak, Jenny brushed a hasty kiss across a silken cheek,then she blew out their candles and went to sit beside the window.

A pungent burning odor continued to drift from the tobacco factory, but the building was dark and empty now. A man wearing a mended serape and a wide hat led a burro down the deserted street toward the sound of voices and music coming from some distant place that Jenny couldn't see. The burro's hooves striking the cobblestones made a lonely sound.

When Jenny was certain that Graciela had fallen asleep, she lit a dark cigar that she'd purchased earlier from a vendor in the mercado. Leaning her arms on the windowsill, she gazed at the night sky, seeking the star she had assigned to Marguarita.

"I don't smoke in front of the kid," she said defensively once she located the correct star. Marguarita had not impressed her as the type to appreciate a good cigar. Not that this was an especially good cigar.

"I sure hope things are going better for you than they are for me." She drew on the cigar and exhaled. The smoke hung on the still, hot air. "I told you I wasn't a kid person. Don't say I didn't warn you." Waving a hand, she tried to clear the smoke that obscured her view of Marguarita's star. "I wanted to hit her. Icame this close. So tell me. Sometimes you have to hit a kid. You just have to, right?" Jenny waited, gazing up at the star. If the star winked, that would signal agreement. The star gazed back as unmoving as a fleck of cotton on a square of black velvet. Jenny sighed heavily. "Well, I'm not a fricking saint like you are," she said sourly.

She smoked for a while, occasionally pressing down one of the waxy black tufts sticking out from her scalp. "Maybe I shouldn't have told her about our plan. Maybe I scared her, I don't know." She waved the cigar. "This would have been easier if she'd been a boy. I've been around men most of my adult life; it doesn't matter what you say to them. But see, that's part of the problem. It's not only that she's a kid, she's a girl kid. I don't know what to say to her. Can you imagine me talking about fashions? Huh! And I don't know how to fix her hair…"

Leaning on the sill, she earnestly appealed to the star. "Marguarita? I've got to cut her hair. You see that, don't you? It's our best chance. So you tell her that she's got to let me do it. She'll listen to you. Hell, she thinks you can do no wrong."

The odor from the tobacco factory mingled with the aroma of the cigar and the heavy scents of town. Jenny smelled grease and rotting garbage, dung and urine, smoke from a thousand cooking fires.

If she leaned far to the left, she could see a glow of light in the direction of the plaza. Otherwise, the night was dark, hot, and sultry, the kind of night that made Jenny feel restless inside, itching for a vague something that she couldn't name. Nearby, someone unseen strummed a guitar. The music was soft and achingly sad, opening a hole in Jenny's chest.At that moment, she could believe that she and the guitarist were the only people left on earth.

When the cigar had burned to a stub, she flipped it into the street,then eyed the bed with anticipation. It had been a long time since she had slept on a decent mattress, between clean sheets and with a pillow for her head. After stripping to her shimmy, she elbowed Graciela aside and slid into bed. Pulling the top sheet to her nose, she inhaled deeply, letting the clean scents of starch and homemade soap obliterate the stench of the night. She was going to sleep as soundly as a dead man.

As it turned out, that's exactly how she slept. When she awoke in the morning. Graciela was gone, and Jenny hadn't heard a sound. Not Graciela getting dressed, not the click of the door closing, nothing.

In two minutes flat, she was dressed and running down the staircase, shouting Graciela's name.

CHAPTER 5

G raciela had never been to a town the size ofDurango, nor had she imagined that so many people could crowd into one place. Within ten minutes of slipping out of the hotel, she was hopelessly lost.