Page 8 of The Promise of Jenny Jones
“Either we get rid of them now, or in a day or two, you’ll have lice, too.”
Graciela’s hand flew to the brown curls peeping beneath the edge of her little feathered hat. “No!”
Jenny pointed to her head, wondering at the wisdom of allowing someone who hated her, even a kid, near her head with a pair of sharp scissors.
Graciela approached with huge reluctance, as if Jenny had admitted to leprosy. She made herself lift a dirty strand between her thumb and forefinger. “Ugh!”
“Just cut it, damn it.” There was a mirror among the toiletries, but it was so tiny that it only revealed an inch at a look. Otherwise, Jenny would have done the job herself. A minute later, ropy strings of red started falling around her. Jenny tried not to look at them. The one thing she was vain about was her hair. She had pretty hair, if she did say so herself. Or she might have if she had done anything with it. She stared straight ahead with a stony expression as Graciela chopped and whacked, moving around Jenny, sidestepping the mats of falling hair.
“It’s done,” Graciela announced, handing Jenny the scissors. She gazed at Jenny’s head with a smirk.
Tight-lipped, Jenny found the scrap of mirror and held it up. Graciela had whacked her hair to earlobe length in most places, closer to the scalp in other places. Here and there a stiff tuft stuck out like the bristles on a broom. Most women would have wept. Jenny sighed and stared into space for a long minute. It had to be done.
Standing, she pulled off her shirtwaist and skirt and tossed them toward the tree. She hadn’t taken time for stockings, so the boots stuck to her feet and she had to fight them off.
Graciela spread a cloth in the shade, seated herself with enormous dignity, then unwrapped a tortilla stuffed with cold meat. First, of course, she opened a napkin across her lap. She watched Jenny undressing.
“You should have said thank you.”
Jenny glared at her and said nothing. She’d be damned if she’d thank a smirking kid for deliberately chopping holes in her hair. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that Graciela had enjoyed hacking Jenny’s hair into a ragged mess.
Between delicate bites of tortilla, Graciela watched Jenny step into the trickle of water and begin soaping her body. “I’ve never seen a grown-up without clothes before,” she said, staring.
“Well, this is what one looks like,” Jenny snapped. She couldn’t remember being this uncomfortable in years. If anyone had seen her naked since she was a kid herself, she hadn’t known about it. She tried to pretend that she didn’t mind Graciela’s staring at her, but she suspected her face was as red as her hacked-off hair.
“Do all grown-up women have hair between their legs, or is it only you?”
Oh God.Jenny’s face caught fire. She turned her buttocks toward the kid, but hated that almost as much. “All grown-up women have hair there,” she said in a choking voice.
“Why?”
“How would I know? It happens when you’re about ten years old, or maybe it’s twelve, I can’t remember. Didn’t your mother tell you about… ah… any of that?”
“My mother doesn’t have a bunch of disgusting hair between her legs,” the kid stated in tones of ringing superiority. She looked down her nose at Jenny.
“Yes, she does.”Did,Jenny silently amended. “All grown-up women get hair between their legs and under their arms.”
Graciela’s face pinched in an appalled expression. “Well, my mama doesn’t!” Her cheeks reddened, she lowered the tortilla to her lap, and her eyes filled with tears. “Mama is dead now, isn’t she?” A low wail built in her chest.
Jenny paused in scrubbing her hair and looked around anxiously. She doubted there was a soul within hailing distance, but the land dipped and rolled. She couldn’t be sure.
“Kid! Don’t be so loud! Stop that!”
She had forgotten, if she had known it to start with, how totally, abysmally, miserable a kid could look. Tears poured out of Graciela’s blue-green eyes. Her nose dripped. Her face and shoulders collapsed. Sobs racked her small body. Jenny stared at a small heap of abject anguish, and she felt as helpless as she had felt in her life.
Keeping one eye on the kid, she hastily rinsed the soap off her body and out of her hair, then she shook the crushed sabadilla seeds into a small vial of vinegar, grateful that Marguarita had included both, and scrubbed the mixture into her scalp, hoping she didn’t have any sores.
Because if she did, the vinegar was going to feel like liquid fire eating into her brain.
“I’m sorry your mother is an angel now.” Stepping onto the bank, she toweled off with her petticoat, then tore off a strip of hem, moistened it in the water, and bound it around her head. The sabadilla had to heat up and cook the rest of the nits. She ought to be able to drag a comb through what hair she had left by the time they boarded the train at Verde Flores.
She jerked on a cotton chemise with a small strip of lace edging, the first lace she’d ever worn.
“Kid, I know you feel bad inside. But you got to be strong.”
Graciela sat hunched over as if someone had let the air out of her. Her hands hung down at her sides, limp on the ground. Tears and snot dripped off her face onto her napkin. If Jenny had seen a dog suffering like that, she would have shot the thing and put it out of its misery.
“Kid, listen. People die all the time. You have to get used to it.” Words weren’t helping. Jenny would not have believed one tiny body could contain so many tears or so much snot. “That woman—her name was Maria, wasn’t it?—she was right. Your mama was very sick; you must have seen the blood she was coughing up. Well, she’s not sick or in pain anymore.”
