The Promise of Jenny Jones by Maggie Osborne Page B

so, and it looks like she was right."
    "That's a—"
    Jenny just stared, until Graciela dropped her head. Tears dripped down on the hands squeezed tightly together in her lap.
    Jenny watched her for a minute, waiting for the snot. "Don't you have a handkerchief?"
    "I lost it."
    Reaching down, Jenny tore another piece out of her petticoat and handed it to Graciela. "Wipe your nose."
    "Thank you."
    "Look, kid, I know it's hard right now. You've lost your mama, your cousins want to kill you, you don't know where you're going or who's on the other end, you hate me…"When she listed it out like that, the kid's life sounded lousy even by Jenny's standards. "Well, okay. You've been dealt a rotten hand. But that's how it is. You have to play the cards you've got. There's no use crying about it. Tears and snot aren't going to change a damned thing."
    The kid didn't speak. She sat there, head down, her fingers on the gold-heart locket that was pinned to her chest.
    An hour later, a man came weaving down the aisle selling greasy tortillas filled with something unidentifiable that tasted like shredded fire. The first bite made Jenny's eyes water and blistered her tongue.
    "Didn't you cry when your mama died?"
    Jenny had forgotten that she'd told Graciela about her ma. "Oh hell, no. I wasn't around when my ma died. But even if I had been, I wouldn't have cried. My ma was mean as a snake. Looked like one, too."
    Graciela's eyes widened. "She didn't!"
    Jenny laughed. "Well, she looked like a snake to me. The meanest woman who ever sucked air. I'm telling you, that woman never said a soft word to anyone in her whole life."
    "Why was she so mean?"
    "Why?" Jenny blinked. She'd never considered the why of it. "I guess I don't rightly know." Frowning, she turned her face to the window and sucked on her blistered tongue. "Maybe life didn't work out like she wanted it to. Maybe she didn't like living in a one-room shack at the edge of a played-out mine, trying to stretch one squirrel far enough to feed six kids." It occurred to her that things looked a little different when seen through an adult's perspective rather than through the eyes of one of those six kids. "Maybe she didn't like it that my pa hit her and kept her knocked—" She gave Graciela a long look. "Kept her with child," she finished primly.
    Graciela turned the fiery tortilla between her fingers. "Did she tell you stories and give you kisses?"
    "Huh? Well, I guess not! She didn't even kiss my pa. Kisses! Huh!"
    "Oh." Graciela placed the tortilla on the seat beside her,then she blotted her lips with the torn piece of petticoat. She carefully tucked the piece of petticoat inside the cuff of her sleeve, then turned to Jenny and placed her small hands on top of Jenny's. She looked into Jenny's eyes. "I'm sorry you had a bad mama when you were little. She should have told you stories and given you kisses."
    Jenny stared at her. Her chest suddenly hurt. "I'm sorry, too," she said in a strange voice that didn't sound like hers. She was silent for a minute,then said, "I thought you hated me."
    "I do," Graciela said firmly, taking her hands away.
    That was better, Jenny thought, feeling angry for no reason. It was a thousand times preferable to be hated than to have a six-year-old feeling sorry for her, for Christ's sake. She threw her tortilla out the window,then gazed at the passing landscape. She hadn't thought about her mother in years, not since she'd heard that the old lady had died. And then her first thought had been: Good riddance.
    Now here she sat on a train going in the wrong direction, feeling sorry for herself because her mother hadn't looked like Marguarita, but instead had smelled like despair, and had never told her a story. Well, crud on a crust. So what? The day Jenny Jones drew aces was the day she'd fall over in a dead faint.
    The heat built inside the car, and Graciela's eyes closed. She sagged against Jenny's shoulder,then slid down until her head was on Jenny's lap