The Penny

by Joyce Meyer

  The style in Christmas trees tended toward the flashy and space-aged that year. In the broad front window of Sonnenfield’s, a silver-metal tree reflected red, green and blue as a spotlight twirled on the floor beneath it. A bank of television consoles, their antennas jutting like rabbit ears, broadcast the same image on a dozen different screens.

  Painted letters on the glass hawked the appliances as “the perfect big-ticket gift for the perfect family holiday.” Our family already had one. I stared at the letters a long time, dreaming I had enough money to buy a television set for the Crocketts.

  As for me, I didn’t need a thing. I had the best present I could ever hope for. Daddy had informed me in a magisterial voice that Jean was coming home. Her secretarial school had disgorged its students the day before, and Jean waited for hours after the building was locked and the heat was turned down before she gave up and admitted she had nowhere to go but home. Laden with her overweight typewriter case and not much else, she’d tottered to a corner phone booth and called Daddy with her Greyhound Bus schedule. He told us all this with a know-it-all smile, like he’d just won the King Solomon Award for Brilliance for figuring out how things would turn out in the end.

  When Mama heard the news, she looked afraid to move. At first I thought she didn’t hear. One of her favorite Christmas ornaments had come from Woolworth’s, a purple ball so big around, with glass so thin that Mama breathed a sigh of relief every time Daddy brought the decorations down and she found it still in one piece. After Daddy told us that Jean called, Mama stared at our purple ball for the longest time, touching the upraised, iced letters that read Silent Night, Holy Night, turning the ball in her hand.

  My sister was coming home for Christmas.

  Just as I turned from the TVs in the shop window, intending to head up the sidewalk and finish my meager shopping, something made me turn back. I recognized the man’s face on the screen, although at first, I had trouble placing him.

  Only one or two sets had the sound turned up. Window glass muffled what the reporters were saying, but if I stood close, I could hear. A swarm of microphones danced before his mouth, their call letters all but obliterating his face. Newsmen aimed questions at him the same way they’d throw darts in an arcade.

  “Is it true that you have announced to your countrymen that you’re ready to be married?”

  “No comment,” he said.

  “Is it true you’ve been corresponding with Grace Kelly since you met at the Paris Match photo shoot in Monaco? When she led the U.S. delegation at Cannes?”

  “No comment,” he said.

  Prince Rainier of Monaco.

  “If you’ve come to find a bride and it isn’t Grace, what sort of woman would you be looking for?”

  “I’m sorry.” A gentleman escort stepped in front of the microphones, propelling the prince to one side. “His Royal Highness will answer no more questions at this time.” Which seemed to give the news hounds permission to lob queries at him double-time, as he tried to duck away.

  “If you’ve never traveled to America before, then why now?”

  “If this is only a regular holiday, why would you travel with a priest and a doctor?”

  “If you are coming to America to sight-see, then why are you only going to Philadelphia?”

  Just what we need, I thought to myself. Jean is finally coming home, and she’ll hear about this, and I’ll have to listen to Grace Kelly stories all over again. She’ll go bats and I won’t be able to stand it.

  I didn’t care how much Jean went on about Grace Kelly, though, not really, I admitted to myself, because I was so excited that my sister and I would be together. Not until I grew much older would it strike me that my enthusiasm over Jean’s return could’ve been seen as selfish. While I was rejoicing because I wouldn’t be alone with Daddy anymore, my sister was facing the fact that she didn’t have any safe place to go.

  Certain fragrances, certain songs, never fail to bring back the day she returned to me. I see it as if I’m opening a book and flipping through each page, seeing every detail. The naked branches of the maple tree that reached out over the street like gnarled fingers. The low rise of clouds moving through our neighborhood in a cresting wave. Daddy commenting as he stood on the landing that we might get snow. The musty smell of our flat mixed with the scent of pine boughs from the Christmas tree inside. I can still see the smugness in Daddy’s eyes as he headed out to the car to go get Jean. My sister coming home, even for a few weeks, meant he’d be in charge of her, and that thrilled him. The minute she set one foot in the door, he’d have control of her again.

  Mama and I waited at the top of the landing until we heard the car pull up at the curb. Mama flew down the stairs to meet them, running like a girl the same age as me. We made it down to the yard before Daddy cut the engine.

  The passenger door shot open, and in those first few precious seconds, Jean leapt upon us, hugging us and laughing. A good number of neighbors braved the chilly air to poke out their heads and find out what all the ruckus was about. Mr. Patterson stepped out on the little hillock that was our yard to wish us a merry Christmas, and Mrs. Shipley brought her baby out so Jean could see it toddle around the stiff, dead grass.

  Mrs. Patterson had taken it upon herself to hang a wreath on our communal front door, with bouquets of pinecones and tiny red berries and gold plastic letters that read SEASON’S GREETINGS. Jean stepped back from the breathtaking squeeze she gave me, eyed me from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, and said something remarkably adult-like.

  “Who’d have thought you’d grow so much while I was gone? You’ve shot up like a weed.”

  It wasn’t like I had anything to do with that. What did a person say? Thank you? “Well, I’ve been trying.” Then I remembered she must’ve just celebrated her eighteenth birthday. She’d done it without us. She’d done it alone.

  For those minutes, as we fought over who was going to lug Jean’s typewriter case upstairs and who was going to get her suitcase and who got to tote her blue-and-white cosmetic case to her room, you would have thought we were welcoming Grace Kelly herself into our upstairs flat. Mama had cooked Jean’s favorite custard, and she’d bought Red Hots to put inside baked apples for dessert on Christmas Day.

  Once Jean’s luggage had been set in her room, it seemed like she’d never been gone. At first my sister prowled the kitchen in her sullen, stealthy way, like a tiger prowling the perimeter of its cage. In the days leading up to her arrival, I had pictured those first hugs in the yard and the suitcases banging against the wall as we carried them up the stairwell smiling at each other. I had not imagined how our house would feel after time had passed and we all fell silent and tense again.

  Mama chirrupped like a squirrel every time Jean stalked into the kitchen, jabbering desperately about topics she thought Jean might be interested in.

  “Did you know the Stinnetts sold an old hobby horse at their yard sale?”

  “I read in the social section of the Post-Dispatch how popular it is for the Forest Park people to have hobo parties. Everyone drives to a different house for a different dinner course.”

  “Did you know Donna Johnson has gotten herself entered in the Miss Missouri contest? How she did that, I do not know.”

  Jean stared at Mama like she was jabbering in a different language, and left the kitchen.

  Seeing Jean’s discomfort left me feeling awkward and shy. Maybe I didn’t know this person who’d returned to my house anymore. I followed her to her room where she began rummaging through her suitcase.

  “Did you hear about it on the television news?” I asked, realizing this might bridge the distance between us.

  “What?”

  “Prince Rainier.”

  “I did hear it.” She brightened. “He’s spending Christmas in Philadelphia.”

  I couldn’t believe it myself. For the first time in my life, I was trying to make Jean talk about Grace Kelly. Always before, when she brought it up, I wanted to s
tuff a mop in her mouth.

  “What do you think it means?” I asked innocently.

  “I think he’s sweet on her.”

  “Do you think he’ll propose?” I asked.

  “I sure think it’s possible,” she said.

  My sister began to pace again—from the bed to the dresser that I thought she’d never use again to the window where she could see into the street, the bedraggled flats decorated half-heartedly for Christmas. The third time she reached the window, she started drumming her fingers on the sill. She stopped abruptly when we heard the sound of singing in the street below. Christmas carolers.

  If those singers had come this far south in our neighborhood, they hadn’t just set out on a social occasion. Residents along Wyoming Street weren’t the sort to invite strangers inside for hot chocolate or fudge or candy canes. The carolers would be lucky if they could entice anyone to come into the stairwell and open the main front door. But someone from downstairs, either the Pattersons or the Shipleys, must have taken pity on them because, next thing we knew, the words lofted up the stairs just as robust as the December evening air.

  Jean returned to her dresser and started moving her bottles of perfume and face cleaner and box of talcum powder around. Finally she blurted out, “I didn’t come back here for help. I just didn’t have any other place to go.”

  The words that wafted up to us from downstairs were the same as the ones on Mama’s precious glass ornament from Woolworth’s. Silent Night. Outside, as cars drove past, the road crackled from the cold.

  “What’s it like, getting away?” I asked.

  My sister jerked her head up in surprise. “Getting away from what?”

  “You know. Getting away from Daddy. Being on your own. Having friends come see you without worrying. Getting to know everyone. Getting to make up your own mind about things.”

  “Oh. Oh, yes. It’s fine. Really fine.” Her answer came much too quickly.

  “Well, I’ve gotten to know plenty.” I launched into a long diatribe about Miss Shaw and how she’d finally let out all her secrets, and about the portables and saving Garland and everything that had happened with Aurelia.

  “The only thing I’m getting to know is how to type f j f j f j f j with a blindfold tied on my eyes.” Jean’s voice held a sense of irony that I didn’t understand. “Then, after that, we added the d’s and the k’s.” She paused. “It’s not as easy getting to know the other girls as you’d think it’d be.”

  “Why not?”

  She used the tip of one fingernail, much longer and more glamorous than it had ever been before she left us, to worry the cuticle on her thumb. The tips of her nails were so clean, I knew she’d used Nail White. It seemed like an eternity before she would answer. “Oh, I don’t know. They talk about things I don’t care about much. Going on vacations with friends. Their mamas giving them advice about boys. How their daddies used to take them to the country club and catch them in their arms when they jumped in swimming. If Daddy tried to catch me when I was swimming, I’d go the other way. See—just . . . things. Things it’s impossible for me to talk about.” Then, “I don’t think they like me very much.”

  I waited, my heart scrunching into a fist of longing, just waiting for her to acknowledge that it was nice for her and me to be together. When my sister finally lost interest in her thumbnail, she glanced up at me like she didn’t much care for what she saw.

  “Aren’t you even glad to see me?” I asked.

  “Yes.” She said as if she found it extremely regrettable, “I am very glad to see you.”

  “Well.” I stood straighter. “That’s something.”

  “There’s no way out, really, is there?”

  “No way out of what?” I asked.

  “This house. What Daddy does to us,” she said. “You can’t run away from it. It follows you every place you go.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  When you grow up in a family like mine, you learn early what not to expect during Christmastime. You don’t expect dolls wearing ruffled dresses and real jewelry. You don’t expect any glittering fineries from Sonnenfield’s window. You don’t expect those television family moments where the daddy puts the star on top of the tree and the mama hugs him, admiring him for his general prowess while the sisters wait expectantly, knowing that this night-of-all-nights will bring only good things.

  Our Christmas morning celebration the next day would be as short-lived as my reveling when Jean had stepped from the Packard automobile, followed by an isolated, simple dinner with turkey and Mama’s peeled apples, which baked up astonishingly red because she put Red Hot candies in them. After that, Daddy would make his sullen retreat to the front stoop for his next beer and cigarette, his resentful insistence that this celebration-nonsense ought not last any longer than it had to.

  I ached to get to Antioch Baptist Church for the Christmas Eve service Aurelia had told me about, where Christmas songs sung gospel-style came out richer and sweeter than Brer Rabbit Molasses and the velvet glow caught from one worshiper’s candle to another until everybody’s faces shone with a soft glimmering light that made even the most unsightly beautiful. Reverend Monroe would stand in the pulpit in front of everyone, a man I knew to be soft-spoken and gentle, a man I knew held me in high esteem, and he would bellow with the muscle of the Lord: “Even if God should send suffering and loss, I will still rejoice in my Savior! Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD! I will be joyful in God my Savior!”

  I’d come up with a plan and was so sure of it, I’d even brought it up with Miss Shaw when I’d worked at the shop last Saturday. Although she usually attended Christmas Eve service at the community church that stood catty-corner to the cemetery, she said, “I can’t think of a way I’d rather observe Christmas, Jenny, I really can’t. And I hope you won’t mind if I ask Delbert Henry to join us?”

  I was so sure of my plan that after I dressed in my best skirt and velvet shoes, I knocked on Jean’s door. She asked, “Where are you going all dressed up?”

  “If you hurry, you can come with me.” I had every intention of bringing my sister along and introducing her to everyone I’d been jabbering about.

  Jean scratched her leg, and I could tell she wasn’t too keen on wearing itchy stockings that day.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It won’t be so bad, Jean. Just don’t wear clothes that make you scratch. Don’t wear the skirt with the net petticoat. Once you hear what the preacher talks about, you’ll forget all about how your dress feels. Besides, there’ll be candles. There’ll be a baby up front, the Trouppes’ baby, Aurelia says, sleeping on a bed of real hay.”

  I think I had her convinced right after I finished the part about the candles. Jean shrugged into her slip, situated her skirt properly, and buttoned it around her waist. She tugged a black turtleneck sweater over her head and slipped her arms into raglan sleeves. As she reached up to fasten her pearls at her neck and brush her hair, I thought she looked about ten years older than she’d looked fifteen minutes ago. She brushed her hair to a fine sheen that mine never would have achieved, even if it did have any length to it.

  The tart smell of apples filled our flat. Mama stood at the kitchen counter, peeling more apples with a paring knife.

  I had my money stashed safely inside my velvet purse for the streetcar. “We’re headed out for a few minutes,” I said.

  “Don’t be long,” she tossed back. “You girls stay out of trouble.” Then, as if one might have something to do with the other, “Don’t let your father catch you.” Just as our feet started clattering down the stairwell, Daddy stepped inside the downstairs door in front of us.

  “Where do you two think you’re going?”

  I caught Jean’s arm and wouldn’t let her go farther.

  “It’s Christmas, Daddy. We want
to go to church.”

  “With your mama slaving away, trying to get ready for tomorrow? I don’t think so.”

  It had been a long time since he’d worried about Mama slaving over anything. “She told us we could go out,” I challenged him.

  Jean backed up another step in spite of me holding her arm.

  “It’s okay, Jenny,” she said. “We don’t have to do it.”

  “You can’t stop us,” I said to him while I still had the courage.

  That’s when he cursed and shouted,

  “You just think I can’t.” He’d backed Jean all the way to the landing, but I held my ground two steps in front of her. Daddy made his stand in front of me with his arms crossed, his biceps flexing as big as two hams.

  “Who wants to be first?” he asked, suddenly swinging his arms back and forth as if he were a football linebacker. “I said, Who wants to be first? Who wants me to take them down?”

  Daddy could have tossed me down the steps just as easy as he could have tossed a sack of cotton. Still, if it had just been me, I would have fought for it. But I was thinking of Jean. I was thinking of keeping things tranquil in our house until she could get away again. I was thinking of the pew that wouldn’t be full, of the heads that would keep turning and looking for us, as I yielded and backed up the stairs myself. Only later did I realize I’d been the sister standing in the most precarious position.

  The next morning, we each unwrapped a new pair of stockings and a new toothbrush and a bottle of Prince Matchabelli cologne that Mama had bought for us. She had signed Daddy’s name to the tags, too, and we thanked them both with polite but careful smiles. As for me, I was glad to have new stockings. Mine had a run in them, from the ankle bone all the way up. I’d been relegated to bobby socks until my next paycheck came.