---

 

Order this writing in the collection book Distinguished Writings available for only $1772

Jenny Goes Looking

Curtis M. Urness, Sr.

Jenny sat on the cheap steel-and-vinyl chair she had pulled in front of the dresser and wiped her sweaty brow with an equally sweaty forearm.
She pulled open the bottom drawer that contained all of Rick’s stuff – his “stash” — and glanced back toward the door, half expecting Rick to be looking over her, his face reddened and accusing.
“Suspicious bitch!”
That was what he’d called her the last time he caught her looking through his things.
“I can’t leave here without you tearing through my private things.
What do you think you’re going to find?”
Then the answer would have been her mother’s wedding ring with the large emerald – what Jenny’s father had dubbed her jealous eye — which she didn’t find in Rick’s things anyway.
She found it later at a pawnshop nestled with other wedding rings and heirlooms in the glass counter.
She’d made Rick get it out but it eventually made its way back.
The only difference was that the second time she was the one who pawned it, to pay the gas bill.
Now she was looking for something just as important.
When she glanced back for Rick, she saw instead the disarray of the back bedroom in her sister’s house where her entire family was living.
The other three drawers of the dresser were grouped in a sort of triangle on the floor, their contents jumbled.
The family’s two suitcases were opened and the children’s clothes they contained were scattered.
The mattress was halfway off the bed, one sheet hanging off it like a dirty, white sail.
And lost in all this mess were two children, a girl of four sitting close to Jenny and a boy of seven, huddled in a corner.
Misty, the girl, laid a tiny, tanned arm on Jenny’s lap.
She leaned into her mother’s side.
Jenny considered pushing her away to keep the girl from getting filthy against Jenny’s factory overalls.
Instead, she pulled the child closer.
Jenny rummaged through the stash drawer, thinking, This should have been the first place I looked.
She dismissed that thought as another, a hopeless one, reasserted itself from the recesses of her mind.
She riffled through Penthouse magazines, baseball cards, rolling papers, roach clips, playing cards, dice.
There was one promising envelope but it turned out to only contain a small sinsemilla bud.
Rolled in a T-shirt was a half-full bottle of Seagram’s Seven.
That settled it; Rick would never have left whiskey sitting unattended.
She turned to the corner where Kevin cowered.

“What time did your father leave,” she demanded.
“I told you already,” the boy cried.
“After lunch.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
Kevin slunk down and covered his face.
“I told you,” he mumbled, “‘out.’
He said, ‘Daddy’s going out for awhile.’”
Misty laid her head face down on Jenny’s lap.
Jenny noticed a fresh, red welt on Misty’s arm.
Misty was trembling.
Jenny felt a presence behind her.
She looked back; hoping to find Rick but instead saw a heavy woman in a sundress filling the doorway.
“Good Lord, you’ve torn this place apart,” Donna, Jenny’s sister, bellowed.
“I’m organizing for the move,” Jenny said.
“This doesn’t look too organized.”
“Give me some peace, Donna.
Is it too much to ask for a little privacy?”
“Not at all – I love privacy!”
Donna put her small, chubby hands together and held them up close to her chest.
“Privacy is fine.
Only I haven’t had any privacy for the past two months.
All I’ve had are your screaming brats and Rick lounging around like he was a millionaire.
I yearn for some privacy.”
“You’ll get all the privacy you want when we’re gone.”
“The sooner, the better.
What are you looking for?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Go back to your soap opera.
Leave me alone.”
“You have it, don’t you?”
“Have what?”
“You know what I mean.
Are you going to be able to move?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
Jenny said nothing.
She stared at Donna, who stood with her arms folded now, a glint of knowledge flickering in her eyes.
She wants me to ask, Jenny thought.
I’m not going to ask her.
“I saw Rick leave with –” Donna began.
“Shut up, damn you.
I don’t care who you saw Rick with.
I don’t go telling you all about your husband.”
“I don’t need to be told about my Earl.”
Donna sniffed.
She walked away.
Misty still trembled.
Kevin hadn’t moved from the corner.
He nibbled on his fingers.
“Why don’t you two go out and play?” Jenny asked.
“I don’t want to,” Misty said, without looking up.
“I want to stay with you.”
“I have some work to do.
Go help Aunt Donna with something.”
“No, I don’t want Aunt Donna.”
Jenny stroked her hair.
“Mommy has to go, honey,” she said.
“I’ll be back soon.”
“I don’t want Aunt Donna.”
“I know,” she said.
“It’ll be all right.”
She looked again at Misty’s welt.
Then she lightly pushed Misty off and stood up.
She walked out of the room.
Donna was seated on the divan, watching the big screen TV.
The living room was immaculate, everything in place and redolent of Lemon Pledge.
Donna gave Jenny barely a glance and shifted her weight on the divan cushions.
“I’m going out for a little bit,” Jenny announced.
“And leaving the kids?
Am I your babysitter?”
“It’s just for a little bit.”
“‘A little bit.’”
Donna shook her head with disgust.
Jenny went to the door and opened it.
The heat outside was oppressive.
Jenny started out but then stepped back in.
“And Donna – don’t lay a hand on them.”
“They better mind me.”
“Don’t lay a hand on them.
I mean it.”
Jenny walked across the front lawn and started up the street.
It was a windy August.
The wind was one of those searing summer winds that blew hot breath on the back of Jenny’s neck, making her imagine the smell of her own singed hair.
She kept her gaze on the sidewalk, as though the thing she was looking for was blowing around with the litter and the grass clippings.
After several blocks, she reached a crumbling, two story brick building, sandwiched between a drugstore and a submarine shop.
The top floor was boarded up, the bottom divided into two storefronts, one empty and the other bearing a neon beer sign.
Jenny went into the bar.
Inside it was dark.
An old song from her high school days – Nazareth’s “Hair of the Dog” — blared from a jukebox.
A scarred, plywood bar ran from the door to the rear of the narrow room.
A heavily made-up redhead leaned over the counter, smoking a cigarette.
Two men swiveled on the stools in front of her.
They erupted into laughter over some raucous joke.
Jenny approached them.
“Sue, you seen Rick?” she asked.
“Hell, is it my day to watch Rick?” Sue said, blowing smoke into Jenny’s face.
“Go ask Jim.
Maybe he’s his brother’s keeper.”
She gestured toward the far end of the bar.
Jenny looked over to see Rick’s brother sitting quietly in the corner.

He was a massive man and Jenny wondered why she didn’t notice him when she walked in.
Maybe that is how it is when you are looking for something.
You tune out everything else, including the obvious.
Jim sat with half-full beer mug before him, concentrating on a ten-inch TV on an overhead shelf.
He didn’t notice Jenny either.
He was a mechanic and still wore the blue coveralls with his name stitched on the left front pocket.
Jenny knew Jim’s habits.
He had probably just gotten off from the shop, was now drinking his one beer and would soon go home to watch TV with his wife and three boys.
Jenny was amazed that two brothers could be so unalike.
Then again, Donna and she were not alike either.
“Hello, Jenny,” Jim said, when he finally noticed her.
He lifted the mug with a beefy, tattooed arm.
“Just get off work?”
“A little bit ago.”
“Where’s Rick?”
“I was hoping that you knew.”
“Haven’t seen him.”
Jim glanced back up at the television.

Jenny looked down at the bar and tapped her fingers.

“Hey!” Jim said.
“I heard you all found a place.
When are you moving?”

“I don’t know if we can,” Jenny said, in a low voice.

“Don’t know?”
“I don’t know if we have the – well, I just don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
Jim knitted his brows and dried oil accentuated the wrinkles on his forehead.
He stared quietly ahead, not at the TV but somewhere out in space.
Finally, he said, “Hell, Jenny, why are you asking me?
You know as well as I where Rick is.”
“I know.
I was just hoping that you would tell me that I’m wrong.”
She walked out of the bar.
She didn’t have much farther to go.
A narrow avenue led from the other side of the sub shop to a dead end.
There were few homes on that street.
Dust from a lot where a house had been demolished danced in a dust devil, sucking into it all the wrappers, napkins and other litter that blew into this street from the restaurant.
Jenny went to a gray frame house, guarded by an elderly pit bull that didn’t bother to get up as she passed.
She knocked.
An eyeball filled the peephole.
Then the door opened slightly.
A sallow-faced man with a beak nose pushed his face into the opening.
“What do you want?”
“I’m looking for Rick.”
“He ain’t here.”
“I hear him talking.”
She pushed the door open and brushed past the man.
“Damn it, you can’t just come in here.”
Jenny ignored him.
She crossed through an untidy living room to a formal dining room dominated by a large table.
Smoke – from cigarettes, cigars and marijuana – hung in the air.
Several men were seated around the table, holding hands of playing cards with crumpled bills and poker chips in front of them.
Among them sat Jenny’s husband, clad in a holey, black T-shirt and ripped jeans, gambling like he had money to burn.
“Jenny,” Rick said.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“You know what I want.
We’re supposed to pay the new landlord today.”
“Later.
I’m in the middle of a game.”
“Then give me the money and I’ll go pay.”
“It’s my tax refund, too.”
“How did you figure?” Jenny said.
“You didn’t work last year.”
Rick didn’t say anything.
He pretended to study his cards.
“You still have it, don’t you?”
Rick laid down his hand impatiently.
“I’ve lost a little,” he said, “but, damn, Jenny, my luck’s changing.
Give me a little more time.”
“Give you what?
You gambled us out of our last house and now you’re gambling us out of the apartment we haven’t even got yet.”
“Damn, Jenny.”
“How much do you have left?”
Rick glanced around the table, his face flushed, eyes lowered.
He produced a wad of bills from his pocket, withdrew a few to keep and held out the rest for Jenny.
“Take it and leave me the hell alone,” he said.
“Don’t interrupt a man at his card game.”
Jenny took the money and sat down in a ladder-back chair near the wall.
She smoothed out the bills, counted them and then counted again.
“Rick, there’s only seven hundred and sixty dollars here.”
Rick ran a hand through his yellow hair and looked away.
“It’s not enough.”
She sank low into the chair and considered her options.
The landlord might take a deposit and hold the place until her next paycheck.
That would mean almost two more weeks of living at Donna’s.
Of course, there were other people interested in the apartment and the landlord might not want to wait.
Rick and she had given their word that they would have the money today.
The men at the table were impatient, waiting for her to leave.
Rick purposely looked away from her.
A multi-colored pile of chips lay in the middle of the table – more money than she earned in a month.
How could these men take money that could mean life or death, shelter or homelessness to some people and risk it all in a game?
She knew these folks.
They weren’t all like Rick; some of them worked and supported their families.
A bearded man named Cliff asked across the table, “Are we playing cards or what?
You raising, Leo?”
A few men glanced in her direction, expressing surprise that she was still there.
I guess I’ve been dismissed.
She stood to leave but something would not let her go.
She stood for several seconds before clearing her throat.
“Listen up,” she shouted.
“I had twelve hundred dollars to put down on an apartment.
We’ve been living in my sister’s spare room for two months and I’m not staying there another day.
Now I can leave here with twelve hundred dollars or without it.
I don’t care.
But if I leave without it, I’m walking straight to the drugstore and calling the police.
I know everyone here.
You decide.”
Cliff slapped his cards against the table and said, “Shit!”
“Talk to her, Rick,” another voice said.
Rick himself stood up and said, “Jenny, damn you, don’t go talking crazy.”
Jenny turned and left the room.
The hawk-nosed man rose from his chair in the living and blocked her way.
I’ve gone too far.
She tried to step around the man but he moved with her.
“Jenny, wait a minute,” a fellow called.
Jenny turned to see the man who had been sitting next to Rick.
A heavy-set man with a face wrinkled like the pit bull’s in the yard, he hooked his thumbs on his red suspenders and stamped one foot.
“Come on back here,” he said.
Jenny walked back to the table.
“We don’t want to see anyone lose their home over a friendly card game,” he said, affecting a smile.
“You had twelve hundred dollars, right?
Now you have seven-sixty.
So you need four hundred and forty more, right?”
“Yes,” Jenny said.
She looked over a Rick, who fidgeted in his chair like Kevin had fidgeted in his corner a short while ago.
The man reached into his pocket and produced a thick wad of twenties, held together by a silver money clip.
He removed the clip and peeled off twenty-two bills as if he were peeling potatoes.
Jenny’s hands shook as she accepted the money.
She folded it with the bills Rick had given her and stuffed it into her purse.
The man removed a notepad and pencil from his shirt pocket and wrote “$440-” and Rick’s name.
Rick stood up.
The man put his hand on Rick’s shoulder and pushed him back into the seat.
“I think you better stick around and see how you do on this next pot, Rick,” he said.
Jenny looked from the man who had given her the money to Rick, who was picking up his cards.
She turned, walked past the jaundiced man and out the front door.
The August sun was in her eyes as she hurried from the dead end of the street.

Still, her head was held high and she didn’t blink.
In her mind’s eye, she saw Rick the way he looked when he sat back down – embarrassed and undignified.
Jenny walked on, not minding the burning wind that blew dust and grit into her face.
She had found what she was looking for.

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...