PENNY WAS HALFWAY down Main Street when she remembered that she hadn't bought the bleach. She paused for a moment, reaching in her pocket for the two thin dimes. Then she bit her lip and kept walking until she reached the Bijou Motion Picture Theater. The matinee had already begun. In the shadows near the screen, Mrs. Jensen played piano to accompany the silent pictures as Penny found her way to an empty seat, sticky with spilled lemonade. Houdini's face hovered before her in the darkness. Her heart beat fast. The heat made her half faint as she watched them bind him with chains as thick as his arms. His eyes leapt off the screen and locked with hers. She winced as his face contorted, her fingers kneading the armrests as he struggled, his muscles chafing against the chains. She leaned forward, her stomach tight as she watched him wriggle like a powerful fish straining against a net. Mrs. Jensen's triumphant chords drowned out Penny's gasp as Houdini finally broke free.
When she returned to the Hamiltons', it was nearly three o'clock. She braced herself as she marched in through the back gate. Just let her mother ask her where she had been all afternoon and what she had done with the bleach money. She lifted her chin in defiance. But her mother, busy taking the laundry down from the line, didn't appear to notice the time Penny had spent away. Her face was set and fixed, with no trace of shame.
"I'm nearly finished here," she said. "Take these sheets in and get started on the ironing."
The sheets to which her mother was referring were the real linen sheets that went on Mr. H.'s bed. Something grew so tight in Penny's throat, she thought it would burst. When was she going to wash her own stinking sheets? Penny remembered the look the Maagdenbergh woman had given her in the store.
"Penny! Did you hear what I just said?"
She tried to stand her ground, the way her mother always did, to hold herself as tall and proud as the Lombardy poplars in front of the public library. "I'm not ironing his sheets." Her voice was strong even though it took all her courage to meet her mother's gaze.
"Pardon me? I don't think I rightly understood what you just said."
"I said I'm not ironing his sheets." Penny raised her voice and prayed there was no tremor in it. "You can't tell me what to do anymore," she added, astounded by her own nerve.
"Very well then, Miss Smarty Pants." She could tell her mother could just manage to rein in her temper. "If you're too high and mighty to do your work around here, then you can pack your bags and go someplace else."
"Maybe I will." If she broke down now and allowed her mother to bully her into ironing those sheets, she thought she would die inside. "Maybe I'll just go."
"Any place in mind?" The corners of her mother's mouth twisted into a smirk. "The Commercial Hotel? Spend ten hours a day cleaning out those rooms while the traveling salesmen try to paw you? Or maybe you want to sweep under the benches at the railway station."
The sarcasm in her mother's voice made Penny want to hate her. Reaching deep inside herself, she summoned up the thing that would shock her mother most, that would shut her up and knock her out of her complacency. "No. I've got something better than that. The Maagdenbergh woman." She felt a cold surge of satisfaction to see her mother frown and take a faltering step sideways. "She's looking for a hired girl."
"If this is some kind of joke," her mother said, "I don't think it's very funny."
"I'm not joking." Penny spoke so rapidly, she hardly knew what she was saying. "She's desperate for a hired girl. Alone on that farm with harvest coming and a baby on the way. She'll pay me any wages I ask."
Her mother shook her head. "Are you crazy or just trying to be smart with me? I don't think you're stupid enough to think you can just go off and work for somebody like that. Come on, let's get started on those sheets."
"I don't see why I shouldn't go work for her. Isn't her money as good as Mr. Hamilton's?" She willed her mother's shame to rise to the surface, longed for some word of embarrassment or regret. An attempt at an explanation, perhaps. One thing was certain—she had managed to get her mother completely flustered. For the first time in her memory, she saw her searching for words.
"You think you're pretty smart," her mother said, this time hesitantly. "But there's an awful lot about this world you just don't know." She stepped toward Penny and rested her hand on her shoulder. "That Maagdenbergh woman is not exactly what people call decent."
Closing her eyes, Penny allowed the hard thing inside her to soften. But before she could accustom herself to the warmth of her mother's hand on her shoulder, the grip toughened, her mother's fingers digging into her flesh hard enough to bruise.
"I have heard enough of this foolishness," her mother snapped in the same tone she had used when ordering her to go buy bleach, a tone of such cold authority that Penny wanted to scream.
She had not meant to do it, had not meant to go this far, but before she could stop herself, the words shot out of her mouth. "You know, you're not exactly what people call decent, either."
Her mother's hand flew off her shoulder and smacked her hard across the face.
"Ma!" she cried, eyes brimming.
"You little shit!" She had never heard her mother shriek like that before. "If that's what you think of me, then get out. Get out!"
She grabbed Penny's arm and hauled her into the kitchen. As hard as Penny struggled, she could not yank her arm free. She had never guessed her mother was so much stronger than she was. As she dragged her up the back stairway, Penny tried to pretend that none of this was really happening. Then they reached the back bedroom, reeking of lily-of-the-valley toilet water and the other, ranker smell, which the toilet water could not completely mask.
"I can smell him!" Penny cried, rubbing her stung cheek. "I can smell him," she sobbed.
"Shut up."
Her mother grabbed a small wicker suitcase and started hurling Penny's clothes into it. She shoved the suitcase at Penny, grabbed her by the hair, and tried to force her down the hall. Before she could march her down the stairs and out the back door, Penny broke free. The flimsy suitcase banged against her thigh as she burst out of the house. Flying into the shed, she grabbed the battered old bicycle her mother used for running errands. Fast as Houdini, she threw the suitcase into the bicycle basket and started pedaling, her calf muscles straining as she pumped down the alleyway. The garbage pails and the boys playing marbles streaked into a blur. Before she turned onto Lilac Street, she heard her mother shouting her name, but she just pedaled faster. She told herself that Houdini would never look back.