Read Online The Penny by Joyce Meyer, Deborah Bedford - Free Book Online

talked—“is that everything’s got to look right.” She stepped back again and, this time, deemed my face acceptable. She snapped the compact shut and stood surveying me like she had wrought a miracle.
    Daddy gave me a look, too, the minute I walked into the den and started straightening my skirt pleats. I knew from experience what he was thinking about when he looked at me that way. It was the same expression I’d seen him use when he first laid eyes on Marianne Thompson and he looked her good up and down. He was thinking how I belonged to him. He was thinking how he was the parent and he could make me do whatever he wanted.
    “What you got lipstick on for?”
    Mama said things needed to look right. It was her idea.
    But Mama didn’t say a word. She stood still, her eyes wide like she was the one who had gotten caught, and not me.
    “You wipe that paint off your mouth right now.” He yanked out the filthy rag he kept in his back pocket to wipe the sweat off his face while he worked, and it came flying through the air toward me. “You don’t talk to nobody on your way down there to that job. Or on your way home, either, you hear me? Because I’ll know. I’ll know if you go someplace you’re not supposed to go.”
    Although Mama had been lighthanded with the lipstick, I could feel the wax she’d applied to my lips now smudged on my teeth. Already, out of nerves, I’d done a fine job scraping my lips clean. I’d scraped plenty of skin off, too. I rubbed my mouth with the rag, which tasted sour and gritty. What lipstick remained didn’t leave much of a stain. I threw it back to Daddy and he tucked it where it belonged.
    “Jean,” Daddy said, “you go get your sister when she’s done. I don’t want her in the street looking like a loose tramp.”
    The last thing Jean wanted was to be responsible for escorting me home. She wanted to argue with him, I could tell. For a split second, I saw anger flare in her eyes and worried she was about to start up the arguments again. The last thing she needed to do was get Daddy riled up right now and, knowing my sister, that’s exactly what she’d do. I wanted her to hush up. I didn’t want him to hurt her. I never could be sure of Jean. You’d think she’d have learned by now that the only thing she’d gain by goading Daddy on would be a quick kick to her rear.
    Thankfully, Daddy never gave her the chance to get him wound up. He kept his eyes on me. “The first money you get from that job goes to pay me back the money you stole, you hear me, girl?”
    I told him I heard him.
    “The whole time you’re in that jewelry shop, I want you to be thinking how you stole from me, you hear?”
    I heard that, too.
    “Don’t you go stealing anything from Shaw Jewelers. Guess we all know how your mind works, don’t we? You thought of how much you could make selling one piece of her jewelry—a bracelet or a ring? You’d make more doing that one thing than you’ll make working for her all summer. You thought about that?”
    How good it felt to get away from our flat, even with Mama waving me off from the whitewashed stoop, her gaze heavy. Her eyes bore into my shoulders until I reached the corner and turned. I glanced back and saw her in her apron shading her eyes and waving good-bye.
    I knew Jean would do as told, loitering around the movie posters at the Fox, perusing every name at the bottom of the bill as it became smaller and less distinct and the letters ran together, things like “song lyrics by Ira Gershwin, produced by William Perlberg, written for the screen and directed by George Seaton,” until I left the jewelry shop and she was forced to shepherd me home.
    Stepping inside Miss Shaw’s shop was like stepping into a sparkling globe of gold and cut glass and gemstones. The display cases buzzed with lighting, their metal edges warm from the bulbs. I couldn’t find a thumbprint or a speck of dust anywhere and, for the moment, I felt giddy and unsteady,