Inverted Jenny

The 1999 Cadillac DeVille pulled up to the receiving doors. A silvered-hair woman, several inches under five feet, exited the car. She steadied herself on the car as Jennifer approached.

Jennifer found the latch and popped the trunk open. It was filled with woolen suits, dressed shirts, starched and folded from the cleaners, polished loafers, and a wooden tie hanger with striped ties. Her coworker wasn’t feeling well and had left early, so Jennifer was on her own at the back of thrift store. She dragged a couple of large plastic tubs out to unload the bounty while the old woman watched under disapproving eyes. Jennifer stood and closed the trunk. She thanked the woman who, although small, reminded Jennifer of the prison guards.

“I want a receipt,” the woman demanded.

“You can go online and print one out,” Jennifer offered.

“No. I want you to fill one out and give it to me.”

Jennifer sighed and thought, This isn’t what I signed up for. She went and searched under a pile linens for the receipt pad. She tore off a sheet, went out to the car, and handed it to the sour-faced woman. Something about her seemed familiar, Jennifer wasn’t sure why.

*****

Jennifer Miles accepted a plea bargain of assault and battery rather than attempted murder. The district attorney agreed the fourteen-year-old could serve her sentence as a juvenile, which is why she was released to a halfway house after four years. No one was there to greet her—not even her ungrateful mother. Jennifer, normally a quiet girl, had gone into a rage when her mother’s latest boyfriend was beating her. She grabbed a skillet from the kitchen and hit the brute in the back of the head. If the pan had been cast iron instead of aluminum, it probably would have killed him. Still, she had hit him with enough force to knock him out long enough for her and her mother to leave the house. Jennifer was still sitting on the front step when the cops arrived. Her mother, more worried about her boyfriend than her daughter, had called 911.

The director of the halfway house had made arrangements for Jennifer to work at the thrift store. It was almost in walking distance of the dwelling and paid minimum wage.

The bins of clothing were where she had left them when she returned to work the next morning. Her coworker had called in sick and the manager was trying to locate a substitute. Jennifer would have to bring in donations alone until someone could be found. Jennifer didn’t mind. She preferred working by herself. Besides, Tuesdays tended to be slow. She began lifting the clothes from the bin. Although the smell of mothballs assaulted her nose, she was grateful they were clean. It astounded her that people brought dirty, soiled clothes, including underwear, to the thrift store. She’d seen and touched things here that were worse than what she encountered in lock-up. Her experience there showed her just how nasty girls could be.

It was obvious these suits were of high quality, and Jennifer retrieved the best of the hangers for them. As she was draping a pair slacks over the bar of a pants hanger, something fell from the pocket and took a slight bounce on the concrete floor.

Although she was alone, Jennifer knew cameras were everywhere. An agreement to employment was that bags and pockets could be checked at any time without warning. Anyone caught stealing would be arrested. Jennifer’s eyes scanned the floor and she saw the edge of a small black notebook. It was no more than 2-3 inches in size. Jennifer remembered a technique she’d seen in jail—she bent down like she was pulling up her sock. Like a slight of hand magician, the item was down the back of her sock. Still scratching, she pulled her jean’s leg back over the sock.

The item was uncomfortable against her leg. She wasn’t even sure why she had grabbed it, but she couldn’t pull it out now. She continued sorting the clothes, standing as still as she possibly could. The substitute, a young pimply kid with two piercings in his chin arrived around 11:00 a.m. He didn’t say much but bolted to the door each time the bell rang, indicating a car had pulled up with a donation. He liked retrieving the items but didn’t like sorting them. Jennifer was just the opposite. At 12:30, the manager told Jennifer she could take her lunchbreak. Most of the time she sat in the breakroom and pretended to watch a fuzzy black and white TV.

“I think I’ll go across the street for a burger,” she said.

“Bring me back a Coketm, will ya?” the pimply boy said. He made no effort to offer her money. “I’ll pay you back,” he finally said as she stood there staring at him.

“Yeah, sure,” she said, and left.

There was a long line when Jennifer entered the burger place. There was also a line to the bathroom—she stood in that one. When she finally made it into a stall, which hadn’t been flushed, she bent over, rolled down her sock and extracted the notebook. She put it in her jacket pocket, put her foot on the handle and flushed the commode. Twenty minutes had passed, and she made her way back across the street.

“Hey, where’s my Coke?” the boy asked.

“Oh, I forgot,” she said, “sorry.”

“Bitch,” he hissed.

She ignored him and began sorting through boxes of paperback books and comics that had been dropped on the floor. She noticed something rolled up and tucked in the back of his pants. It revealed itself whenever he bent over, and his denim jacket rode up. She guessed it was a couple of comic books. She decided not to say anything and hoped he’d be caught and told to leave. Then she remembered the small notebook in her own pocket.

*****

Jennifer shared a dormitory room with seven other girls. Privacy was not much better than prison, except for the bathrooms. She joined the others in the house for dinner at the appointed time. After eating, they were expected to help with clean-up and then a group meeting before bedtime and a mandatory 10:00 p.m. lights out.

Jennifer ate a few bites and grabbed her stomach.

“What wrong?” the house mother, Mary, asked.

“It’s my stomach,” Jennifer said. “My coworker, Lynn has some kind of stomach bug. I may have caught it from her. May I be excused to use the bathroom?”

“Of course,” Mary said.

Jennifer stood and bolted up the stairs.

She went to her dorm room and got her jacket. If anyone saw her, she would just say she had the chills. She went into the bathroom and sat on the commode. She took the small black notebook from her pocket and examined it. It appeared to be leather and felt soft in her palm. She turned it over and saw small tabs, she held it up to her face and realized they were letters of the alphabet. She cupped the small notebook in her left hand and carefully began turning the pages with her right. Each page had a place for a name, address, and phone number. Jennifer wasn’t sure what purpose it served since most everyone she knew stored that information in a cellphone. The other curiosity was that all of the pages were blank—all but one. Under the Js was a single name—Jenny and a phone number.

There was a knock on the door, “Jennifer, are you alright?” Mary called.

Jennifer stood, flushed, and turned on the faucet. “Yeah, I’m feeling better.”

“Are you coming to group?”

“No, I’m just going to go to bed.”

Jennifer laid on the upper bunk and opened the notebook to the singular entry. She turned it in her palm, as if holding it upside down would reveal the mystery. Something fell into her hand. It was a square, less than an inch in size. She looked at it unsure which way was up. It was a stamp, with an airplane. Is it supposed to be upside down? she wondered. She slipped the stamp back into the fold of the notebook, copied the phone number onto the palm of her hand, and placed the notebook back in her jacket.

*****

All Jennifer could think about when she walked to work Wednesday morning was the singular entry and the stamp. She was glad to see that Lynn was back and feeling better. Jennifer did not have a cellphone—and no idea show she’d call if she did. When her lunch break came, she asked Lynn if she could borrow her phone.

“Sure,” Lynn said.

“Is it okay if I take it outside? It’s kind of private.”

“No problem.”

Jennifer went outside. There was an old picnic table at the far side of the parking lot and she went to it. She looked at her palm and punched in the numbers.

“Heritage Stamps Auction House, Logan speaking,” said the voice.

Jennifer hesitated. “Do you buy stamps?”

“Sometimes, and we auction them off for clients. Do you have stamps you want to sell?”

“Just one.”

“One stamp? What is it?” Logan asked suspiciously.

“I’m not sure. It’s red…white writing… a blue airplane, and the plane is upside down.”

“An inverted Jenny, are you saying you have an inverted Jenny?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Where did you get this stamp?”

“I fo—my grandfather gave it to me.”

“Did he tell you anything about it?”

“No, it was a long time ago…. I was just wondering…”

“Only one sheet of one hundred was ever sold. There are a lot of fake ones out there, but if you want me to take a look at it, you can bring it over here.”

Jennifer wrote the address down on her other palm.

*****

Thursday was Jennifer’s day off. It took three buses and almost two hours to get to the auction house. A bell tinkled when she walked in the door.

“May I help you?” the man behind the glass case asked.

“I’m looking for Logan.”

“You found him.”

“I called yesterday about the stamp…the Jenny.”

“Yes, I remember.”

Jennifer approached, took the notebook out of her pocket, and shook the stamp onto the counter.

“I see,” the man said. “I’m sorry, what did you say your name is?”

“I’m Jennifer, Jennifer Miles.”

“Jennifer, what a coincidence.”

Logan took a brush and carefully swept the stamp onto a glass plate. He took out a magnifying glass and bending over the glass, inspected it thoroughly. He straightened and looked at the girl.

“Tell me again how you got this?”

“My grandfather left it to me. When I was little, I used to do cartwheels in front of his house. He would call me his inverted Jenny.”

“I see. Well, inverted Jenny. This inverted Jenny is the real deal. What do you want to do?”

“Sell it, I guess. How much is it worth?”

Logan paused. There was no provenance. He doubted how the girl’s story of how she got it. She looked in need of cash. I can offer you $20,000.”

“Dollars?”

“Yes. We can go to the bank and arrange for them to put it on a debit card for you. Let me just get my jacket.” He went to a room in the back, taking the stamp with him. He knew he should feel guilty about the discounted offer. This Inverted Jenny #49 was worth close to a million dollars.

She felt like she had just won the lottery. Am I being punked?

An hour later, Jennifer was walking to the bus stop with the debit card where the stamp had been. She felt like turning cartwheels.