The Saga of Jenna Continues

This is Part II of my novel, Jenna, about an eight-year-old girl from a dysfunctional home who is placed in foster care.

In Foster Focus Volume 7 Issue 3, we published the first nine pages of Jenna.

Continued here.

Her favorite time of the day was when it was early morning and nobody else was awake. Jenna knew what her job was. While everybody slept, she cleaned up the house. She did it back home, and she could do it here. She always got yelled at back home when she messed it up, and she didn’t want some strange people screaming at her.

She hopped out of bed and looked around. Her eyes grew wide. Everything was so different here. Light streamed in through the windows, the dark red of the early morning. The room looked so tidy. It was painted three different colors. Most of the walls were bright blue. Someone had also painted little pink flowers around the windows. Jenna shook her head. Part of her liked it, but it was so strange. Who were these people?

She found Mom’s coat and put it on, but when she realized how warm and toasty it was, she took it off. She looked down at what she was wearing, one of Mom’s skirts hiked up so she could wear it as a dress.

Tiptoeing into the hallway she heard the sound of someone gently snoring. A bedroom door was open. Miss Laurie lay on her side snuffling a little as she slept. Her mouth was wide open. Someone was sleeping next to her, probably Mr. Harvey, although blankets mostly covered him, and she couldn’t tell.

She crept down the hall and into the kitchen. We need to straighten up, thought Jenna. She glanced at the dishes in the sink and decided to start on that first. Rummaging around in the cabinet she found some things she would need. The sink cabinet was crammed full of stuff. She wondered if she could move some things aside later, and make some room… just in case.

She filled the sink with hot water and bubbles and started scrubbing the dishes. She didn’t see a towel so she placed them on the counter to drain. Cleaning made her feel good.

She picked up the washrag and started scrubbing everything in sight: the counters, the table the toaster with all the crumbs on the side. I see why they needed me here, Jenna said to herself.

Her eyes grew wide once more. She heard a man’s voice. For a moment she was scared, and then she realized it must be the man who dropped her off last night, Mr. Harvey. He was talking to someone in the front room. She better go see what he was doing.

She walked in the room and saw a tall, skinny man with bony cheekbones and a shaved baldhead, along with a mustache and a scraggly chin beard. He was looking at a sheet of paper, and had a wild, crazy look on his face.

He read but read like a crazy man, “Tell us what we need to know! Tell us now, or we send you upstate for ten years.” He wasn’t talking to anybody but himself.

Jenna screamed.

The man dropped his papers and tumbled back against a wall. Miss Laurie ran into the room, wearing her robe. “Everything’s okay, sweetheart!” she yelled above the din of Jenna screaming. She hurried over to where Jenna stood and put her arms around her. It was the first time Jenna let the woman touch her, and she stiffened up, but she stopped howling.

“This is Mr. Dan,” said Miss Laurie. “My husband.”

She and Mr. Dan put on their best smiles. They looked happy and nervous at the same time.

“What about Mr. Harvey, the man who brought me here last night?” said Jenna. “I thought he was your husband.”

Miss Laurie and Mr. Dan stared at each other, confused for a second, and then they laughed a little. “No Jenna,” said Miss Laurie. “He was a social worker. He was here to help you since your parents couldn’t take care of you.”

“I can take care of them,” snapped Jenna.

Miss Laurie gulped.

“Why was he talking to himself?” demanded Jenna, pointing at Dan.

Mr. Dan looked away. Miss Laurie grinned. “My husband, Dan, is an actor,” she said proudly.

Jenna’s eyebrows scrunched together. Her head cocked to the side and she said. “On TV? In the movies?”

Mr. Dan started to speak. He opened his mouth and said nothing. Miss Laurie spoke for him. “He’s going to be in a play.”

“A play?” asked Jenna. “Acting? In front of a lot of people?”

Jenna looked at Mr. Dan. He would not look her in the eye. He looked embarrassed.

“How can he act in front of a lot of people when he can’t talk to me?”

He grinned and said, “I… I’m a little shy.”

“He’s not shy in front of a crowd,” added Miss Laurie.

“You sounded mean,” muttered Jenna.

“I’m playing a detective,” he said.

Miss Laurie had walked into the kitchen. She said, “Dan! You cleaned up. Thank you.”

Mr. Dan shook his head as Miss Laurie came back in the room. “I didn’t do anything,” he said.

Miss Laurie shrugged her shoulders. “I left a mess in the kitchen…”

“I cleaned it,” said Jenna, proudly. “I do a good job.”

Miss Laurie said, “You didn’t have to…”

“It’s what I do. I get up early and clean up.”

Miss Laurie noticed one of the plastic bags on the floor. Mr. Harvey left them there last night. She looked through Jenna’s clothes and shook her head, a frown on her face. “These are grown up clothes,” she said.

Jenna smiled. “I’m tall, and my Mom is short,” she said proudly. “So I can wear them!”

Miss Laurie groaned. “These are not little girl clothes! I only found two things for you to wear. Tonight after school we go buy you some clothes!”

“School?” said Jenna. “Do I have to go to school today?”

“Your case worker…” Laurie started.

What in the world is a case worker?

Miss Laurie kept talking, “…said you hardly ever went to class.” Miss Laurie handed her the two worst things she could have, that black skirt that went down to her feet and the rock shirt, the one with the band on it—the guys who wore makeup on their face and wore the evil grins and the black crazy clothes. At the bottom of the shirt was the word: KISS.

This was going to be an awful day!

My first day at school, and I have to wear this, thought Jenna. She was furious. She stared down as she and Miss Laurie walked though the long tiled floors. The school seemed empty. Maybe I won’t have to go.

They walked in the office. Some kids were sitting on a bench near the wall, playing around and teasing each other. “Colton, you’re in here because you’re in trouble,” said a tired sounding voice from behind a counter. The kids quieted down, at least for a moment. One of them grinned and pointed at something. Jenna just knew it was her shirt.

Miss Laurie showed some papers to the tired sounding woman behind the counter. The kids on the bench started talking again, and the tired woman made them sit apart from each other. That worked. They stopped talking but kept smiling. A stern looking lady—probably the principal, thought Jenna--came out of an office and motioned one of them to follow her. He stopped grinning.

Jenna found herself siding up next to Miss Laurie. Miss Laurie scribbled something on a sheet of paper and showed the tired woman some papers. Jenna remembered something and felt like someone punched her in the stomach. The kids would find out she couldn’t read and would make fun of her.

In a minute they were walking back down the empty hall. Jenna kept glancing back and forth. It seemed so huge. Miss Laurie opened the door to a classroom. The lights stung Jenna’s eyes. She glanced around at the other students. “Do I have to go today?” she whispered to Miss Laurie, but nobody heard.

The teacher was much younger than her last teacher. She smiled at Jenna and said, “I am Miss Teak.”

Jenna nodded her head and said, “My name is Jenna.”

“Why don’t you sit next to…” she looked around the room. There was an empty seat next to a quiet girl with golden hair. The teacher said, “You two will probably talk too much… I’m putting you next to a boy.”

Miss Teak pulled the desk over next to an empty seat and left it there. “There is your seat,” she said to Jenna. Miss Laurie bent down like she wanted to give Jenna a hug, but stopped herself when Jenna stiffened up, and she simply placed a hand on Jenna’s shoulder. “Bye, bye, Jenna,” and she turned around and left before Jenna could say anything.

Jenna sat down and glanced over at the girl with the golden hair. The girl looked back at her, only for a second.

The horrible discovery had to happen sooner or later. The teacher got everybody busy and called Jenna back to a table in the back of the room. She showed Jenna a list of words and said, “Could you read these for me, Jenna?”

Jenna looked at the list of words and stared hard at her teacher. The first list were simple words, baby words, she thought to herself. She only knew the word the.

Miss Teak sighed. Disappointed in me, thought Jenna. She probably wishes I wasn’t in her class. Miss Teak scribbled something down on a sheet of paper and showed it to Jenna. It was a math problem: 78+24. “Can you do this…”

Before she finished her sentence Jenna took the pencil from her teacher’s hand and went to work. “You should have written it like this,” said Jenna. Instead of writing the numbers going across, she wrote them going down.

78+24

Jenna solved it double quick and said, “One hundred and two.”

Miss Teak smiled. She wrote down more math problems. Jenna solved them all.

“You are a smart girl. I want you to work with a tutor.”

“What’s a tutor?” said Jenna.

“They will help you and read to you.”

“I need someone to work with Jenna,” said the teacher. Several hands shot up, including the girl with the golden curls. I hope she gets picked, thought Jenna.

Instead, Miss Teak picked a girl with straight black hair who looked very serious. Miss Teak moved Jenna’s desk again and had her sit next to the black haired girl. “Jenna’s new, Neva,” explained the teacher. “She doesn’t know how we do things. Jenna and Neva may work together, and whisper.” The last word sounded like a warning. To Neva she said something else in a quiet voice that she thought Jenna couldn’t hear, but Jenna had great ears. “She may have trouble doing a lot of things. For a time, you may turn in the same paper except in math and except when we have a test.”

Neva nodded her head seriously and moved closer to Jenna. Neva pointed at Jenna’s shirt and whispered, “Those guys wear makeup.”

“Neva, it has to be school talk,” warned Miss Teak. “Everybody take out your reading books.” In a low voice, the teacher whispered to Neva. “Put your finger under the words, so she can follow along.”

Mr. Dan picked Jenna up from school and grunted a hello when she got inside the car. “Seat belt,” he said. She fumbled around a little but didn’t know where anything was. He leaned over and pointed them out. Wordlessly she clicked the two sides together.

I’m glad he doesn’t say much, thought Jenna. I don’t want to tell him about my first day at school.

He turned a few corners and soon parked in front of the house.

“I have to get back to work,” he mumbled.

“Are you going to be in the play?” asked Jenna.

“I do that for fun. I work in an office.”

“Oh,” Jenna said.

“I have to go.”

Jenna picked up her things: papers from school, a math homework sheet and some easy books she had sandwiched between her other things so kids couldn’t see them. She stepped out of the car and walked up to the porch. She glanced back over her shoulder. Mr. Dan was watching her.

She hesitated at the door. Should she knock or just go inside? She turned the knob and walked in the house.

Boy, did it smell! The stench reminded her of gasoline. Her nose crinkled and she heard a strange squishing sound.

“Jenna?” shouted Miss Laurie. “I’m in the hallway.”

The girl walked to the hallway and stared. Miss Laurie wore a tee shirt with red, green and blue smudges on it. A plastic film covered the hallway carpet. Miss Laurie had a huge paint roller and was painting the hallway green, bright green. Jenna tiptoed out on the plastic, avoiding the globules of paint that had dropped.

Laurie grinned. “I’m always up to something,” she said. She made a few more swipes at the green wall and said, “I’m done for now.”

“Did you paint the flowers in the bedroom?” asked Jenna. “Those were nice.”

“Thank you,” Miss Laurie said, brushing the hair away from her eyes and standing up.

They went to a couple of clothing stores and bought Jenna some pants, skirts, tennis shoes and shirts. Jenna insisted on wearing some of the clothes right away. She left the KISS shirt and the torn black skirt in the garbage on the way out the store, hoping she’d never see them again. She wondered if Miss Laurie saw her tossing them away.

“I’m going to tell you a secret,” whispered Miss Laurie as they left the store. “I like ice-cream.”

“You do?” asked Jenna.

Miss Laurie placed a finger by her lips, telling Jenna to be quiet.

“Kids don’t like ice-cream anymore, do they?” asked Miss Laurie sadly.

“We do too,” said Jenna, shocked.

“Oh?” Miss Laurie was surprised too. She took Jenna’s hand. Jenna’s shoulders stiffened. “We need to cross the street, and you have to hold my hand.”

Soon, they were sitting down, each of them holding a cone. Miss Laurie had a simple cone with pink ice cream and sprinkles. Jenna had a waffle cone and two kinds of ice cream, one scoop was triple chocolate, and the other was a mix of white chocolate and regular chocolate. Miss Laurie took big bites. Jenna licked hers. She thought it would make it last longer. Jenna looked at Miss Laurie and said, “You’re still not my mom.”

I understand,” she said between bites.

Something unusual happened that night after Jenna put on her new snowman pajamas and her new blue furry bedtime socks and crawled into bed. Miss Laurie took out a book and pulled up a chair. She was going to read to Jenna.

She held up the book. On the cover was a moody looking ocean covered with fog and shadows. A lone ship sailed into the darkness. Jenna squinted and made out something in the gloomy background: a dark island was in the background with a cliff that looked like a skull. The ship was sailing to the island, and two kids, a boy and a girl, stood near a railing staring at the gloomy island. Jenna wanted to warn them to go away.

“This is called Shadow Island, said Miss Laurie.

Jenna nodded and said, “I can understand that. Why are they going there?”

“It looks pretty awful, doesn’t it,” agreed Miss Laurie. “On the back cover it said they didn’t have any choice.”

Jenna felt a pain on the insides, like someone, “squeezed on her innards,” something Grandma would have said. Jenna remembered things her grandmother used to say, but it was hard to remember what she looked like. She missed Grandma all the time, but especially right now.

Miss Laurie turned to the first page and read:

Shadow Island is not on any map. You will not find this island, unless it is your doom.

Jenna thought how it was unfair that these kids had to go live there. Miss Laurie kept reading, “Fog drifted over the murky sea. Tall, jagged boulders stuck out of the ocean like stone knives and stabbed at the shifting darkness of the overcast sky.”

Miss Laurie coughed a little and read.

My twin sister, Amanda, had turned on me…

Jenna imagined the story in her mind. Books were freaky. She could see them playing in her mind, like watching a movie.

Miss Laurie kept reading about the two twins, a brother and a sister, who had lousy parents.

Not like mine, thought Jenna.

The twins in the story found a note from their parents. It read:

YOU’RE OLDER NOW—OLD ENOUGH TO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELVES! YOU DO NOT NEED US TO BE HERE.

YOUR PARENTS NO LONGER COOK. YOU DO THE COOKING. WE DON’T DO THE LAUNDRY. IF YOU WANT YOUR CLOTHES CLEAN, YOU WASH THEM YOURSELF.

WAKE YOURSELF UP IN THE MORNING.

WE ARE GOING TO SPEND MORE TIME AWAY FROM HOME. YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN!

Love,

Mom and Dad

What rotten parents, thought Jenna, but she liked the story. The parents in the book took the family to a remote island where they were the only humans.

Jenna liked monster stories.

When Miss Laurie closed the book, Jenna said, “Read more!” Laurie smiled a little and went on to the next chapter. Jenna closed her eyes and daydreamed. She imagined the events happening, like she was watching them in a movie.

The sister, Amanda, was blaming the brother, Nick, for the way the parents treated them. Miss Laurie read:

Amanda’s face was red--deep red. As she exhaled, the blush went away and her skin became pale. She sat on the floor and clenched her fists. She stared at her brother, Nick, like she was about to attack him. “This is all your fault,” Amanda yelled.

Jenna’s face went red too. She could tell by the way her cheeks burned. She knew what it was like when everything was her fault.

At least Nick had a sister, even if she couldn’t stand him half the time.

Miss Laurie finished the chapter. Jenna had been so busy daydreaming that she hadn’t noticed that Mr. Dan had come in the room and was sitting on a chair.

“Mr. Dan, you can read the next chapter,” said Jenna.

“I’m a little shy about reading,” he said.

Jenna didn’t know what to say. They wished her goodnight. Miss Laurie tried to hug her, but Mr. Dan smiled and shook her hand. Jenna smiled and lay back down, thinking she couldn’t fall asleep. She was wrong. Soon, she was dreaming about being on a boat by herself, sailing into a mixture of shadow and fog.

Editor’s Note: I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. A little unorthodox of me to run it over a couple issues,but it was worth it.