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Inverted Jenny

a life turned upside down

By Mindy ReedPublished 3 years ago 10 min read
1
Inverted Jenny

Jennifer Miles accepted a plea bargain of assault and battery rather than attempted murder. The incident wasn’t premeditated so the district attorney agreed the fourteen-year-old could serve her sentence as a juvenile. After four years, she was released to a halfway house. No one was there to greet her—not even her mother. Normally shy, the girl had gone into a rage when her mother’s latest boyfriend was beating her. She grabbed a skillet 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 get out. Her mother, more worried about her boyfriend than her daughter, called 911. Jennifer was still sitting on the front step when the cops arrived.

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

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

Jennifer popped the trunk open. It was filled with woolen suits, starched dress shirts, polished loafers, and a wooden tie hanger adorned with striped ties. Her coworker fell ill and had left early, so Jennifer was on her own at the dock. 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 searched under a pile linens for the receipt pad. She tore one off, went out to the car, and handed it to the sour-faced woman. Something about her seemed familiar.

The next morning, the bins were still waiting for her. Her coworker, Lynn, had called in sick and the manager was trying to locate a substitute. Meanwhile, Jennifer would have to bring in donations by herself. She didn’t mind. She preferred working solo. 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. That experience showed her just how nasty girls could be.

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

Jennifer’s eyes scanned the floor and she saw the edge of a small black notebook—no more than 2-3 inches in size. Although alone, Jennifer knew cameras were everywhere. An agreement to employment was that your bags and pockets could be checked at any time without warning. Anyone caught stealing would be arrested. 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, she slipped the item inside her sock. Still scratching, she pulled her jean’s leg back down.

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 lunch break. 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.

When Jennifer entered the burger place, there was a long line at the counter and a longer one for the bathroom. Hoping for privacy, she stood in line for the bathroom. When she finally made it into a stall, which hadn’t been flushed, she extracted the notebook from her sock. She put it in her jacket pocket and flushed the commode with her foot. 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. 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 attend a group meeting before bedtime. Lights out at 10:00 p.m. sharp.

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 must 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 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.”

“Can you come 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. When her lunch break came, she asked Lynn if she could borrow hers.

“Sure,” Lynn said.

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

“No problem.”

Jennifer went out to an old picnic table at the far side of the parking lot. 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 we buy them outright. We’re a licensed broker. We usually auction them off for clients. Do you have stamps you want to sell?”

“Just one.”

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

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

“An Inverted Jenny,” he murmured. Are you saying you have an Inverted Jenny?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“How did you get it?”

“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 her day off. “I’ll be in tomorrow,” she said.

Logan doubted the kid had an authentic Inverted Jenny. Her story sounded lame. But, if by chance, it was the real thing, it would be the biggest deal of his career. Not to mention the possibility of a sweet commission.

It took three buses and almost two hours for Jennifer 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 smiled as he took a brush and carefully swept the stamp onto a glass plate. He took out a magnifying glass and inspected it thoroughly. He straightened and looked at the girl.

His heart raced, but he maintained his calm demeanor. “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 with it?”

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

Logan paused, contemplating his next move. There was no provenance and he seriously doubted the girl’s story of how she got it. He looked at Jenny in her tattered jeans and worn out sneakers. Her face drawn and grim. He took a deep breath and said, “I’ll give you twenty thousand.”

“Dollars?” she croaked.

“Yes. One time offer. We can go to the bank and arrange for them to put it on a debit card for you.”

Jenny nodded. She felt faint, like she had just won the lottery.

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

“Sold!” the auctioneer announced. The Inverted Jenny was sold to an Italian collector for 1.4 million dollars. Logan brokered the deal. He didn’t give Jenny a second thought.

fact or fiction
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About the Creator

Mindy Reed

Mindy is an, editor, narrator, writer, librarian, and educator. The founder of The Authors Assistant published Women of a Certain Age: Stories of the Twentieth Century in 2018 and This is the Dawning: a Woodstock Love Story in June 2019.

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