Jenny Lee & the Stranger ~ Part 1

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This is the story of Jenny Lee Martin, who had once been a boy named Tim, and how on a spring morning in 1950 she saved the Earth from destruction. It’s a story about niceness…

JENNY LEE & THE STRANGER
Laika Pupkino ~ 2011

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I started this story as a tribute to the COUNTRY GIRL stories of Billie Sue Pilgrim (currently writing as Starla Ann), back in 2007. But before I could finish this, Billie Sue decided that her series would work better if she changed her young heroine from a girl who had once been a boy to one who had been born a girl, eliminating Lizzy Jane’s whole strange genesis (psychotic town elders demanding that she transition or be executed- kind of a present-day-Iran-meets-1950's-Alabama thing.) I think her sweet story is simpler and better since the change, except that it left my little spin-off suddenly no longer relevant to what it had been spinning off from, so I unpubbed the two chapters I’d posted...

But I do like this story, and even the opening references to another child’s tale of transformation that never happened seem to work okay, bit of a metafiction that sets the tone for my tall tale. And now that I've finished it here's the whole story, in four parts:

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PART 1 ~ CONCERNING THE CURIOUS ORIGINS OF JENNY LEE MARTIN
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Perhaps you’ve read the stories about the young Alabama boy who after a bizarre misadventure that would cause him to be converted---under order of a rather strange + barbaric local law---into a girl named L____ J___, would go on to have a whole series of unbelievable adventures involving everything from bank robbers to dinosaurs. Well as it turns out, at that same year (1950) and just one state up (Tennessee) from that remarkable young heroine there lived a plucky nine year old girl named Jenny Lee Martin (formerly a boy named Tim) whose remarkable tale bore many similarities to L____ J____'s life story.

Although there were some differences right from the start. For example, how when Timmy had decided to go skinny dipping in the creek on that hot June day not long after he'd moved to his new town, his clothes had been stolen not by some other kid pulling a dirty prank (as had happened to L___ J___) but by monkeys escaped from a derailed circus train.

But the most significant difference between the early years of these two conscripts into girlhood lie not in the details of their adventures, but in the subtleties of their individual gender identity- a term that psychologists would come up with some years later to describe how well a person's thoughts and feeling about if they were supposed to be a man or a woman matched the body it sat in.

While the boy that L____ J___ had been would accept being sentenced to a life as the opposite sex only grudgingly at first, for young Tim it was like a dream come true, if in a very strange and scary way (they actually seemed to be talking about executing him!). And while Timmy had made a show of protesting his girlification it was only because he feared that if he appeared to want it too much they would have denied it to him. Those crazy town elders had seemed capable of just about anything!

But when her nightmare ordeal was over and everything had returned to normal, more or less, Jenny Lee saw that her wise and wonderful father had been right. The Lord truly did work in mysterious ways. She just wished that he could be here to see now; the girl she had become.

######

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She woke up. She didn’t know what time it was but it felt like she'd had a full night's sleep, even though a glance through her bedroom window showed that it was still dark outside. She lie there listening to the faint screek! screek! screek! of the generator windmill out to the hog trough, thinking about her old life as a boy named Tim, her new life as Jenny Lee, and all the crazy events that had led her to this...

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Tim's mother had taken sick with encephalitis and died shortly after he was born, and it was up to his father to raise him. The years that followed were bittersweet for Frank Martin, the grief of losing his Louisa Mae offset by the joys of caring for his baby boy.

In December of the following year when America entered the war that had been raging across Asia, Europe and North Africa, Frank felt he should do his duty and go. But Frank Senior had told him, "We can take care of little Timothy if you insist. But the baby just lost his mama. He needs you!"

So Frank obtained a “hardship case” deferment from his draft board and spent the next four years as a Civil Defense warden, staying at home to raise his child. He did a fine job of it too. By word and by the example Frank instilled in young Timmy a clear sense of right and wrong and nurtured the virtues of compassion, fair play and self-respect.

It was by a grim twist of fate that this young father who had ridden out WWII in safety---raising his rifle only to put food on the table---would end up as a casualty of that war. Roughly two years after Japan's representatives had signed the terms of surrender aboard the USS Missouri, Frank had found a large tattered balloon out in the woods that had a crate attached to it covered in strange oriental writing. And when he attempted to open it the explosive device inside went off, making him one of the handful of victims of Japanese’s “fire balloon” program, a little known and not terribly effective weapon which had been targeting (to the extent that you can target a balloon) America’s vast expanses of forest, hoping to burn them down.

The school that Timmy had attended back in Franktown Corners was even smaller than the one here in Bowerton Springs. The sheriff had walked right into the classroom and led him quietly outside to give him the terrible news.

The next week was just a blur to Timmy. The funeral, where a big black crow sat perched on the steeple. Fat ladies drenched in cheap perfume calling him "you poor thing" and trying to feed him sponge cake. His grandfather, in his funny old-fashioned suit with the shoestring tie, bringing the boy home in his clattering old stake-bed Model A to live with him and Grandma...

######

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Their rooster, Joe E. Brown had begun to crow. Which meant it was right around 4:45. Jenny Lee had been trying to remember the dream that had awoken her. She'd been able to piece enough of it together to decide that, sadly, it hadn’t been one of her dreams about Papa. Those dreams were special...

On her first night home after her stay in jail, and after the trial and the trip to the doctor's, Jenny Lee had lain in bed trying to get to sleep. She'd been in a certain amount of pain, and her thoughts had begun to run in negative and obsessive circles, until she managed to convince herself that Papa had died as a punishment for her being the way she was---“Not right in the head” as her defense attorney had put it---and she’d ended up crying herself to sleep…

And that was the very first night that her Papa visited her in her dreams. In a field, in a strange golden light, where the cottonwood seeds swirling through the air around them seemed to shine like stars, he asked her to please not be sad, and assured her that not only was he proud of her but her Mama was too, and their being called home to Jesus had to do with a lot of things but it was certainly not some divine judgement against her.

Jenny Lee missed him terribly. She remembered the day---just a few months before he'd died---that she had come home crying, because some mean boys called her a sissy and a stupid girly-boy and a lot worse. And Papa had said, "You know Timmy, people saying somethin' don't make it true..."

"But it is true!" she'd blurted out, to her utter horror she found herself telling him everything: How she'd always felt that something had gone horribly wrong when she'd been born a boy, and the way she got jealous of her friends Mildred and Cindy Lou for the pretty clothes they got to wear, the games they played, the fact that they were going to grow up to become wives and more importantly mommies- It all came out in an unstoppable rush, like Coca Cola out of a shook up can.

Her father got real quiet for a minute. It was the longest minute of her life, the fear that this silence meant he was trying to find words equal to his disgust, that he'd start calling her names like those kids at school had done, or like those horrible things old King Larry had said to his daughter Gonnorheal in that play they'd listened to on the radio at school (in which the people had talked even funnier than Yankees), calling her: "How sharper than a serpent's tooth!"

But finally he put his arms around her and said, "Honey, you're not wrong for feeling how you do, you're just different. When you go out in the woods, don't the trees all look different from each other? Tall trees, short ones, some going up into two big branches and others maybe a bunch of little ones, but is there a wrong tree in the forest? The Lord made this world and everything in it. And I figure he had to have made you how you are for a reason."

She looked up at him with tears in her eyes as he brushed her hair back from her forehead. If she'd had to freeze time at any point in her young life and only retain one moment it would have been right there.

Then his voice took on a tone of caution, "But I 'spect most other people aren't going to see it that way. So you have to do something that might be very hard for you. For now, and I don't know how long that'll be, you have to go on being a boy---or pretendin' to be a boy, I guess you could say---when you're at school and stuff. But some day, somehow or other..."

He reminded her that all things are in God's hands, hands so powerful they created a million mighty suns with no more effort than you would use to sprinkle salt out of a shaker, and that if you had a portion of faith even as big as a mustard seed He could answer your prayers.

But the boy she'd been had still had serious doubts. All those miracles in the Bible, none of them seemed to be very recent. And what Timmy was really afraid of was that God wouldn't want to answer a prayer like his. While such things weren't really discussed openly in 1950, he had nonetheless picked up on the belief that God got real ornery about stuff like this.

She saw that she should have trusted her Papa. As impossible as it had once seemed she was now Jenny Lee Martin, just a normal American schoolgirl and a regular part of her community. Although for this to come about it would take a scarecrow, a lion (No, not that scarecrow and lion…), an angry judge, and a doctor who dreamed each night of burning in eternal hellfire.

######

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When she realized that she wasn't going to get any more sleep tonight, Jenny Lee decided that today would be an excellent day to take Miss Edna up on her reward.

She got up, brought in a bucket of water, put on a pot of coffee on the stove for her Grandpa, and warmed up the rest of it to perform her a morning ablutions with a soapy rag, which for people in those days consisted of more than just washing your face and hands but less than a full bath.

At the mirror in the front parlor she ran a brush through her thick jet black hair, and appraised her appearance. Would she one day be as pretty as the photos she had of her mother? She had the same fair complexion and fine features, but she also had a bit of an overbite, which she thought made her funny looking (actually this was quite cute on her).

At least she did have Mama's eyes, she thought happily. Big and dark and soulful, they shone with an incorruptible and tender-hearted character that made anyone who was not a total blackguard want to do good things themselves.

Her grandfather came lumbering down the stairs, raving about how good the coffee smelled, and that she would wind up spoiling him. She asked, "How are you today, Grampa?"

"Why, I'm feelin' right as rain and ready t’ wrassle a whole passel o’ polecats!”

Which was what he always said, but she saw how he was favoring his left leg, and doing his best to hide it. She knew the hard work of farming was getting to be too much for him, and late one night she'd heard him and Grammy debating whether to sell off a big chunk of their acreage. Trouble was, the neighbors that he would want to sell it to couldn't afford it. And Kraken Foods---the big agricultural concern that had offered to buy his entire farm on the spot---were a bunch of egg-sucking carpetbaggers that he wanted no part of.

As she poured him his coffee, she explained why she was leaving so early this morning.

"Well good for you," he smiled, "Say Hi to Edna and that Eye-tie fella for me!"

She accepted a kiss on the forehead, gathered up her school books, and started down the dirt lane into town just as the sun was cresting Squaw Peak.

######

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With three meals on the table every day at home and money being tight, Jenny Lee and her grandfolks rarely ate at the Regal Diner. But on the day that she'd shimmied down into a storm drain to rescue Edna Miller's puppy, Edna---who owned and ran the restaurant---had promised her five free meals.

Jenny Lee had felt like it was wrong to get a reward for just doing what you should when a helpless little animal was in trouble, and she refused Edna's offer. And so a weird sort of bargaining ensued. Edna kept insisting that she be able to express her gratitude, but tried to make it more palatable to the girl by reducing her offer to three meals...

"One meal," countered Jenny Lee.

"Alright, but you get seconds and a slice of blueberry pie, and you can drop in for a free soda water any time you want."

"Done!" exclaimed Jenny Lee and they shook on it, smiling.

So here she was, going out for breakfast on a Tuesday morning, like she imagined the kids who lived in cities did before they clocked in at their schools like big factories. She was looking forward to one of Dago Tony's big fluffy Denver omelets, loaded with ham and cheese and green onions, a rare treat for her. While she had eggs for breakfast nearly every morning, they were either scrambled, poached or served sunny side up, since Grandma was suspicious of anything so affectedly high-tone and French sounding as an omelette...

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Entering town on its one paved street, she walked past the schoolhouse, whose doors would not be open for some time still, then past the barber shop and then Hingley's Supermarket- which was really just Hingley's Groceries with a bigger sign, trying to cash in on the growing supermarket craze.

She passed the white wooden two-story Grange Hall. Its spacious front lawn sported a bank of a dozen picnic tables and a small band stand, and served as a park for the little village. It was here that she had been arrested by Sheriff Sweeny on the charge of deviated raiment, and her life had changed so drastically. Though it hadn't been funny at the time Jenny Lee giggled as she recalled the pandemonium of that day, with everyone running and screaming and bumping into each other...

######

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On the day his pants had been stolen by a chattering gang of monkeys, Tim had decided to try to make his way home naked. He was pretty sure he could do it without being spotted, if he stuck to the woods and circled clear around the whole town. But when he saw the lady scarecrow at the back of Nadine Carleson's vegetable garden....

It had clouded up all of the sudden, and with the way the wind was kicking up it was pretty cold. He figured he would be forgiven if he borrowed the scarecrow's clothes for the last mile of his hike.

Ducking back into the trees he put on the dress and shawl, a thing he had always longed to do but had never dared to before (and with just him and his father in the household for most of his life he'd never really had the opportunity...). It wasn't the prettiest outfit, all kind of mismatched, but it was prettier than anything he'd ever worn, the dress with its cheerful pattern of yellow and white daisies on a field of soft green. And it fit just perfect. It felt so different, how it enclosed both legs and all the space between clear down to his ankles. He smiled at how right it felt.

"I'm Jenny Lee," she proclaimed to nobody in particular. "Tim? No, I'm not Tim. Tim was..."

Was what, she pondered. If Timmy wasn't her, then who was he?

Maybe he was like when you were making a drawing, and you kind of messed it up the first time. And then you went back over it and got everything right, just like you'd had it pictured in your head, but you'd needed something to work from to finally get it right. That was Tim. Not a waste of effort, but you didn't hang on to that middle step after you had it drawn proper.

She was skipping through the woods, imagining herself to be Little Red Riding Hood (although the ruffled blue gingham sunbonnet was neither red nor a hood), as she really was going to Grandmother's house, although it was her house too…..... When a very large and toothy lion appeared out of nowhere, blocking the trail ahead and fixing her with his huge baleful brown eyes.

Now it isn't likely that the lion was going to eat her, he had been well fed on bloody chunks of horse meat just that morning. But when the kid took off like that, a long dormant instinct came to life in his brain- the one about how when something ran you were supposed to chase it...

And chase it he did, right up Main Street and into the middle of the tables and the milling crowd at the Grange Society Bake Sale and Social, where Roundhouse Tubby and his Junction City Swing Serenaders were playing up on the bandstand. It was quite a ruckus!

######

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The mayor, who hadn't climbed a tree in over thirty years, needed help getting down. He was furious. Everyone was furious. This event that they had all looked forward to and had taken such pains to prepare for was in shambles. And after things calmed down a bit, suddenly the sight of a boy in a flowery dress upset them even more than the great cat had!

The poor confused beast managed to avoid getting shot, thanks to the men from the circus showing up right then, just as Sheriff Todd Sweeny was drawing a bead on him, as he sat lapping up Birdie Sanders' award winning banana cream pie with his giant tongue.

Rory the lion was happy to see someone he knew, and who wasn't running around screaming like a nut. While it had been interesting, he'd pretty much had his fill of life in the wild by then. He went off with the men, riding shotgun in the jeep, luxuriating in the feel of the wind fluffing his mane...

But under the letter of local jurisprudence, it appeared that Tim would not be faring as well as Rory had. Barring some miracle, his trial was expected to last maybe an hour or two, and his date with the township's Volunteer Firing Squad would be on next Saturday.

That miracle came in the form of old Dr. Braunhemmer, who despite being a relative newcomer to the town, and a foreigner to boot, was very well respected. When they told him what they planned to do, and that they wanted him to act as the attending physician (to record the time of death and make it official-like) he knew he had to act.

He appeared as an expert witness for the defense, and ran circles around prosecutor Phil Arlen, the Mayor's nephew, who'd been a mediocre law student and had only barely passed the state bar exam on his third attempt. The doctor questioned Jenny Lee, and there in the defendant's dock she told the whole truth about herself to somebody besides her loving father for the first time.

Doctor Braunhemmer had done some serious lying on Jenny Lee's behalf. He’d figured that he had done so much lying already (to start off with, he wasn’t really from Austria…) and his past sins were so many that lying under oath to help save this innocent child would not alter his fate in the hereafter. The doctor knew where he was going.

And with a lot of impressive medical jargon and some murky X-Rays of what might have been a 1936 Studebaker he convinced the jury that Timmy couldn't be guilty of the crime of deviated raiment, because he had never in fact been a boy, but an ‘amorphously bifurcated mitochondrial pseudo-hermaphrodite’, or whatever high-flown terms he’d invented…

######

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And then later, in Doctor B.'s office, Grandma held her hand while he explained the procedure to her. How if her body was left as she was, in a few years she would change in all the ways that boys change when they grow into men, and that she would probably end up as big and heavy-bearded as Papa had been. But if he performed this procedure thing she would not really be a girl, but she would be as much like one as was currently possible. And then later, he hypothesized, there might be shots or pills which if she took them regularly would give her body the soft contours of a woman.

"Did you really mean everything you said in court?" Asked Dr. Braunhemmer, "about your, ahem...... personality?"

"I really do! I love Papa and I love my grandpa, but I don't want to look like them, or do the stuff they do. I want to be a girl! And besides, I don't think Judge Quartelow gave me any choice."

"One ALWAYS has choices!" said the old doctor sternly, "Never forget that, Fraulein. Someone telling you to do something is never a good enough reason to do it. Listen to your heart, not to the drums and bugles and the cheering of the mob ...... You could leave this town. Sometimes leaving is the only way. You might say 'I have investments here, things I would lose if I leave zem behind..."

"I don’t really have any investments," said Jenny, but Doctor Braunhemmer didn't seem to hear her.

"Things, what are things? You can always get new things. And yes it is tough to be leaving ones friends, friends are important. But honor ......... one's very humanity. That we must never lose! To lose that …..... the cost is ...…... Oh I should have listened to that tiny voice. A conscience is nothing if you find it too late. Now in my dreams, I hear them. The screaming, always the screaming…" He trailed off, stood there staring at his hands like they were something horrible.

"Doctor B., are you alright?"

The physician suddenly remembered where he was. "Ja. I was saying. I have a friend and his wife in Chicago you could live with. I discussed this with them yesterday. They can't have children, and I know they would give you a very good home. I could drive you to the bus station up in Jackson, and give you money for your bus fare."

"You would do that for me?"

"I would do that for me! Before I would ever again- uh, before I would operate on you in ways you do not want. So please, think about this, and what it is you want. This will be the rest of your life."

She looked at Grammy, who smiled and squeezed her hand. "It's up to you dear."

######

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That had been Jenny Lee's first encounter with the law in her new town, and it was a scary one. It just seemed plain crazy, getting so worked up over what kind of shapes the fabric covering a person's hide was stitched together into. And even if it was wrong to wear some old scarecrow's dress you could just take it off and put on britches, there had been no real harm done. At least not that she could see...

It would take a while for her to stop fearing that she might be hauled before Judge Quartelow again, for committing some other capital crime she’d never heard of. But fortunately, once she had to all appearances become an ordinary nine year old girl, people seemed to calm down considerably. There almost seemed to be some collective amnesia at work regarding how she'd arrived in their midst as a male, an unconscious conspiracy to forget that bit of unpleasantness.

Someone else might have held more of a grudge against the townsfolk here, seeing as how before the old doctor stepped in they HAD meant to kill her, which was pretty rude...

But Jenny Lee took the Gospel she'd been raised on seriously. To her forgiveness wasn't just something you did when it was easy or when you felt like it. And nor was it some duty you had to grit your teeth and slog through, but a GIFT- for the person who granted it as much as those it was directed at.

Though young, she had seen from the example of the adults around her how an inability to forgive could poison someone's soul, leaving them full of hate and suspicion and self-pity. It was up to you whether you wanted to hang onto your resentment, the bittersweet pleasures of being the aggrieved, or preferred the freedom of being comfortable in life, and having a heart that was open to the love and beauty and niceness around you...

Because there was love and niceness here. Every day these folks revealed more of their good side to her. And if they did go a bit psychotic on occasion, it was just that certain things tended to set them off. It was a small and insular world they inhabited. (Some of them had never been outside of Haymaker County, and didn't share the worldly perspective of a girl who had one time traveled clear down to New Orleans...). And so anything that was different, that seemed to threaten to overturn their sense of how the world should be, it's like it scared them in some way that ordinary physical peril never would...

This might be reason why---although they might give a neighbor the shirt off their back---they didn't immediately take to strangers. Especially strangers that were as strange as the one that Jenny Lee was soon to meet.

For here she was arriving at Edna’s diner. She crossed the establishment's small parking lot, her glossy leather Red Goose shoes crunching against the gravel. She clomped up the three steps, opened the aluminum door with the half moon window and went in.

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To be continued...

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Japanese Fire Balloons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_balloon

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Comments

Says it all.

"But finally he put his arms around her and said, "Honey, you're not wrong for feeling how you do, you're just different. When you go out in the woods, don't the trees all look different from each other? Tall trees, short ones, some going up into two big branches and others maybe a bunch of little ones, but is there a wrong tree in the forest? The Lord made this world and everything in it. And I figure he had to have made you how you are for a reason."

Amen

hugs!
Grover

There Is a Bit of Elfaba Here

littlerocksilver's picture

It's almost as if you are rewriting Maguire. Very enjoyable so far.

Girl.jpg
Portia

Portia

All things....

Andrea Lena's picture

...are in God's hands...it's amazing how quickly I can forget that...circumstances and events that don't quite compare to a child losing parents and gaining identity only to be rejected. Her father was a gem and her family is great. I am so looking forward to more of this when you find the time. There are days where I wish I could have frozen a moment in time. And days when the world is filled with omelettes and Red Goose Shoes. Thanks for this lovely tale.



Dio vi benedica tutti
Con grande amore e di affetto
Andrea Lena

  

To be alive is to be vulnerable. Madeleine L'Engle
Love, Andrea Lena

I Reckon It's Klaatu

joannebarbarella's picture

1950s.....Flying saucers.....Saving the world.....2+2=97.5. And Jenny lee is such a sweet and lovely child. Thankyou Dr. Strangelove for the small mitigation of your crimes.

Those Jekyll and Hyde citizens of Haymaker County should be truly grateful that they were saved from committing murder.

But I think I missed something. Chicago?......New Orleans? Was there a connection?

Joanne

Klaatu Odammit Poopoo

laika's picture

Shoot, Joanne. Way to wreck it! His name is Epsilon Tau (ET for short) & he has a robot named Gorp.
Glad somebody's reading this turkey though, and that you got my oh so subtle hints
about Dr. Braunhemmer, which was based on the infamous ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW
episode #133: "Mengele Comes To Mayberry". The only thing worse than
being the victim of someone like Dr. B. would be to BE him...
~~hugs, Veronica

Jenny Lee & the Stranger ~ Part 1

The Phantom Stranger perhaps?

    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine
    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine