Jenny

Jenny By Mara Stephan “Jenny! You stop that right now,” bellowed out my red and round faced dad. I crawled even faster. “I know where it is, thought,” I attempted to say, but not having said my first word yet, it was hard. “Jenny, you should listen to you father,” sang my mother in her hushed lullaby tone. I knew she was right, but I had to find it again. There it was! The brown wooden door, that creaked when you opened it, was small enough that only a baby would see it. It blended right in with the wall. Daddy arrived, his red face even more red now, something I thought was impossible. “Money,” I slowly pronounced my first word as the door screeched open. What? Where was it? “Shelly, come here!” shouted my father. The loud noise hurt my ears. Mommy came running up our elegant stairs. She grabbed me and hurried of to my room where she set me down in my crib and opened one of the windows. The warm summer air slowly rocked me to sleep as mommy sang in her high, light voice. I was soon cocooned in my many blankets. I took one last glance around my well designed room. I knew that my mom was worrying about our money problem and that we might lose the house. I tried to stay awake to help but my tiredness was pulling me down into a deep sleep. I awoke to Daddy yelling like he does every morning. He was saying something about how Mommy shouldn’t be asking him how he can afford new suit when we’re so low on money. After hearing this I silently wondered the same thing. My mind was filled with thoughts. Where had all the money in the little room gone, and how had Daddy gotten so much money? I placed all of the clues together…Daddy had taken the money! Now that I knew where the money was, the hard part was going to be finding a way to tell Mommy. To get her attention I had to cry. That was easy. “Daddy took the money,” I practically cried as she ran in the room. She gave me a confused look and I remembered that I couldn’t talk. This was going to be harder than I thought. I went through the list of possible ways to tell her. I couldn’t write it down, or tell her, so the obvious way was to use signs with my hands to get her to understand. I pointed at Daddy. She understood that one. Next, I rubbed my fingers together to represent money. She understood this one, too. So she knew Daddy and money. I really hoped she got what I was trying to say. “Dad has money?” she said, confused. I nodded furiously. I could tell she remembered the note that they had found saying that there was money hidden in the house. About a week ago, my mom and dad had gotten a letter saying that they were in great dept. The letter also said that we might even have to move out of our house. We all knew that this was terrible until we had found a note that appeared like magic. It said that there was money hidden somewhere in the house. Mommy looked a little confused until I say her face wash over with understanding. All of a sudden there was a look in her eye that I had never seen before. She put me back in my crib and ran out of the room. I heard a loud noise and my mom yelling at my dad. I knew that Dad was scared because he wasn’t yelling back. After this went on for a while, I finally heard Daddy drive away and saw Mommy come back into my room with a great grin on her face and her arms filled with money. For the first time in a while I knew she was happy. I was too.