She rode a bicycle with a little cart on the back for carrying sacks of oatmeal from town. She’d stop by our house on the way because we had a lot of dandelion greens in our yard. She’d pick them and cook them up.

She wore men’s shirts, bright red lipstick, bright red rouge. Her face was real weathered, wind-burnt. She wasn’t very big but she was kind of stocky. In summer she wore a kerchief on her head and in winter she wore wool hats, a hood, layers on layers, big men’s coats, men’s warm boots.

She was the best gardener. Dr. Cheltington and some others in the rich neighborhood hired her to do their grounds work. She could make anything grow and those yards were gorgeous because of her.

If she came into your house, you’d still smell her a day later. When the weather was warm she bathed in the creek or ponds, but in winter she reeked. Most of the boys in the neighborhood, the first naked woman they seen was Bicycle Jenny taking a bath in the goldfish ponds.

She had a lot of dogs — little yipping chihuahuas — and a chicken wire fence to keep them in. I’m talking sixty, seventy chihuahuas without stretching it a bit. She always said she had a hundred.

When we saw her head off to town, we’d go over there. We’d get through the fence and past the dogs and walk around looking at things. She had clothespins and wire hanging from trees. Down in her hole in the ground was an old-fashioned bathtub and a little cast-iron camp stove. She had test tubes with rubber stoppers, little blue bottles, jars of jellies she made from her raspberry bushes. She had some bright red berries, too. Someone said they were probably poison.

Bicycle Jenny had the go-ahead, anytime she needed water, to come into our house and get it. She’d fill her cream cans in our sink and carry them back on her wagon. When it was snowy she used a sled.

If our parents were home we weren’t afraid of her, but if she showed up when they were gone, we were. My sister and I would see her coming and hide under the bed. We’d wait and listen for the front door to open.

She talked to herself while she filled up at the sink. Her voice was high, cracked, eerie like a witch’s. She had her big men’s work gloves, her hat and her other hat, and she’d usually have some chihuahuas stuffed in her coat.

Bicycle Jenny would say, Look what I’ve got, and she’d pull them out of her shirt pocket. She kept the puppies in little strawberry baskets.