Why did Baby help Penny? -- Part 2

Continued from Part 1

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In the Dirty Dancing story, Baby Houseman helps Penny Johnson in five steps:

1) When Baby sees Penny crying in the kitchen, Baby fetches Johnny Castle and Billy Kostecki to help Penny.

2) After Baby learns that Robbie Gould has made Penny pregnant and that Penny wants to get an abortion, Baby asks Robbie to help pay for the abortion.

3) Baby gets $250 from her father and gives it to Penny to pay for the abortion.

4) Baby learns to dance well enough to replace Penny in the performance at the Sheldrake Hotel on the day of the abortion.

5) Baby fetches her father to treat Penny after the abortion.

Each of Baby's steps to help Penny involved risks. In Part 1, I discussed the first two steps.

1) Baby's decision to fetch Johnny and Billy risked causing trouble with Max and Neil Kellerman.

2) Baby's decision to ask Robbie to pay risked causing trouble with her sister Lisa and her parents.

Now I will discuss Baby's third step to help Penny.

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Baby gets $250 from her father and gives it to Penny to pay for the abortion.

When Baby asks her father for $250 -- which is like asking for $2,000 now -- he agrees quickly because he assumes she will use the money to help Neil Kellerman.

Baby could not count, however, on her father's quick agreement. He might have insisted that she tell him how she intended to use the money. Surely she foresaw that he might insist, and surely she must have considered three responses to his insistence:

1) Tell him the truth.

2) Tell him a lie.

3) Insist stubbornly that she could not tell him.

Baby foresaw that if she told her father the truth, then he would refuse to give her the money. Furthermore, he would forbid her to associate further with Penny. Furthermore, he might tell Max Kellerman that a staff dancer, Penny, was pressuring his daughter, Baby, to provide money for an illegal abortion.

Baby foresaw also that any lie she told would probably collapse. In the circumstances of this family vacation away from home, she simply could not concoct and maintain a plausible lie. The only people at this resort who might agree to support her lie were the employees -- in particular, Penny, Johnny and Billy -- whom she was trying to befriend.

Therefore, Baby decided on the third response, listed above. If her father insisted that she tell him why she needed the money, then she would insist, more stubbornly, that she could not tell him. Baby's most important consideration was to keep Penny, Johnny and Billy out of her father's understanding of the request.

Baby figured that her father might assume incorrectly that she wanted the money to help Neil Kellerman. After all, her father knew that she was spending time with and acting affectionately toward Neil.

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 Suppose that Baby insisted that she could not tell her father how she intended to use the money and that he therefore refused to give her the money. Then the situation might have developed in two ways.

1) He would relent later -- maybe that evening, maybe on a following day -- and eventually would give her the money even though she refused to tell him the reason.

2) He never would give her the money as long as she would not tell him.

Keep in mind that the money was not desperately urgent. Penny and Johnny did not know that Baby was trying to provide money for the abortion. They still would have been pleasantly surprised by the money if Baby had not been able to provide it until a following day. Also, Penny and Johnny still might have collected enough money from their friends.

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Baby surely worried that her father might involve her mother in this situation. Her father might have told her mother that she had asked for such a large amount of money while refusing to tell the reason. If so, then her mother might have approached Baby and demanded an explanation.

Baby feared her mother's questioning more than she feared her father's questioning.

Baby valued her father's respect more than she valued her mother's respect.

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Even after Baby managed to get the money from her father, her risks continued.

When Baby gave the money to Penny, she risked the possibility that her generous gift might be revealed to some other employees, who would gossip the information to further employees.

(In the July 1986 script, many of the employees were gossiping about the sexual relationship between Baby and Johnny (Scene 92A).)

Eventually this gossip might have reached Robbie Gould. Keep in mind that Baby had threatened to get Robbie fired. Now Robbie would have some information he could use to threaten Baby. Robbie could have simply threatened to tell Lisa that Baby had given all the money to Penny. Of course, Lisa would tell her parents.

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Baby's third step to help Penny -- asking her father for the money and giving it to Penny -- was risky primarily for Baby herself. Now Baby was deceiving her father and thus was jeopardizing her superb relationship with him.

In her first two steps -- 1) fetching Johnny and Billy to the kitchen and 2) asking Robbie to provide money -- she had not risked her own credibility much and was not risking trouble for herself much. Rather, she might merely annoy Neil, Max, Robbie or Lisa.

Baby might have stopped after the first two steps. She might have decided that the third step was too risky to her precious relationship with her father. She might have decided that she should not not ask him for the money and should not give his money to Penny.

Baby might have told her father frankly about Penny's situation and might have asked him for his wisdom about the situation. When her father advised her to stay out of Penny's situation, Baby might have accepted and followed his wise advice respectfully.

Instead, Baby took her third step and deceived her father and risked her relationship with him. Why?

Baby wanted to befriend Penny and Johnny and wanted to join their social circle.

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I will continue this article in Part 3.