Little Miss Strange

by Joanna Rose

  She put the grocery bag on the big table and went over in the kitchen corner and lit the fire under the teakettle. She got out two mugs and put them on the table, and she sat down, in one of the table chairs, not in her bed. I sat in the other table chair, by the grocery bag.

  Tina Blue said, “Is Fern your teacher?”

  “Sometimes,” I said. “It’s different teachers at Free School. Next year it will be regular first grade, with just one regular teacher.”

  Tina Blue said, “Who are the other teachers at Free School?”

  I said, “Lady Jane. Sometimes Lalena’s mother, Margo.”

  She said, “Margo?”

  “She makes cookies,” I said. “No-bake granola cookies. Not good cookies. Not like wafer cookies.”

  “Is Lalena your friend?” Tina Blue said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Best friend. Because we’re the only girls.”

  Tina Blue stood up and got a little wooden box from the shelf by the white elephant. She got one of her pink cigarettes out of the box, and lit the pink cigarette with a match and blew a puff of smoke out into the middle of the room.

  She said, “So, you have lots of friends?”

  “Lalena mostly,” I said.

  “I hope we can be friends,” I said.

  “You’re a grown-up,” I said.

  “What about Jimmy Henry?” she said. “He’s a grown-up. Isn’t he your friend?”

  “No,” I said. “He’s Jimmy Henry.”

  Tina Blue poured tea in our cups. Then she sat back and smoked the pink cigarette until it was down to a tiny end, and she got up and put the tiny end into the little dish on the shelf. She sat back down.

  I said, “Don’t you have other friends who are grown-ups?”

  She sipped at her tea, looking at me over the edge of her mug.

  She said, “Family of man.”

  She didn’t say anything else. She didn’t say anything about the wafer cookies. After a while of Tina Blue just looking at me over the edge of her mug, I said, “I have to go now.”

  “’Bye,” I said when I got to the door. “’Bye.”

  I shut the black painted door behind me and ran up the stairs, in our apartment. It was quiet and bright and Jimmy Henry was in his chair. Tina Blue’s ring was in my pocket.

  IT WAS late, way after bed, and it was late night pink in my bedroom. There was knocking on a door downstairs, and Jimmy Henry went down there. I was almost back asleep when there was music at Tina Blue’s. I was all the way asleep when Jimmy Henry came back. I woke up when he came in the front door of our apartment. He turned off the lights in the front room. It was quiet all over our house.

  WASHER BOXES were best. Refrigerator boxes were too big. Television boxes were too small, smaller than they used to be.

  Now there were two washer boxes on the porch, one old, one new. Both of the boxes faced my table, which was at the end of the porch, by the railing. The back of the boxes was all you could see from the front door. There used to always be one box facing the door, so I could see, in case of visitors. Now the inside of my boxes was secret, so I could be in there, secret. It was the best place to take Tina Blue’s ring out of the heart pocket. I would hold the ring in one hand, then the other hand. I put the ring on each finger, one finger at a time. I set the ring down on the floor of the box, right next to me. I set the ring in the very back corner of the box. I sat in the new washer box, and the ring sat in the old washer box, and I looked around the corner at the ring, Tina Blue’s silver ring, sitting in the big box all by itself.

  MARGO LIKED to buy food at the big wooden food store on Seventeenth Avenue instead of Safeway because of farm workers. Lalena and I got to have dried papaya, but besides the dried papaya there wasn’t much stuff in the wooden food store that was really food, like Jimmy Henry’s food that he bought at Safeway, bread and cans of soup and bacon and frozen broccoli.

  The Saturday of the short red truckers was a special Saturday even before we went to Someone’s Beloved Threads. It was going to be Memorial Day weekend the next day, and Margo was buying stuff for a picnic in Cheeseman Park. All the people from Denver Free University were going to be there, and all the kids from all the Free Schools, like my Free School, everybody having a big picnic in Cheeseman Park. The grown-ups were going to sit in one big circle in the grass, and all the kids were going to sit in the middle of the circle in a peace symbol design. It was going to be beautiful. Telling about it made Lady Jane cry because of beauty.

  Me and Jimmy Henry walked to Lalena’s house after lunch on Saturday. It was too hot to wear my red corduroy jacket, so I had to leave it at home, folded up on my chair, with Tina Blue’s ring in the pocket. Walking to Lalena’s house was sunny and windy, and Jimmy Henry stopped at the corner of Twelfth Avenue and Corona Street to look at the Rocky Mountains.

  Jimmy Henry said, “Always look at what’s far away, so your eyes will remember how to see far away.”

  Jimmy Henry always said that at the corner of Twelfth Avenue and Corona Street, on the way to Lalena’s house, when it was a sunny day and we could see the Rocky Mountains.

  Lalena’s daddy was sitting on their porch. Jimmy Henry went and sat by Lalena’s daddy, and Lalena’s daddy said to me, “Them girlies are back in the kitchen.”

  The house was big and empty between the front porch and the kitchen. Lalena sat at the big table by Margo. Margo was filling up her string shopping bag with folded-up brown paper bags, and she had on her straw hat. Margo’s straw hat was wide around with painted blue stars on top. Kate-Katie sat on the windowsill, drawing designs in the air with the smoke from a stick of incense.

  “Okay,” Lalena said when she saw me.

  She jumped off the chair and jumped right in front of me and spread her arms out wide.

  She said, “This is my Memorial Day outfit.”

  Lalena’s Memorial Day outfit was a long dress that had big blue and white stripes going up and down. The dress tied around her neck in long red ribbons.

  Lalena’s said, “Beautiful?”

  I said, “Beautiful.”

  Margo said, “Okay, who’s on the bus?”

  Margo always said that. We never rode a bus to Seventeenth Avenue. We always walked.

  We walked on Corona Street and then we walked on Colfax Street. Colfax Street smelled like the food from the Mexican restaurants, and people walked fast, and cars drove by fast. We turned when we got to the big church. Margo liked to walk by the big church. It was a white church, with tall white towers and a sleeping angel above the doors. There was a black fence all around the white church, a curvy black metal fence. After Margo looked at the white church, looked at the big wooden doors and the sleeping angel, and looked up at the white towers, we turned the corner and walked on Logan Street, where it was houses again for two blocks and then Seventeenth Avenue. Seventeenth Avenue was the best street. Down Seventeenth Avenue one way was Bead Here Now. We turned the other way on Seventeenth Avenue to go to the wooden food store, walking under a Frisbee game. Gandalf was there. Gandalf was a big mostly black dog. Gandalf always caught the Frisbee, and he always had drool.

  The stores on Seventeenth Avenue had people living upstairs. People were in the windows up there, and the people in the windows waved and yelled and talked to the people on the sidewalk. The stores were all connected, and in between the stores were doors leading up to where the people lived. Margo stopped to talk to the guy who sold Cripple Creek newspapers out of his bag and Lalena and I went and sat on the bench under the window of Together Books. Together Books was decorated inside for Memorial Day weekend.

  I said, “They put their flag upside wrong.”

  Lalena stood up and looked at the flag in the window, turning her head sideways, then turning her whole self sideways.

  “Upside down,” she said. “It’s upside down.”

  Margo started walking away on the sidewalk, and Lalena and I went after. When we got to the wooden food store we went to the dried papaya box and got ou
t two long orange pieces of dried papaya and went back out on the sidewalk, to sit on the square gray sidewalk stones. The sidewalk was cool on my butt.

  Lalena said, “You have to get a new outfit for Memorial Day.”

  I said, “What kind of outfit?”

  “A flag outfit,” Lalena said. “Lady Jane said everybody should wear flag stuff. You need a special new outfit, like this outfit.”

  She rubbed her hands up and down on the stripes of her new long dress. Sitting down like we were, Lalena’s new striped dress covered all of her legs and her feet.

  She said, “We’ll ask Margo if we can go to Someone’s Beloved Threads on our way home. We’ll find something really beautiful.”

  When Margo came out of the big wooden door of the wooden food store, Lalena said,

  “You promised we could go to Someone’s Beloved Threads after the food co-op.”

  “I did?” Margo said. “Well, okay. But you can’t stay and try on everything in the store. I have to get home and start bread.”

  Someone’s Beloved Threads was the most beautiful store on Seventeenth Avenue. There was a flower box with rows of flowers, purple and pink. Last summer, Constanzia’s grown-up boy, Erico, grew tomatoes and sunflowers there. The doorway of Someone’s Beloved Threads was painted with flowers and vines and at the top was a yellow sunface that looked like Constanzia’s face, and Erico’s, except yellow instead of brown. Inside Someone’s Beloved Threads was dark and crowded with clothes, clothes hanging along the walls and clothes hanging from clotheslines in the middle, and big boxes of clothes on the floor. The boxes were best. Lalena and I would pull the clothes out of one box, looking for good outfits. We piled all the clothes back in when it was time to start on a new box. We tried stuff on. Sometimes we lost the clothes we had on to begin with, so we wore different outfits when it was time to go home.

  Today Constanzia was sitting behind the counter at her sewing table, which is how it usually was. When we came in, she got up and said, “Just at the right moment do I see Sarajean Henry.”

  She held up the short red truckers. They were beautiful. The short red truckers were just like regular overalls, but instead of regular blue jean stuff, they were red. Instead of long bottoms, they were shorts. Short red truckers. Somebody had patched a big blue star on the pocket on the front. I took off my pants and put on the short red truckers. Lalena kicked my pants into the corner. Constanzia did up the straps on the short red truckers, hooked the straps on to gold snaps, and there was a gold snap on the pocket at the top of the blue star.

  Constanzia said, “Muy bonito.”

  That meant beautiful in Mexican.

  I said, “Gracias.”

  That meant thank you.

  “How much?” Margo said.

  “Out of the goodness in my heart,” Constanzia said.

  That meant free.

  Lalena and I ran out of the shop and it was cool air on my underpants. I wanted to run all the way home. We walked.

  THE NEXT day was Memorial Day weekend. I got up early, way before Jimmy Henry’s alarm clock, and I put on the short red truckers, with Tina Blue’s ring in the pocket under the blue star, and I snapped the snap at the top of the blue star.

  After breakfast we got ready to go to Cheeseman Park. Jimmy Henry had two six-packs of beers. Lalena and I were going to get bottles of pop. I was hoping for potato chips too. When we asked Margo if we could have potato chips for the Memorial Day picnic, Margo said, “I have to draw the line somewhere.”

  Jimmy Henry sneaked two bags of cherry candies into the bottom of his backpack, so I wasn’t too worried about what Margo would bring to eat. Margo made stuff like rice with lumps of stuff and pieces of plants. Sometimes nuts. Usually raisins. Jimmy Henry and I put all our stuff on the kitchen table. There was his backpack with the secret cherry candies and the beers. He put his extra Marlboros in there, and his sunglasses. Jimmy Henry put his sunglasses in his backpack instead of on his face because I didn’t like his face with sunglasses, so he never put them on until the sun. He put the Frisbee in the backpack. He put our blue squirt gun in the backpack.

  I said, “The squirt gun?”

  Jimmy Henry said, “Margo said bring it.”

  I had my own bag for my own stuff. My bag was a special bag that Fern made for me out of her old cutoffs. The legholes were sewn across, and she braided a macramé strap. I put crayons and colored pencils in there. Jimmy Henry had his red bandanna around his head, so I put my red bandanna in my bag. I put the purple peace symbol keychain in there too, so we could all remember how to be inside the circle. I had two dimes in my bag too. Jimmy Henry always gave me two dimes.

  “A candy bar and a phone call,” he said.

  Jimmy Henry put his backpack on his back. I looped my cutoff bag around my neck. I put my hands in the big side pockets of the red truckers, blue star right in front, a little bump in there at the bottom of the star.

  Jimmy Henry said, “Sneakers.”

  “I thought I’d leave them here,” I said.

  “Sneakers,” Jimmy Henry said.

  I went in my bedroom and got my sneakers. I came back out carrying them.

  “On the feet,” Jimmy Henry said.

  I sat down on the kitchen floor and put my sneakers on my feet. Then we walked down our stairs. There was no music at Tina Blue’s. It was hot out on the sidewalk. It was even hotter when we got to the Safeway parking lot and no trees. The Safeway store had flags all across the front, and all the flags were right side up.

  We turned up the hill past the Safeway, walking slow on the sidewalk. Jimmy Henry smoked a Marlboro while we walked. He puffed a big puff of smoke and then walked right through it. He didn’t put his sunglasses on his face. I sang for a while, while we walked. I sang, “Oh, bandanna, oh, don’t you cry for me.”

  After a while Jimmy Henry sang too.

  At Cheeseman Park the sidewalk ended into grass all the way across for a long way. There was a little curvy road and some big trees and mostly grass. There were people on blankets and people with Frisbees and balls and dogs. I held onto the strings at the bottom of Jimmy Henry’s cutoffs. He started to walk into where all the people were. I stopped.

  “Maybe we could have our picnic here,” I said.

  “We have to find our friends,” Jimmy Henry said.

  I looked at all the people all over the grass.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Well, here,” he said.

  He picked me way up and put me on top of his shoulders. He held me on my knees.

  He said, “Can you see our friends now?”

  “No,” I said, between laughing and laughing.

  Jimmy Henry said, “You just watch from up there.”

  The grass was full of dandelions. I was as high as a yellow Frisbee that went flying by us. I could see all the way across Cheeseman Park to where the buildings started again. Jimmy Henry squeezed my knees where he was holding on.

  We found Margo and Kate-Katie and Lalena’s daddy and Lady Jane and Fern and everybody. All the kids from Free School and the kids from the YWCA Free School and the Thompson Street Community Center Free School. There were lots of Free Schools. There were lots of kids.

  Lalena was wearing her Memorial Day weekend dress with the red ribbons tied around her neck. Her hair was all over, brushed loose, fuzzy bright orange.

  “We all have to go sit in the circle and be a peace symbol,” she said. “Then we get pop and stuff. After the peace symbol.”

  People were starting to sit out in the sun, on the grass, sitting in a big circle. Kids were standing around with other kids and sitting around and there were ladies by the kids saying, “No, here. Sit there. Over there. Over here.”

  Lady Jane was in the middle of all the kids and ladies, telling kids to sit in different places. Fern was in the middle too, sitting in the grass. I took my cutoff bag off and put it down by the big tree, and Lalena and I went and sat by Fern. Fern was picking dandelions and laying them
in the grass.

  “Look,” she said.

  She picked up one dandelion and held the long stem part out for us to see. She poked her thumbnail through so there was a long hole in the stem and white wet stuff dripped out. Then she took another dandelion and put the long stem of that one through the hole in the first dandelion stem. The two dandelions were hooked together. Fern made another hole and put another dandelion stem through that hole and then three dandelions were hooked together.

  Lalena and I started making holes in dandelion stems, hooking the dandelions stems together, making holes, hooking them together. Our fingers got sticky from the stem juice. It was a dandelion rope. Fern went along on her knees in the grass, showing other kids how to make it work.

  Jimmy Henry stood under the big tree with some guys, smoking Marlboros, leaning on the tree. I held the dandelion rope up for him to see, but his sunglasses were on his face.

  People were starting to sing. Lalena and I sang. We both knew some of the words. We both knew the main words. Everybody knew the main words. The music of singing got louder when it was time to sing those words. Lalena and I counted five tambourines, except I said we shouldn’t count John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski, since he had his mom’s tambourine and didn’t bang it right, didn’t even bang it in time with the main words. There was a lady with a guitar. I couldn’t hear the guitar at all, since I was on the other side of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski.

  Margo was by the big tree where Jimmy Henry was smoking Marlboros. She had a milk bottle and she was making yellow Kool-Aid.

  I said, “Did you find out about potato chips?”

  “Not for sure,” Lalena said.

  Lalena was making a long dandelion rope, letting it pile up into a dandelion rope pile next to her on the grass.

  People were driving their cars slow on the curvy road that went around Cheeseman Park. One man driving one of the cars leaned out of his car window while he was driving and he took a picture of all of us sitting in the circle on the grass. A pickup truck guy yelled out. Fern stopped making dandelion ropes and looked at the road.