Little Miss Strange

by Joanna Rose

  “Empty,” she said.

  My bare feet made wet bare feet prints from the door to Jimmy Henry sitting on the box. Margo came over to Jimmy Henry and took the piece of paper out of his hand.

  “What does that piece of paper say?” I said. “Does it say goodbye?”

  Margo gave it back to him.

  “Yeah,” Jimmy Henry said. “It says goodbye.”

  He folded it into a long square.

  The purple and green striped cloth was gone from the tall skinny window and the window was all foggy and wet inside. There was a lopsided heart drawn into the fog on the window, and the heart was dripping down.

  “Did she draw that heart on the window?” I said.

  Jimmy Henry didn’t say yes and he didn’t say no. He looked at the lopsided heart on the window.

  Lalena said, “Tina Blue doesn’t draw very good hearts.”

  Margo touched Jimmy Henry on his arm.

  She said to Lalena, “Come on, sweetheart. We have to go.”

  Margo and Lalena left.

  “What’s in that box?” I said, kicking at the box Jimmy Henry was sitting on.

  “Books,” he said. “Her books.”

  He stood up. Tired.

  “Let’s go have macaroni and cheese,” I said.

  I pulled on his shirt and pulled him away from the box of books. Pulled him to the door. We went out in the hallway.

  “Aren’t you going to shut the door?” I said.

  He shut the door.

  Upstairs in our apartment all the lights were on and the windows weren’t foggy. There was our stuff everywhere. Jimmy Henry went to his chair and sat down.

  “Do you want your coffee cup?” I said.

  “No,” he said. “We’ll fix macaroni and cheese.”

  I went in my bedroom. The pink of the Safeway sign was all in the parking lot because of the rain. I took Tina Blue’s ring out of my pocket and put it on the windowsill. She left it here. She left without it.

  I dumped my crayons out on the top of the dresser and I put Tina Blue’s ring inside the crayon box. The crayon box was too skinny and the ring made a bump in there. I put the crayon box in my first drawer under all my socks and underpants.

  Jimmy Henry was still sitting in his chair. Not smoking Marlboros. It was quiet all over our house except for raining outside. I opened the bottom kitchen cabinet and got out the big pot for macaroni water and put it on the counter without banging. The dishtowel drawer was the drawer to stand in to reach the macaroni and cheese box. I was standing in the dishtowel drawer when Jimmy Henry looked up out of his hair. I shook the blue and yellow macaroni and cheese box at him.

  “I can make macaroni and cheese, you know,” I said. “If you turn on the fire.”

  Jimmy Henry kind of laughed. Kind of hiccupped, kind of laughed.

  1972

  On the second day of third grade, Miss Rinaldi’s class, Lalena turned around from her seat in front of me, Hand, Henry, alphabetical, and threw up on my desk. We both got sent home, me to put on clean clothes, Lalena to be sick. A safety patrol guy named Russell from sixth grade walked with us to my house from Thompson Street Elementary. Russell wore a white safety patrol sash and he had a badge because of honor. He held onto our hands, me on one side, Lalena on the other. When we got to my house on Ogden Street, Russell took my key from my hand and he opened the front door. He put the key back in my hand.

  Lalena said, “You can just leave us both here.”

  She said, “My mother is supposed to pick me up here after her shift at the food co-op. Then she’ll take Sarajean back to school.”

  Russell left. He never said a word all the way home holding our hands, one of us on each side of him, and then he left.

  I said, “When is Margo coming to get you?”

  Lalena said, “She’s not.”

  “Oh, great,” I said. “You’re staying here at my house and I have to change my clothes because of your throw-up and go back to school by myself.”

  Lalena hopped on each stair behind me going up.

  “That guy had wet hands,” she said.

  There wasn’t very much throw-up on my clothes. I put on my baggy cutoffs and my Cripple Creek sweatshirt. Lalena sat flopped in Jimmy Henry’s chair and looked at old funnies.

  “So let’s just stay here,” she said.

  “We’ll get in trouble,” I said.

  “When Jimmy Henry gets home we’ll say how we both got sick,” she said.

  I said, “Did you throw up on purpose?”

  “Did you want to sit in Rinaldi’s class all day?” Lalena said. “You know she’s the queen bitch of homework? Daddy’s girlfriend Sasha? Sasha had Rinaldi when she was in third grade. Sasha said Rinaldi is the queen bitch of homework.”

  “Oh, great,” I said. “You want to skip school on the very second day?”

  The window that looked out between the houses was partway open and sunny. I drew my finger through the dirty dust on the glass, a straight line across the middle of the window. I drew another line down through the middle of the first line, like four windows.

  I said, “If you ever throw up on me, or on my desk, or on anything of mine, ever again, then we’re not friends anymore.”

  Lalena said, “What if I’m really sick and it’s accidental?”

  “Then it won’t be okay,” I said. “But we can still be friends.”

  It was the middle of the day, just like the middle of every day all summer, until yesterday. But in just one day that was the first day of school, it was different.

  Lalena hopped out of the chair and hopped to the refrigerator.

  “Just walk normal,” I said.

  She opened the refrigerator door and stood looking in. Cheese, bacon, leftover pea soup in the pan. Milk. I got the crackers out of the cabinet.

  Lalena said, “Let’s go to the Safeway store. You got any money?”

  “You have money,” I said. “I saw your money. You have a dollar in your pants pocket.”

  “I know,” Lalena said. “I just wanted to know do you have some too.”

  If Lalena knew how much money I had, one dollar thirty-five cents, she would add my one dollar thirty-five cents to her one dollar and say that’s how much we can finger. Lalena said fingering. I said copping.

  “So how much?” she said.

  “Dollar thirty-five cents,” I said. “But I’m probably not copping anything today.”

  Lalena figured that if we just stole however much we had money for then we could always just fake like we forgot to pay in case we got caught.

  It was hot outside. Too hot for my Cripple Creek sweatshirt, so I took off my sneakers and set them on the front porch step. I took off my socks and put one sock inside each sneaker.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Lalena said, “I’m probably getting peanut butter squares.”

  “Oh, great,” I said.

  Peanut butter squares came in a red and yellow wrapper with a drawing of a weird little girl on there. The wrappers never came off right and stuck to the candy.

  “I’ll peel them for you,” Lalena said.

  At the Safeway parking lot we walked along the edge on the little parking lot curb, so the black paving stuff wouldn’t be too hot for my feet. Lalena was good at walking on the curb. Even with her sneakers on Lalena never fell off the curb.

  The automatic Safeway doors rushed open and the Safeway smell rushed out, and the floor was cold smooth tile.

  Honey bits, fruit jellies, peanut butter squares, chocolate rolls. I picked up a pack of honey bits and looked at the wrapper. Ingredients. Address. A drawing of a smiley bee. Nothing else. Sometimes there was a special offer on the back, but it was usually something stupid like “Send Away for Fifty Baseball Cards Today Kids.”

  Lalena was looking at peanut butter squares. The chocolate rolls were next, same price, three for a nickel. I counted out fifteen chocolate rolls. We moved down the candy aisle and Lalena picked up a pack of yellow gum, which was
my favorite gum. Her favorite was green gum.

  “I’m getting this for you,” she said. “To make up for getting throw-up on you.”

  “Right on,” I said.

  “Don’t say right on,” she said.

  She moved on to the candy in little bags.

  “Butterscotch kisses,” I said.

  “Spearmints,” she said, pulling a bag of spearmints off a long hook.

  “Okay,” I said.

  We went to the checkout counter, me first. I opened my hands full of candy onto the counter and I said, “In a bag please.”

  I gave my money and got my bag full of candy, and then Lalena put her candy on the counter and she said, “In a bag please.”

  We had to say it like that so the lady wouldn’t put all our stuff in the same bag.

  Back out into the hot, along the edge of the parking lot, into the cool under the trees on Ogden Street. Lalena pulled a licorice whip and a caramel sucker out of her back pocket and put them in her bag. We walked back to my house, peeling and chewing and sucking, and went around back on the skinny sidewalk, cool and dark in there in between the houses. Past the tall skinny window that looked into painted green and purple inside. To the backyard. The sumac tree was bright red and only tall purple flowers were left in the grass, little fringy flowers on tall stalks poking up, looking like stickers but not. We both lay down in the grass and weeds by the ivy tub next to the sumac tree. With my eyes closed it was birds far away, and peanut butter.

  Boys’ voices were out front, and feet ran in between the houses on the skinny sidewalk. I opened my eyes and looked straight up at jagged red leaves and blue with clouds and purple flowers leaning over me. Whispering, boys whispering on the back porch of the two back doors of the two empty apartments. A window opened. A window shut. Quiet.

  “They went inside,” Lalena said, whispering in the grass next to me, peanut butter smell.

  I said, “They’re going to get in trouble.”

  “They went in that window with the newspaper,” Lalena said.

  I said, “Sh.”

  Lalena said, “Come on.”

  She went on her knees in the grass holding her bag of candy in her teeth. She crawled through the grass to the skinny sidewalk and then popped up onto her feet around the corner there. I crunched up my bag to put it in my pocket. Noisy paper. Then I crawled through the grass too, to the skinny sidewalk, and stood up in the damp cool cement air, out of the hot dust and buzz of the backyard, out of sight of the back porch. I leaned close to the edge of the house. No boy voices. I peeked. Empty backyard, flat porch along the house.

  “Come on,” Lalena whispered.

  Back out front, my sneakers were still on the top step. The sun was shining right into the old refrigerator box under the boarded window.

  “They’re right in there,” I whispered.

  We went and sat next to each other, cross-legged in the box.

  Lalena said, “What are you going to do when they come out?”

  “They’ll probably go out the alley,” I said.

  “What if they come out the front door?” she said.

  “Nope,” I said. “That hallway door doesn’t open. Locks with a big lock.”

  It was quiet and sunny in the box, listening.

  “What do they do in there?” Lalena said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Get high. Leave stuff laying around. Jimmy Henry has to go in there and clean it up sometimes.”

  “Do they smoke grass?” Lalena said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I never went in there. I saw in the back door once is all. It’s dirty in there. I hate it when those boys go in there.”

  Lalena said, “Sh.”

  She crawled out of the box and her feet went to the front door. I held my breath for a minute and got out and went to the front door behind her. Inside I stood with my back against the door, the doorknob in my hands behind me, not letting any door noises happen. The hallway was dark but our door at the top of the stairs was open and light from up there made white stripes through the railing onto the wall of the stairway. The stripes of light stopped halfway down. We were down at the bottom in the dark.

  Lalena went to the first black door and got down on her knees and looked under the door. Then she got up and snuck back over to me and we went out again, into the refrigerator box.

  “Well,” I said. “What did you see?”

  “I saw a guy’s feet is all,” she said. “Black hightops.”

  Lalena and I loved black hightops.

  I said, “Just one guy’s feet?”

  Lalena said, “Just one guy’s feet. No talking.”

  After a while she said, “What do we do now?”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “About those guys in there?” she said.

  “Nothing,” I said. “They just go away.”

  “When?” she said. “How long do they stay in there?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Those boys in there. Being home on a school day. Miss Rinaldi for third grade, queen bitch of homework. Giving me a bad mood.

  “Let’s go over to Seventeenth Avenue,” I said.

  “Let’s wait,” Lalena said.

  I went and sat on the top step. I put my sneakers on without my socks. Blue sneakers. The next sneakers I got were going to be black hightops.

  A window slammed out back. Then it was quiet.

  “See,” I said. “They’re gone.”

  I tied my shoelaces and untied them. I wiggled my finger down to a chocolate roll in the bag in my pocket. Lalena got a peanut butter square out of her bag.

  She said, “Well?”

  “Well what?” I said.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go over to Seventeenth Avenue.”

  I tied my sneakers.

  “Don’t want to?” she said.

  I untied them.

  “Good,” she said. “I have a better idea.”

  She picked up her bag of candy and hopped on both feet down the porch stairs and went around back. I followed. My shoelaces stayed on okay, untied, and the little end things made a little clicky sound, clicking around untied.

  Lalena went across the back porch to the newspaper window. I stopped at the corner of the house at the end of the skinny sidewalk.

  “Nope,” I said.

  Lalena looked around the backyard. The ivy tub. The sumac tree. Garage. She walked over to where the trash cans were lined up at the side of the garage.

  “I’m going out front,” I said.

  Lalena took one of the trash cans by the metal handle on the side and she dragged. The trash can scraped on the gravel and through the weeds. She stopped at the porch.

  “Come here,” she said.

  “Nope,” I said. “I’m going back out front.”

  “Help me get this onto the porch,” she said.

  “I hate those trash cans,” I said. “They stink.”

  “Please,” Lalena said.

  Lalena hated to say please. She said it like it was a secret.

  I went and took the trash can by its other metal handle and we lifted it onto the porch. Lalena bumped the trash can across the warpy wood to the newspaper window. She climbed up, on top of the trash can, got to her knees and stood up, holding her arms out like a tightrope walker. She looked close at the newspaper window. She looked into each corner.

  “I’m going out front,” I said.

  Lalena poked at each corner of the window. She pushed at the top half of the window, and when she pushed there, the top half slid down and banged. It was the way in. The bottom half was stuck. The top half came down. Opposite of how it was supposed to be. She looked in there.

  “Yuk,” she said. Her voice came from inside.

  She climbed onto the windowsill and then she went through the top half of the window, one leg at a time.

  “Come on,” she said.

  I said, “I’m going back out front.”

  Lalena jumped
down from the window. Disappeared behind the newspaper. I heard her feet land on the floor.

  “Come on,” she said from inside.

  The trash can sat there, dirty, dented, stinky. It wobbled when I climbed on. The windowsill was splintery. I walked my hands up the peeling paint sides of the window to standing and I looked in at Lalena through the open top half. She stood in a square of light, looking up at me.

  “Come on,” she said, “Climb over.”

  It was one room. No other window except the boarded-up one. A kitchen counter stuck out in the middle of the room, but no stove or refrigerator. Everything was brown except for red corn chip bags all over the floor, all one big linoleum kitchen floor, and across the middle of all the linoleum was a long black crack with the edges curling up. Everywhere was dark with dust.

  Bits came sprinkling down on me, paint bits, dirt bits, probably spiders, me climbing through, and a long splinter stabbed out at me, stabbing me in my leg, and when it stabbed I had to jump down into the square of light. I landed on my butt and started to cry. I pulled up the baggy edge of my cutoffs and looked at the stab and round red drops of my blood dripped on the linoleum.

  Lalena got down in front of me.

  She said, “Does it hurt?”

  “I didn’t even want to come in here,” I said. Not crying.

  It didn’t hurt too much. It was up above where my leg was tan from summer, where my leg was white, by my underpants.

  I wiped at the blood with the sleeve of my sweatshirt and I stood up, holding my sleeve against the stab so it wouldn’t bleed on my leg. I didn’t want any more of my blood to get on the floor. I wanted to wipe up the round red drops of my blood on the floor, it was too shiny and red to be on that floor. And I wanted to pee.

  “Can we go now please?” I said.

  Lalena said, “Can we come back?”

  “We can’t even get out,” I said.

  There was no trash can inside. Lalena looked all around, walls, ceiling, me. My blood on the floor.

  “Quit crying,” she said. “It’s alright.”

  “It is not alright,” I said. “We have to get out and I’m bleeding. You call that alright?”

  Lalena walked around the room. She stopped at the kitchen counter and she pulled out one of the drawers, all the way out. She brought the drawer over and stood it on its end under the window. I went first, Lalena kneeling, holding the drawer straight up. The splinter in the window stuck out, long and sharp, old wood with no paint color, except at the very point that was red and wet. I snapped the splinter off and threw it out the window and I climbed out onto the trash can. Then Lalena came out. She turned and pushed the top half of the window back up. It slid back down.