Little Miss Strange

by Joanna Rose

  “Yeah,” he said. “Well, she had to go away.”

  “You mean like up in the mountains?” I said. “Or away like to California?”

  “Nobody knows,” he said. “She just went away.”

  After a while he got up off my bed and went in the kitchen and ate the rest of his sandwich while he made coffee. He made us both coffee with sugar.

  I SAID to Lalena. “I had a mother who had to go away.”

  “Oh, yeah?” she said. “What’s her name?”

  “Nobody knows,” I said. “She just had to go away.”

  LALENA’S NEW house on Seventeenth Avenue was tall and pointy on top, three stories high. There were five apartments in the whole house, and Lalena’s new apartment was up in the pointy part. The ceilings in Lalena’s room were slanty to the floor, and there was a little window down low, where the wall was a triangle between the slanty ceilings. Way down out the window was Seventeenth Avenue.

  The stairway going up and down to all the apartments was splintery wood and saggy in the middle of each step, and squeaky on each step, like slow breaking.

  There were two apartments on the second floor. One door was old wood, and the other door across from it was painted shiny yellow, with knobs and buttons and lights painted on like a cartoon. There were two other apartments on the bottom floor, by the street door, plain wooden-door apartments, and then outside was four cement steps down and Seventeenth Avenue.

  Lalena sat on the top of the four steps, and I sat next to her, in the sun. It was cold, cold in the air and cold in the cement, cold except where my leg in my blue jeans touched her leg in her blue jeans.

  A hippie Mexican guy and a regular hippie guy walked by us on the sidewalk and didn’t look at us, just walking. A regular lady walked by and said hi. A guy and a hippie girl went on the other side of the street. The hippie girl had a big pregnant stomach.

  Lalena said, “That’s what old Sasha will look like pretty soon.”

  “Fat as that?” I said.

  “Yup,” she said.

  “And then you’ll have another brother, or maybe a sister?” I said.

  “Yup,” Lalena said.

  “And then all three plus you get to live here?” I said.

  “Yup,” Lalena said.

  “Quit saying yup,” I said. “Do you hope it’s a sister?”

  “Nope,” she said.

  “You want another brother?” I said.

  “Nope,” she said.

  She looked away past me on Seventeenth Avenue, and then her daddy came up, walking big on the sidewalk, big hiking boots and a big army coat that was open to his T-shirt on his stomach. Lalena’s daddy had big hair too, hair that stuck up on his head, and big eyebrows. When he got to in front of the steps he stood there, standing on his feet far apart, holding a Safeway bag.

  He said, “Sasha up there?”

  Lalena said, “Yup.”

  He came up the four steps and sat on the other side of Lalena. He got an apple out of the Safeway bag. Lalena looked straight ahead, across Seventeenth Avenue.

  He said, “Want an apple?”

  Lalena said, “Nope.”

  He leaned out and looked at me, polishing the apple on the shirt of his stomach.

  “Apple?” he said.

  “Nope,” I said.

  He got up again.

  He said, “Sasha in a good mood?”

  Lalena said, “Don’t know.”

  He went in the front door and his feet went up inside the stairs.

  After a while my butt got too cold to stay sitting and I got up.

  “Let’s go somewhere,” I said.

  Lalena jumped off the top step, all the way down four steps, landing easy on the sidewalk. I went down each step.

  People walked on the sidewalk slow, walking like summer, looking in windows, standing around. Lalena’s new house was on the block between Logan Street and Grant Street. Right next to Lalena’s house there was a store of just beer and pop and bottles of wine and maybe gum. There was a telephone in there too, and the store was open all the time. The sign said BILL’S and PEPSI and OPEN ALL THE TIME.

  After Bill’s Pepsi store was Uncle Sam’s Attic. Uncle Sam’s Attic was all army stuff, like my army coat, and a row of boots going across under the front window, boots like Fern’s boots. The guy in there had a long beard all the way down on his shirt. There were a bunch of guys in there, and the beard guy always sat behind the counter and talked to them. All the guys had army coats.

  I said, “Do you think that guy is Uncle Sam?”

  “Uncle Sam is just a guy in old school books,” Lalena said.

  She said, “Your army coat is best, because of that patch.”

  “That guy has a lightning patch,” I said. It was a jagged lightning streak on a red and blue patch.

  The next place just had boards on the front, and spray paint on the boards of peace symbols and PEACE and FUCK. Even the door was boards across.

  Lalena said, “If you could write on here, like if you had some spray paint right now, what would you write?”

  I looked at all the stuff that was already on there. There was a good drawing of President Nixon, only his head, with a big X on it.

  Lalena said, “Sasha sucks dick.”

  “You would write that on there?” I said.

  “You’d probably write ‘Sarajean loves Jimmy Henry,’” she said.

  “No,” I said. “If I had a boyfriend, I think it would be Peter Pan.”

  “Peter Pan?” Lalena said. “You mean like in the story Peter Pan?”

  One design was a peace symbol all colored in to look like planet Earth.

  “He could fly,” I said. “Plus he didn’t have a mother.”

  “He couldn’t really fly,” Lalena said.

  “Well, in the story then,” I said.

  She said, “You’d have a boyfriend that was just in a story?”

  “Just shut up,” I said.

  After the boarded-up part there was a way back to the alley, a brick sidewalk with holes from bricks gone and trash and trash cans all lined up, and the backs of the buildings on Sixteenth Avenue.

  Lalena went back on the brick sidewalk.

  The alley was crooked bricks all oil black and the backs of all the buildings. Little metal stairs went up five steps to a metal door. Lalena went up there, and each step bonged like music. She climbed onto the metal railing and sat there, her arms folded across her chest. Her feet bonged on the metal railing. On the Logan Street end of the alley a car went by and besides that there was just us.

  Lalena said, “Perfect.”

  She said, “Let’s get some cigarettes and come here. Every Saturday.”

  I said, “Oh, great.”

  THE NEXT Saturday we walked past Uncle Sam’s Attic and a guy said, “Hey.”

  A hippie guy.

  He said, “Where’d you get that coat, kid?”

  He said, “Where’d you get the First Cav patch, kid?”

  “It’s her dad’s coat,” Lalena said.

  “Who’s your dad?” the hippie guy said.

  Lalena said, “Jimmy Henry, so fuck you.”

  Then she took off running up Seventeenth Avenue, and I ran after her, running hard on the sidewalk, across Logan Street without looking, and the next block and the next, all the way to Someone’s Beloved Threads, and we ran inside.

  I said, “Why did you say fuck you to that guy?”

  I couldn’t breathe from running. Lalena looked out through the clothes hanging across the window.

  Constanzia was behind the counter by her sewing machine.

  She said, “Mis angelitas.” Little angels.

  “Hi,” I said. “Lalena lives here now. Sometimes. Three blocks away, down there.”

  Lalena was still watching out the window.

  Someone’s Beloved Threads always smelled a certain way, like I couldn’t remember something. It was all clothes hanging across, colors of clothes all mixed in together, hanging long an
d beautiful, my hands were always in the hanging stuff.

  Constanzia standing up behind the counter was not much taller than Constanzia sitting at her sewing machine. She was not very tall or very big, not much taller than Lalena, and Lalena not much taller than me. Constanzia had long black with gray hair that she braided, sometimes in two braids, sometimes one long braid. One long braid today.

  “Can we braid my hair like your hair,” I said.

  Sometimes she braided my hair. Not Lalena’s. Nobody was allowed to touch Lalena’s hair, except her daddy was allowed to get out the snarls.

  Constanzia said, “I have something especially beautiful. This is not good for anything except to be especially beautiful.”

  Along the back wall was stuff in boxes and clothes hanging. Constanzia’s Mexico sandals, even in winter, on her feet in socks, going sh sh sh, she went into a dark corner and pulled a box from under there. She dumped the box over on its side and it was all silky heavy piles of thready old window curtains. The stuff was shiny gray and darker designs of leaves or something swirling in the threads. I pulled out a big piece and wrapped it around me. Parts hung in shreds.

  “Beautiful,” I said.

  Lalena turned from the window.

  She said, “What?”

  “Look,” I said. “Especially beautiful stuff.”

  We got all wound and wrapped up in the curtains. It was dusty in the air under the lightbulb in the ceiling.

  Lalena said, “Superman.”

  I said, “Princess Tiger Lily.”

  We piled all the curtains in the corner and wrapped up in the pile until we were hidden. Being under there got hot. I got out of the pile. Lalena opened up a peeking hole.

  She said, “Where are you going?”

  “It’s hot,” I said.

  I put my army coat on the floor and kicked off my sneakers and I dug back into the pile, all the silky curtains on my bare T-shirt arms. Lalena wiggled and wiggled and her arm reached out and threw her coat on the floor. Her arm reached out again and threw her blue jeans by her coat.

  I said, “Are you in just your underpants?”

  She wiggled her hand through to my arm. The door of the shop opened and banged shut, and I didn’t move or breathe until it was Mexican talking, Erico, Constanzia’s grown-up boy.

  “It’s just Erico,” I said in a whisper.

  Erico’s feet went around the store, not all the way to our corner, talking Mexican to Constanzia. He said madre. Mother. Erico was telling his mother a story, her not talking back to him, just Erico’s nice Mexican voice, and Constanzia laughed.

  Lalena’s hand was on my bare skin with her fingers almost tickling the inside of my elbow. She was rocking easy, just a little bit, in all the curtain stuff.

  RIGHT ACROSS from Lalena’s house was the Lair Lounge. We sat on the step of the Lair Lounge looking across at Lalena’s house. Lalena’s window was way up. The window right under Lalena’s window had colored lights.

  “Who lives there?” I said. “Where those colored lights are?”

  “Never saw anybody yet,” Lalena said. “They play their records all the time.”

  Then it was Lady Jane, in the window of the colored lights.

  “Lady Jane,” I said.

  Lalena said, “What?”

  “From Free School,” I said. “Lady Jane. In that window.”

  Lalena said, “Lady Jane?”

  I waved my arm. Lady Jane went away inside the window.

  Lalena said, “I remember her. Lady Jane? That was her name?”

  “Usually,” I said.

  The street door opened and Lady Jane came out. I waved again and she called hey and then she ran across the street, her long straight blond hair blowing.

  I said, “Hi.”

  Lady Jane was already talking, so I waited until she wasn’t and then I said, “Lalena’s new house is up there now.”

  “Sometimes,” Lalena said. “My new house sometimes.”

  I said, “Is your name still Lady Jane?”

  “Usually,” she said. “So what’s up with Jimmy Henry?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “You still live there?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “On Ogden Street.”

  “And Sammy is Sasha’s old man now?” she said.

  “Yup,” Lalena said. “Sasha’s going to have a baby.”

  Lady Jane said, “Far out.”

  Lalena said, “If I live there sometimes then we all get food stamps.”

  “Far out,” Lady Jane said. “Bread not bombs.”

  Lalena said, “Right on.”

  “Well, I have to go to work,” Lady Jane said.

  She walked away up the sidewalk.

  Lalena said, “What a weirdo.”

  I said, “You said right on.”

  “Come on,” she said.

  I HELD my cigarette between my two fingers, my first and second finger, my fingers sticking out straight. I touched the burning end to the frayed bottom of my blue jeans, one thread, and a tiny bit of orange burned up the thread.

  “Jimmy Henry knows,” Lalena said.

  “Knows what?” I said.

  She blew cigarette smoke out her nose.

  She said, “He knows your mother’s name.”

  “He said nobody knows,” I said. “He said she just had to go away.”

  Lalena said, “Right. He was balling her, and they had you, and he didn’t even know her name? Like he didn’t even know his own girlfriend’s name?”

  “You think you always know everything,” I said.

  “Did you ask him what her actual name was?” she said.

  “He said nobody knows,” I said. “He said she just had to go away.”

  “Yeah, well, that doesn’t make sense,” she said. “I bet she died and he just doesn’t want to tell you.”

  I said, “You always think you know everything.”

  “You’re not even smoking that cigarette,” she said. “Look, do like this.”

  She smooched out her lips and touched them to the filter part of her cigarette. Lalena had freckles even on her lips.

  “Do it,” she said.

  I stood my cigarette up on its end on the metal railing and it stood there smoking, the smoke curling up. In the sunlight I could barely see the orange of where the fire was. Lalena tapped her foot on the railing and my cigarette fell through the metal stairs to the alley bricks, still smoking up at us.

  “So,” she said. “You should just ask him her name.”

  “You have freckles on your lips,” I said.

  “I do not,” she said.

  LALENA’S NEW house went door, kitchen, front room, bedroom, then Lalena’s little room, all in a row. The bathroom was off to the side of the kitchen, looking out over the alley.

  Sasha said, “It used to be a sunporch.”

  Lalena’s new bathroom was the best room. It was pink, and a long bathtub on animal feet was under the windows. The light in the ceiling was pink too, Sasha had climbed up on the toilet and changed the regular light-bulb to a pink lightbulb. If it was dark outside, with no light from the windows, the pink light made the bathroom quiet and far away from even the kitchen. The dark pink light made my eyes in the mirror someone else’s eyes, and I stared at my own face until my stomach jumped.

  We had been out in the alley. We liked to sit on the metal stairs until it was completely dark and then not move or say a sound. It was like being invisible. It got really cold being invisible.

  Sasha looked at Lalena’s bright red fingers, because of Lalena hating mittens. She looked at me.

  “You guys are nuts,” she said. “Aren’t you freezing? Here, take a bath. Then I’ll fix you some dinner.”

  She turned on the pink light and she turned on the bathwater and the hot water came up in clouds. Sasha poured bubbles out of a tall bottle, and the smell was wet leaves and old flowers. She went back in the kitchen and Lalena shut the door.

  “She’s so nosy,” she sa
id.

  She took off her shirt and started to take off her pants and she said, “Don’t look.”

  Lalena got down in all the bubbles right away. I got in one toe, whole foot, other toe, other foot, knees, and then my butt, real slow. The water was hot, the best way of bathwater, so hot I couldn’t do it all at once, and goosebumps like cold wooshed on my stomach and arms.

  The music from the record player was a woman singing high, like a sad song, and the close-by clunk of Sasha’s boots in the kitchen. Sasha sang all the words to all the sad songs.

  Lalena yelled out, “Do you always have to sing?”

  Sasha kept singing. Not very loud.

  Late at night I woke up a little bit. The light was on in the front room on the other side of the big bedroom. The light went dark and I closed my eyes back into the pillow. I dreamed that Lalena’s daddy came and carried Lalena away in his arms like she was a princess in a pink light castle.

  ON SATURDAYS and Sundays I stayed in bed a little while, deciding on an outfit. My new best outfit was swishy red bellbottoms and a long white Mexican blouse that used to be Margo’s.

  The blouse went down to the knees of the red bellbottoms, and the sleeves went down to the knees too. There was elastic in the cuffs and I pushed the elastic up over my elbows so that each sleeve went down just as far as it was supposed to.

  I opened my window for a while, leaning out. Cold and sun. I put on my army coat and went out into the kitchen. The refrigerator had milk, and old carrots, and a bowl with chicken noodle soup from last weekend. Mustard and ketchup and an empty mayonnaise jar. There were potato chips in the cabinet, and I took them into the front room.

  It was dark in the front room. A long piece of blue cloth with designs of India was hung up across the windows. The blanket on the couch was curled up into a nest and Jimmy Henry’s big white socks were on the floor. They went all the way up to my knees when I put them on. Jimmy Henry’s door was closed and the India cloth made everything dark blue, Jimmy Henry’s white socks, even the potato chips looked blue. I folded the top of the potato chip bag down as far as the rest of the potato chips and put it in my coat pocket. My sneakers were under the applebox table. I carried them down the stairs and sat on the top step to put them on.

  The only store open on Seventeenth Avenue was Bill’s Open All the Time Pepsi Store.

  Five buttons went in a row at the side of Lalena’s front door. I pushed the top button. The stairs inside stayed quiet. Sometimes the buzzer didn’t work. I sat down on the step and took out my potato chips. No one came and no one came and then it was Lady Jane, on the sidewalk in front of me, in the sun that was all on her hair.