Little Miss Strange

by Joanna Rose

  Jimmy Henry sat up, rubbing his face. His hair was all tangled. I put my hands in fists in my pocket.

  Jimmy Henry said, “Home so soon, baby?”

  “Junkies were here,” I said.

  He stood up, and I didn’t look in there at him.

  He said, “Huh?”

  “Junkies,” I said louder.

  He came in by me, behind me.

  He said “Shit,” and he picked up the yellow balloon, his arm reaching past me. Red sores on the white inside of his elbow.

  “You shouldn’t say that, Sarajean,” he said.

  “Why?” I said. “What is it?”

  “Damn it,” he said, like whispering, like crying, and he went in his room.

  “HE SAID those guys wouldn’t come over anymore but they do,” I said.

  “Liars,” Lalena said. “All junkies are liars. That’s what Margo says.”

  “They lie about shooting needles?” I said.

  “Everything,” Lalena said. “Margo says they lie about everything. Remember when he wouldn’t say about your mother’s name? Liars.”

  She said, “It doesn’t matter.”

  SASHA HAD her baby in the summer, a girl baby named Dylan Marie. Dylan Marie was always sleeping in her baby bed. When she wasn’t sleeping her eyes kind of rolled around. She smelled nice like baby powder and bad like diapers.

  Lalena said, “She stinks all the time.”

  Sasha sat next to Dylan Marie’s baby bed and watched Dylan Marie sleep. She would touch Dylan Marie on her round head where there was soft fuzz. Sometimes Sasha just leaned her head on the baby bed railing.

  She would say, “You girls go on outside and play.”

  Sasha sang her sad songs quiet now, just to Dylan Marie.

  MOSTLY WE stayed outside on Seventeenth Avenue. It was hot and people hanging around and people in windows and music. It was best just sitting on the front steps.

  We got a box of broken colored chalk from some people moving out and we drew the front steps in paisley. It took all day on a hot day. We paisleyed all the sides and the fronts and all the flat parts of the steps, big flat paisleys that went from one step down to the next and over the edge onto the sidewalk. Lalena drew the paisleys. I filled them in. By the end of the day there were colored chalk footprints going in and out and away on the sidewalk, and a guy took a picture of the steps, all paisley.

  LATE, OUT on the steps, the sky would get dark orange. Later the sky got black and Lalena had to go inside, or sometimes Margo came, and her and Lalena walked back to their Corona Street house. Sometimes I stayed all night with her. Sometimes I walked home by myself.

  The long sidewalks along the streets were different sidewalks at night, the trees leafy in the wind, and shadows of leaves blowing on the sidewalks under the streetlights. People were inside their windows in the light or there was the jumping blue light of television.

  The Safeway corner was all lit up, and I walked along the edge under the trees, looking at my front porch. Sometimes Jimmy Henry would be sitting there, and I could see the orange dot of his cigarette in the dark. The only part of him that moved was the white arm that held the cigarette up, or sent it flying into the street and land in a splash of sparks.

  “Junkie,” I would whisper. “Liar.”

  Sometimes he sat there until the parking lot lights went out, late. When he went in, and then the lights in the front windows upstairs went dark, I went in too.

  1973

  Cross-stitch, running stitch, chain stitch, French knot, lazy daisy, satin stitch. Constanzia taught me embroidery. Round hoops fit one inside the other, catching the cloth straight and tight. The embroidery thread popped through the tight cloth behind the needle, three strands of embroidery thread pulled apart from six strands that came gathered in a skein instead of on a spool, a skein held together with a gold paper band that said sky blue number sixty-eight or rose red number twenty-two.

  On the cement floor, next to the sewing machine table, all the colors of skeins in a box next to me, I sat and made long designs and round designs and flower designs and leaves. My butt got cold and my fingertips got sore and pink and I was invisible when people came in to buy or sell their stuff. Constanzia got up and stood at the counter, her long skirt down next to me, her Mexican sandals next to me, and she talked to people like I wasn’t there at all.

  After school late afternoon was best, long quiet times of no people. Constanzia sang the words to Mexican songs that went along under her sewing machine. Lightbulbs in the ceiling made spots of light around, lighting up hanging colors of clothes.

  I said, “Can I live here with you?”

  Constanzia said, “What about your poor sad papa?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Not him,” I said. “Just me.”

  She didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no.

  When it got all the way dark outside, and it was time to turn around the sign that said CLOSED inside and OPEN outside, so that it said OPEN inside and CLOSED outside, I put on my army coat and I said, “Buenas noches.” Good night.

  I walked down Seventeenth Avenue to Lalena’s house. The windows there were all dark, Lalena’s window and Lady Jane’s window, no lights. The door of the Lair Lounge opened across the street and music came out for a second, then the door closed and the music went back inside. Lights on in the houses and stores up the street and down the street made yellow squares on the sidewalk.

  There were people inside Bill’s Open All the Time Pepsi Store, a guy talking on the phone inside the phone booth in there. The guy in the phone booth talked and laughed and talked. When he was all done talking he came out of the phone booth door and out to the sidewalk, and he went away up Seventeenth Avenue whistling a song. And then Lalena came past the guy walking away.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Are you going home?” I said.

  “Home where?” she said.

  I said, “I don’t know.”

  She said, “Well, there’s no one home at Corona Street.”

  “Here neither,” I said.

  Lalena said, “Good.”

  I said, “So where do you want to go?”

  She said, “I don’t care.”

  We walked along the sidewalk, walking in and out of the squares of light. Together Books was open, all the lights on, and a kind of bald on top guy with a bushy black beard was reading to a bunch of people sitting on the floor. I looked through the O of TOGETHER.

  “Lalena.”

  Lalena’s stepbrother John stood there with his coat unbuttoned, breathing from running.

  “Look,” John said. “I got to find your dad.”

  “Not home,” Lalena said.

  John said, “Margo’s busted.”

  “Wow,” Lalena said. “Busted?”

  “Look,” John said. “You guys go over Sarajean’s house. Stay there. I’ll find out what’s going on.”

  Lalena said, “I’ll just stay here and wait for Daddy.”

  John said, “What if they’re busted too? Just do like I say, okay?”

  He turned around back up Seventeenth Avenue.

  “Wow,” Lalena said. “I wonder if they took her away in a cop car and a siren?”

  “Wow,” she said. “Fuck.”

  When we got to my house, when we got inside the front door from the porch, Lalena looked at the door to the painted apartment.

  She said, “Let’s go in there.”

  “I don’t have a key,” I said. Liar.

  Jimmy Henry wasn’t home. I turned on lights in the front room, in the kitchen, in my bedroom, almost all the lights. Lalena sat on the couch with her coat on.

  “Well?” I said.

  She stared at the top of the window.

  I said, “Want a baloney sandwich?”

  Lalena kept staring at the top of the window, like there was something there, which there wasn’t.

  I said, “Want something else?”

  She didn’t say yes and she didn’t say
no. I went in the kitchen and got out baloney sandwich stuff, mayonnaise and bread. Lalena came in by me.

  She said, “What if they make me go to Juvie?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “That’s for kids that get busted. Not for kids when their moms get busted. I don’t think.”

  Lalena stood next to me, me making baloney sandwiches, her watching the top of the cabinet door, like there was something there, which there wasn’t.

  I said, “You’re just staring at stuff. It’s kind of weird. It’s kind of creepy.”

  She said, “I wonder how long I’m supposed to wait.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Want this baloney sandwich?”

  “Does it have pickles?” she said.

  “No,” I said. “Baloney and mayonnaise is all.”

  She pulled her baloney out and licked the mayonnaise off. She put the baloney back between the breads and took a bite. She didn’t chew.

  She said, “What if Jimmy Henry’s busted too?”

  I said, “No.”

  Then she chewed.

  Jimmy Henry’s bedroom door was shut, like his bedroom door was always shut. I opened it, into the dark. Light from the streetlights came in at the top of the curtains, lighting up the ceiling. Lalena followed me in there, into the smell of laundry, old laundry, old cigarettes. She turned on the light switch. The stuff messy on the dresser top was nickels and pennies, a coffee cup, a hairbrush, a cigarette pack twisted into a bow, a brown envelope printed with blue letters in the corner, “Veterans Administration.”

  Lalena pulled open the first drawer. Tangled-up white socks and thick red winter socks. The second drawer was different colors of T-shirts piled in there. The third drawer was a pair of brown corduroy pants folded up at the knees. I had never seen Jimmy Henry wear brown corduroy pants.

  “Come on,” I said. “Jimmy Henry’s not busted. He’s just not here.”

  Lalena pulled a white envelope out from under the brown corduroy pants. It said “Jimmy Henry” on the front in thin, loopy letters.

  “Come on,” I said. “Leave that stuff alone.”

  The bottom drawer was just Jimmy Henry’s green zipper army bag, all flat and empty.

  I hit the light switch on my way out the door, making the room dark behind me, and went back in the kitchen, sat in the bench, picked up my baloney sandwich. Lalena sat across from me. She had the envelope, from under the brown corduroy pants, from the third drawer.

  The front door opened, and I took the envelope and stuck it under my butt.

  “God damn it,” I said.

  Jimmy Henry came into the kitchen.

  I said, “Lalena has to stay here. Margo’s busted.”

  Jimmy Henry kind of looked at the counter, like he was thinking about having a baloney sandwich.

  “I know,” he said.

  I said, “She has to stay here. In case of Sasha and her daddy being busted too.”

  He picked up the mayonnaise jar, like he was reading where it said mayonnaise.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “They didn’t get busted.”

  Lalena said, “As long as I don’t have to go to Juvie.”

  Jimmy Henry said, “Well, everything will be okay.”

  He put the mayonnaise jar back down on the counter. Then he went in his bedroom and shut his bedroom door.

  I pulled the envelope out from under my butt.

  “What did you take this for?” I said.

  “What’s in there?” Lalena said.

  “Probably none of your fucking beeswax,” I said.

  Lalena followed me in my bedroom.

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

  “You never get in trouble,” she said. “Just open it.”

  It was a piece of paper folded up. Scribbly, looping writing like on the envelope, old, almost invisible writing.

  Take care of my daughter now, Sergeant James Henry. Call her Sarajean Henry and teach her to fly.

  Christine Jeanette Blumenthal

  “Christine Jeanette Blumenthal,” I read the names.

  Lalena said, “See, I told you he knew her name.”

  She said, “Blumenthal. What a weird name. I never heard of anyone named Blumenthal.”

  She said, “Teach her to fly, what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just shut up,” I said.

  Loopy letters.

  My daughter.

  I said, “What should we do now?”

  “Nothing,” Lalena said. “We just wait and see what happens to me is all.”

  The paper fell back into its three folds. I put it back inside the envelope. My mother’s writing on the outside of the envelope.

  “Are you going to sneak it back in his drawer?” Lalena said.

  “No,” I said. “No.”

  Christine Jeanette Blumenthal. Sergeant James Henry. My daughter.

  LALENA’S DADDY came over the next day, Saturday morning.

  “Stupid bitch,” he said. “Fucking potheads.”

  He said it a bunch of times, and then him and Lalena left. I watched them walk away, past the Safeway. Jimmy Henry made coffee, the smell coming into my bedroom.

  He said, “Want some breakfast?”

  I said, “No.”

  My breathing fogged up the window. I wrote NO on the window with my finger, and the NO and the little cloud of fog faded away. I breathed on the window again, and I wrote LIAR, and then the cloud and the letters faded away. I shut my bedroom door and took out the envelope, took out the piece of paper. “Christine Jeanette Blumenthal.” “Sarajean.” “Sergeant James Henry.” Written-out words, three people that were me and Jimmy Henry and my mother. My mother. My mother.

  ON THE way home from school I cut through the alley, along the boarded-up garage doors, three in a row, the Dumpster painted with spray paint FUCK YOU and STOP THE WAR, the high metal fence of ripply metal with dark streaks of rust, into my yard.

  The sumac tree was fall orange and yellow, and dark maroon seed things sticking up. The asters were done, just straggly stalks leaning, but there were dandelions around the ivy tub, dandelions still blooming tall and yellow, the ivy dying back. I set my books on the ivy tub and I sat down, leaning, the splintery curvy side through my sweatshirt. I picked one long dandelion and looked close into the tall yellow of it. I worked my thumbnail through the stem, stem juice like white glue all under my thumbnail. I picked another dandelion and stuck its stem through the hole in the stem of the first dandelion. Again. Again. It was a long dandelion rope soon, and I got up out of the grass, to maybe loop the dandelion rope around the edge of the ivy tub, or maybe hang it in the sumac tree. But the door was open.

  The door into the dirty apartment with the old newspaper covering the window. The door was open just a crack.

  Looking at the door, I laid the dandelion rope down careful, left my books sitting on the edge of the ivy tub, and I walked through the tall grass, stepped on the wooden porch quiet. I pushed the door open with my fingers, and it squeaked, and it opened, into dark yellow light inside.

  A long-haired boy in a jean jacket sat on the counter that stuck out into the middle of the room.

  He said, “Sergeant Henry’s little pet kid.”

  I stepped inside the door. He was a Mexican boy, Mexican-colored skin. Black hightops.

  “Get tired with making daisy chains?” he said.

  “Dandelion ropes,” I said.

  He took a pack of Kools out of the top pocket of his jean jacket, and he shook one Kool up from the rest and took it between his lips so that it dangled there, like about to fall out of his mouth. He took out a little box of matches, same pocket, wooden stick matches that rattled inside the little box. He lit a match, holding the match inside his hand, so that it looked like a secret, looked hard to do, made his Mexican skin bright for a second. His eyelashes were long, like a girl’s. He puffed the cigarette into being lit, and then he flipped the match, in a high swoop, across the room. It landed on the linoleum
with a tiny smoke. He looked at me, through a cloud of cigarette smoke, and he squinted one eye at me over the dangly cigarette in his mouth, and he said, “Want one?”

  “What?” I said. “A cigarette?”

  “No,” he said. “A match. What do you think?”

  “No,” I said. “Why would I want a match?”

  He lit another match, holding the cigarette in his teeth, lighting the match behind his hand, flipping the match, still lit, across the room. The match went out when it hit the wall, leaving a little tail of smoke, where it hit the wall, and he watched me watch it.

  I said, “How old are you?”

  He looked about as old as me.

  I said, “You always come in here.”

  He looked around the room, not at me.

  I said, “Why are you here?”

  He said, “Why are you?”

  I said, “I live upstairs.”

  “Then what are you doing down here?” he said.

  I said, “You’re not allowed in here, you know.”

  He put his hands in the pockets of his jean jacket, smoking with just his face.

  I said, “What’s your name?”

  He pulled his legs to underneath him so he was sitting cross-legged on the counter, all in a cloud of cigarette smoke.

  I said, “Why do you come in here? It’s dirty.”

  The boy was kind of smiling, or else cigarette smoke was getting in his eyes and looking like smiling.

  I said, “You know who you look like? The Cheshire Cat. You remind me of the Cheshire Cat.”

  I said, “How long are you going to stay here?”

  The boy said, “Where’s the old man?”

  I said, “What old man?”

  “What old man you think?” he said. “Sergeant Henry.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I don’t know. I just got home. He’s not usually home yet. How come you say ‘sergeant’?”

  The boy took his hands out of his pockets, and he took his cigarette out of his face, and he tapped the long cigarette ash onto the floor.

  He said, “You going to run and tell?”

  I said, “I don’t think so.”

  He hopped down off the counter, and came over by me. He was small. He seemed like as big as me. He went past me, opened the door and said, “See ya.”