Little Miss Strange

by Joanna Rose

  He walked out across the porch boards, through the grass, past the ivy tub, my books sitting there, and he stepped over the dandelion rope strung out on the ground.

  “Hey,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  The boy didn’t turn around, kept walking toward the alley, and he said,

  “Hey, man, I’m the Cheshire Cat.”

  He turned into the alley, around the corner of the garage. Soap and something else stayed in the air, and curls of cigarette smoke.

  DOING HOMEWORK at the kitchen table, and Jimmy Henry lying on the couch, maybe sleeping, but maybe not, and the porch boards out back sounded out old wooden squeaking. I held my breath for when the newspaper window would bang open. Jimmy Henry would get up from lying on the couch and get mad is what would happen next.

  “Orville made the first piloted flight in a power-driven plane at Kitty Hawk in 1903,” I read, reading loud off the top of the page of my social studies book. “December 17, 1903.”

  Quiet downstairs. Quiet in the front room. I went in and looked over the back of the couch. Sleeping.

  I tiptoed down the stairs. I peeked under the door. Four feet. Black high-tops. I tiptoed back up the stairs and back in the kitchen, listening, looking at the fuzzy picture of Orville and Wilbur Wright, and no noise from downstairs.

  THE PAINTED front of Someone’s Beloved Threads was all peely paint and old wood showing through. The sun at the top of the door was losing its sunface around the edges.

  “Erico,” I said. “I think you should paint again, on the doorway part.”

  Erico stopped hammering on the door, where he was hammering up plastic to keep the wind out. He stopped hammering and looked at me.

  “On the sun,” I said. I pointed up. “The sun needs a new face.”

  Erico looked up, where I was pointing, where the sun was still smiling but not shining like it used to shine, with all fiery sun streaks reaching out around it.

  I said, “Don’t you think? Look at its face.”

  Erico looked at me. He looked at the sunface. He looked at his hammer and started hammering again.

  “Erico,” I said. “Don’t you want to paint a new sun?”

  Erico stopped hammering again, and he turned around to me where I was standing on the sidewalk.

  I said, “You can hardly tell its a sun anymore.”

  Erico bent at his knees like about to sit down in front of me. His knees cracked.

  He said, “How come I got this work to do, and you want to paint pictures on the door? Why is that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You can’t see it anymore.”

  Erico had a black mustache and no beard. His face was right at my face, and his black eyebrows went scrunched across the top of his nose. He had a kind of big nose.

  He said, “Where is your little friend Lalena?”

  “Who?” I said. I loved the way Erico said Lalena.

  “Lalena,” he said.

  “I don’t know where Lalena is,” I said, trying to say it that way. “She’s not at home.”

  Erico said, “Don’t you have any other friends to go play with?”

  “No,” I said.

  He stood up tall again, and his knees cracked again, and he started hammering again.

  I said, “We could make the sun a catface. Did you ever hear of the Cheshire Cat? I know this other kid that’s a Mexican kid. He says his name is Cheshire Cat, which is just because I said that. Is there Alice in Wonderland in Mexico?”

  Erico stepped to the side and opened the door.

  “Go find Constanzia,” he said. “See does she have something for you to do.”

  I went in, and Erico’s hammering started again. It was bright outside and dark inside. Constanzia was in her big chair, behind the counter, where she liked to take her catnaps. Her eyes were closed.

  “Constanzia?” I whispered.

  Constanzia’s wrinkly face smiled. She didn’t open her eyes, just smiled in her sleepy wrinkled-down face.

  I pulled out the box from under the counter, skeins of embroidery thread and the hoops. I pulled a long thread loose from a skein that said sungold number seventeen.

  “Sungold, Constanzia,” I said. “I’m going to make a sunface with this thread. It’s sungold number seventeen. And you can ask Erico to paint on the sunface outside too.”

  “I think he will,” I said.

  “If you ask him,” I said.

  “Since you’re his mother,” I said.

  BOXES AND boxes of clothes. Outfits and scarfs and big squares of cloth. All Lalena’s stuff and all Margo’s stuff, all in boxes and stacked into Lalena’s little pointy room on Seventeenth Avenue.

  Lalena said, “I get it all now.”

  I said, “What about when she gets out, or home, or whatever it is?”

  Lalena said, “I’ll give it back.”

  “Where are your brothers going to live?” I said.

  Lalena said, “By their grandma in Fort Collins.”

  “Is that your grandma, in Fort Collins?” I said.

  “Nope,” Lalena said. “My grandma lives in Ohio or Iowa or like that.”

  “What about your other one?” I said. “Don’t you have two grandmas?”

  She said, “There’s just one. She’s mean. She doesn’t like Margo ’cause she thinks Margo is too much of a hippie.”

  I said, “Are there any grandfathers?”

  Lalena said, “Nope.”

  The window in the triangle wall was covered with frost designs, and we couldn’t see out. The radiator hissed and clanked warm. Dylan Marie was sleeping in her baby bed, and Sasha was making soup and singing in the kitchen. The soup was onion smell. Lalena and I had to stay in her room and be quiet, or go outside and be cold, so we were being pretty quiet. Quiet enough to hear Sasha singing.

  Lalena had on a T-shirt and cowboy boots and underpants. She was putting on different outfits from Margo’s boxes, trying on outfits and taking them off and trying on other outfits, but there was no mirror.

  “How is this embroidery shirt?” she said.

  “Is this paisley top a beautiful dress?” she said.

  “Yuk,” she said. “Pink and yellow plaid.”

  There were pieces of see-through white cloth like a bride’s dress. Cut up blue jeans with pieces of bandanna sewed on. Silky dark pink stuff with tiny white stars. I laid pieces on the mattress, and all on the floor like a beautiful rug, and all on the boxes, so the boxes were like fancy chairs.

  One piece had parrots, with green and red wing feathers and yellow head feathers. I folded the parrot cloth and put it in the corner of an empty box by the door.

  When it was time for soup in the kitchen, Lalena and I sat at the table and had bowls. Sasha went into the big bedroom with Dylan Marie.

  “To suck,” Lalena said.

  Sasha fed Dylan Marie from her titty. Lalena said boob. We didn’t get to watch.

  The kitchen was tall yellow walls and dark yellow cabinet doors and no windows at all, and counters all around the yellow walls. The counters were red. There was a Grimm’s fairy tale about yellow and red. An evil dwarf kidnapped a princess, and he poisoned her with red wine and yellow wine so he could chop off her finger and steal her gold princess ring.

  Lalena smashed up crackers, so many crackers that there was a pile of them sticking up in the middle of her bowl. I smashed my crackers on the table and scooped them into my bowl. I blew all the crumbs left on the table across to Lalena, and the crumbs stuck in her hair.

  Sasha said, “You girls quiet down in there.”

  Lalena’s daddy came home, up the stairs in big footsteps, and then in the door of the kitchen.

  “Girl,” he said. “What you got all in your hair? You been out in the snow?”

  He tugged at Lalena’s hair, and then he went into the bedroom. Lalena got up and went into the bathroom to look at the cracker crumb snow in her hair, and I got up and went over to the counter to get more crackers, for more soup.

&nb
sp; Through the front room to the bedroom, Sasha was in her rocking chair, but Dylan Marie wasn’t sucking. It was Lalena’s daddy, down on his knees in front of Sasha. He was sucking on Sasha’s titty, and his hand was on her other titty, grabbing, and her shirt was wet, and her eyes were closed.

  I held my breath and sat back at the table.

  When Lalena came back, I said, “Let’s go outside after this.”

  “Too cold,” Lalena said.

  I said, “Let’s go to Constanzia’s.”

  “Too cold,” she said.

  “Lady Jane’s,” I said.

  “That freak,” she said.

  Lalena’s daddy came back in the kitchen. I looked at soup and cracker crumbs and the wooden table. Lalena’s daddy splashed soup in a bowl and dropped the big spoon on the stove, clank, like the radiator. He stood by the stove, standing on the edge of where I wasn’t seeing. The soup in my bowl was green celery, orange carrots, blue bowl, white noodles. Onions that were no color. Lalena smashed more crackers.

  I said, “Want to go outside?”

  She said, “Nope.”

  I got up and went to the kitchen door, to the wooden hooks where all the coats were, where my army coat was. I looked at the coats on the hooks and my army coat and not at Lalena’s daddy and not through the front room to the bedroom. I took my army coat off the hook.

  Lalena said, “Where are you going?”

  “Don’t know,” I said.

  It was dark outside the door in the hallway. My breathing came out of my nose in a whistle. The floor of inside Lalena’s kitchen squeaked from feet in there, and I went down the stairs.

  There was music from Lady Jane’s, by the yellow door, a long song of bells and singing. The song ended, and I tapped my fingernail on the door. Lady Jane opened it, opened the door wide, and she bowed like a lady, and she said, “Look who’s here.”

  “It’s me,” I said.

  Lady Jane said, “Come on in, me.”

  She had on a long white T-shirt and blue kneesocks and a yellow joint in her fingers. She went and sat at the table and set the yellow joint on the edge of the table. Her blue jeans were hanging on the back of the chair. She took them, and she stuck her blue kneesocks feet straight out and pulled on her blue jeans, both legs at once. The music started again, more singing, more bells. Lady Jane stood up and zipped her blue jeans and then she went over to the shelf under Birds of the World and turned the music down to not so loud.

  She said, “What’s up, child of God?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “What does that mean, ‘child of God’?”

  “Like family of man,” she said. “Hippies maybe. Maybe like we’re all flying through the universe on the spaceship Earth together.”

  She said, “I have to get ready for work.”

  I said, “Okay.”

  She put on another shirt over her long white T-shirt, a light blue shirt like blue jeans, and flowers embroidered up the front by the buttons. Blue flowers, and pink and yellow leaves.

  “I know embroidery,” I said. “Constanzia taught me.”

  Lady Jane said, “Far out.”

  She pinned her sleeve with a safety pin. No button.

  “I make leaves sometimes,” I said. “I make them green.”

  Lady Jane started singing, a different song than the record, louder than the record, she sang,

  “Green leaves was all my joy,

  Green leaves was my hearts delight,

  Green leaves was all my love,

  And who but my lady green leaves.”

  She looped long beads around her neck, clicking beads, all colors of beads.

  “Okay,” she said. “What are you up to now, lady green leaves?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Where do you have to go to work at?”

  “At Celestial Tea Palace,” she said. “It’s a café.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Are you the waitress?”

  Lady Jane said, “Yep. I am the waitress.”

  She picked up her yellow joint, smoked on it, and put the end in a little white plate on the table.

  “And you get to eat all you want?” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Pretty much. It’s a good gig. I’m into my solitude right now, so waitressing is my humanity hit.”

  I said, “Solitude?”

  She put on her coat.

  “So,” she said. “What’s Jimmy Henry up to?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He goes and does stuff at other houses, like our house but for a different landlady.”

  “Oh,” Lady Jane said. “So he has a real job these days?”

  I said, “I don’t know.”

  She pulled a blue stocking cap down over her head, almost to her eyes.

  “Funny things, jobs,” she said. “Sometimes you just feel like having one. Are you going up to Lalena’s?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Where are you going?” she said.

  “Nowhere,” I said.

  “Well, come on, Nowhere Man,” she said. “I’ll walk you partway there.”

  She pulled out the plug of the colored lights, and we went out the yellow door into the dark hallway and down the squeaking stairs, Lady Jane singing all the words to the “Nowhere Man” song.

  Outside it was gray sky and tiny icy snow bits in the air. I pulled my hands up inside the sleeves of my army coat.

  Lady Jane said, “Don’t you have a hat?”

  “No,” I said. “At home.”

  She said, “Don’t you have some gloves?”

  “I have some mittens,” I said. “At home.”

  She said, “Is there a scarf at home too?”

  I said, “No.”

  Lady Jane walked loud in her Dutch-girl shoes. We went as far as Clarkson Street, and she stopped.

  “I go this way,” she said.

  Away from Colfax Street, away from toward my house.

  “Okay,” I said. “’Bye.”

  “’Bye,” she said. She pulled a long piece of hair out of the side of my mouth.

  “’Bye,” I said.

  Her Dutch-girl shoes clonked away on the sidewalk. She turned around once and waved at me, and walked some more, until I couldn’t tell which was her and which was maybe just some other person on the sidewalk.

  CONSTANZIA SAVED all the bird stuff for me. A big square that used to be a skirt, one long edge hemmed up neat, the other long edge still puckered and thready from where the waistband used to be, and all light green and blackbirds flying across. A baby blanket covered in little smiley birds with blue eyes and long eyelashes. A long square of old curtain with peacocks in shining bright green. When I got the piece of parrot cloth from the box in the corner of Lalena’s room, I took it home hidden under my coat.

  It was cold in the purple and green apartment, even with all the candles set in a row, lit, shining. I spread the green peacock cloth on the mattress. I folded the skirt piece of blackbirds across the dresser top so the ends were even. Lying on the mattress, on the green peacock cloth, and the purple light of candles all on the painted walls, and I got all sleepy and warm. Cars going by on Ogden Street. Bluejays. My arms inside my shirt, warm bare skin, my hands down in between my legs, cold hands, warm legs, purple, green, shiny green peacocks.

  Jimmy Henry came home, front door, feet up the stairs. I folded up all the pieces of birdcloth, folded them into the bottom dresser drawer. My shoe box of stuff in the top drawer, and candles, and the box of wooden matches. Two drawers in between, still empty. I went out, locked the door, went up the stairs.

  Jimmy Henry was in the kitchen.

  He said, “Hey, baby.”

  I didn’t say anything, and he didn’t look at me. He was pulling apart slices of bacon.

  “I thought I’d fix a little dinner,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah?” I said. I smelled toast.

  “Well, yeah,” he said. “BLTs, okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “BLTs are okay.”

  “Hey,�
�� I said. “BLTs R OK, get it?”

  He looked up from laying bacon in the pan.

  “All letters,” I said. “No words. Talking with all letters, no words.”

  The bacon started to pop in the pan.

  He said, “You’re pretty smart, aren’t you?”

  My face went all flat, and I didn’t know where to have my hands.

  “Well,” I said. “As and Bs. That’s pretty smart.”

  “Keep an eye on that bacon for a second,” he said.

  He went in the front room, to the closet in the corner. He was inside the closet door when the toasts popped up, and I laid them on the counter by the mayonnaise jar, and put in two more pieces of bread. He came back into the kitchen holding a blue book, and he handed the book out to me. A big blue book. Inside a gold circle on the cover was gold writing that said Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary.

  He said, “That should be for you, I guess.”

  A big, heavy, blue book.

  His hair hung down, over his eyes, and he turned to the stove and wiggled the bacon in the pan. I put the Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary on the table.

  I opened it up to C. “Collegiate: of the nature of a college, or body of colleagues, or a civil or ecclesiastical office.”

  I turned ahead to E. “Ecclesiastic: of or pertaining to the church; not secular.”

  “Secular: of or pertaining to the worldly or temporal.”

  “Temporal: of or pertaining to the sides of the skull behind the orbits.”

  Jimmy Henry put a BLT on the table by the Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary.

  “So,” he said. “What did you look up?”

  I said, “I’m not sure.”

  I closed the Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary.

  “Thanks,” I said. “For the dictionary. And for the BLT.”

  He picked up the dictionary with only one hand, held it up with one hand, looking at the gold circle of words on the cover.

  “You can have them,” he said. “All those books in that box in the closet. There aren’t any kid books in there.”

  He set the dictionary down on the table.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  After the BLTs were gone, and Jimmy Henry went in on the couch to look at the Denver Post, I opened up the cover of the dictionary. Inside the front cover, on the first white page, it said “Tina Blue,” in thin loopy letters.