Little Miss Strange

by Joanna Rose

  All those books from her shelves, rows of books up by the white china elephant. Jimmy Henry sitting on the box after Tina Blue was gone. Those books. Maybe the white china elephant was in the box too, a white china elephant like Lady Jane’s white china elephant teapot that poured tea out of its trunk.

  Lady Jane. I looked up “Solitude: state of being alone; loneliness.” Lady Jane was into her solitude thing.

  I turned the pages back through the Ss, not looking up words, just hearing the whispery sound of the pages. At the beginning of S a perfectly flat blue flower was there, a violet maybe, or a tiny blue pansy, thin as paper, dry as the page. There was a little ink star there, on the page of the flower. A little blue ink star next to “Sarah: wife of Abraham, mother of Isaac.” I closed the pages over the flower, over the star, and carried the dictionary into the front room. Jimmy Henry was asleep and the Denver Post was fallen on the floor, so I took the dictionary, the flower inside, the star page, into my room. I put the dictionary on top of my dresser. The gold words Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary went up and down the back edge, and I could see the words from my bed, until I turned off the light. In the pink Safeway light, the dictionary was only a black square on top of my dresser.

  THERE ARE eleven Blumenthals on the page in the phone book. I fold the glass phone booth doors to shut, so I am inside the phone booth, inside Bill’s Pepsi market, and I stack my dimes on the little shelf under the phone hanging there.

  I drop one dime in, and then another, and the dimes sound like they are dropping far away. I dial the first number, and count four buzzy rings, each buzzy ring ringing inside my chest. A guy voice says, “Hello?”

  “Hello?” I say. “Is there a lady there named Christine Jeanette Blumenthal?”

  “Nope,” the guy says. “Wrong number.”

  “Well,” I say. “I am Sarajean Henry.”

  The guy says, “This is the Blumenthals, but there isn’t no Christine lives here.”

  I say, “Do you know me?”

  The guy says, “You got the wrong number.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Never mind,” I say.

  “’Bye,” I say.

  Click.

  I put the phone back up on its hook, and I draw one straight line through the first Blumenthal in the phone book. I drop two more dimes down into the slot and dial the next Blumenthal.

  At the end of all the Blumenthals there are three Blumenthals not crossed out because of nobody answering their phone ringing. Of all the other Blumenthals that did answer their phone, nobody knew Christine Jeanette Blumenthal and nobody knew Sarajean Henry.

  I put the last dimes in the top pocket of my army coat, in where they jingle with the key of the painted apartment. I put the pencil in there too, so I can come back and dial the other three Blumenthals that I didn’t cross out.

  IT WAS too rainy for recess to be outside so we stayed inside. We were allowed to stay in our classroom, and no teacher, but there were monitors, Katy Carmel, who was bossy, and Bruce Baxter, who was fat. Or we could go to the gym, sit on the bleachers, watch kids play kickball. Dodgeball wasn’t allowed. The other fourth-grade girls sat by the wall, by the bathroom door, going in and out of the bathroom, brushing their hair.

  John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski slammed the ball into the bleachers where Lalena and I were sitting.

  Lalena said, “Polack.”

  John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski came over to get the ball. His T-shirt was hanging out. His blue jeans drooped around his skinny middle and covered up his shoes with his bellbottoms.

  “Polack,” Lalena said.

  “Ha,” he said. “I’m named after a president. Not a whore in a song.”

  He bounced the ball away.

  “Whore in a song?” I said. “What does that mean?”

  Lalena said, “How should I know? He doesn’t know anything.”

  She yelled, “Whoever heard of a president named Karpinski?”

  After school it was still rainy. We went to Lalena’s house, and it was just Lalena’s daddy there, at the kitchen table, drinking a beer, looking at the Denver Post.

  I said, “Let’s go visit Constanzia.”

  Lalena said to her daddy, “Where does my name come from?”

  Lalena’s daddy burped a loud beer burp. I kept my coat on.

  He said, “That’s a song.”

  Lalena said, “What song?”

  “Margo loved that damn song,” he said.

  Lalena said, “Is it a song about a whore?”

  Her daddy laughed.

  “Yes, it is,” he said and he grabbed her and pulled her close to him and put his big face by her face.

  “A song about a damn whore,” he said, and he kissed her a big smacky kiss on her cheek.

  Lalena punched his arm, and he laughed loud, and he said, “Margo loved that damn song.”

  Lalena stomped away from him, out of his arm holding her, into me, out the door. Her daddy laughed at the ceiling, and I went out the door after her. She was still stomping, all the way down the stairs.

  She stood outside there, looking out at Seventeenth Avenue, and the rain, her hair curling all up like she hated, her breath from her nose little white puffs. Her cheeks had two pink spots.

  “Just shut up,” she said.

  “I didn’t say anything,” I said.

  “Just shut up,” she said.

  I sat down on the top step. The roof of the porch dripped rain on my knees.

  “Fucking Margo,” Lalena said.

  “I think it’s a beautiful name,” I said. “My name means something about somebody’s mother. And their wife.”

  “Just shut up,” she said.

  “Well,” I said. “What do you want to do now?”

  Lalena didn’t say anything. She stared out, puffing out of her nose.

  Lady Jane came walking up the sidewalk under a blue umbrella. She got to the steps and looked up.

  “Hi,” she said.

  Her Dutch-girl shoes kept her feet up out of the water.

  I said, “Those are good rain shoes.”

  She came up the steps, folding the umbrella into itself, and she sang part of a rain song about the rain in summer.

  I said, “Do you know the Lalena song?”

  Lady Jane said, “Ah. Beautiful. Margo loved that song.”

  She started to sing, and Lalena said, “Shut up.”

  Lady Jane shut up.

  I said, “It’s a song about a whore.”

  Lady Jane sat down next to me. The rain dripped on the patches of her blue-jean knees, green velvet patches stitched around with gold thread.

  She said, “A beautiful song. A love song.”

  Lalena didn’t look at me, and she didn’t look at Lady Jane. She hunched over herself and looked out at the rain.

  “Then again,” Lady Jane said. “A name is a very personal thing. It’s your own personal symbol that you present to the world. You can always change it if it doesn’t match.”

  I said, “Match what?”

  “Match who you are,” Lady Jane said.

  I said, “You mean like if Lalena’s not a whore?”

  Lalena punched my arm hard enough to hurt.

  “Hey,” I said. “Not a whore. I said not.”

  “You said if,” Lalena said.

  “Huh?” I said.

  “Just shut up,” Lalena said.

  “Violence is not the answer,” Lady Jane said. “Love is the answer.”

  Lalena said, “You shut up too. Both of you just shut up.”

  After sitting there and just getting dripped on for a while Lady Jane said, “You can come visit if you want. I’ll make tea.”

  She leaned over me, looking at Lalena.

  She said, “I can help you find a new name.”

  Lalena said, “I don’t need a new name.”

  Lady Jane went inside.

  I sat there and picked at the knees of my blue jeans, looking for loose threads where it was s
tarting to look like maybe a patch.

  Feet down the steps behind us, and Lalena’s daddy came out. He stood there, behind us, over us. I worked a thread loose, poking my finger into a hole in the seam by my knee.

  He said, “Fuckin’ rain.”

  He said, “Tell Sasha I’ll be late.”

  He left.

  Lalena said, “L.”

  I said, “What?”

  She said, “L. Just call me L now.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “L is pretty short.”

  Lalena said, “Just L.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay, L. Hey, OK-L, get it? All letters?”

  “Will you just shut up,” Lalena said.

  “You better quit telling me to just shut up, or I’ll just leave,” I said. “Maybe I’ll just go to Constanzia’s.”

  “No,” Lalena said. “Let’s go up to my room. It’s too rainy.”

  “Well, I said. “Okay. Okay, L.”

  Lady Jane’s yellow door was open, and the record player was on.

  I said, “L.”

  Lady Jane turned the music down and said, “What?”

  “Just L is her new name,” I said.

  “L is pretty short,” Lady Jane said.

  Lalena said, “L.”

  “You could spell it out,” Lady Jane said. “You could spell it E-l-l-e. That’s the same as L, but spelled out it’s French.”

  “A French name?” I said.

  Lalena said, “What does it mean in French?”

  “Girl,” Lady Jane said. “It means girl.”

  “Well,” I said, looking at Lalena. “You’re a girl.”

  “I know that, Sarajean,” she said.

  “I mean instead of a whore,” I said.

  WE STAYED in her room, and I practiced saying “Elle.”

  I said, “Elle, can I try on this top?”

  I said, “Elle, go get us some crackers.”

  When Sasha and Dylan Marie came home I said, “Elle, I have to go home now.”

  Elle said, “No, stay over.”

  She went and asked Sasha could I stay over, and Sasha said, “I don’t care.”

  “Well,” I said. “Okay.”

  We stayed up late, Lalena being Elle, and me doing her homework. We took a bath with patchouli bubbles in the pink light, and I brushed my hair with Sasha’s sparkly plastic hairbrush.

  Elle said, “I’m not telling her my new name.”

  “Who?” I said, “Sasha?”

  “Sasha,” Elle said. “I’m not telling her. I’m just telling my daddy.”

  “Well, he’ll tell her,” I said.

  “Not if I tell him not to,” she said.

  “Why not?” I said.

  “Because he likes me better than her,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “I mean why not tell her? What if she has to say something to you?”

  “I’m just not telling her,” Elle said.

  Late at night, Lalena wasn’t there. I got out of her bed in the dark, and I tiptoed through the dark of the other bedroom, past the big bed, past Dylan Marie’s little bed, through the front room. The pink light of the bathroom lit out into the kitchen. I stopped halfway across the cold tiles, by the kitchen table.

  Lalena’s daddy sat on the edge of the bathtub, and Lalena stood between his legs, facing away. His legs were holding her, and his hands were in her hair, pulling back, his fingers all in her hair. His eyes were closed, and her eyes were closed, and he was breathing like running, breathing like crying, breathing like he couldn’t breathe.

  EARLY, BARELY light, barefoot down the stairs, holding onto my sneakers, down to the door, down to Seventeenth Avenue. I sit on the top step outside. The sidewalk shiny wet. Nobody walking.

  At Colfax Street the light is green for no cars one way and red for no cars the other way. When it changes for no cars, I cross.

  By Ogden Street the sky is lighter gray. I go in, to the locked door of the painted apartment, the key in my pocket, always in my pocket.

  I take the candles out of the top drawer and line them up on the floor by the mattress. I get my shoe box of stuff. I wrap up in the green peacock cloth and sit on the mattress with my shoe box that I don’t open, by the candles that I don’t light. I listen for Jimmy Henry.

  He used to wake up early every day, get out of bed early every day. Brush my hair in braids or barrettes. Whichever I wanted.

  LADY JANE came over to our house with daffodils. I was in my bedroom reading about Amelia Earhart, who flew away and never came back, or even said where she landed. Then Lady Jane’s voice was in our front room. I went out there, and she had daffodils.

  “Daffodils,” I said.

  “Spring,” Lady Jane said. “Here. Put them in water.”

  There was yellow like the chalk at school. There was yellow like on the back cover of Nancy Drew books. Dandelion yellow. Sungold number seventeen. There was a girl in fifth grade whose name was Sunshine, and she always wore a yellow outfit of different yellows that didn’t match right. Daffodil yellow came off on my finger when I touched the ruffly edge of the middle part, the daffodil part that stuck out and made it a daffodil instead of some other yellow flower.

  The only thing that was the right size to hold the daffodils was the orange and brown glass mug from the root beer place on Colfax Street. Orange and brown and daffodil yellow wasn’t very good. There were old jelly jars in the cabinet over the refrigerator. Old peanut butter jars. I climbed up on the counter. Behind the jars was the old teapot, the green apple with the smiley worm handle. The little lid with the leaves was gone, broken, too many little pieces even for glue.

  The green apple teapot was perfect. The daffodil stems stuck straight up, the yellow all bunched together. I set the teapot with the daffodils in the very center of the blue kitchen table. Green yellow blue.

  Then there was music. Jimmy Henry never played his records. It was Lady Jane, looking at all Jimmy Henry’s records.

  She said, “Wow.”

  She said, “Far out.”

  She said, “Little Miss Strange.”

  She looked at me, and then she looked at him.

  He said, “Turn it down.”

  Lady Jane didn’t turn the music down. She danced in front of the record player, danced in one spot mostly, looking at the records. Her long blond hair danced on her back down to the butt of her blue jeans, to the patches on her butt, blue-jean patches stitched around with purple thread. Lady Jane’s hair was perfectly straight, all the way to her butt. Jimmy Henry sat on the couch, sitting still, his hair in a pony tail with a rubber band. Brown. Straight.

  The daffodils stood up tall in the green apple on the kitchen table. Music in the front room. I got my book of History of the United States and sat at the kitchen table, setting my book perfectly in the middle between me and the daffodils. The daffodils were in the window reflection. I was in the window reflection. My hair was curly, always curly, even when I brushed it down flat and wet, it dried up curly. Dark brown. Amelia Earhart had blond curly hair in the picture.

  The music stopped, and Lady Jane said, “Let’s hear the flip side.”

  There was more music, more records, and after I went to bed I was awake for a long time, hearing music.

  In the morning the light came into the kitchen window right on to the daffodils. Yellow green blue. The front room was dark, and the records were out, leaned up against the couch and some out flat on the applebox table. Jimmy Henry’s door was shut, still asleep when I went to school.

  AFTER SCHOOL Elle said, “Want to come over?”

  “No,” I said. “You can come over my house. There are daffodils.”

  We walked along Ogden Street. It was rainy. Not raining.

  Elle said, “What did you get on the history quiz?”

  “A,” I said.

  “Perfect A?” she said.

  “Perfect A,” I said. “None wrong.”

  Elle got a B.

  “Pretty good,” I said.

&
nbsp; Elle said, “Great. B is great.”

  I said, “I think B is pretty good. A is great.”

  Elle said, “Shut up.”

  There was music coming down the stairs inside. The door at the top of the stairs was open, and there was drifty blue smoke in the air. Incense. Music and incense in my house. The records were all back on the shelf, and the daffodils in the green apple teapot were in the middle of the applebox table in front of the couch.

  Elle said, “Those are daffodils huh?”

  She dropped her coat on the couch. The couch pillows were all in a straight line, and Jimmy Henry’s couch blanket was folded up. Lady Jane came through the kitchen doorway, wiping her hands on a towel.

  She said, “Home so soon?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not soon. Now is when school always gets out. What are you doing?”

  “I did a little tidying up,” she said. “Are you hungry?”

  I said, “No.”

  Elle said, “Yes.”

  Lady Jane said, “Want a grilled cheese sandwich?”

  Elle said, “With mayonnaise?”

  “Where’s Jimmy Henry?” I said. “Why are you tidying up?”

  Lady Jane went back into the kitchen. The front-room curtains were pulled back, and the front room was all afternoon light. The newspapers were stacked up by the door. The chair that was usually by the door was over by the applebox table, like someone could sit there and look at the daffodils.

  Elle went in the kitchen and leaned on the counter, watching Lady Jane get out cheese and butter and bread. Big brown bread all still in a loaf, not cut. Not Safeway bread.

  I said, “Where did that bread come from?”

  Lady Jane said, “I did a little shopping.”

  She bent over, looking in the refrigerator.

  “Mayonnaise,” she said.

  Purple-stitched blue-jean patches. She had on Jimmy Henry’s tie-dye T-shirt.

  I said, “Where’s Jimmy Henry?”

  Lady Jane said, “Aha.”

  She took out the mayonnaise jar. She had on big red winter socks.

  I said, “Are those Jimmy Henry’s socks?”

  She put bread in the toaster.

  Elle said, “Lady Jane, do you think getting a B on a history quiz is great?”