Little Miss Strange

by Joanna Rose

  “I think I read part of it,” she said.

  I said, “When is it due?”

  “Day after tomorrow,” she said. “No, day after that.”

  “Well, just read it,” I said. “I don’t even know for sure if I read that same one. There’s a whole bunch of those books. They just kept moving around and all, different houses.”

  “Come on,” she said. “Just come over.”

  The sky was dark clouds down low, early night, and squares of yellow light coming on in houses. My house stayed dark. Jimmy Henry’s windows, two windows across the front upstairs, stayed dark.

  I said, “Just a second.”

  Around the side of the house, on the skinny sidewalk, I could see up to our front-room window, our kitchen window. Dark.

  I went back out front. Elle was down in the corner, trying to light a cigarette, and the wind kept blowing out her matches.

  I said, “Let’s go over your house.”

  Nobody was home at Elle’s new apartment, but lights were on.

  “Cassandra Wiggins,” Elle said. “She always leaves the lights on.”

  “When she goes to bed, she leaves the lights on?” I said.

  “The little lights, like that one by the couch,” Elle said.

  In the kitchen, Elle opened the refrigerator and stood there, looking in. I sat on the green chair with the blue velvet cushion. Elle slammed the refrigerator door and opened a cabinet door.

  “Do you have a jar of coffee?” I said. “We could make coffee.”

  “I hate coffee,” she said.

  She sat on the couch, next to the little lamp. The lamp had a little white lampshade.

  “Hey,” I said. “Go get a scarf. Do you have a paisley scarf?”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  She went in her room, and when she came back she had a square of paisley scarf, big paisleys that looped in together with pink and gold and purple. I draped the paisley scarf over the white lampshade, and the pink and gold and purple paisleys lit up from inside, lit up the front room pink.

  “Brilliant,” Elle said.

  I said, “The quality of the light is the quality of the dark.”

  “Is that a poem?” Elle said.

  “I think so,” I said. “Those are my favorite kind of paisleys.”

  Elle said, “What, purple and pink?”

  “No,” I said. “Those big swirly ones that go all together. I hate those little ones that are just all by themselves in rows.”

  The Who’s Next faces looked into the front-room window, and the heater under the window clanked on and hissed. I pushed my sleeves of my black sweater up over my elbows.

  Elle said, “That sweater stinks.”

  I said, “This sweater is wool.”

  She said, “Smells like cat if you ask me.”

  I said, “This is a very cool sweater.”

  Elle pulled off her cowboy boots and dropped them on the floor, one boot, then the other boot.

  She said, “I’ll show you what’s cool.”

  She went in her room and turned on the light in there. The light from her bedroom doorway made the pink light in the front room plain and hard.

  I said, “Turn off that light.”

  When Elle turned off the bedroom light and came back out, she had on a long silky robe with big sleeves, orange and red and Chinese letters, and a wide white sash.

  “It’s a kimono,” she said. “It’s silk.”

  She swirled around, and the bottom of the kimono swished on the bare wood floor. I touched one long sleeve, soft cold silk.

  “Where did you get it?” I said.

  “Sasha,” Elle said.

  “She gave it to you?” I said.

  “No,” Elle said. She danced in her bare feet, danced into the middle of the floor and bowed to me. The colors of the kimono changed in the pink paisley light.

  “Silk,” I said. Saying it was like breathing.

  Elle said, “Come here.”

  I followed her into the other bedroom, the big bedroom, and she turned on the light at the switch and went to one of Margo’s boxes. She pulled out a thin white dress. The dress had little ribbon straps, and a long ribbon on the front, between gathers of silk.

  “It’s a nightgown,” Elle said. “Put it on.”

  She danced away, out into the front room.

  I took off my black sweater, my hair snapping up from static, took off my hightops and my socks and my blue jeans and stood on the bare floor. I put the white silk over my head, and it dropped cold onto my bare skin. I touched the front of me, down the silk, the front of my legs, and goose-bumps rushed all over me from cold and silk.

  Elle was still dancing around in the front room, and when I went out there she said, “I can see your underpants.”

  And she said, “Dance.”

  I made a little circle, holding the lacy bottom edge out, lace tickling my ankles. Elle danced in a circle around me, the kimono sleeves flying out like angel wings.

  “Sing,” she said.

  “Sing what?” I said.

  “Don’t you know a dancing song?” she said. “Dance like a ballerina. And sing.”

  I dropped the lacy edge to the floor and raised my arms and I sang,

  “Lavender blue, dilly dilly,

  Lavender green,

  When I am king, dilly dilly,

  You shall be queen.

  Who told you so, dilly dilly,

  Who told you so?

  ’Twas my own heart, dilly dilly,

  That told me so.”

  I sang the words over again, trying not to laugh, laughing anyway, and we danced around the front room, around the couch and out into the middle of the floor, bowing and sweeping long silk, dancing up on bare pointed toes, around the paisley lamp and under the glass doors of the bookshelves that flashed pink lamplight from their jeweled edges.

  When I stopped singing the song, Elle fell onto the couch, and I jumped up onto the couch next to her and sat down slow, white silk spreading out around me like a flower turned over. My toes under the flower were warm on my bare legs, and the red couch stuff was scratchy.

  “What a weird song,” Elle said. “Where’d you get that song?”

  “It’s an English folk song,” I said. “Mr. Rivera taught it to us.”

  “He sang it to you?” she said, sitting up and pulling her hair back off her neck, away from her face. Her neck was bare, and pink from the pink light, and her face was pink.

  “He likes to sing,” I said, “He sings, like, that song, and songs from history.”

  “I saw Mr. Rivera in his car at the Safeway,” Elle said. “He was with his wife.”

  “When?” I said. “What does his wife look like?”

  “She had long black hair that was curly, and a red ruffly shirt,” Elle said. “She has big boobs.”

  “You’re lying,” I said. “You didn’t see them.”

  Elle wiggled down into the cushions next to me.

  She said, “They were kissing, and he put his hand inside her shirt.”

  I said, “You liar.”

  “Really,” she said. “Here. He did just like this.”

  She pushed me back against the scratchy back of the couch and she kissed me on my mouth, laughing, then not laughing, and she touched her hand on my chest. Her fingers touched through the gathers of silk, touching me, touching me on my nipple, like touching inside my stomach, and I pushed her away.

  “Liar,” I said, and I laughed, trying not to laugh.

  “You always laugh,” Elle said. “Quit laughing.”

  She put her hand on my face and kissed again on my mouth and she whispered, “Close your eyes and don’t laugh.”

  She kissed me on my neck, and on my shoulder, and when she kissed me soft at the bottom of my throat I couldn’t help it, couldn’t help laughing.

  The door at the bottom of the stairway opened, and we both jumped up. Elle ran across the bare floor to her bedroom, and I grabbed the pink paisley scarf
off the lamp and ran after her, into the bedroom, and she shut the bedroom door. She turned on the bedroom light switch.

  Margo said, “Lalena? Are you home?”

  “We’re in here,” Elle said loud through the door. “We’re in here doing homework.

  She was trying not to laugh.

  “And besides it’s Elle, damn it,” she said. “My name is Elle.”

  “My clothes,” I whispered. “My clothes are in her room.”

  We stood still and listened at the door, Elle listening to Margo, no cowboy boots, no Cassandra Wiggins, just Margo. I listened to Elle, to her breathing. Wispy orange curls behind her ears and damp on her neck. Margo went into the kitchen, and Elle opened the door a crack and then went through the crack. I draped the pink paisley scarf over the doorknob. Elle came back holding my blue jeans and my black sweater, my hightops and my socks.

  I pulled the ribbon straps off, and the silk nightgown dropped to the floor around me. I stepped out of the circle of silk and picked the nightgown up and laid it on the mattress.

  Elle said, “You’re going to need a bra before me.”

  I held my hands up over my chest, one warm hand flat over each cold nipple bump.

  “No, I’m not,” I said. “They haven’t even started yet.”

  Elle said, “Mine are.”

  She pulled at the top of the kimono and looked down in at herself.

  “You can barely tell,” I said. “Maybe a little.”

  I pulled my sweater on over my head, and I sat down on the mattress and pulled on my blue jeans. I didn’t want to put my clothes back on. I wanted to dance around in the silk nightgown. I wanted to wear the silk nightgown with the kimono over it. I wanted to eat a candy bar and be by myself in Elle’s new apartment with the pink paisley lights and look at Cassandra Wiggins’s books. I wanted it to start snowing so much there would be no school tomorrow. I wanted a red ruffly shirt.

  Margo said, “Do you guys want some rice and tomatoes?”

  “No,” Elle said through the door. “Sarajean’s doing my book report for me.”

  “I am not,” I whispered.

  Margo said, “That’s very giving of Sarajean, but you should do your own homework, Lalena.”

  “It’s Elle, damn it,” Elle said. “My name is Elle.”

  1976

  The first day of junior high was assembly, and all the kids sat in the bleachers to hear Mr. Withers give a speech. Mr. Withers was the principal of Mountain View Junior High School.

  “Americans,” Mr. Withers said. “You are here to become strong Americans, to guide us through our next two hundred years.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Elle whispered. “He looks about two hundred years old.”

  I said, “Sh.”

  Mr. Withers told us who other people were, Mr. Sherett, who was the dean of the boys, and Miss Purcell, who was the dean of the girls. When he said their names, Mr. Sherett and Miss Purcell stood up from their seats on the bottom bleacher so we could see who they were. Miss Purcell was an old lady, with hair curled up tight, and red lips.

  Elle whispered, “Those are the biggest boobs I ever saw.”

  I said, “Sh.”

  They took up the whole front of Miss Purcell’s blouse.

  Elle and I had the same homeroom, Hand, Henry, alphabetical, but we didn’t get to be locker partners. My locker partner was a girl named Marcia Henson. Marcia Henson wore a light blue skirt and light blue sweater on the first day of school, and she said, “You better not keep any of your drugs in this locker.”

  I said, “Drugs?”

  Marcia Henson said, “I plan on joining Young Americans for Freedom, and we don’t believe in drugs and peace and all that hippie stuff.”

  Marcia Henson’s little square-toed shoes were blue too.

  The cafeteria was different stuff everyday for sixty-five cents, out of big square pans, goulash or shepherd’s pie or macaroni and cheese, and big soggy biscuits soaked yellow in margarine. The Mexican cafeteria ladies scooped stuff out onto a plate and handed the plate across the counter. They wore hairnets and just talked to each other.

  The door of the gym was right across from the cafeteria, and there would be Mexican boys standing around there. I saw Pete there. His hair was long again, and he wasn’t any bigger, he was smallest of all the Mexican boys standing around there. His face was bigger maybe, maybe just his nose was bigger.

  There were lots of Mexican kids in junior high. The Mexican boys stood around together, and there were Afro kids who stood around together. The white kids were just kind of everywhere else. The Mexican girls liked to hang out in the second-floor bathroom during lunch, right by my home room. They smoked cigarettes in there, and sprayed hair spray.

  The Mexican girls had long black beautiful hair. Some of the Mexican girls wore corduroy pants, tight, different colors, and some had short tight skirts and nylons.

  One Mexican girl in the bathroom had a run in her nylon, and she put nail polish on there. She put a dot of pink nail polish at the top of the run, bending backward, dotting the nail polish on the curve of her leg below her knee. A tiny dot. She straightened up and she put the tall gold cap back on the bottle of nail polish, and she said to me, “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  ELLE LOOKED close into the mirror in her bathroom and painted a long swoopy line of black across each of her eyelids.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It looks kind of weird.”

  Blondish reddish eyelashes stuck out from under each black swoop.

  “You’re right,” she said. “I need black mascara.”

  I TOOK Tina Blue’s silver ring to school every day, taking the ring out of my inside jacket pocket on my way down the stairs, wearing it on my middle finger on the way to school, putting it back in my pocket before I got there, before I saw Elle. I wore my blue jeans and a different colored T-shirt and my green corduroy jacket, and black hightops, and no bra. I didn’t have a bra. I didn’t want a bra.

  There were special blue and white sweatshirts that said HORNETS on the front. The Hornets were the football team. The sweatshirt had a cartoon drawing of a mean-faced hornet wearing a football helmet. Everyone who wore a Hornets sweatshirt to school on Thursdays got off fifth-hour study hall to go to the gym, and yell rhyming cheers with the cheerleaders, who wore blue pleated skirts with white in the pleats. Blue and white were the school colors. I didn’t have a Hornets sweatshirt. I didn’t want a Hornet sweatshirt. I liked fifth-hour study hall.

  The only other class I liked was English, Mrs. MacVey, third floor, third hour. Mrs. MacVey dressed weird, not straight, not like a teacher, not like anybody I ever saw before. She wore full skirts, not A-line, not pleated, and bowling shirts with different names embroidered over the pocket. The first time Mrs. MacVey wore a bowling shirt, it was a yellow bowling shirt that said JOSIE over the pocket. The next time she wore a bowling shirt, it was a blue bowling shirt that said FRANCIE.

  Mrs. MacVey said, “I don’t like bowling, but I love bowling shirts.”

  She hung her little sweaters on her shoulders, and the ninth-grade kids called her Mac.

  I always sat toward the back of Mrs. MacVey’s class. When Mrs. MacVey looked around for someone to call on, I hid behind the head of whatever kid was sitting in front of me.

  Mrs. MacVey said things like “allegory,” “satire,” “the richness of the imagination.”

  She assigned us The Hobbit to read, so I went to Together Books after school. I bought a used copy, with a bent cover and “Bobby” written inside, in square printed letters, and a pencil drawing of a curvy knife with a fancy decorated handle. I didn’t know who any Bobby was, but he was good at drawing, and he didn’t wreck his book very much, except for bending the cover, and not even very much. It cost twenty-five cents.

  I took The Hobbit home in my inside jacket pocket. Blackbird wasn’t there. I went into the painted apartment and folded up my jacket for a pillow on the mattress. I was up to page
81 when the back door rattled and clicked, and then it opened and there was Pete.

  “Hey,” I said, and then I didn’t know what to say.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Pete leaned in the doorway, and I sat up, and started to stand up, but then I just sat on the edge of the mattress.

  “I saw you at school,” I said. “You go to Mountain View Junior High.”

  Pete said, “You in seventh?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Seventh grade.”

  He came in and leaned against the wall by the little dresser.

  “I have to read this book for English,” I said. “Mrs. MacVey.”

  I said, “You in ninth?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Again. Half a year. I got to make up some stuff. I missed a bunch of school in Tucson.”

  His voice was scratchy.

  He said, “Anybody home upstairs?”

  I said, “No.”

  Pete came over and sat on the mattress. He took out a pack of Kools and he shook out a yellow cigarette that was a joint, twisted in yellow joint paper.

  I said, “Is that a joint?”

  “Yeah,” Pete said. “Want to get high?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t know.”

  He held the joint in his teeth, holding it, lighting it, touching it just to his lips and sucking in the smoke. He held the smoke in and didn’t breathe out, and he handed the joint to me.

  He said, “’Ere.”

  I took the joint between my fingers and looked at it, and then I touched the pinched end to my lips and puffed a tiny puff. The joint tasted like incense.

  “I don’t think you got any,” Pete said. “Take a bigger hit.”

  “A bigger hit?” I said.

  “And hold it in,” he said.

  I took a bigger hit.

  The joint smoke exploded in my throat, and I coughed and coughed and coughed, and Pete watched me coughing. When I finally stopped coughing, he said, “I think you got some that time.”

  He smoked the joint, taking hits, looking at me, my face all tears from coughing. When he handed the joint back to me, I shook my head no. Pete took one more hit, and then he pinched the lit end of the joint with his fingers. He put the joint back in his Kool pack, and the Kool pack back in his pocket.