Little Miss Strange

by Joanna Rose

I ran on the sidewalks until my breath cut into the inside of my chest. I slowed down to walking fast, crossed Colfax Street against the light, and a car beeped at me.

  I said, “Fuck you,” and never stopped.

  My apartment. The painted apartment.

  I stacked my books from the shelf in a tall stack and carried them up the stairs.

  All the birdcloth.

  My shoe box, and the candles, and the old ends of candles that rolled around in the top drawer, dark green, red. The purple one.

  I took it all into my bedroom, and I sat down on the bed and pressed my fingers flat over my eyes and sat, still, and the light of my eyelids flashed like my heart beating, slower and slower.

  1977

  The front door was open, and the apartment door was open. I saw all the way through to the alley, the back door wide open too. Laughing came through the doors, and paint smell, and I went to the doorway at the back of the hall. Lady Jane stood on a ladder in the middle of the floor, and she was painting with a paint roller, painting wide streaks of white across the purple ceiling, half of the ceiling white already.

  JFK was painting into a corner. He had speckles of white in his hair, paint on his face, paint on his skinny arms.

  He said, “It’s going to take two coats.”

  A half white room, patches of white, purple showing through.

  Lady Jane climbed down the steps of the ladder, and came over to me in the doorway, and turned to look at the half white, half purple.

  “We got yellow for the shelves,” she said. “For over the green. Yellow trim.”

  A white lightbulb shone down from the middle of the ceiling. The mattress was gone. The little dresser was out on the back porch.

  She had Jimmy Henry put the door back on the closet, and then she painted the door yellow. She put a piece of yellow and orange tie-dye across the tall window, and then she put her table there. The piece of yellow and orange tie-dye had straps hanging from the ends.

  “It was a dress,” she said. “A bridesmaid dress. We all had a different color. I’ll just cut those straps off. Now I won’t have to just stare out at the wall of the house next door.”

  She painted the little dresser shiny white, and then she decided she didn’t like it. When I came home from school, the little dresser was out back by the trash cans.

  She wound her Christmas tree lights around the railing of the stairs.

  “It was so dark in that hallway,” she said.

  THE FIRST day of summer vacation Elle came over early. I was sitting on the top step of the front porch, and she came walking along the sidewalk, walking slow. She had a bandanna tied around her chest like a halter top, a triangle of red bandanna, and her cutoffs hung low, under her bellybutton, her bare stomach curving in, curving out.

  She sat down next to me on the top step.

  “What’s the matter?” I said.

  She said, “Why are you wearing that hat?”

  I said, “You look like you’ve been crying.”

  “Talia split,” she said.

  “Split?” I said.

  “Los Angeles,” she said. “She has to go stay with her dad and her stepmother in the summer. She got on a bus. She has to go there every summer.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Bummer.”

  She picked at the pink nail polish on her toenails.

  I said, “What’s she going to do in Los Angeles?”

  “I don’t know,” Elle said. “How should I know?”

  We sat there on the top step, Elle sniffing, me being quiet, Talia riding away on a bus. Elle’s hair was piled up on top of her head, her shoulders bare, freckles, bony.

  “Want to get high?” I said.

  “Okay,” she said.

  I said, “Come on up.”

  We went up the stairs, and Elle said, “How come there’s Christmas lights?”

  “Don’t ask me,” I said.

  I got the wooden pipe out of my top drawer and put a little clump of marijuana in it, took it out to the front room where Elle was flopped on the couch.

  “Cute pipe,” she said.

  “It’s half mine,” I said. “Half mine, half JFK’s.”

  She held the pipe out, looking at it.

  “You mean John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski has had his lips on this pipe?” she said. “That creepy little weasel.”

  “Here’s some matches,” I said.

  She lit the pipe, and I got a stick of incense, took the matches back, lit the incense. The blue smoke of incense curled into the cloud of marijuana smoke, sandalwood smell, marijuana smell.

  “I can’t believe you hang out with him,” she said.

  She handed me the pipe.

  “I don’t really hang out with him,” I said. “He’s gone for the summer anyway. At his grandma’s in the mountains.”

  I said, “I never got high first thing in the morning before.”

  “The only difference is you forget you’re high,” Elle said.

  “I always forget I’m high,” I said. “Until I like walk into the middle of the street, or start cracking up, and then Jimmy Henry just stares at me, and then I remember I got high.”

  “You think he knows you get high?” she said.

  “No,” I said. “Does Margo know you get high?”

  “My daddy knows,” Elle said. “He doesn’t care. Margo doesn’t know anything.”

  I said, “Does she know you smoke cigarettes?”

  “No,” she said. “Probably. I don’t know. What do you think Jimmy Henry would do if he walked in right now and we’re getting high?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Nothing probably. Go in his room and shut the door.”

  I got up and opened the window.

  The air of summer touched my arms, and I leaned out, looking down at the skinny sidewalk. I picked at the dark peeling paint, dropping the bits down. The window below me opened, and Lady Jane’s head poked out. Her part in her hair was crooked. I flicked a little piece of paint down, a tiny bit that landed on her head. I picked off another piece and dropped it, and she jerked her head back when it fell past her face. I turned back into the room.

  Elle was picking at her toenails.

  “Got any pop?” she said.

  Music came up from downstairs, and Elle looked up from her toes.

  “What’s that?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “I mean where’s it coming from,” she said.

  “Lady Jane is up,” I said. “Want some coffee?”

  Elle said, “I hate coffee.”

  She came to the window and leaned out next to me.

  “That must be weird,” she said. “Her living there.”

  “I don’t care,” I said.

  She said, “So, does she come up here all the time?”

  Elle’s hair tied up in a rubber band wisped out around her ears.

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  “Or does he go down there?” she said.

  She had freckles on her ears.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She just lives there now is all. Who cares.”

  Elle said, “Do you hear them?”

  “God, Elle,” I said, and shoved her with my shoulder.

  I went and picked up the pipe from the applebox table. It was all smoked up. I put it in my pocket.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go to the store and get a pop.”

  We started down the stairs, and when we got to the bottom, Lady Jane opened her door.

  “Hi, you guys,” she said. “Where you going?”

  “Nowhere,” I said.

  She said, “Want some French toast?”

  I said, “No.”

  Elle said, “Yeah.”

  Elle went back to Lady Jane’s open door, and I stood at the front door, looking out at the empty street.

  “Come on, Sarajean,” Lady Jane said.

  I shut the front door and went back there.

  Elle went in, to the middle of the roo
m.

  “Wow,” she said. “Sure looks different.”

  I stared at her and she shut up.

  Lady Jane said, “We can eat outside if you want. I got a table for the back porch.”

  She went over in the corner and opened the yellow-painted cabinet over the stove. The dishes in the cabinet were stacked up, big plates, little plates, coffee mugs all lined up, all different colors.

  “Here,” she said, handing plates to Elle. “Take these out back.”

  The table on the back porch was a round wooden table, with a book under one leg, and a lacy tablecloth, the lace torn into holes along the edges. Elle set the plates down, one by each chair, three chairs.

  “Far out,” she said. “Food.”

  There were shelves made of cement blocks and boards, and little house-plants in pots were lined up across the shelves. There were bigger pots, red geraniums, yellow marigolds, around the bottom of the sumac tree.

  “Hey,” I said. “What happened to the ivy tub?”

  Lady Jane came out with two glasses of milk.

  “I got rid of it,” she said. “It was all falling apart, and the ivy was all weedy. It’s spread all back to the garage. You want milk, don’t you?”

  She set the glasses of milk on the table and went back inside.

  Elle said, “Milk?”

  I picked up one of the glasses of milk and took it with me, to the edge of the porch. I sat down there, looking at the sumac tree, looking at the marigolds, at the geraniums. I poured the milk into the dirt. Elle came and sat next to me with the other glass of milk, and she poured it into the dirt. The milk puddled there, and then slowly soaked in.

  “This place looks pretty nice now,” Elle said. “It used to be all dark in there. You think she’ll stay living here?”

  Lady Jane came out with forks and knives and laid them on the table.

  “Almost ready,” she said, and went back in.

  “Is she always like that?” Elle said.

  “Like what?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” Elle said. “Like giving you a glass of milk and shit?”

  Lady Jane came back out with the frying pan.

  “Here we go,” she said, singing out the words.

  “Like that,” Elle whispered.

  I sat in the chair with my back to the open door of the yellow and white apartment. A crow landed in the sumac tree, the twisty branch bending down. The crow landed there, stretched its shining black wings out wide, and it screeched. Lady Jane jumped up.

  “Shoo,” she yelled. “Git.”

  “God damn it,” she said.

  “Why don’t you like crows?” I said.

  “He gets in the trash,” she said. “Plus, there are baby sparrows in the eaves, and I’m afraid he’ll get them.”

  “Do crows do that?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” she said, looking at the crow.

  He looked back at her with one black eye.

  “He goes kind of nice with those yellow and red flowers,” I said.

  “Crows can be powerful allies,” Lady Jane said. “But, I guess the deal is, you never know whose allies they are.”

  Elle looked me, rolled her eyes around.

  I said, “Is that in your Audubon book?”

  “No,” Lady Jane said. “It’s a Yaqui way of knowledge, or something.”

  “Yaqui?” I said.

  “It’s a Mexican thing,” Lady Jane said.

  Lady Jane went to the edge of the porch, and she stamped her bare foot. The crows spread his wings wide and screeched again, lifting out of the sumac tree, to the roof of the garage, and then away over the alley, shining black like white in the sun.

  LATE AT night, I could hear them, when I was lying on the couch in the front room, reading, or just lying there, summer bugs ticking at the light in the ceiling. The sounds that came up from the tall narrow window were Lady Jane laughing ha haha, Jimmy Henry’s quiet voice, not talking, his quiet voice down there in the dark. And then, after a while, nothing.

  THE FLOWER box was white petunias in the front, and tall red zinnias behind, red zinnias so tall I could see them at the bottom of the window from inside, red along there.

  I went to the shop every day, down the alley to the kitchen door. Erico was there sometimes, and he would say, “Ten o’clock.”

  And I would say, “Ten o’clock.”

  I went through the striped blanket, through to the front door. I turned the sign around from CLOSED to OPEN, and I opened the front door. The morning air came in the shop, morning air smell, and old clothes smell, coffee from the kitchen, sometimes coffee in a cup that Erico brought out to me.

  Constanzia came down after I got there. She sat into her chair, her breathing careful. Sometimes she went quietly back asleep and sometimes I looked at her sleeping face, her sleeping hands in her lap.

  One day Erico leaned a big ladder against the front of the shop outside, and he went up. I went out the door, and he was scraping the peeling old sunface away, messy bits dropping onto the red zinnias, on to the white petunias.

  “Erico,” I said. “Is it time to paint a new sunface? Finally?”

  He kept scraping, and the old design of sun and leaves fell to the sidewalk in bits, and down on my face in bits. I moved out to the edge of the sidewalk.

  “Erico?” I said.

  He stopped scraping and looked down at me.

  “Let’s paint crows on there,” I said.

  “Maybe Friday we can draw a new design,” he said. “First we have to scrape. Then sand. Then prepare a new surface.”

  “Why all that?” I said.

  “Patience,” he said. “For the sake of patience.”

  He scraped all that afternoon, across the top of the door, and down the sides, getting down off the ladder, moving the ladder to a new spot. I watched him from inside, his feet in brown boots on the ladder, and people walking around the ladder, people looking up at him.

  The next day Erico sanded the wood around the door with his electric sander, the thick orange cord running through the shop to the big plug in the kitchen. Buzzing sharp and loud. There was dust, glittery in the air by the door, white on the windowsill, white on the red zinnias. Gray on the white petunias.

  Then Erico had to go work somewhere else, and for two days the doorway of the shop was bare new-looking wood. On Friday there were cans of paint stacked by the door, and Erico painted the wood light gray.

  “That’s not a very pretty color,” I said.

  “Primer,” Erico said. “It is the color of patience.”

  “LADY JANE,” I said. “I need to look in your bird book.”

  She got Birds of the World down from the yellow shelf, and she set it on the table by the tall window. She pulled the orange and yellow tie-dye to the side so there would be light.

  “Crows,” I said. “I need to look at crows.”

  She sat down in the other chair at the table.

  “Crows?” she said. “Why?”

  “Just because,” I said.

  The crow picture was a crow looking straight up off the page, up at me.

  “This isn’t a very good picture to try and copy,” I said. “I need a sideways crow.”

  “Try raven,” Lady Jane said.

  The raven was perfect. He was bigger, and he faced sideways in the picture. His beak was bigger, and bigger wings.

  “What’s the difference between a raven and a crow?” I said.

  “Different birds,” Lady Jane said.

  She said, “Ravens are better.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “Smarter,” she said. “Tricksters.”

  “Yaqui?” I said.

  “I guess,” she said.

  I DREW the raven over, onto a big piece of paper, and I showed it to Erico.

  “A raven,” I said. “One at each corner.”

  I said, “Tricksters.”

  He looked up at the doorway, bare, painted gray.

  “I don’t know,” he sa
id.

  “Pretend it’s just a crow,” I said.

  “Well then,” Erico said. “If we are going to try and trick a trickster, we better paint the doorway blue first.”

  I said, “Blue?”

  “On the background,” he said. “All around the door.”

  “Why does it have to be blue?” I said.

  “A blue doorway,” he said. “Welcomes friendly spirits. Keeps out the evil ones.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Do you believe in evil spirits?”

  “Only when they try to come into my house,” he said.

  He painted blue all around the door, a middle kind of blue, not light blue, not dark blue.

  “Like sky,” I said. “How about branches? There were branches there before.”

  Constanzia came out and looked at the blue.

  “He says evil spirits will stay away now,” I said. “Because of the blue.”

  Constanzia looked up at the blue, and she looked up at Erico on the ladder, and she looked up at the sky. Then she went back in the shop.

  “Erico,” I said. “Doesn’t she like it?”

  Erico came down the ladder, and he stood on the sidewalk. His hands were covered with blue paint, and he wiped at them with an old white towel that was covered with blue paint. He looked up at the doorway, and he looked into the dark of the shop, wiping at his hands. He turned and he looked at me. I was almost as tall as Erico’s shoulder. His black hair curled down around his ears.

  “Old people,” he said, “see more. Perhaps it is foolish, this talk of tricking spirits.”

  “What do you mean?” I said. “Like she doesn’t believe in spirits? Is it something about being Catholic?”

  “Perhaps they sit at her feet,” Erico said. “Perhaps they sit at her feet and wait. In the long silences.”

  “Wait for what?” I said. “You mean when she’s sleeping in her chair? Is it like guardian angels?”

  Erico looked at my face, and I looked at his face, at his eyes. I looked, and I couldn’t see his eyes, and I wanted to look more.

  I said, “Are your eyes black or brown?”

  He crinkled into a smile, and something was different in a moment, something that became new blue paint, and a day of summer, and Erico, tall, and he turned and climbed back up the ladder.

  I went inside.

  “Constanzia?” I said. “Constanzia, do you want some coffee? And then can we work on the sewing machine? The zipper foot maybe?”