Little Miss Strange

by Joanna Rose

  Constanzia was sleepy, and maybe her eyes closed.

  “Constanzia?” I said. “Can we do the zipper foot today? And then maybe tomorrow the buttonhole maker?”

  “Sí,” she said. “Some coffee, sí.”

  I went back in the kitchen, and poured warm coffee from the pot on the stove. I stirred in brown sugar from the jar, three spoons. When I took the coffee out to her, her head was dropped down, and her breathing was soft sleeping breathing.

  “Constanzia,” I said, and I set the coffee down on the table.

  “Mm,” she said, waking up a little, and then back into her catnap in her white wicker catnap chair, the old wicker color showing through.

  I went outside.

  “Erico,” I said. “Will there be leftover blue?”

  “Yes,” he said from up on the ladder.

  “Tomorrow,” I said. “Let’s paint Constanzia’s chair with the leftover blue.”

  Erico looked down at me.

  “I will,” he said. “I will do that.”

  I went back into the shop, and I sipped at Constanzia’s dark, bitter coffee.

  When I took my bath that night, I unhooked the silver chain of the Mary medal. I only ever took it off for my bath. The medal was bright blue, magic blue, safe blue.

  THE WEEKENDS were crazy busy on Seventeenth Avenue, people walking up and down the street, sometimes the same people, walking up and down the street. Sasha came in, with Dylan Marie right behind her close. Sasha carried a big box, and Dylan Marie hid her face behind Sasha’s butt.

  “Does she like clothes?” I said.

  “Hats,” Sasha said. “She likes hats.”

  My Walt Whitman hat was behind the counter. I put it on. Dylan Marie watched.

  Sasha started laying things out on the counter for Constanzia to look at. I went to the shelf under the window, where the hats were piled up.

  “Dylan Marie,” I whispered.

  Dylan Marie looked around at me, and I held up a wide straw hat. She kept watching me, and I put the straw hat back on the shelf and held up a purple baseball hat. Dylan Marie smiled and turned her face back into Sasha.

  “Here,” I said.

  She wouldn’t look at me again. I went back behind the counter, and as I went by Sasha and Dylan Marie I put the purple baseball hat on the floor there, by their feet. I watched through the glass counter. Dylan Marie picked up the purple baseball hat, and she held it to her chest and she put her face back into Sasha’s leg. When they left, Dylan Marie was still hanging onto the purple baseball hat, hanging on to it and chewing it.

  “I guess I gave away that purple baseball hat,” I said.

  “Such a little blond one,” Constanzia said. “So much alike, those two, mother and daughter. Daughter?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Dylan Marie.”

  The purple baseball hat cost one dollar. I put one dollar in the money box.

  After Constanzia went upstairs for an afternoon nap, Elle came in.

  “Look,” she said. “I got a postcard. Look.”

  She handed it to me out of her shoulder strap purse. The picture was of city lights, and then the ocean, and the sky dark orange and streaks of purple, and the water of the ocean looked pure gold.

  Dear El—It really looks like this because of smog.

  I have a boyfriend named Dirk. What a weird name?

  I am a waitress. XOXO—T

  “She has a job already,” Elle said. “And a boyfriend.”

  “X-O-X-O-T,” I said.

  Elle took the postcard back and looked at the front of it, and she looked at the back of it. She put the postcard back into her purse, and she took out a silver lighter. She snapped it open and lit it, snapped it shut.

  “You got a lighter,” I said. “Let me see that.”

  I lit the lighter and then snapped the top down, opened the top and lit the lighter again. One hand.

  “Far out,” I said.

  “Quit wasting lighter fluid,” she said. “Give me that.”

  She took the lighter back and she put it into her purse.

  “What else do you keep in there?” I said.

  “Just stuff that I need,” Elle said.

  She walked to the front window, swinging her butt, bouncing her purse on its long shoulder strap, from her bare shoulder, all freckles.

  “That purse is longer than those cutoffs,” I said.

  Elle’s cutoffs were cut off short, and torn up the seam at each side.

  “I can see your underpants when you walk like that,” I said.

  Elle looked down at herself. She looked at her own butt.

  “Red underpants?” I said.

  “Foxy, huh?” Elle said.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t know,” Elle said. “Look at you.”

  My blue jeans were cut off long, down by my knees, and baggy, and my long T-shirt hanging out.

  “You could fit two people in those cutoffs,” Elle said.

  “Well,” I said. “I have to keep stuff in my pockets.”

  “You should get a purse,” she said.

  She said, “You’ve been wearing those same sneakers since third grade.”

  “Not the same ones,” I said,

  “They look like the same ones,” she said. “I can see your toe.”

  She wandered back and leaned on the counter, kicking at it in a slow rhythm.

  “Don’t do that,” I said.

  She ran her fingernail along the crack between the glass countertop and the wood, her pink polished fingernail running through the gritty dust trapped there, crunching like sugar.

  “Don’t do that,” I said.

  Elle said, “Are you going to work all day again?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Zigzag. Today we’re going to do zigzag, after Constanzia’s nap.”

  The shop was cool and outside was hot. People walked by the window in a slow easy way, bare arms, guys with no shirts, girls with long hair pulled up off their necks. Talking came in the door and then faded away, sandals slapping away up the hot, bright sidewalk. A little fan hummed back and forth behind the counter, cool air across the back of my neck.

  Elle said, “There’s nothing to do.”

  “Zigzag,” I said. “When Constanzia comes back down, zigzag.”

  “You just like saying zigzag,” Elle said.

  There was a pile of stuff at the end of the counter, and I sorted through it. Blue corduroy pants. A pink sweater.

  “Look,” I said.

  Pale gauzy cloth was twisted around the arm of the pink sweater, a white, long-sleeved shirt.

  “You should buy this,” I said. “It’s a good sunburn shirt.”

  Elle got sunburned again and again. She wore little halter tops sometimes, and her bare shoulders burned over and over, and her back. Once her shoulders were so sunburned there were watery blisters that peeled away and left white shadows in with the freckles.

  The white shirt was see-through, long and loose. Elle put it on over her strappy little top. The shirttails went down past her cutoffs.

  “Too big,” she said.

  “Perfect,” I said. “Too big is cool.”

  Elle said, “What do you know about cool.”

  She let the shirt slip off her bare pink freckled shoulders, let it drop to the floor.

  “Hey,” I said. “Pick that up.”

  She picked up the shirt and dropped it on the counter. I picked the shirt up and looked at it. Tiny buttons of dark shell went down the front, and one on each sleeve, There was no collar, just a button there. The color of the cloth was dark white. The color of the cloth was ivory. Ivory number nine.

  Elle said, “Now what?”

  She said, “Why don’t you come over to my house tonight?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Nobody will be home,” she said.

  I said, “You always say that.”

  I spread the shirt flat on the counter, and I drew on there with a pencil.
A leaf, like a hand, with long curling fingers. Short, light pencil lines, next to the top button.

  Elle said, “I can get a bottle of peach wine. Or cherry.”

  “You threw up last time you got that stuff,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “But then you don’t get a hangover.”

  “If you don’t get drunk you don’t get one either,” I said. “Smoking marijuana is better.”

  “Do you have some?” Elle said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Me either,” she said. “But I know who does.”

  I fit the embroidery hoops over the thin cloth.

  “Should I try to get some?” Elle said.

  “Oh sure, just like last time,” I said.

  “Got any money?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  I pulled a long thread separate from the skein of ivory number nine, bit it off, licked my finger, twisted a knot.

  “Well, give me ten bucks,” she said.

  “Ten bucks?” I said. “What about you, don’t you have any money?”

  “Not with me,” Elle said. “I’ll pay you back.”

  “You still owe me three dollars from when you bought that white eye-shadow,” I said.

  “Highlighter,” Elle said. “It’s highlighter.”

  The needles in the card were set in there in an even row from small to big. I took out the smallest. The material of the shirt was so thin. And one single strand of ivory number nine.

  “How about it?” Elle said.

  I closed one eye, aimed the thread perfectly through the eye of the smallest needle.

  “First try,” I said.

  I set the threaded needle down on the glass of the counter. I gave Elle my five-dollar bill from my back pocket.

  “This is all I have,” I said.

  “I need ten,” she said, picking up my five-dollar bill.

  “That’s all I have on me,” I said, watching my five-dollar bill go into Elle’s shoulder strap purse.

  “Can’t you get more?” she said.

  “That’s all I have on me,” I said.

  “Well, borrow some out of the drawer,” she said. “They wouldn’t care.”

  “They wouldn’t care if it was, like, for something else,” I said. “But not for buying marijuana.”

  “They wouldn’t even know,” Elle said.

  The corners of the shop had dark shadows in the boxes of old curtains and big pieces of cloth. Shirts hanging across the rack by the door moved when the air of the fan touched there. The red of the zinnias at the bottom edge of the window was hard hot red, baked bright by the sun out there, and there were gray dust bunnies at the bottom corner of the door, tangled though with tiny colors of thread. Sandals slapping by on the sidewalk. Perfect.

  I said, “No.”

  “Well,” Elle said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  She raised her arms, tucking in the loose strands of her hair, tied up on her head. The pale hollow of her armpit was a bumpy rash from shaving off the fuzzy red hair in there.

  “See you later,” she said.

  She went out the door, stepping onto the bright sidewalk, her hair a hot light, an impossible color, and then she went away, up Seventeenth Avenue.

  The second leaf was almost done when Constanzia came down to the shop. Her arms were wrinkled and bare and silver bands clinking like tiny music at her wrists. She went to the doorway and looked out at Seventeenth Avenue, stepping out into the sun, and she looked at the zinnias and the petunias and she came back in, smiling, nodding her head.

  “Mm,” she said, sitting down into her chair. Her new blue chair.

  She took a piece of work from her sewing basket, and she let it lay there in her lap, under her hands, under the quiet of the silver bracelets.

  “Perfect, sí?” I said.

  “And look,” I said. “Ivory leaves. I’m making ivory leaves.”

  “Ivory leaves,” she said, “Mm.”

  She said, “Maybe the zigzag tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow would be okay,” I said. “Tomorrow would be perfect.”

  BY THE time the shirt was finished, ivory leaves on each side of the dark shell button at the neck, it was mine, and I took it home with me that night.

  There was no Blackbird at the curb. Our apartment was still and hot. I turned on water in the bathtub, cool water, and I poured in perfumey pink bubble bath. When the water and the bubbles were up to the faucet, I got in, the cool water rushing over me in goosebumps. The bathroom was dark, the bathroom door open just a crack. Bird sounds came in, a siren far away, the singy hum and clank of the refrigerator. The water dripped, and the foam of the bubble bath made its own small noise. I closed my eyes, lying back into the cold curve of the bathtub, breathing in the chills.

  The door out in the front room opened.

  Jimmy Henry said, “Are you home?”

  “I’m in the bathtub,” I said.

  His footsteps went into his bedroom, and then they came into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator door, and there was the metal opener on the bottle cap, and the bottle cap bouncing on the floor and the refrigerator door shut again.

  “You in there in the dark?” he said.

  I said, “Yeah.”

  He went away then, away from the kitchen, out to the front room, down the stairs. I slid under the water, bubbles tickling around my head, cold water filling up my ears, and the squeaking of my butt on the bottom of the bathtub. Then I got out, splashing, the air warm on my skin.

  The ivory leaves shirt was soft as pajamas, tickled my legs. I put on a pair of old men’s shorts of some dark maroon silky stuff. My skin was cool and tight, touched by my clothes. Shadows touched into the corners of the kitchen.

  I made a peanut butter sandwich and sat in the bench of the kitchen table. Music came up through the kitchen window.

  “Turn it down,” I said.

  The door in the front room opened, and Lady Jane came in.

  “Hi,” she said. “Are you hungry?”

  She turned on the front room light, the bright yellow of it filling the kitchen with hard dark.

  “Are you sitting there in the dark?” she said.

  I said, “Turn it off.”

  She turned the light off and the evening shadows came back in.

  She came into the kitchen.

  “Are you hungry?” she said. “We’re having gazpacho. It’s Margo’s recipe.”

  “I’m having peanut butter,” I said.

  “Well, bring your sandwich and come on down with us,” she said. “It’s so nice. Out there. Out back on the porch.”

  “It’s nice here,” I said. “Up here. At the kitchen table.”

  Lady Jane said, “It’s a shame to be inside on such a beautiful evening.”

  “It’s right here,” I said. “The evening. It’s right here.”

  The air of the window smelled of cooling cement and the dust of the thin curtain. Orange was starting to color the sky over the roof of the house next door, and there was the night sound of a cat.

  “Okay,” Lady Jane said. “But come down if you want. It’s so nice there.”

  She left, leaving the door open. I got up, and the bare backs of my legs were sticky damp on the bench. I shut the door.

  “It’s nice here,” I said.

  “Ivory leaves,” I said.

  I got a book of poems that had no rhymes and sat back at the kitchen table. I read out loud, reading the lines like sentences, stopping at periods, or maybe at the end of an idea that seemed like a sentence. Listening to the sound of me.

  Feet came up the stairs, and I stopped reading, and waited for Lady Jane to open the door.

  It was Elle.

  “Hi,” she said. “Can we come in?”

  “Who?” I said.

  “Me,” she said.

  She came in, and two boys came in behind her, and I held my poem book up in front of me, in front of the thin cloth of the ivory leaves shirt, and nothing on under there.


  “Hey,” I said.

  Elle turned on the light in the front room.

  “Turn that off,” I said.

  “What are you doing?” she said, coming into the kitchen.

  The two boys stood by the door in the front room, blue jeans, T-shirts, two boys I didn’t know.

  “Turn that light off,” I said.

  “That’s Mike and Billy,” Elle said. “Are you home by yourself?”

  One of the boys turned off the light switch by the door. They both stayed right there, by the door.

  “Elle,” I said.

  She sat down by me, and she smiled close at my face, all sweet wine smell.

  “Got a lid,” she said.

  “Well,” I said. “You can stay but they can’t.”

  Elle took a plastic baggie out of her purse and held it up.

  “Want to smoke some?” she said.

  “No,” I said, and I lowered my voice to her.

  “Who are those guys?” I said. “I don’t want any guys in here.”

  “Want to go hang out?” she said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Look, you guys,” I said to the two boys in the front room. “You got to go.”

  They both turned to the door.

  “Just a second,” Elle said. “I’ll come out in a second. Go wait out front.”

  They left.

  “Who are those guys?” I said.

  “My friends,” Elle said.

  She dumped marijuana out onto the table, and the little seeds scattered.

  “God damn it,” I said, putting down my book and elbowing her out of the bench.

  “What a weirdo,” she said, picking up my book. “Sitting here in the dark, reading poems. And you’re wearing that shirt. You know I can see your boobs.”

  I got a baggie from the second drawer, and I pinched up some of the marijuana into it. I took the emptied-out baggie from Elle and brushed the rest of the marijuana off the table into it. She leaned against the refrigerator and watched me.

  “Here,” I said. “Your half.”

  There was a black shadow of eye makeup under her one eye, and the pink on her cheeks was two dark smears.

  “You don’t have to go,” I said. “Who are those guys?”

  “Mike and Bobby,” she said.

  “Billy,” I said. “You said Billy before.”

  “Something,” she said. “Billy maybe.”

  She put the marijuana into her purse.