Little Miss Strange

by Joanna Rose

  Upstairs was quiet and dark, and the sounds of Lady Jane and Nancy came up between the houses. I put some marijuana in the pipe, smoked some.

  Points south. New Mexico. Arizona.

  Los Angeles. The ocean.

  She would get sunburned all the time.

  I put on the ivory leaves shirt, over my T-shirt, and took the pipe back downstairs.

  IT WAS a picture of a tall pink building on a sunny day, and it said, “I Miss You—XOXO Elle.” I leaned the postcard on my dresser against the wall where I could see it from my bed.

  X-O-L.

  JIMMY HENRY and Lady Jane talked about Elle, just to each other. Not to me, not when I could hear, just sometimes “Elle” in the air, when they were in the kitchen and I was in the front room, or “Elle” in the space between the houses, above the skinny sidewalk.

  “Elle may be doing okay,” Lady Jane said. “If she was in trouble, they would have heard.”

  Jimmy Henry said, “I was pretty much on my own when I was thirteen.”

  “Not me,” Lady Jane said. “Dad never let me out of his sight.”

  She said, “I was his favorite.”

  I STAYED in bed in the mornings until the downstairs doors all quit slamming, open and shut, and the morning took over. Then I made my coffee and took the cup into Jimmy Henry’s bedroom. The air in there was quiet and cool, and he never slept there anymore. The bed was always neat, and there was no smell of warm sleeping. I opened the curtains across and sat in the middle of the neat bed. The birds in the trees right outside the window fussed and chirped, and I drank my coffee.

  In Jimmy Henry’s bedroom, in the summer morning, I didn’t remember school, I didn’t remember anything. I sat in the middle of his bed with my coffee in the cup and the birds outside, not doing anything, like I was never going to do anything again.

  I said, “Elle.”

  I said, “Jimmy Henry.”

  I said, “Dad.”

  Saying words out loud into the empty quiet of Jimmy Henry’s bedroom made the words come back to me all odd, like they were brand-new words I had never heard before, made-up words.

  I said, “Christine Jeanette Blumenthal.”

  Sometimes, instead of saying words out loud, I just tried to breathe.

  ON THE Fourth of July it was ninety degrees and all the stores were closed. Lady Jane wanted to go for a ride to the mountains. Jimmy Henry sat at the back porch table, drinking a beer, ten o’clock in the morning, his hair tied back from his face into a ponytail, no shirt.

  “Morrison,” Lady Jane said.

  She brushed her hair.

  “Let’s go to that little town called Morrison,” she said. “It’s not very far. There’s a hotel there, with a funky old bar. We could have gin and tonics.”

  Jimmy Henry said, “It’s too hot to move.”

  Lady Jane bent over and hung her hair down, brushing it upside down. Jimmy Henry watched her.

  “We could take Margo,” she said from upside down under her hair. “It would cheer her up.”

  Jimmy Henry said, “She has the dragon lady to cheer her up.”

  Lady Jane stood up straight and flipped her hair back, and looked at me. I sat on the edge of the porch eating my toast like all I was interested in was eating my toast.

  She said, “Be nice.”

  He said, “I’m not nice?”

  The butter dripped through the big holes in the toast, Lady Jane’s homemade bread. Butter dripped into the powdery dust along the edge of the porch, making little beads of butter mud. Behind me, Jimmy Henry and Lady Jane moved together, and there was the soft sound of clothes touching, skin touching, a kiss. I stood up, and when I turned they were moved apart, looking at each other. Jimmy Henry leaned back in his chair. He picked up his beer can and tossed it into the bag standing next to the table.

  “How about it?” he said. “Want to go for a ride?”

  “No,” I said. “I think I’ll go read.”

  I went upstairs, and I slammed the door. It made me jump, slamming the door like that.

  I looked in my closet. I opened my top drawer. My middle drawer. Nothing. I felt like doing nothing, and I listened for sounds from downstairs. I went in the bathroom, and I looked at the face around my eyes in the mirror, the only light coming in from the kitchen window.

  My mother’s face.

  Somewhere it is Fourth of July, and there is this woman getting ready to have a picnic, or go see fireworks or something, and she looks like me. Brown eyes. Skinny nose with a bump. Pointy chin. Elle said heart-shaped. She said I have a heart-shaped face, and that her face is oval-shaped, and oval-shaped is the best.

  Maybe her name isn’t even Blumenthal anymore. Maybe she married some guy and changed her name. But maybe she’s still Christine.

  Jimmy Henry came upstairs, and I went out in the kitchen. He picked up the keys to Blackbird off the applebox table.

  “Sure you don’t want to go for a ride?” he said.

  He tossed the keys from one hand to the other hand.

  I said, “When are you coming back?”

  He shrugged.

  I said, “I’ll just hang around here.”

  “Okay,” he said. “See you later.”

  He left. He never looked right at me, and then he left. I stood in the kitchen staring at the door until I had to blink, and the whole house was quiet, and Blackbird starting up, driving away.

  Sun came in all our windows, and it was as quiet as night.

  I went down the stairs. The Christmas lights were plugged in, shining single dots of color. I opened the front door, and the bright colors of the lights washed out pale. I shut the door, back to colored lights and dark, and I went back to Lady Jane’s door. Pushed it open. Shut it behind me.

  It was all messy and yellow and white. A pink blanket was piled up on the bed, and sheets with cartoon animals all over them. Blue-striped pillow. One pillow.

  I sat at the table by the tall window and pushed open the yellow and orange tie-dye bridesmaid dress and I looked down to the skinny sidewalk. A dark green leather-covered book was on the windowsill, under the yellow and orange tie-dye bridesmaid dress.

  Lady Jane’s handwriting was round and neat, no slant, and it filled up most of the green book, running straight and neat across pages with no lines.

  He is my soul mate.

  I want to have his child.

  A man needs to have his own child.

  I turned to another page.

  His lips on my breasts makes me cry.

  Lips to breast.

  Lips to belly.

  Lips to pussy.

  I shut the book and laid it carefully back in the corner of the windowsill.

  He kisses her down there.

  I got up from the table and stood in the middle of the room, looking back there where I couldn’t see the green book.

  Pussy. Elle says “cunt.” She says the Mexican boys say “cunt.”

  The yellow-painted shelves were full of stuff, a lot of books, Birds of the World, the white elephant teapot. The white elephant teapot sat up in its same place as when Tina Blue lived here. Tina Blue’s white elephant. The handle was broken off now, the elephant had no tail. It was in its same place, up high on the shelf. I reached up to the high shelf and took the teapot down, and the teapot rattled. Inside were the two broken pieces of the elephant’s tail, and some loose beads, dark red beads.

  I took down Birds of the World and set it on the table. I opened to pileated woodpecker, and turned pages, the light shining on the glossy pictures, not really looking at them. There was an envelope in western meadowlark. The stamp was a beautiful yellow bird that looked like the western meadowlark picture. I couldn’t read the bird name on the stamp. The post office mark covered up the writing on the stamp. The return address said “Omaha, Nebraska.” There was a little blue heart, drawn kind of crooked, with “Blue” written inside the heart. The envelope was empty. I folded it up and put it in my pocket.

  Her b
athroom smelled of sandalwood soap and strawberry shampoo. I opened the mirror cabinet over the sink. Musk oil in a tiny brown bottle. A flat blue plastic case that snapped open. Birth control pills, yellow pills in three rows, orange pills in the last row. Sasha had birth control pills. Elle said the orange pills were fake, the yellow ones the important pills.

  His own child.

  What would she do, just give him a baby? Like my mother gave him me?

  I went back up to my room and got Tina Blue’s ring out of the pocket of my jacket, and put it on my finger. I put the string of kelly bird beads around my neck, and the purple silk cord tangled in with the Mary medal. I changed from my T-shirt into a pajama top, shiny light blue with lacy ribbon straps and long ribbons down the front. The warm Fourth of July air felt all over my skin, and where the silver touched me was cool.

  Jimmy Henry’s bedroom was the coolest quietest place, just the birds and sometimes a car. I lay down there, in the middle of Jimmy Henry’s bed, the green blanket scratchy against my back through the pajama top. The beads and the Mary medal slid across my neck, tickling there, and I lay my hands on my chest and closed my eyes and moved my hands down, inside my cutoffs, cool silver on the warm skin of my stomach. My finger found the tiniest wettest fold of skin and touched there, touching and touching until I couldn’t breathe, and then touching until breathing came easy again, after the little noise, that broke loose, from my own throat.

  BANGING ON the door downstairs woke me up quick, and I got up quick off the bed and went down to the front door. Margo and Cassandra Wiggins.

  Dragon lady.

  “Los Angeles,” Margo said. “Is Jimmy here? We have to go to Los Angeles, to get Lalena.”

  “They went for a ride in the mountains,” I said.

  “She got busted,” Margo said. “For shoplifting. The police called, they’re holding her in a juvenile facility until I can go get her. She’s okay. They found her.”

  Cassandra Wiggins leaned against the railing, her face not saying anything. Margo looked hot and pink and her hair curled around her forehead all sweaty.

  “I guess they’ll be back in a while,” I said. “You mean go there? Drive to Los Angeles?”

  “Yeah,” Margo said. “We have to go get her. The police can only release her into my custody.”

  She turned to Cassandra Wiggins.

  “Let’s just wait here okay?” she said, and Cassandra Wiggins shrugged her shoulders, stood up straight, and they both came in, past me, up the stairs. I shut the door and followed them up. The Christmas lights sparkled on Tina Blue’s silver ring, and I took it off and put it in the pocket of my cutoffs.

  Margo sat down heavy on the couch, leaned her elbows on her knees, pink, round knees. Cassandra Wiggins looked around the front room, looked at the top half of the window all boarded up. Looked at me.

  “Hey,” she said.

  She reached out at me, touched the string of kelly bird beads, her cool fingers touching the skin of my neck.

  “I remember these,” she said.

  I stepped back.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  I tucked the beads inside the pajama top and crossed my arms over my chest, warm skin creeping up my neck, to the one spot where her fingers touched.

  Margo said, “If we leave right now we can get there by tomorrow afternoon, maybe tomorrow night.”

  “Is she in trouble?” I said. “For shoplifting?”

  “They’ll just let me take her,” Margo said. “I can just bring her home with me.”

  “Did you talk to her?” I said.

  “No, I talked to some lady cop at the juvenile facility,” Margo said.

  “Does she want to come home?” I said.

  They both looked at me.

  “She’s my little girl,” Margo said. “She has to come home. Little girls belong with their mothers.”

  “Or their fathers,” I said.

  “No,” Cassandra Wiggins said. “No.”

  Cassandra Wiggins and Margo looked at each other until Margo looked down at her knees. Cassandra Wiggins sat down across from her on the applebox table.

  She said, “Margo.”

  I stood still and straight by the door, and Margo and Cassandra Wiggins were just there, without me, two other people in my house. I went around the couch, into the kitchen, into my bedroom. I changed the pajama top back into my T-shirt. I put Tina Blue’s silver ring into the inside pocket of my jacket. There was the quiet sound of them talking, no words coming back to me.

  JIMMY HENRY let Cassandra Wiggins and Margo drive Blackbird to Los Angeles.

  “Drive the desert at night,” he said. “Don’t let it overheat.”

  Lady Jane said, “Call the café if there’s a problem.”

  I said, “Can I go?”

  Everybody said, “No.”

  Blackbird drove away, and Lady Jane and Jimmy Henry stood on the top step of the porch, watching Blackbird go up Ogden Street, Cassandra Wiggins driving.

  Dragon lady.

  Jimmy Henry’s hand touched up and down Lady Jane’s back, his fingers not quite just barely touching through her skinny summer shirt.

  I GOT home from the shop and Blackbird was back. I ran up the stairs. It was just Lady Jane and Jimmy Henry sitting at the kitchen table, and they stopped talking and looked at me.

  “Is Elle back?” I said.

  Jimmy Henry didn’t say anything, and Lady Jane said,

  “Yeah. She’s back.”

  I said, “I’m going over there.”

  I turned around to go back out and Jimmy Henry said, “Wait.”

  I turned back around, and he didn’t say anything.

  “What?” I said.

  “Maybe you should wait,” he said.

  “For what?” I said.

  Jimmy Henry looked at the table, and Lady Jane looked at Jimmy Henry.

  “What?” I said. “What’s going on?”

  Jimmy Henry said, “Did you know those guys Lalena went to LA with?”

  “No,” I said. “Just some boys. From Kansas maybe.”

  “You should have told us what you knew,” he said. “You should have told us that she wrote to you.”

  The postcard from Elle was lying on the kitchen table, the picture of the tall pink building.

  “That’s mine,” I said. “That was in my room.”

  My bedroom door was open.

  “You went in my room,” I said.

  “I did it,” Lady Jane said. “I’m sorry. I saw it on your dresser and I looked at it.”

  “You went in my room,” I said.

  “Sarajean,” Jimmy Henry said. “This was serious. Lalena could have been in trouble.”

  His voice was trying to be different.

  “I don’t care what you say,” I said, my voice shouting. I didn’t know what to say, and I looked in at my dresser. The top drawer was open, and my stuff in there, my mother’s letter, the horse patch, all my stuff.

  “Sarajean,” Lady Jane said. “I’m sorry. I just looked at this because it was on top.”

  Jimmy Henry said, “Sarajean, we have to talk. About things.”

  “No,” I said, my thoughts going away like crazy, and Tina Blue’s ring was in my jacket pocket, my jacket hanging there on the doorknob of my room.

  “I don’t want you ever in here,” I said, not shouting, stepping into the doorway of my room.

  Jimmy Henry pushed his hair away from his face and he reached his hand out at me.

  “Baby,” he said. “Come here. Sit down and listen.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m going over Elle’s. I don’t want to talk to you.”

  His hand dropped to the table, his hand a fist, closed.

  “Sarajean, don’t get in trouble,” he said. “You don’t understand, I can’t help you if you get in trouble.”

  In trouble. My face got hot.

  “I’m not going to get in trouble,” I said.

  My voice was shaky down in my chest.

  I to
ok my jacket off the doorknob. The end of my arm, my hand holding the jacket and Tina Blue’s ring in the pocket, like someone else’s hand attached to me, and I looked at Jimmy Henry so he wouldn’t look at my jacket, his hair hanging down into his face. I backed out of the kitchen and I went out the door, and down the stairs, and when I got to the sidewalk I walked slow and started to breathe right again.

  The door at the top of the stairs was open, and I looked in.

  I said, “Hello?”

  Elle was lying on the couch. She sat up when I said that, sat up and looked over the back of the couch. She was sunburned.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She lay back down on the couch.

  “You’re home,” I said.

  “No shit,” she said.

  “I got your postcard you sent,” I said.

  “I wasn’t sure what the address was,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, I got it,” I said. “When did you guys get back?”

  “This afternoon,” she said.

  She stared at the ceiling.

  “You’re all sunburned,” I said. “Did you get sunburned at the beach?”

  “No,” she said.

  She closed her eyes and turned over on her stomach. Her back was sunburned too, white lines in the hot pink where another halter top had been tied across.

  “We never went to the beach,” she said. “It was too far away.”

  “I thought Los Angeles was at the beach,” I said.

  “Los Angeles is really big,” she said.

  “So, what’s it like?” I said.

  “Big,” she said.

  She sat up and rubbed her face.

  “Fuck,” she said. “I’m really burnt out. Of course Cassandra Wiggins Hardass had to drive all the way, no stopping.”

  Dragon lady.

  “They were pretty freaked out,” I said. “Even Jimmy Henry got all weird.”

  “My mother cried all the way home,” Elle said, and she laughed. “I couldn’t believe it.”

  “Yeah, well,” I said. “If I’d a known you were going there I would have said look in the phone book.”

  “For what?” she said.

  “Blumenthal,” I said. “Christine Jeanette Blumenthal. Maybe she lives in Los Angeles.”

  She sat up and stretched her arms, and then she sat back down and started poking around in her leather shoulder strap purse that was on the floor by the couch. She closed her eyes, reaching around in there with her eyes closed, instead of just looking.