Little Miss Strange

by Joanna Rose

  “So, where were you?” I said. “Were you staying at Talia’s house?”

  “Couple days,” she said. “And at her boyfriend’s apartment.”

  “He has his own apartment?” I said. “How old is he?”

  “Him and some other guys,” she said. “This one guy, Bart, liked me.”

  “Bart?” I said.

  Elle said, “And . . .”

  She looked at me.

  I said, “And what?”

  “God,” she said. “You are so dense.”

  “What?” I said. “He’s like your boyfriend now?”

  She leaned back, her eyes closed, smiling, her eyes closed.

  “We did it,” she said.

  I almost said did what, and then I knew, and my neck got hot and my face got all stiff.

  Did it hurt, did it bleed, what if you got pregnant.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” she said.

  She was looking at me. Smiling.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Did you like it?”

  “Of course,” she said. “God. Did I like it.”

  “I mean him,” I said, all nervous. “Do you like him? Is he going to write, or something, you know, like is he your boyfriend now? Bart? His name is Bart?”

  “I’m going back,” she said. “As soon as I can figure it out.”

  I said, “Back to Los Angeles?”

  “Back to Los Angeles,” she said

  She lay back down on the couch, on her sunburned back.

  She said, “Got any grass?”

  “At home,” I said. “Oh, shit.”

  My marijuana. The little pipe. In my top drawer.

  “What?” Elle said. “Oh shit, what?”

  “My marijuana,” I said. “It’s in my drawer. Lady Jane went snooping around in there. I wonder if she got it. Shit.”

  “You just left it lying around?” Elle said.

  “No,” I said. “It was in my dresser drawer.”

  “Like that’s going to keep them out, a drawer,” Elle said.

  “I have to go home,” I said.

  “Come back if you still have any grass,” Elle said.

  JIMMY HENRY sat at the kitchen table. The apartment was almost dark, just him, in the last light from the kitchen window. He looked at me and I got mad, looking back at him, sitting there like he was all sad. When I got to the doorway of the kitchen I saw my mother’s letter, on the kitchen table, and the inside of me jumped a sharp jump.

  He said, “I have to ask you, Sarajean.”

  Then he didn’t say anything, and I held my breath, standing still and straight by the door.

  He said, “Do you remember coming here? Do you remember her? Do you remember me?”

  I said, “Remember you?”

  “The first time,” he said. “The first time. The first time you came here?”

  I said, “Came here from where?”

  “You were only about three,” he said. “I don’t know from where. She said you were with her friends, and that she was going to go get you, and then she brought you here.”

  “Was I born here?” I said. “In Denver? I thought I was from Denver?”

  “No,” he said, “Council Bluffs. Your birth certificate said Council Bluffs.”

  “My birth certificate?” I said. “I didn’t know I had a birth certificate.”

  “I don’t know where it is,” he said. “I think she took it last time she left. And she left this.”

  His fingers touched in an arch on the envelope on the table. The name side up. His name.

  He said, “I was in Vietnam.”

  He said, “I didn’t meet your mother until you were about three, and she brought you here.”

  And then it was perfectly quiet, and perfectly still, and in the perfect quiet and stillness what he was saying wrapped around me until the understanding got to my chest with a big slow opening. When it got to my throat I said, “You’re not my father.”

  “Yeah,” he whispered. “I’m not.”

  “Who is?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  I turned away, went to the couch. I sat down on the arm of the couch. When I looked back in the kitchen, at him sitting there in all shadow now, at the table, he didn’t look any different. He didn’t look at me. He looked at his hand. At the letter on the table.

  Music came up from downstairs. Too loud. The walls hummed.

  “Does she know?” I said.

  Jimmy Henry said, “Who?”

  “Lady Jane,” I said.

  “Know what?” he said.

  “I don’t care,” I said. “Anything. Does she know about you? Does she know my mother?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “She tried to help find her. We just never knew where to look.”

  “I wish she wouldn’t play her records so loud,” I said. “How come you never told me? Seems like you should have told me.”

  Jimmy Henry rubbed his eyes. He straightened the letter on the table so it was perfectly square in the middle of the table in front of him.

  “It was kind of to keep you safe,” he said.

  “Safe?” I said.

  “Well, so nobody would make you go to a foster home or something,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  I said, “What’s my name?”

  Little Miss Strange.

  “Blumenthal,” he said.

  Jimmy Henry saying that word, that name, in a small voice looking down, his hair hanging down, made everything different, finally, him, me, our house, all of it floating, and mostly me.

  Sarajean Blumenthal.

  I went downstairs.

  I sat on the front step.

  You’re not my father, you’re not my father, beating like the guitar sounds, beating like a heart might beat, over and over, and then just father father father and then father a strange sound that wasn’t a word. Strange. Strange.

  He came down and, out the door. He leaned on the railing at the other end of the top step.

  I said, “Is that why I always said Jimmy Henry?”

  “I guess,” he said. “It was just a cute thing you did at first. You liked to say that, Jimmy Henry, like it was all one word. It made me laugh.”

  Then he said, “I’m sorry.”

  He was barefoot, white toes that curled in under his long white bare feet.

  “I didn’t laugh for a long time before that,” he said. “Before she brought you here.”

  I stood up.

  “I got to go walk around,” I said.

  At the corner I turned and looked back at our house and Jimmy Henry was gone. The front porch was empty.

  ELLE WAS still lying on the couch, like she hadn’t moved.

  I said, “I’m back.”

  “You get your grass?” she said, not opening her eyes.

  “I forgot,” I said.

  “Shit,” she said. “Why don’t you go back and get it.”

  “Because,” I said. “Because Jimmy Henry’s not my real father.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean,” Elle said, her face in her arm, her voice sleepy.

  “He told me,” I said.

  “Well, that’s weird,” she said.

  She sat up.

  “He never even knew my mother until I was already three years old,” I said. “That’s what he told me. Just now.”

  “So your mother just stuck you with some guy who wasn’t even your father?” Elle said.

  “I guess,” I said. “I guess they were going together.”

  “So who’s your real father?” she said.

  “He said he doesn’t know,” I said.

  “Yeah, right,” she said. “Just like he didn’t know your mother’s name, and then he had that letter.”

  “My real name is Sarajean Blumenthal,” I said.

  She said, “Sarajean Blumenthal?”

  Weird, her saying that.

  She stood up and stretched her arms up.

  “Well,” she said. “What do you wan
t to do?”

  She went to the window and looked out, up and down Seventeenth Avenue.

  She said, “Let’s go buy some cigarettes. Got any money?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  I went behind her down the stairs, and we walked down to Bill’s Pepsi Store. Everything looked the same, Seventeenth Avenue, the Lair Lounge.

  “Palm trees,” Elle said. “They’re so weird. They’re really ugly, palm trees are, big hunks of dead bark hanging off.”

  We waited at the counter to buy cigarettes. Elle pointed at small yellow boxes under the counter back there. The boxes said “Trojan” in red letters.

  “Those are rubbers,” she whispered. “Bart had some of those.”

  I said, “You’re not a virgin anymore.”

  “He showed me the box,” she said. “He didn’t open it.”

  “What if you got pregnant?” I said. “You know that place, Saint Mary’s?”

  “I didn’t,” she said.

  We went back in the alley, back to the stairs, same stairs. The alley was dark, and window light, and cars going by at the Logan Street end.

  “I came from Council Bluffs,” I said. “I’m not even from Denver.”

  “Bart Allen,” Elle said. “He has long straight blond hair and blue eyes. He said he’s the bad man. That’s a song.”

  “So, how old is he?” I said.

  “I think sixteen,” she said.

  “I have to keep saying my name is Sarajean Henry so they won’t put me in a foster home,” I said.

  “Or Juvie,” Elle said. “I had to sleep in a bunk bed. The girl under me kept crying. And it stinks.”

  She said, “Sarajean Henry sounds better than Sarajean Blumenthal anyway. Blumenthal is kind of weird.”

  “It’s not my name,” I said. “Henry isn’t my name.”

  “Why are you crying?” she said. “Quit crying.”

  “I don’t know why,” I said.

  Elle sat next to me, and the heat from her sunburn reached across the space between us, and we smoked cigarettes.

  After a while she said, “Want to back to Los Angeles with me?”

  “No,” I said. “When?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I got to figure it out.”

  We stayed there late, smoking the cigarettes, and Elle talking mostly about Bart Allen, and I didn’t do anything, not even cry after a while.

  THE KETTLE whistling woke me up. The cabinet door opened and shut. Jimmy Henry getting up from the bench. He got up and made coffee and sat back down out there. Finally I had to get up and get dressed. I had to pee.

  There were two mugs on the table, one waiting.

  He said, “I’m glad you know. It was always a drag.”

  “What was a drag?” I said, passing in front of him to the bathroom door.

  “You not knowing,” he said, and I stopped and didn’t turn, stopped there, looking into the bathroom, looking at the toilet.

  He said, “I knew I had to tell you. If she never came back. I guess I always thought she would. Come back.”

  I squeezed my legs together for a second.

  “So, she was from Council Bluffs?” I said.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “That’s where she was when you were born.”

  When you were born.

  He blew at the coffee in his mug.

  “Why did she leave me with you?” I said. “If you weren’t even my real father?”

  He said, “She would take off, and leave you with one of her girlfriends for a while, different girlfriends. I’d go get you, and then you would be here when she came back. She usually came back here first, when she came back. To this red house, she liked it that this house was red, she said she could always find it.”

  “What girlfriends?” I said.

  “Katie,” he said. “Lady Jane. Except she was Ruby then. Other girls I didn’t know. She had other friends, other boyfriends too, I guess.”

  “You weren’t even her main boyfriend?” I said.

  He laughed. One short laugh. He pushed my coffee across the table and I took it and leaned on the counter, leaning with my legs pressed tight I had to pee so bad.

  “I was kind of fucked-up a lot,” he said. “Except when you were here. Then I kind of kept it together.”

  “What about her mom and dad?” I said.

  “She never told them about you,” he said. “I don’t think she ever told them anything after she left home. You know, like she just took off. That was what she always did.”

  I sat down, in the chair, and tucked my hands into my lap. I pressed my fist in between my legs.

  “Why?” I said. “Why did she always do that?”

  Jimmy Henry breathed in, held the breath for a moment, breathed out.

  “I have to pee,” I said.

  I got up and went in the bathroom.

  Jimmy Henry said, “I don’t know, it wasn’t that kind of thing where we talked to each other about things.”

  My peeing was too loud to hear what he said next.

  I flushed, even louder, and then I said, “What?”

  I opened the door.

  He said, “She was a junkie.”

  The toilet water ran loud, like the handle needed to be jiggled.

  “So were you,” I said.

  “I know,” he said. “I’m not anymore.”

  “I know,” I said.

  I reached back in and jiggled the handle.

  “I have to go open the shop,” I said.

  “MAMA HAS a cold,” Erico said.

  He unlocked the door, turned the sign around to OPEN.

  “I’ll be back in a little while,” he said. “She’s sleeping. It is okay, you can be here by yourself, okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “By myself is okay.”

  I leaned on the counter. Seventeenth Avenue was quiet like Sunday, and I tried to think of what day it was. Not Sunday. Some Lady Jane song about Sunday morning got stuck in my head, but I didn’t know any of the other words, just “Sunday morning.”

  Erico came back, and he went upstairs.

  Margo went by, past the red zinnias.

  Elle came in about noon.

  “Did you say anything to Margo?” I said.

  “What?” she said. “About Bart? Shit, no.”

  “No,” I said. “About me and Jimmy Henry.”

  “No,” Elle said. “I’m not talking to her. She’s driving me nuts, wanting to know all the time where I am and when I’m coming back and all.”

  “She knew my mother,” I said.

  “Ask her,” Elle said. “Did they take your grass?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I don’t suppose you have it with you,” she said.

  “No,” I said.

  PEOPLE WANDERED in and out of the shop, and Constanzia stayed in bed. Erico came back in around four.

  He said, “Why don’t we close early? Mama isn’t feeling too good.”

  “I can stay,” I said. “I don’t mind.”

  “It’s okay?” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “By myself is okay.”

  THE DAYS just kept being like Sunday somehow.

  LADY JANE said, “She was pretty fucked-up. Jimmy was too, but he could take care of you.”

  MARGO SAID, “I didn’t hang out with those guys. She used to drop you off sometimes, and then take off with Lalena’s daddy. They were into downs.”

  NANCY SAID, “It will all make sense someday.”

  ELLE SAID, “Fuck it. Let’s go to Los Angeles. You have some money don’t you?”

  JIMMY HENRY said, “Want some coffee?”

  He said, “Are you going to the shop today?”

  He said, “I’ll be down at Lady Jane’s.”

  THE PURPLE plastic peace symbol keychain. A pink silk scarf with long fringe. A little square copy of The Prophet that I never read. Jimmy Henry’s war medal. The horse patch. A tiny bell in the shape of an owl. The Kelly Bird poem. I laid the pink scarf out flat,
and set The Prophet there, and I put all the other things on top of The Prophet and I tied the corners of the scarf into one knot, so it made a little bundle, with the flat book at the bottom. I put the pink bundle away, in the corner of my closet, behind the box of bird cloth.

  CONSTANZIA STAYED in bed for the whole week. Doctor Michaelson came over three times. After Doctor Michaelson left on Friday afternoon, Erico came downstairs and he leaned in the doorway, in the rainbow stripes of the blanket, and he said, “We have to close the shop for the weekend.”

  “Why?” I said. “I can be here by myself. I can work.”

  “I think Mama will go in the hospital,” he said. “The doctor said pneumonia.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Pneumonia? They can cure pneumonia. Lots of people get that.”

  I said, “Right now?”

  He sat on the edge of the table, next to Constanzia’s sewing machine, his face even with my face, dark eyes. I could never tell the color of Erico’s eyes.

  “She’s sick,” he said. “My sister is coming from Las Vegas.”

  “Your sister?” I said.

  Erico nodded yes.

  His sister.

  “She is driving from Las Vegas,” he said. “Maybe she’ll be here tomorrow.”

  “I didn’t know you had a sister,” I said.

  “Emilia was a dancer,” he said. “In Las Vegas. After she came to this country and got a divorce.”

  His voice was so quiet that I wanted to whisper, and I thought about kissing Erico on the mouth, his eyes closed, and his arms around me like in a kiss. He stood up, and went and turned the sign around to CLOSED.

  “Come over like regular on Monday,” he said. “We’ll see how things are.”

  EMILIA. ALL weekend, in my room, or on the couch reading, Lady Jane’s music and Jimmy Henry being quiet, and him hanging around at our apartment instead of Lady Jane’s, I thought about Emilia.

  I didn’t think about Constanzia, in a white hospital bed, coughing and nurses.

  Elle came over and she cried because Bart Allen promised he would send her a letter and he didn’t. When Elle kept talking about Bart Allen I didn’t think about Emilia, and after Elle went home, I thought about Erico, Erico’s mouth, and closing my eyes and pretending about Erico, and wishing Jimmy Henry would go hang around at Lady Jane’s.