Little Miss Strange

by Joanna Rose

  She wiped her face with the edge of her long skirt.

  “God, I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “Come on, we have to get you out of here.”

  I went to my room. All messed up, my dresser drawers dumped out, all my clothes on the floor. My Tampax tampons box. I picked up the box and looked, my money still safe inside. I put the money into my blue-jeans pocket, my fingers shaking, my knees shaking.

  I said, “What did they dump out my stuff for?”

  My voice shaking.

  Lady Jane came as far as the doorway.

  “Looking for dope?” she said. “I don’t know. I was downstairs, I heard all the noise. I know they saw that letter from Tina Blue.”

  “What letter from Tina Blue?” I said.

  “Come on,” she said. “We have to get you out of here. They probably went to look for you at school. They’ll probably be back with someone from some juvenile department.”

  Lady Jane’s eyes were red and snot dripped down from her nose to her lip. She looked crazy. She sounded crazy.

  “Are you crazy?” I said. “Tina Blue?”

  I pushed my folded-up blue jeans and cutoffs off the bed. I kicked at the pile of underpants on the floor, and the socks, and I picked up my underpants. Stuff all over the floor. The letter from Christine Jeanette Blumenthal was on the top of my dresser and I picked it up.

  Tina Blue.

  Lady Jane said, “They’ll take you away. They’ll put you in a foster home or something while they look for her. Come on, just leave this stuff. We’ll go over to Nancy’s.”

  She pulled my arm, and I let go of the underpants, dropped them back on the floor. I held on to the letter, and Lady Jane pulled me by my arm, across forks and spoons and slipping on album covers and over the newspapers and out the door. Down the stairs.

  “Come on,” she said. “Come on.”

  “Lady Jane, wait,” I said. “What about Jimmy Henry? Doesn’t he get bail or something?”

  “He’s been busted before,” she said. “A gun charge. I don’t know. There might have been a second offense that time. I don’t even know what he was dealing. Maybe he wasn’t dealing. I don’t know.”

  Running and walking and running, holding on to my arm by the wrist, pulling me along the sidewalk, down Ogden Street, past Saint Therese Carmelite, around the corner onto Ninth Avenue and down Ninth Avenue toward JFK’s apartment building on Clarkson Street.

  “Tina Blue?” I said.

  “If we couldn’t find her before I don’t know how we’re going to find her now,” Lady Jane said, looking back behind us.

  Tina Blue. Christine Jeanette Blumenthal. Thin loopy Bs.

  We went into JFK’s building, up the stairs, down the long striped hallway. Lady Jane knocked on the door, tried at the doorknob, knocked again. JFK opened the door.

  “Hi, you guys,” he said.

  Lady Jane pulled me inside and shut the door and turned the lock.

  JFK said, “What? What’s going on?”

  “Tina Blue,” I said. Maybe not really saying it.

  “Jimmy Henry got busted,” Lady Jane said.

  “Shit,” JFK said. “Wow. When?”

  Lady Jane sat down in the middle of the couch.

  “Okay, now,” she said. “I have to think.”

  Her face kept talking, her mouth moving, a clear drip of snot hanging at the end of her nose caught the sunlight that came through the bamboo shade and sparkled like a tiny star.

  My heart belongs to purple.

  Lady Jane said, “When is Nancy getting back?”

  “Don’t know,” JFK said.

  Lady Jane said, “Where is she?”

  “Just out messing around, I guess,” he said. “She doesn’t have to work tonight.”

  “Oh, God, work,” Lady Jane said. “I have to go call in.”

  She stood up.

  “I’m going to go call work,” she said. “And then I have to go find Lalena’s daddy.”

  JFK sat down on one end of the couch, and he looked at me.

  “Elle,” he said. “You’re supposed to say Elle.”

  “He might know what’s going on,” Lady Jane said. “You guys stay here. If Nancy comes home, tell her I’ll be back as soon as I can. Tell her I might need her to work for me tonight. Don’t let anybody in.”

  She left, and I turned the lock behind her.

  “Now what?” JFK said.

  I sat on the other end of the couch from him.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Are you scared?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” I said, my whole self zinging from him saying that.

  He said, “He was dealing coke?”

  I said, “Do you remember my mother?”

  “Huh?” he said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “She came over to our house sometimes, when we lived on Lincoln Street.”

  “Tina Blue,” I said.

  I call myself Tina Blue.

  JFK sat there, the space of Lady Jane in between us on the couch, a quiet around us, inside, outside the window, everything quiet and quieter.

  I CALL myself Tina Blue.

  I have fled the dark heart of America.

  And I am hiding.

  AND INTO the quiet I said, “I know.”

  JFK said, “You know what?”

  “I know where she’s hiding.”

  “Hiding?” he said. “Who’s hiding?”

  “Tina Blue. Christine Jeanette Blumenthal.”

  He said, “Where?”

  I said, “Omaha, Nebraska.”

  He said, “Omaha, Nebraska?”

  I said, “Do you remember what she looks like?”

  “Well, yeah, kind of,” he said. “Don’t you?”

  “If you asked me this morning did I remember Tina Blue I probably would of said yes. Long hair. I remember her eyes closed. But now I don’t know. I can’t think of her face. There was a little dot on her neck. She had a flower-painted teapot. And pink joints, she kept pink joints in one of those carved wooden boxes with the ivory flowers on the lid.”

  “God,” I said. “My ring.”

  JFK just looked at me, watching me.

  “You have to go over my house,” I said.

  “Why?” he said. “We’re supposed to wait here.”

  “In my bedroom, on the doorknob,” I said. “I need my green jacket.”

  “Your green jacket?” he said.

  “Yeah, get it,” I said, picking up his hand with my hand, putting my key into his hand, into his thin fingers.

  “I don’t want to go over there,” he said. “What if the cops are there?”

  “Please.”

  I looked at him, at his face, brown smooth cheeks, light gray-colored eyes that looked right back at me and didn’t want to go over there.

  “Please,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said, looking down, his long, light-colored hair falling over his eyes, and I touched his hair, soft hair, touched his shoulder, the bones of his shoulder through his T-shirt, sorry for saying please like that, sorry for saying please and making him look away.

  “Hurry up, okay?” I said.

  WAITING AT JFK’s, waiting for him to come back, I looked at my face in the mirror, with JFK’s baby pictures all around. I looked in the mirror for Tina Blue’s face, the face I couldn’t remember now. The only face I saw was the same face I always saw, my face that never changed, and baby pictures, all around my face in the mirror.

  JFK opened the door, and he held my green jacket. I took it and closed my hand around the ring in the pocket. The same ring that had never changed, the cold circle of it the same as the day under Tina Blue’s window, and I took the ring out of the pocket, Tina Blue’s silver flowered spoon ring, Christine Jeanette Blumenthal’s silver flowered spoon ring, my mother’s silver flowered spoon ring.

  “That’s her ring?” JFK said.

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “I got it when she lived there.”

  I put it on my fi
nger. JFK stood still and straight by the door, and when I looked at him he looked away.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “So what are you going to do?” he said. “How do you know she’s in Omaha?”

  “I’m going to go there.”

  “Where?” he said. “Omaha? Nebraska?”

  “I have the address. I have the envelope. I’ve been using it for a bookmark.”

  “A bookmark? What envelope?” he said. “How are you going to get to Omaha, Nebraska?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  IT WAS getting dark, and Lady Jane wasn’t back.

  “How are you going to find her?” JFK said. “Maybe you could just live with me and my mom. What about school? You know, Jimmy Henry might get off with just probation, or parole or like that. Why don’t you just write to her? You don’t even know how long ago she sent that letter to Lady Jane.”

  He stopped.

  “Are you worried about him?” he said.

  My stomach jumped. Jimmy Henry.

  “I guess it depends on a lot of stuff,” JFK said. “Now, don’t get mad, but was he doing junk? I remember when he used to do that, but I thought he didn’t do it anymore because my mom says junkies are the scourge of the earth, junkies and Jesus freaks, and now she hangs out with him and Lady Jane, so I didn’t think he was into that anymore.”

  “JFK,” I said. “You’ve got to shut up. I don’t know what to do, and you’ve got to shut up.”

  Then I was crying and JFK shut up.

  FINALLY THE thing to do was just leave.

  “Leave?” JFK said, and his voice squeaked. “What do you mean, leave? Don’t leave. Wait here for my mom. You can stay here tonight.”

  “I’m going to Omaha tonight,” I said.

  “You mean leave for Omaha?” he said. “How can you leave for Omaha?”

  “What am I supposed to do, wait to get put in a foster home? Or Juvie? Look, I know her address. I can just go find her. Just don’t tell anyone. If I can’t find her, I’ll just come back.”

  “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t not tell anyone. I’m a bad liar. My mom always knows.”

  “Well, just say I left,” I said. “But don’t say where.”

  JFK got up off the couch and leaned against the kitchen doorway, and he crossed both arms over his chest.

  “Oh, man,” he said. “I think this is a bad idea. How can you get to Omaha? What are you going to do, just walk up to some house and knock on the door and say ‘Hi, you’re my mother’?”

  He frowned. He played with his lip with his finger.

  “Okay,” I said carefully. “I won’t do it. But I have to go get some things at my house. Homework stuff.”

  “Really?” he said.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said.

  He stood up straight.

  “Okay,” he said. “We can make hamburgers and wait for my mom and Lady Jane. My mom will know what to do, don’t worry. Lady Jane gets kind of nuts sometimes, you know?”

  “Macaroni and cheese,” I said. “Let’s make macaroni and cheese.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I think we got some macaroni, and I know there’s cheese.”

  “Okay,” I said, leaving, walking down the striped carpet, down the hall. Not looking back at him. My stomach jumping.

  “Put the macaroni water on,” I said.

  THE LIGHT of the sky was gone, and the light up there was the light of streetlights, and the pink Safeway light, hard against the sky, city night sky. “In the city night sky,” Erico said, “it is never dark. The light cannot escape. The sky of night here is never black.”

  HI, YOU’RE my mother.

  THERE WERE no lights on at our house. From under the corner tree of the Safeway parking lot, the dark red of our house disappeared, just a dark place across the street. Blackbird was parked out front. I went back down the block, into the alley. Into my backyard.

  Black sweater. Truckers. Ivory leaves shirt.

  Marigolds at the edge of Lady Jane’s porch were yellow like white in the dark, and the marigold smell, and the stink of the garbage cans. The window of the empty apartment covered thick and hidden with black grime, and I wanted to be in there. I went to the skinny sidewalk and never made a sound.

  The click of the key was loud, the latch click of the front door shutting behind me loud too, and I stood still in the dark at the bottom of the stairway, trying to listen past the doors, into Lady Jane’s, upstairs, no sound, my heart pounding in my head. Not breathing.

  The pounding stopped when I started breathing again.

  I went up the stairs one slow step at a time.

  Record covers on the floor in the front room. I stepped wide across the forks and stuff on the kitchen floor. I closed the door in my room, closed the door and closed all the pink Safeway light in with me.

  I stepped on my Walt Whitman hat, and I picked it up and put it on. I picked up the horse patch.

  The book on the floor by my bed had the envelope with the yellow bird, and the blue heart, and Tina Blue’s address. Fourteen twenty Belmont Street. Omaha, Nebraska. I stared hard at the address, in the dark light, and then folded the envelope and put it my my inside jacket pocket.

  The box of birdcloth was dumped out in the closet, and the smell was the dusty smell of the back corners of Someone’s Beloved Threads. I put the cloth close to my face, wanting that smell, wanting that smell down inside me where the crying was, wanting to sit in the dark closet and cry into the smell of the birdcloth.

  I untied the pink scarf knot around The Prophet, the bell owl, Jimmy Henry’s Purple Heart. I hooked my front door key to the purple plastic peace symbol key chain. I put the horse patch inside The Prophet with the Kelly Bird poem. I tied the scarf corners together again.

  Leaving.

  KNOCKING ON the door. Hello? Are you Tina Blue?

  Do you know who I am?

  THE CRYING stopped, thinking so hard on what I would say. A car door slammed out on the street. Nothing. Some other car, not somebody coming in here to get me, to take me to some juvenile place.

  FUCKING JIMMY Henry.

  HIS ROOM was black, light from the streetlights shining onto the ceiling over the top of the curtains. I pulled one curtain open enough to let some streetlight in. The dresser drawers were pulled out, and his socks and stuff dumped on the floor, his T-shirts dumped on the floor in their folded stack. His tie-dye T-shirt on the top of the stack. It smelled like laundry soap, smelled like Jimmy Henry. I wiped my nose with it. I wanted him to be walking in right now, in a skinny T-shirt that smelled like soap, wanted him to say, “It’s alright. We’ll go together, in Blackbird, we’ll drive to Omaha and find her together. It’s alright, baby.”

  HE DOESN’T want to find her. Fucking Lady Jane.

  I SHUT myself in the bathroom and turned on the bright light, not looking in the mirror. My toothbrush, the toothpaste, a comb, the hairbrush. Jimmy Henry’s long hair was tangled all through the bristles. Lady Jane’s sandalwood soap was in the soapdish with Jimmy Henry’s white soap from Safeway. I took Jimmy Henry’s soap. I folded the bathroom things into a towel.

  The green canvas bag wasn’t very full.

  I STILL have all your books.

  THE WEBSTER’S Collegiate Dictionary was open on my dresser top, and I turned the pages to the S page, with the papery blue flower, black-looking in the dark of my room. The star on the page of “Sarah,” black-looking in the dark of my room. I untied the pink square bundle and laid the flower into a page of The Prophet. I tore the Sarah page out of the dictionary, the tearing of it loud, the last noise I made in my room. I put it in my heart pocket.

  And then I left.

  From the front porch Ogden Street was empty, nobody out. The street was empty up past the Safeway store, and empty down the sidewalk under the trees as far as Saint Therese Carmelite. The night had turned windy, a piece of trash blowing in the street, and the papery blowing of leaves in the trees, a sound that seemed loud, and wasn’t.
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  Eleventh Avenue went down the hill toward downtown, and all the lights of Denver spread out wide. Crossing Clarkson Street, I picked out the one light in the front of JFK’s apartment building, him waiting, making macaroni and cheese, and me out here leaving.

  “I’ll call you,” I said. “I’ll call you at the café.”

  “Sorry,” I said, not sorry, walking down the hill of Eleventh Avenue.

  At Lincoln Street I turned toward Colfax Street, past Colfax Street, going down the sidewalk, holding on to my hat in the wind. At Seventeenth Avenue I stopped, even though the light was green, I stopped. Seventeenth Avenue went back up the hill from Lincoln Street and I could only see the dark hanging shape of the sign at Bead Here Now.

  Closer to the Greyhound station places were open and there were people hanging out on the sidewalks. A guy sat on the sidewalk at the corner, drunk looking, all sloppy and sleepy.

  “Nice hat,” he said.

  I said, “Thanks,” and I walked past him, crossed the street, even though the light was red.

  “I’ll give you a buck for that hat,” he yelled after me.

  I kept walking.

  “A buck,” I said. “I paid four bucks for this hat.”

  A man leaning by the telephone pole at the other corner looked at me, me talking to myself.

  He said, “Hey, little guy.”

  He thinks I’m a boy.

  I kept walking.

  THE GREYHOUND Bus greyhound hummed around in its big circle, and I pushed through the doors not looking up, walked right up to the end of a line of people at the counter. There were eight people waiting in the line. Eight people and then I had to know what to say.

  Omaha.

  Points east.

  Omaha, Nebraska, please.

  “One ticket to Omaha,” I said to the guy behind the counter.

  He didn’t look up from all the papers on the counter.

  He said, “One way or round trip?”

  “One way, please,” I said.

  I said, “How long is round trip good for?”

  “Ninety days,” he said.

  He looked at me.

  “One way,” I said.

  “Twenty-two fifty,” he said.

  He wrote on the ticket, tore along the dotted part, tucked part of the ticket inside another part and put the whole thing into its own folder. I put a twenty-dollar bill and a five-dollar bill on the counter. He already had two dollars and fifty cents there.