Little Miss Strange

by Joanna Rose

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Nice trip,” he said, not looking at me again.

  The sign on the wall behind the counter didn’t say Omaha anywhere on it, except for LINCOLN-OMAHA, DEPARTING AT 10:35 P.M. It was eight-fifteen. Two hours and twenty minutes. I pulled down on my hat and went around the rows of orange seats to the back wall, by the garage doors, a row of empty seats in the corner. A lady across from the empty seats was looking at a magazine, and she didn’t looked up when I sat down. I slid the green bag off my shoulder. I pushed the bag under the seat.

  The loudspeaker said, “Now boarding for Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Trinidad, and points south.”

  Loud and echoey, bus engines loud in the garage, and people lining up to go out there, to points south.

  Eight seventeen.

  I put my ticket in my inside pocket of my jacket, and I took out the envelope. Fourteen twenty Belmont Street, my stomach jumping. Hurting.

  WHY DIDN’T you ever come back?

  Did you mean to never come back?

  “NOW BOARDING for Greely, Cheyenne, Scott’s Bluff, points north.”

  I didn’t look up from under my hat. I didn’t know what I would say. I didn’t know what she would look like. Fourteen twenty Belmont Street.

  MY HEAD dropped and I woke up scared. The clock only said nine-ten. I stretched my arms out in front of me straight until my shoulders made little popping sounds.

  A cigarette machine was next to the doorway of the bus station restaurant. I dragged my green bag out from under the seat and pulled the strap onto my shoulder, and walked over to the cigarette machine, right up to the cigarette machine with the big yellow and red sticker that said “Minors by Law Forbidden to Operate This Machine,” and under that a row of lit up pictures of the different brands. I counted out coins, dropped them clanking loud into the slot, not looking around, and I pulled out the knob under the Marlboros picture. I put the Marlboros in my pocket, and I turned and walked back to my same seat not looking around and not looking at anybody.

  The air of the bus station was cloudy with smoke. Ashtrays were at the end of each row of orange chairs, most of the ashtrays full of paper cups. I didn’t have matches. I put my hand in my pocket, the pack of Marlboros feeling nice and smooth and square.

  Nine-fifteen. Every time I looked at the clock my heart thumped.

  Nine-sixteen. Thump.

  “Now boarding for Los Angeles.”

  The lady across the seats from me slapped her magazine shut and stood up. She patted her curled hair, stuffing the magazine into her big purse. She picked up a little flowered suitcase out of the seat next to her and smiled at me without looking at me and went and got in line at the garage door.

  I pulled my bag out again and went over to a stand of magazines and cough drops and stuff. I picked a tube of chapstick out of a holder on the counter.

  “Forty-nine cents,” a girl behind there said.

  I put two quarters on the counter, and I said, “Got any matches?”

  She put one penny and one pack of matches on the counter, not looking up, looking at a magazine. I put the penny and the matches in my pocket, not saying thanks, and I went back toward my same seat going the other way around all the chairs, along the wall with the row of pay telephones. One telephone had a telephone book hanging on a wire cord.

  Celestial Tea Palace. I wrote the number on the envelope, under “1420 Belmont Street.”

  “Now boarding for Sterling, North Platte, Lincoln-Omaha, and points east.”

  My heart went bang.

  I SLID into two empty bus seats and pushed my bag underneath. The tall cushions hid me into the little space of seats, I couldn’t see in front of my seat, or to the seat behind me. Tall people moved down the aisle, past me and my two seats, and there were the easy sounds of people settling into seats around me. The garage outside the bus windows was busy and noisy, and inside was dark and quiet. Then the bus driver got on, and he shut the door, shutting the quiet dark in, and he drove out the wide doors, and I left.

  I left Denver.

  The bus turned away from downtown, in a direction I had never been, out Nineteenth Avenue, over to Twenty-fifth Avenue and then farther, block after block to Seventy-second Avenue, shacky little houses in rows, and gas stations and little grocery stores on every corner.

  At Seventy-second Avenue the bus made one last wide turn onto a highway, the streets of little houses scattering out, Denver scattering out into smaller and smaller lights and houses, away from the side of the highway. Denver disappearing behind me. The bus going faster and faster, in with the lanes of traffic. My heart going slower and slower. Even, and not beating hard.

  THE BUS seat is so big that I am weightless, curled under my jacket, no backbone pressing, no body, no earth under me, just the hum of highway. The bus window is the window of night, tiny lights way out at the edge of darkness. Quiet talking here and there around me, a crunch of plastic bag, potato chips in little yellow bags on a rack in the bus station. I am hungry for an instant, and then I want a cigarette, just for a second, and then nothing. I want to think about Tina Blue. I try to force my thoughts to be about Tina Blue, but it’s not Tina Blue, it’s Jimmy Henry. His thin arms, the smooth inside muscle of his arm under the short sleeve of his T-shirt, the clean inside of his elbow after he quit doing junk and the tracks healed and went away, only a smooth white lump over the blue vein. Brushing my hair. Putting the brush down on the bed and taking me by my shoulders and turning me around to his tired face, his soft beard, kissing me on my mouth, soft, kissing long on my mouth, wet and soft.

  My heart beats all over my body.

  My stomach is sick.

  He is not my father.

  And it never happened, never was like that.

  It is an argument between my brain and the sick in my stomach, and I lose, I lose Jimmy Henry’s soft wet mouth on my mouth, his arms pulling me against his chest, his hands in my hair. I lose him, and I ride in the dark tall bus seat, my heart beating all over, in between my legs, deep, up, in there, pussy cunt fuck, and my wet fingers in there, pussy cunt fuck, dirty words making my fingers work. Curled under my jacket in the dark of the bus.

  I WOKE up when a lady sat in the seat next to me.

  “Oh, hello there,” she said, loud but in a whisper.

  An old lady, with gray hair, and a big square purse that she tucked down into the side of the seat in between us.

  Outside was a dark street, the corner of two dark streets, a stoplight hanging over the middle of the corner, shining steady red, bouncing in the wind. Through the windows on the other side of the bus was a little restaurant, lit up.

  “Well,” the old lady said. “A bit late as usual, but we should still get to Omaha by tomorrow night, not too late tomorrow night. Are you going all the way to Omaha?”

  She buttoned her sweater buttons, and unbuttoned the bottom one. She smoothed her hands down her front, patted her lap, looked up and down the bus aisle.

  “It’s a windy one out there,” she said, turning back straight in her seat, poking her hair behind her ears, patting her purse. “First of the fall rains no doubt. It’s going to be a hard winter this year. The bluejays are fighting with the crows just to beat the band, that’s always a sign, you know.”

  The bus pulled away, out into streets, and down dark streets in a dark town. Dark stores, and houses, and then the street turned back into being a highway.

  “Funny time of night to be leaving,” the lady said. “But I can’t get to Omaha too early or my son-in-law can’t pick me up, and my girl is home with the new baby, I have a new granddaughter, you see. I was there right after she was born, three months it’s been, but they change so fast, three months is a long time, especially for a summer baby. They named her Melissa. There never has been a Melissa in our family. I guess it’s kind of French.”

  I slipped my arms back into the sleeves of my jacket, and found my Walt Whitman hat, fallen down in between the seat and the window,
and I put it on.

  “Now do you need to use the little boys’ room before I settle in here?” the lady said.

  I said, “What?”

  “If you need to climb over me you better do it now,” she said. “I always get snoozy on late-night bus rides, so here, you just hop out now.”

  She tucked her knees to the side so I could get out past her, so I did. My knees were shaky, my feet not feeling completely on the floor of the bus. The bus going one way, me going the other way.

  The bathroom light turned on when I opened the door. The bathroom was like a tin can, tin can door, tin can sink, tin can toilet, and the loud bus engine coming up. The stink was like pee and pine cleaner. The mirror was a tin can mirror, not glass, and my face in the mirror was wavy and scratchy. I backed against the wall, trying to see did I look like a boy standing there. All I could tell was it was someone wearing a green jacket and a hat.

  The tin can toilet seat was cold, and my stomach hurt when I peed. I leaned my elbows on my knees, closed my eyes, rubbed my face, sitting there, the highway going by under my bare butt on the toilet. I held my hands in front of my face and looked at my ring. I touched the silver flowers on my lips, and I smelled my fingers. I looked at my fingers, and my underpants, leaned down to smell my underpants, my same own smell. I didn’t wash my hands.

  “THERE YOU are,” the old lady said, pulling her knees to the side again. “Climb back in here. You can go back to sleep, don’t mind me, I’ll be snoozing away here in a little bit, by the time we get to Ogallala I’ll just bet.”

  “This bus goes to Ogallala?”

  “Oh yes,” she said, “Right by Ogallala. Oh golly golly we used to call it. Oh golly golly. That always got the children laughing, I’d say, here we are, oh golly golly. Someday I’ll be saying, here we are Melissa, oh golly golly. Of course, they might just call her Missy, that’s a good nickname for Melissa.”

  The old lady hummed a little bit, and she tugged at the cuffs of her sweater and all. I leaned back into my seat and looked out the black window. Headlights coming the other way lit up the side of the road, weeds and yellowy bushes for a second. Somebody toward the back laughed every once in a while, a short ha-ha little laugh, like telling a long story with funny parts. One voice talking and then laughing.

  The old lady started to snore a quiet buzzy snore, and then a clack clack clack started from the front of the bus. I stood up partway. Windshield wipers clack clack clack in the dim light of the front of the bus.

  OGALLALA WAS a big highway crossing, and the town lights were off a ways. The bus drove into a gas station, past semi trucks all pulled in under orange lights, to a restaurant attached to the gas station, and a little store, all one big place set in the middle of cement.

  The bus driver stood up and stretched his arms out to the sides and then he said, “Fifteen minutes, folks.”

  The old lady didn’t wake up. People from other seats did, got up and went up the aisle. I stood up and looked down at her. Her knees were smooth bumps covered in big flowers on her dress. I stepped high over her knees, stepping sideways, and she didn’t wake up.

  The air smelled wet. Rainy. Not raining. The cement was shiny with water and orange lights, and oil colors, and the oil smell was in the wet air.

  I went as far as the row of candy and pop machines, and I bought a can of pop, warm quarters from my pocket dropping loud into the slot. My hands were warm. I took the pop back to the bus. Some other people from the bus were coming away, or getting back on already. The bus engine hummed gas smell into my face, and I went around past, to the other side. The yellow lines on the cement led out to the dark open edges of the lights, led out to nothing out there. I set the can of pop down on the cement and I took out the pack of Marlboros, tore open the top, let the wind blow the clear wrappings out of my fingers.

  A gust of wind across the cement had a gust of raindrops in it. I breathed in the wet smell. The cigarette made me high, then sick, then okay, and I dropped the last part of it on the wet cement. The lit end sogged out.

  I went back around to the door of the bus, and the old lady was there, right in the door, sticking her face out, sniffing the air. She stepped back into the bus to let another guy get back on, and then I got on, and she was standing in the aisle by our seats.

  “Hello, there,” she said. “Here we are.”

  I waited for the oh golly golly part, but the old lady yawned and rubbed her eyes. I got back into my seat and she sat back into her seat and tugged at her sweater, She rubbed her hands together, held them with her fingertips tucked in, and she rested them together like that in her lap. My hands were cold, cold can of pop, and wet.

  “That’s bad for you teeth,” the lady said. “That soda pop, I don’t know how you kids drink so much and have any teeth left in your head.”

  The bus drove out of the place and left all the lights behind us. I pulled my green bag out far enough to unzip the zipper, enough to pull out my black sweater. I made a pillow against the window, so I could just open my eyes and see out to the blackness, the wool scratchy and then warm on my face and on my neck.

  I OPENED my eyes to gray. Too gray, bright in my eyes like grit, and I closed my eyes until my heart started to beat like a fast drum, waking up on this bus.

  The gray was thick fog laying out along wet weedy fields. Nothing else was out there, just the side of the road going by, and I closed my eyes again, pulled my hands under my shirt, skin and skin, back to sleep.

  The old lady’s chirpy talking came into my sleep, and I kept my eyes closed.

  “Way too soon, oh, way too soon,” she said.

  “It is for my delphiniums, I know that,” another voice said. “I was hoping for another bloom.”

  I looked out at storming-down rain.

  “Well, look who’s awake under that hat,” the old lady said. “Not that you’ve missed much Nebraska countryside in this rain. Do you have to go to the bathroom?”

  She tucked her legs to the side.

  “No,” I said. “That’s okay.”

  She straightened back up and talked to the other lady across the aisle, talking about green tomatoes. Talking about the rain. Talking about the road.

  “It used to be this bus went through Saint Francis and Bird City and then headed north a little ways on, around McCook,” she said.

  “Well, it took three days to get to Omaha that way,” the other lady said. “This way we’ll get there by ten.”

  Ten o’clock. Ten o’clock tonight. I couldn’t think of what day today was.

  “I have people in Bird City,” the old lady said. “Can’t even get there on a bus anymore, can’t get there unless my girl and her husband come and drive me, and you know, he’s got his business, busyness I call it, busy all the time.”

  People in Bird City.

  She smelled like licorice drops.

  I got The Prophet out of the partly open zipper, pretending to read, the rain not stopping. My eyes felt burning and wanting to close.

  JFK WOULD have for sure told by now.

  Maybe not.

  Jimmy Henry might be out on bail. Elle’s daddy might have got him out.

  Elle.

  Lalena. Lalena was a better name. I’ll tell her. Lalena is prettier than just plain Elle. Margo loved that damn song.

  Sarajean.

  I OPENED the folded page from the dictionary. Sarah with a tiny blue star. Spelled with an H. Wife of Abraham. Mother of Isaac.

  “Oh, now what’s this?” the old lady said. “Tearing pages out of a book?”

  I folded the page back into The Prophet.

  “I found it,” I said.

  “Defacing books,” the old lady said. “If I caught one of the children doing any such thing as might damage a book, they got their library cards taken away.”

  “I found it like this,” I said. “I didn’t do it.”

  “Well, I hope not,” she said.

  She looked at my face, at my jacket. White hairs stuck out of her
nose. She looked at my shoes. My purple socks showed through the holes. She looked back at my face.

  “I’m Mrs. Smit,” she said. “Not Smith, Smit. It’s German, a good German name. It used to be Schmidt. It was changed when my people came here, Ellis Island you know.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  People in Bird City.

  “And your name?” she said.

  “Me?” I said, looking quick out the window, faking a cough.

  “Bird,” I said.

  “Bird?” she said.

  “Bird,” I said. “Bird Isaac.”

  “Bird Isaac?” she said. “Bird Isaac?”

  “Well,” I said. “Yeah. Bird Isaac.”

  She said, “Bird Isaac, is Bird some family name?”

  “Kind of,” I said.

  “Well, you can’t tell if it’s a girl’s name or a boy’s name,” she said. “And you don’t look very much like a little girl. Last night in the dark I thought you were a boy. How old are you?”

  “Sixteen?” I said.

  “Seems to me you’d want to dress up a little bit to go traveling,” she said. “Why do you cut your hair so short?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well, that’s a very pretty ring you have, anyway,” she said.

  I covered my ring with my other hand.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Bird Isaac,” she said. “So they call you Bird? Just Bird?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  I opened The Prophet.

  “Sounds like some hippie name,” she said. “I know of one girl, her mama used to do my hair, named her baby boy Freedom. She was divorced, the gal that did my hair. Her girl moved to Denver right after high school, never did come back. Freedom. We never got a wedding announcement. Are you Catholic? That’s a Virgin Mary medal right?”

  I tucked my beads, my Mary medal, back into my T-shirt.

  “I know quite a few Catholics,” she said. “We’re First Protestant Church but we always got on well with the Catholics. I had a young girl babysit for me, she was Catholic. She had one of those blue medals. Very pretty. Seems like you might want to take those hippie beads off, they’re getting tangled up in the chain.”