Little Miss Strange Read online

  “Hey,” I said. I kicked a fuzzy sweater up into the air.

  Lalena put the chair in front of the dresser with the mirror, and she climbed up there, up on the chair, up on the dresser in front of the mirror. She turned around in a circle and bowed.

  “Beautiful?” she said.

  “Beautiful,” I said.

  “Wear anything you want,” she said.

  She climbed down off the dresser and jumped off the chair. The chair tipped over. Lalena went into the closet.

  “Here,” she said, and she threw a red cowboy boot out of the closet, and then another one. She came out of the closet backward, yanking on a long piece of twisty leather.

  “You can be an army girl,” she said. “That coat can be your army dress.”

  I took off my pants and shirt and put on Jimmy Henry’s army coat over just my underpants, the insides of the army coat on just my bare skin.

  “Beautiful,” I said.

  “Beautiful,” Lalena said. “Okay.”

  I went after her out the door, the red cowboy boots on the wooden stairs going down loud. Lalena’s daddy was still in the front room, and Robbie and John were in there. I followed Lalena to the kitchen doorway.

  Margo was cutting up potatoes at the sink. Kate-Katie sat at the table stringing beads onto a long string. Lalena went and pulled back a chair from the table and sat next to Kate-Katie. She picked up a glass by Kate-Katie’s elbow and drank out of it, made a face, drank again.

  “Sarajean’s an army girl,” Lalena said.

  I stood still right by the kitchen doorway.

  Margo said, “If you use saffron instead of salt, it purifies your aura.”

  She turned and took the glass away from Lalena and set it back down on the table.

  “Don’t drink that wine, sweetheart, it’s not good for little girls,” Margo said. “Saffron vibes with Mercury.”

  She turned to the sink and started cutting up potatoes again. Lalena smiled at me, a big stupid smile. Kate-Katie kept putting pink beads, one at a time, onto the long string. Lalena picked up the glass with the wine, got down from the chair, and she walked by me out the door.

  Kate-Katie said, “Mercury vibes, huh?”

  I followed Lalena as far as the front-room doorway and I stopped there, and Lalena went like a dancer into the middle of the front room. She danced around holding the glass with the wine up in the air.

  “Hey, soldier,” she said. “Love you twice five bucks.”

  Lalena’s daddy looked at her.

  “Get your little ass out of here,” he said. He said it quiet.

  Lalena stood in front of his chair. She drank the rest of the wine out of the glass, and then she dropped the glass onto the rug and it rolled under her daddy’s chair. She danced around in a circle, and when she was by her daddy’s chair again he reached out and caught the long end of the purple scarf, pulling the scarf untied, pulling it off. Lalena ran out, past me, through the doorway. The pink pajama top came out behind her like angel wings, and she ran up the stairs.

  Her daddy looped the purple scarf around his neck. I stayed right by the door. I didn’t want to make any noise in the red cowboy boots. I waited right there by the door until Jimmy Henry came to take me home.

  ON SATURDAY mornings we cleaned our apartment, me and Jimmy Henry, and washed our laundry. The clothes went into a pillowcase, and the towels and washcloths too, except for one washcloth. Then I took off my sneakers and climbed into the bathtub still wearing my pants and shirt. I turned on the water, with the plug left out, and poured Ajax around in the bathtub. Then I washed the bathtub with the last washcloth and rinsed the Ajax away with the red-handled pot Jimmy Henry used for washing hair. Being in the bathtub with clothes on was the best part of Saturday.

  The worst part was trash. My job was to empty the little trash can in the bathroom into one of the big trash cans. The big trash cans were lined up alongside of the boarded-up old garage in the alley. To get there was down the stairs and out the front door, and I usually looked in my boxes on the way, in case any paper blew in there or anything. A long skinny sidewalk went between the houses, with bright green moss growing along the edges. The sun never got in there, just rain or snow or dripping. Halfway was the tall window next to Tina Blue’s bed.

  The sky up over the skinny sidewalk was a long stripe of blue. Tina Blue was there, in her window, leaning her head on the windowsill, her arm like a pillow.

  I said, “Hi, Tina Blue.”

  She didn’t answer, didn’t look down from looking up at the sky.

  “Hi, Tina Blue,” I said.

  She looked around, finally looking down at me.

  I said, “What are you doing?”

  She said, “I am contemplating the perfection of the view.”

  “We’re cleaning house,” I said.

  She looked at me for a while, and I held the bathroom trash can out for her to see, and then she closed her eyes and laid her head back down on her arm like a pillow, her fingers dangling over the edge of the windowsill.

  A porch went across the back of the house for the back doors of the two downstairs apartments. There was a purple curtain in the window of Tina Blue’s back door, and a green chair on the porch next to the door, and a scraggly fern sitting in the chair. The other door didn’t have a window in it, but there was a window right next to the door, a little window with newspaper taped on there, old newspaper turned brown. The backyard didn’t have much grass.

  The big trash cans were next to the garage, three of them, big and dented. The trash cans looked like they had never been any color at all. I held my breath whenever I got near them, pushing one big metal lid up with one finger, just enough to dump the bathroom trash in. Then I ran until I was far enough away to breathe without the smell, back to the skinny sidewalk.

  Tina Blue’s arm was still there, her head still on her arm like a pillow, her hand dangling out the window. She didn’t look down. She wasn’t looking up at the sky. I couldn’t even see any of her face. Her fingers moved a tiny bit, and then I saw her silver ring, and I heard it land with a sound on the skinny sidewalk and there it was, Tina Blue’s silver ring in the mossy corner of the skinny sidewalk. I looked up at her, all I could see was her curly brown hair, and I went to the corner and picked up her ring, closed my fingers around the cold circle of it, and ran out front and onto the porch.

  I set the trash can on the top step and went inside my washing machine box. I sat very still and listened, and the cold ring turned warm inside my hand. I opened my hand out flat. It was a spoon ring. There were flowers in a little bunch on the part that used to be the handle of the spoon. My stomach felt like it was laughing. I put the ring into the front pocket of my pants, where it made a bump, and I could feel it, on my leg. I crawled out of my box. I got the bathroom trash can and I went in the front door as quiet as I ever was. The black painted doors were shut. Tina Blue’s door was shut. I tiptoed up the stairs, into our apartment and into the bathroom and shut the door like I had to pee. Then I took the ring out of my pocket. It was way too big, even for my thumb.

  “Hey, baby, you ready to do laundry?”

  Jimmy Henry was in the kitchen, right outside the bathroom door. The ring jumped off my finger and rolled on the bathroom floor. I got down and grabbed it before it could roll behind the toilet and I put it back in my pocket and Jimmy Henry knocked on the bathroom door.

  “You in there?” he said.

  I opened the door.

  “Hi,” I said.

  My face was hot and my hands were hot, and there was still the feel of the ring on my pointer finger, on my thumb, and the bump of the ring in my pocket. I pulled down on my shirt.

  Jimmy Henry said, “Let’s hit the Laundromat. Here’s your jacket.”

  We went out the door, Jimmy Henry first, carrying the pillowcase of our laundry, down the stairs, past the black painted doors, past Tina Blue’s door, me carrying the red coffee can with our laundry soap, out to Ogden Street.
/>   The sun was bright on everything, bright on the coffee can, bright on the metal buttons that Constanzia at Someone’s Beloved Threads sewed on my jacket, buttons all down the front of my jacket and one button on the pocket on the front over my heart. I touched the bump on my leg. I unbuttoned the little metal button on the heart pocket. Mostly I held on to the coffee can.

  When we got home there was music in Tina Blue’s. Her door stayed shut.

  I kept Tina Blue’s ring in my pants pocket all day, rubbing on the bump of it. I didn’t take the ring out until bedtime. Then I put it in the front button heart pocket of my red corduroy jacket, buttoned the metal button, folded the red corduroy jacket up on the chair by my bed.

  SUNDAYS WERE different. No alarm clock, just Jimmy Henry waking up. I was already awake when his bare feet came into the kitchen. I was still in my bed and my red corduroy jacket was on my chair. There was no music coming up through the floor.

  “Who’s in there sleeping?” Jimmy Henry said.

  That part of Sunday was not different.

  Jimmy Henry looked in.

  He said, “You’re already awake.”

  I said, “I know.”

  He came in and sat on my bed. I sat up and he put his arms all around me. I twisted around to where I could see my red corduroy jacket on the chair.

  Jimmy Henry said, “French toast?”

  He didn’t say braids or barrettes, because of Sunday.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll get dressed now.”

  Jimmy Henry went back into the kitchen, and he left the door open a little bit. I closed it a little bit. I got dressed in my blue-striped overalls, my truckers. Lady Jane called overalls truckers, because they were for trucking around, and then she would sing. I put on my red jacket over my truckers. I unbuttoned the button and looked, silver flowers down in the heart pocket, and then I buttoned the button back up. I went out in the kitchen and got into the bench. Jimmy Henry looked up from mixing yellow eggs in the glass bowl with a fork.

  He said, “Cold?”

  “No,” I said, leaning my elbows on the table, leaning on the table, leaning on the bump in my heart pocket.

  Jimmy Henry said, “Got your jacket on.”

  “I know,” I said.

  I said, “This is my favorite jacket, you know.”

  He dripped vanilla into the eggs.

  After breakfast on Sundays was when Jimmy Henry brushed my hair. On Sundays he just brushed my hair loose, no braids, no barrettes. On Sundays, Jimmy Henry brushed my hair for a long time, brushing and brushing. He was brushing my hair when music came up through the floor.

  He said, “Want to go visiting?”

  I said, “Go visiting where?”

  “Tina Blue,” he said. “We’ll bring her coffee.”

  “Tina Blue drinks tea in the morning,” I said. “In bed.”

  “Okay,” Jimmy Henry said. “Tea.”

  He took the apple teapot from the shelf over the stove, and he took the box of rose hip tea from the cabinet, and the round teaball from the silverware drawer.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t,” I said.

  “Why not?” he said.

  I smooshed leftover pieces of French toast around on my plate, swimming them through the syrup. When the kettle whistled Jimmy Henry poured tea water into the apple. He squirted in honey. Then he picked up the apple by the smiley worm handle. He looked at me.

  “Okay,” he said.

  I said, “Okay.”

  I slid out from the kitchen table and walked after him out of the kitchen, looking at his back pocket of his blue jeans in front of me.

  “Wait,” I said, and I went back in my bedroom. I took off my jacket and folded it up on the chair. Then I went back out.

  “Okay,” I said.

  The hallway was dark, the doors were all shut.

  “You knock,” Jimmy Henry said.

  I knocked one knock.

  “Louder,” he said. “She’s got the music on.”

  But the door opened and there was Tina Blue. No rings on any fingers.

  Jimmy Henry said, “We’ve come to call.”

  Tina Blue said, “So you have.”

  She wore a silver bracelet with bluish green stones. She had dangly red bead earrings.

  We went into the painted apartment and Jimmy Henry set the apple teapot on the curvy table by the bed. Tina Blue turned the music down, and she was kind of smiling, not at me or Jimmy Henry, kind of just smiling at the record player. I looked around, looked at the white china elephant up on the shelf. Looked at the windowsill.

  “And some for you,” Tina Blue said. She gave me a mug. I took it and stood still, looking down into the pink tea.

  “You can sit, baby,” Jimmy Henry said.

  I sat down on the floor.

  Tina Blue laughed and sat in her bed. Jimmy Henry sat in the big chair. Tina Blue was smoking a pink cigarette, and she got up and gave the pink cigarette to Jimmy Henry, even though his Marlboros were in his T-shirt pocket, and she took a hairbrush from the shelf by the white elephant, a hairbrush with a wooden handle. Then she sat back into her bed and scooted back until she was by the skinny window, and she started brushing her long curly hair. Jimmy Henry watched her and took little puffs of the pink cigarette. Tina Blue closed her eyes.

  She said, “I don’t know.”

  “Tina,” Jimmy Henry said.

  She brushed her hair, long slow hairbrushing. The music stopped and the record player clicked a bunch of times and the record started to play again.

  Jimmy Henry said, “Why don’t you brush Sarajean’s hair?”

  “You already brushed my hair,” I said.

  Tina Blue stopped brushing her hair, her eyes still closed.

  “Come here, Sarajean,” she said, her eyes still closed.

  I sat still on the floor.

  Jimmy Henry stood up and put the little end of the pink cigarette in a dish on the shelf by the white elephant. He reached his hand down to me.

  “Come here, baby,” he said. “Let Tina Blue brush your hair.”

  I set my tea mug on the floor and got up. I put my hand in his hand.

  “Wait,” I said.

  I undid my sneakers and took them off. Then I got onto the bed, into the pillows and blankets, in front of Tina Blue, close enough to look out the tall window if I leaned over there a little bit. I turned away so Tina Blue could brush my hair like Jimmy Henry wanted her to. After a minute she did, slow, soft. Careful. It almost tickled. Jimmy Henry sat back down in the big chair. It stayed that way for a long time. Jimmy Henry sitting in the chair. Watching. Tina Blue brushing. Me sitting still.

  When Tina Blue stopped brushing I got off the bed right away. I went and stood by Jimmy Henry and nobody said what to do now. The record stopped and clicked a bunch of times and started again. Jimmy Henry got up and clicked it to off. Tina Blue opened her eyes.

  She said, “Where do we go from here?”

  She said it kind of like singing.

  Jimmy Henry picked up the apple teapot and he didn’t say where we were going. He opened the door and we went out into the dark hallway. I ran up the stairs. Jimmy Henry came up the stairs slow steps behind me.

  The Sunday newspaper was in the kitchen, so I got it and spread the funnies out on the front-room floor. Peanuts had Woodstock in it. Li’l Abner had Daisy May who was beautiful. When Daisy May was sad, she cried stars.

  ON MONDAYS Fern was the teacher at Free School. Fern lived on my street, Ogden Street, in a brick building past the Safeway store, on the corner of Colfax Street. Fern was tall and skinny and her fingers were like that too. She liked to make braids.

  “Trinity,” Fern said.

  I always had my hair in barrettes when it was Fern at Free School, and she braided my hair into tight little braids called French braids, Fern’s bony fingers making skinny braids that went tight all along the side of my face. Her plain white face close right by mine, braiding. On Mondays when Jimmy Henry saw my hair after Free School
he liked to say, “You have macramé hair.”

  Macramé was something else about Fern. She braided rope in long fancy braids and tied in beads and shells, sometimes feathers. The long braided pieces twisted together at the ends, with a long tassel, so a plant could sit there and hang from a hook by a window, and that was macramé.

  Fern sold her plant hangers on the sidewalk on Seventeenth Avenue, in front of Bead Here Now. She laid all the braided hangers on the sidewalk, and people would come walking along and buy the hangers instead of walking on them.

  She had a long beaded necklace of wooden beads that clicked when she walked. There was a silver cross hanging from it. I liked walking by her because of the clicky sound.

  At the end of Free School on Monday Fern said, “I’ll walk you home.”

  Fern almost always said that at the end of Free School on Monday. We walked on Ogden Street, yellow, white, brick, KEEP OUT, WALK, WAIT, green, white, gray, gray, tan, my house, red.

  Tina Blue was walking up to the door with a Safeway bag.

  I said, “Hi, Tina Blue.”

  “That’s Tina Blue,” I told Fern.

  “That’s Fern,” I told Tina Blue.

  “Yes,” Tina Blue said. “So it is.”

  Then Fern touched my French braids, and she looked at my face, her face looking down at my face.

  “’Bye,” I said. “Thank you for the French braids.”

  Which is what I always said to say goodbye to Fern on Mondays after Free School, and she went away up toward Colfax Street, the clicky sound of her beads coming back to us. Tina Blue watched until Fern was past the Safeway store.

  Then she said, “Come in for tea. I have wafer cookies.”

  I said, “Should I go get Jimmy Henry?”

  Sometimes we had wafer cookies instead of dinner, right out of the box, if Jimmy Henry was especially sleepy on the couch.

  Tina Blue said, “How about just you and me?”

  “Well,” I said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  We went past my boxes, into the front door. Tina Blue went first, straight to her black door. I didn’t shut the front door until Tina Blue’s door was open in the dark of the hallway.