Little Miss Strange

by Joanna Rose

  “It won’t stay up,” she said.

  I said, “I’m going upstairs.”

  She said, “We could just leave it.”

  “Yeah, and Jimmy Henry will know,” I said.

  Lalena pushed the window up again. She stood there on top of the trash can, looking at me, holding up the window. She let go. The window stayed shut. She jumped off the trash can and when she landed on the porch the window came slamming down open again.

  “Shit,” she said.

  She climbed back up on the trash can. She pushed the window partway up and stopped for a second and then she slammed it up with a loud slam. It stayed shut. She climbed down from the trash can, and she slid the trash can across the porch carefully, watching the window. I went upstairs.

  It was hard to see the stab, down and inside my leg. I wet a washcloth and wiped at it. The washcloth came up smeared pink. I wiped a little more, and it hurt there, just when I wiped. The edge of my underpants got wet from the washcloth, and the blood on the sleeve of my sweatshirt was dark.

  Lalena sat in Jimmy Henry’s chair. She had my splinter, holding it up, looking at the sharp point where my blood made it red.

  I said, “What have you got that for?”

  “It didn’t seem like you should just leave it out there,” she said.

  My candy was still in my pocket, and I just lay down on the couch so I could just eat it.

  MOST OF my stuff is pretty good, but the keychain is pretty junky, a purple plastic peace symbol. I always leave the keychain out of the shoe box until last, to throw it away, and then not, and I put it back in the shoe box with my other stuff.

  The shoe box stays down here in the purple and green painted apartment, in the top drawer of the little dresser. All my best stuff is in the shoe box. The shiny pink scarf I got from Margo’s drawer. The little square book called The Prophet, so small it fit in my pocket at Together Books, small and square with a drawing on the front of a guy that looks like Jimmy Henry. The silver spoon ring I got from the hippie girl that used to live here, Tina Blue. The purple ribbon with the silver heart attached that Jimmy Henry threw away in the trash.

  Mornings in summer were best, when Jimmy Henry always sleeps late. Now sometimes on Sunday mornings, now that it’s the school year, I come down to the painted apartment and sit in the corner where it used to be the closet, on the mattress, next to the tall skinny window. The windowsill is painted thick on old wood with dark beautiful purple, and the walls all purple and green, and in the morning the colors get lighter, and greener, and more purple. Tina Blue had two favorite colors, purple and green. She said her eyes love green and her heart belongs to purple. Lalena always has two mothers, Margo and whoever her daddy’s girlfriend is.

  Sometimes I come down to the painted apartment when Jimmy Henry’s friends come over. Sometimes guys come over and just stand by our door in our front room, just stand there quiet. I leave like I’m going to go hang out on the front porch and sometimes the guys leave pretty soon after. If it takes a long time and they don’t leave, I sneak into the painted apartment.

  I never told Lalena about the painted apartment, about ever coming in here.

  THE FIRST day of snow was early, only in September. Hot like summer the first two weeks of school and then it was completely winter. Jimmy Henry said it was going to be a long cold winter. He said he knew because the bluejays in the holly bushes were making a big fuss all the time, being noisy and fighting with the sparrows.

  The first day of snow started during the night, and then morning was all quiet everywhere. The sky was plain white and big gray snowflakes falling straight and heavy down. I held my hands over the toaster until toast came up, and then I sat at the kitchen table with toast and grape jelly, watching how the gray snowflakes in the sky turned to white snowflakes in between the houses.

  Jimmy Henry in his room, his belt buckle from his bluejeans clunking on the floor. A match. Sometimes he smoked his whole first cigarette in his room. Sometimes he came out before I went to school. I got up from the table and got a wooden stove match and scraped it across the stove. I turned on the gas and poked the match at the burner, and the stove wooshed into fire. I put the kettle there to make instant coffee for Jimmy Henry in case he got up before I went to school.

  My army coat with the patch was on the hook in the closet and my boots for over my sneakers were on the floor. I left my boots there.

  The kettle was almost going to whistle. I turned off the fire and went through the front room to knock on Jimmy Henry’s door. One knock.

  “’Bye,” I said.

  “Yeah, baby,” Jimmy Henry said from inside his room.

  I said, “I made coffee water.”

  “Yeah, baby,” Jimmy Henry said.

  Our apartment door clicked a little quiet click into the dark of the hallway, cold around me going down. Outside the front doorway was bright white gray. Ogden Street was a white street with black lines in the middle from cars. I went out to the sidewalk, making feetprints. My breath was big puffs. Snowflakes landed on my sleeve, snow coming down through the air from higher up than the tree branches, higher up than our house. The front windows upstairs were the windows of Jimmy Henry’s bedroom. The curtains were pulled across shut.

  The key to the painted apartment stayed in the top pocket of my army coat. That was where I found it. It looked just like my other key that opened our door at the top of the stairs.

  Inside the painted apartment was dark and beautiful, big snowflakes coming down outside the tall window. I left my sneakers by the door and got on the mattress, wet socks from snow through my sneakers, cold toes curled up under me. After a while Jimmy Henry’s feet came down the stairs, across the hallway, out the front door. Then the snow and the whole house were absolutely quiet. On the low roof of the house next door dark green clumps of moss were getting round white tops of snow, dark green, bright white.

  The window out back banged and then nothing. No feet sounds or talking from inside the other apartment. After a while of not hearing anything I tiptoed to the door. My wet socks left half feetprints on the floor. Toe prints.

  The hallway was dark, and I didn’t breathe, down on my hands and knees on the cold floor, looking under the other door. A boy with long dark hair sat on the floor in there, leaned back against the counter. A candle was on the floor in front of him. The candle flame was tall and white. I didn’t see the boy’s face. I saw his hands, held out to the candle flame, like he was trying to hold the white light around the candle.

  I went back into the painted apartment, back on the bed, feet under. I took off my army coat and curled under it and listened for the boy to go away. A long time later he went away.

  It snowed all morning, still snowing when Jimmy Henry came back in and went up the stairs. Cold came through my army coat to where I was warm underneath. The end of my nose was cold. My legs were stiff getting out from under me, standing up. My sneakers were still wet. I carried them upstairs.

  Jimmy Henry was in the kitchen making hot water in the kettle.

  He said, “You’re home early.”

  “Stomachache,” I said, putting my army coat on the bench of the table, my sneakers on the floor.

  Jimmy Henry looked at me.

  “Better now,” I said.

  He laughed. It was a short choky sound.

  I said, “Why are you laughing?”

  “Because you’re a little truant,” he said.

  “I don’t know what that is,” I said.

  He said, “A truant is a little girl who doesn’t want to go to school.”

  He poured hot water into his cup and the coffee smell came up.

  I said, “Can I have some of that?”

  “It’s coffee,” he said.

  “With sugar,” I said.

  He didn’t say yes and he didn’t say no, and he got down another mug.

  I sat in the bench. Jimmy Henry put the two coffees on the table and he sat across in the chair. He pushed his hair b
ack away from his eyes, and it fell over his eyes again. The kitchen was kind of dark, and I got up and turned on the switch, and the light came on bright and yellow. I turned it off.

  “We need a candle,” I said.

  “A candle,” Jimmy Henry said.

  “For our table,” I said.

  He said, “There’s probably one in that bottom drawer.”

  The first drawer had all our forks and spoons and eating stuff. The second drawer had dishtowels and rags from old T-shirts. The bottom drawer had all different things in there. Rubber bands and matchbooks and the can opener. Safety pins and shoelaces and a nutcracker. Pencils and a burned potholder and a tennis ball in a plastic bag. And a candle. A yellow candle.

  The candle wouldn’t stand up by itself on the table. It fell over. Jimmy Henry picked the candle up and held the bottom end over the fire of a match until wax dripped on our table, yellow wax on painted blue. He stuck the bottom end of the candle into the squishy wax drips, and the candle stood up straight. He lit another match and lit the candle. The candle flame started out small and shaky, and reached up between me and Jimmy Henry. I put my hands out, like I was holding the light. My fingers were lit up pink.

  DOING HOMEWORK was at the kitchen table, with all my books stacked up in order, and usually Jimmy Henry sleeping on the couch. Science was the best homework. In third grade, science was learning birds. Birds had air in their bones so they could fly. Hummingbirds were the smallest birds. Pelicans were the biggest. Bluejays were the second biggest.

  Thompson Street Elementary was three blocks after turning the corner of Saint Therese Carmelite, walking by myself. One morning almost there John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski was kneeling down by the curb. I was going to walk past him and pretend he wasn’t there but he said, “Hey. Lookit.”

  Under the back of a car there was a bird, a round gray pigeon sitting on the street. The pigeon’s wings were spread out like he was going to fly away. His wings were gray and white, with different colors shining over them, silvery green and purple, like oil in a puddle. When I got near the pigeon it flapped one wing, flapping around in a circle under the car. Then it stopped and it looked at me with its one silver eye.

  “He’s hurt,” said John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski.

  The pigeon flapped some more and then it stopped. Its round feather chest puffed.

  “He’s got a hurt wing,” John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski said. “And also he’s probably scared.”

  “Come here, pigeon,” I whispered. I reached out my hand and the pigeon flapped around in a circle again.

  “You can’t touch him,” John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski said. “He’ll just do like that, trying to get away. I guess he’ll probably die.”

  “What if we caught it,” I said. “And put it in a box.”

  “He’d still probably die,” John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski said. “Then you’d have a dead bird in a box. You could bury him in the box.”

  He picked up his math book and his blue sweater from the curb.

  “It’s almost late you know,” he said.

  He walked away on the sidewalk. The first bell rang, and I walked away backward, watching the pigeon under the car until I couldn’t see it anymore.

  Miss Rinaldi called on me in spelling, and I didn’t know what word we were on.

  At recess, Lalena wanted to draw on the playground with chalk.

  “No,” I said. “There’s a pigeon, under a car, with a hurt wing, and it can’t fly,” and I started to cry.

  Lalena looked at my crying.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Pigeons always die. There are lots of pigeons.”

  “They do not always die,” I said. “This pigeon wants to fly but its wings just flap in a circle on the street.”

  “It’s okay,” Lalena said, “There’s pigeons all over.”

  “I hate you,” I said.

  I ran outside the playground fence and ran back on the sidewalk, all the way to where the pigeon was this morning. There was no car. There was no pigeon. I sat down on the curb.

  “Sarajean?”

  Fern, from Saint Therese Carmelite, was standing right there by me. She sat down next to me.

  “What’s wrong?” she said. “What happened?”

  “A pigeon,” I said, crying all over again. “It was right here and it was probably going to die and not fly away, just fly around in a circle on the ground, but it’s gone now.”

  Fern put her arm around me and pulled my face in to where she was warm and she smelled like incense. She put her other arm around me and my nose was running, getting all over in between the buttons on her coat, blue buttons with anchors on them.

  “Well, you know what I think?” she said. “I think pigeons go to heaven. Don’t you think? All animals?”

  “It couldn’t fly,” I said. “Its wing was hurt.”

  “You don’t have to fly to get to heaven,” she said. “Jesus just takes you there when you die. Otherwise how would people get there? We don’t have wings.”

  I couldn’t wipe my nose, it was too runny, and I couldn’t get my hands out of Fern’s arms around me. I looked out of Fern’s coat, up at the sky. No pigeons. No clouds. In pictures of heaven, Jesus and the angels were always were always sitting on the clouds.

  I said, “Where does heaven go when there aren’t any clouds?”

  “It’s always there, somewhere,” Fern said. “I guess you can only see it if you die. It’s the good part about dying.”

  “Come on,” she said. “Shouldn’t you get back to school?”

  My legs didn’t feel like standing up, even after we were standing up. Fern put her warm fingers on my face, and her eyes had tears. She had a light blue scarf that was holding her long brown hair back in a ponytail, and she pulled the scarf out of her hair. She wiped my face with the scarf, wiped each of my cheeks.

  All the kids were gone from the playground. We got to Miss Rinaldi’s class and I walked to my desk. Fern whispered to Miss Rinaldi. When Fern left, Lalena turned around to me.

  “Okay, class,” Miss Rinaldi said. “Open your science books. Turn around, Lalena.”

  WALKING HOME from school by myself, by the spot where I thought the pigeon was, where Fern and I sat on the curb, I couldn’t tell if it was the same spot.

  At home, Jimmy Henry was lying on the couch. He opened his eyes and then he sat up, rubbing his face with his hands. I put my books on the applebox table and sat down next to him on the couch. The couch was warm under me. Jimmy Henry lit a cigarette and leaned back, leaned his head on the back of the couch, and blew a long cloud of cigarette smoke up into the air. I leaned back onto him. His chest breathed under my head. The cloud of cigarette smoke floated in the air, and the smoke from the cigarette in his hand curled up.

  AFTER CHRISTMAS Lalena’s daddy moved in with his girlfriend Sasha because Sasha was pregnant. He moved out of the big house on Corona Street. Margo and Robbie and John all stayed there like before. Sasha’s apartment was in the top of a big house on Seventeenth Avenue. Lalena and I went there when all of her daddy’s stuff, like records and clothes and stuff, was in boxes on the floors in different little rooms. One little room was Lalena’s for when she went there.

  She said, “I get to live here now.”

  “When?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Just sometimes.”

  We were in their new front room, which wasn’t really in the front, sorting the albums out alphabetical, for a two-dollar reward from Lalena’s daddy. A dollar each.

  “So you have two places to live?” I said.

  She said, “Sort of.”

  “And you have two mothers?” I said.

  She said, “Sasha’s not my mother.”

  “But Sasha gets to tell you what to do if you’re at this house,” I said. I handed her an album. “Here, that’s a D.”

  “It looks like an O,” Lalena said. “Anyway, I don’t have to do what she says.”

  I said, “But
you have to do it if Margo says it?”

  “Not really,” she said.

  “So what’s the difference?” I said.

  She said, “Difference of what?”

  “Of Margo and Sasha?” I said.

  The stacked-up records fell over and skidded on the wood floor.

  “Sasha is Daddy’s girlfriend,” Lalena said.

  “And Margo is your mother,” I said.

  I stacked the records up again, all neat.

  “Yeah,” Lalena said. “Margo used to be Daddy’s girlfriend once. Before. A long time ago. When they used to ball.”

  “Well,” I said. “Jimmy Henry never has a girlfriend. Who do you suppose my mother is?”

  “You don’t have one,” Lalena said.

  Sasha yelled in from the kitchen.

  She yelled, “Lalena, come here and help me for a minute.”

  “You’re lucky,” Lalena said.

  JIMMY HENRY made sandwiches for supper.

  He said, “Peanut butter, or peanut butter and jelly?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Jelly, I guess.”

  I said, “Did you have a girlfriend?”

  Jimmy Henry looked at me instead of jelly and then at jelly.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Not in a while, though.”

  I said, “Who?”

  He said, “No one you’d remember, I guess.”

  I waited the rest of the way for my sandwich, and then I got out of the bench and took my sandwich into my room and sat on my bed. Jimmy Henry came in the doorway with his sandwich and he said, “You mean like your mother?”

  My face buzzed looking at my sandwich, white bread, red plate, purple jelly leaking out. He came over by me and sat down on my bed and ate his sandwich for a while and then he said, “Is that what you meant?”

  I said, “I don’t know.”