Little Miss Strange

by Joanna Rose

  “Jesus,” Jimmy Henry said.

  “Here,” he said, handing the hairbrush to me. “I’ll get the stove. You should brush your hair.”

  I took the hairbrush and went in my room and dropped the hairbrush on my bed. I zipped my zipper and buttoned the button and I picked up the hairbrush and brushed at my hair, hard fast brushing, pulling out knots, then slower and slower until my breath came back slower and even and smooth in my chest.

  When I went back out, Jimmy Henry was looking in the cabinet. He took out a jar of instant coffee, and he looked at me.

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  When the coffee was done, two cups steaming, smelling up the kitchen, Jimmy Henry took his cup and headed out of the kitchen.

  I said, “Are you going back in your room?”

  He stopped, turned around, looked at me.

  “I have to get dressed,” he said. “I told Lady Jane I’d fix her door. It won’t shut right, she said.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Good.”

  He looked at me for a second.

  “Yeah?” he said. “Good.”

  THE REFRIGERATOR box was lying sideways against a garage door in the alley behind my house. We stood the box up, taller than me, taller than Elle, one end cut off, and the other end said “This End Up.” The box tipped back over sideways.

  “Cool,” I said. “Let’s put it on the front porch.”

  “Why?” Elle said.

  “Grab that end,” I said.

  We dragged the box around front, onto the porch, and laid it on its side along the porch railing. I crawled in.

  Elle said, “What are you doing?”

  I laid down on my stomach and looked out the end of the box, at Elle’s bare bony ankles.

  “You have freckles on your ankles,” I said, touching her big ankle bone.

  Her foot jumped.

  “That tickles,” she said.

  She bent down and looked in at me.

  “Why are you in there?” she said.

  “This is a very cool box,” I said. “Come on in.”

  Elle got down and scooted feet first, on her butt, in beside me.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she said, sitting next to me in the box, her head bent down.

  She worked her fingers into her pocket and took out a roll of cherry candies. I turned over on my back and looked up at the piece of blue sky and clouds and red porch roof. The clouds piled into each other. The porch roof looked like it was falling in the sky.

  I said, “See how the porch roof looks like it’s falling?”

  Elle laid down on her stomach next to me and looked out the end of the box.

  “No,” she said.

  “It’s not really falling,” I said. “It’s an optical delusion.”

  “Whatever you say,” she said, laying her head down.

  Her breath tickled the hair at my neck. Birds sounds and car sounds, far away, and up close, Elle, crunching on cherry candies, making the refrigerator box smell like cherry candies instead of cardboard box smell.

  She said, “It’s almost the end of summer vacation.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m glad.”

  “You are?” she said.

  She leaned up on her elbow and looked down at my face.

  “Why?” she said.

  “’Cause we’ll be sixth-graders,” I said. “I don’t know, I’m just glad.”

  Elle said, “I hope we get Mr. Rivera this year.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know about having a man teacher.”

  “He’s Mexican,” Elle said. “You like those Mexican boys.”

  “I liked Pete,” I said. “I don’t like those other boys. I don’t like that Buddy.”

  “Did you want to kiss Pete?” Elle said.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want to kiss anyone.”

  “You never kissed anyone,” she said. “How do you know you don’t want to?”

  She said, “Want me to show you how to kiss a boy?”

  I said, “What do you know about kissing?”

  “I know about kissing,” Elle said.

  “Look,” she said. “Like this.”

  She put her hand on the side of my face. Her fingers were cool, and she leaned her face over me.

  “Close your eyes,” she said. “You’re supposed to close your eyes.”

  “Girls aren’t supposed to kiss girls,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. “Pretend.”

  I said, “Pretend what?”

  She said, “Sh.”

  Her orange hair fell down into my face, and I closed my eyes. There was cherry sweet smell, then Elle’s cherry mouth taste on my mouth and her fingers tickling on my face, on my neck. Tickling inside where I couldn’t breathe, so I laughed, and opened my eyes up at her, her hair all around us, her eyes that color, her freckles on her lips that color, her mouth cherry candy pink. Petunias and marigolds.

  “It’s easy,” she whispered. “Kissing is easy.”

  She kissed my mouth again, and again, little cherry tastes on my lips and cool fingers on my neck, and then cool fingers on the bare skin of my stomach under my shirt.

  “Do you like it?” she whispered.

  I said, “No,” whispering back, and Elle’s wet cherry tongue came into the “no” of my mouth, and a soft hurting sound from her mouth, and the pressing hurt of her fingers at my blue jeans, pressing there, and all of her, pressing down, onto me, and no breath, no breath in my whole self.

  I pushed her away and laughed, catching at my breath and laughing.

  “You’re not supposed to laugh,” Elle said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Laughing.

  I said, “Do it again.”

  MR. RIVERA had long sideburns, and he kept his pencil behind one ear. His black hair curled over his collar in the back, over the collar of his white shirt he wore the first day, a white shirt with blue stripes, tiny thin stripes, long sleeves, tiny buttons at the cuff. After lunch, Mr. Rivera rolled up his cuffs. He wore a gold watch, and a gold ring on his finger.

  In Mr. Rivera’s class, we got to decide where we wanted to sit.

  “Unless,” he said. “Your choice proves to be a problem.”

  I chose my desk perfectly in the middle, middle row, halfway back. John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski sat in the very back row by the window. That proved to be a problem. He flipped his pencil right out the window, and Mr. Rivera said, “Mr. Karpinski, let’s move you a little closer.”

  Right behind me.

  John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski whispered, “Hey, Sarajean.”

  “Just shut up,” I whispered back.

  ELLE GOT Mrs. Zimmerman. It was the first time ever we weren’t in the same class. We met outside on the steps of school to walk home.

  “Shit,” Elle said. “Not fair. I wanted Mr. Rivera.”

  “At least John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski isn’t in your class,” I said. “He got Mr. Rivera too.”

  “Mrs. Zimmerman,” Elle said, and she kicked at a paper cup blowing on the sidewalk.

  “Mrs. Zimmerman’s nice,” I said. “She’s the music teacher sometimes.”

  Elle said, “Mr. Rivera’s cute.”

  “Well,” I said. “Yeah.”

  OUR FIRST homework was a report. Mr. Rivera said there wouldn’t be any other homework this week except this one report. We had until Friday to write it, written in ink, cursive. “What I Want to Be When I Grow Up.”

  FROM THE corner of Seventeenth Avenue I saw Erico at the top of a tall ladder, and I ran the whole block of the sidewalk and across Clarkson, but Erico was not painting a new sunface, he was fixing the sign. He scraped at the corner of where it said SOMEONE’S BELOVED THREADS, peeling curls of wood off the bottom edge so he could hammer there and the sign wouldn’t bang in the wind anymore.

  “Erico,” I said.

  “Yes,” Erico said, not looking down.

  “Erico,” I said. “I thought you
were painting a new sunface. When are you going to do that? It’s almost gone off there.”

  A thin curl of sign wood caught on the leaf of a marigold tall in the back row.

  “Erico,” I said. “A marigold bracelet.”

  The marigold bracelet was perfectly curled, some color of white.

  “Erico,” I said. “What are you?”

  He stopped scraping and looked down at me.

  “What is that you say?” he said.

  “You,” I said. “What are you?”

  I sat on the edge of the flower box.

  “My father was from Oaxaca,” he said. “So in Mexico City I was Oaxacan. Here in Denver, I am Mexican.”

  “No, like your job,” I said. “You know, school teacher or mechanic. What’s the name of your job.”

  Erico put his scraper in his back pocket of his tool belt and he took a folded-up square of sandpaper from his other pocket and he sanded at the bottom edge, making wood dust glitter in the air, and dust down on the marigolds and petunias.

  “Hey,” I said. “You’re getting the marigolds and petunias all dirty.”

  He kept sanding.

  “So,” I said. “Are you a carpenter?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And as soon as I finish this being a carpenter I am going over to Mrs. Tilson’s and become a plumber.”

  He hammered some more, and when he stopped hammering I said, “Erico, if you paint a new sunface you are a painter, too.”

  Erico started hammering again, and I ducked under the ladder and went into the shop.

  Constanzia sat in her chair next to a tangled pile of blue jeans. She had her tape measure, and she measured how long one blue jeans leg was. Then she took her pen that hung around her neck on a chain and she wrote the number of inches on a little square of paper. She put the paper into the back pocket of the blue jeans and then folded the blue jeans over the arm of the chair.

  She was humming a song. She looked up when I came in, humming a little louder to me, and then she looked back down to measuring blue jeans.

  “Hi,” I said. “First day of school. I got Mr. Rivera.”

  Constanzia looked up again and nodded her head. She stopped humming and she said, “This is your sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Rivera?”

  “He’s Mexican,” I said.

  Constanzia said, “You can practice your Spanish for him.”

  “No,” I said. “He just speaks English, like American, no accent.”

  Constanzia said, “You let him know you know some of his language.”

  “But he isn’t Mexican,” I said. “Not like you. He just talks like he’s from Denver.”

  Constanzia said, “We all came from somewhere else.”

  “What about me?” I said. “I’m not from anywhere. I’m from Denver.”

  Constanzia nodded her head.

  “And your papa?” she said. “And your papa’s people?”

  “Well,” I said. “He gave us this report, Mr. Rivera did. ‘What I Want to Be When I Grow Up.’ You’re a shopkeeper?”

  Constanzia started humming again, pulling a pair of blue jeans onto her lap.

  “A tailor,” I said.

  She nodded her head.

  I moved along the counter, putting my fingers into the shoe box lid filled with broken beaded necklaces and bits of gold chain and silver chain. Three boxes of sweaters were on the floor at the end of the counter, all different colors of sweaters folded up into each box, one box marked small, then medium, the large. On top of the large was a black stiff scratchy sweater.

  “Mother,” Constanzia said.

  “Mother?” I said.

  Constanzia said, “Shopkeeper. Tailor. Mother.”

  It was a pullover sweater. When I held the sweater up against me it went down to my knees.

  “No,” I said. “I think he means like your job.”

  The sleeves went down to my knees, too. The price of the sweater was two dollars. I put two dollars in the money drawer.

  “It would be cool to be a teacher,” I said. “Or an airplane pilot. I don’t know too many things to be.”

  The sweater smelled old, like it had been somewhere else for a long time.

  “Or a shopkeeper,” I said. “Or waitress. Lady Jane is a waitress.”

  I folded up the black sweater.

  “I guess I’ll go,” I said. “’Bye.”

  “Adios,” Constanzia said. Goodbye.

  THE NEXT day Mr. Rivera said, “Who has started on their report?”

  Three girls raised their hands in the front row. I looked around at other kids looking around. John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski said, “Hey, Sarajean, what are you going to be for your report?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Sh.”

  “I’m going to be an astronaut,” he said. “Or president. Ha ha.”

  “ELLE,” I said. “What are you going to be when you grow up?”

  Elle said, “Make clothes. I make great outfits.”

  “Tailor?” I said.

  “Fashion designer,” Elle said. “Say fashion designer.”

  “Do you have to go to college for that?” I said.

  “Maybe,” Elle said. “I might go to college. Margo went to college.”

  “Maybe I should go to college,” I said. “I have to decide by Thursday night.”

  “I thought it wasn’t due until Friday,” Elle said. “Just say teacher.”

  I said, “I don’t know about teacher.”

  “Just say teacher,” Elle said. “He’ll like that.”

  JIMMY HENRY was leaning on the kitchen table. He was drinking a beer, and he seemed like in a pretty good mood.

  “Jimmy Henry?” I said, trying to make my voice like usual. “I have to ask you something.”

  “Oh,” he said, looking at me, then looking out the kitchen window, his hair falling down into his eyes. He sat down at the table and he took out his cigarettes and he lit one.

  “Okay,” he said.

  I said, “Did you go to college?”

  Jimmy Henry said, “What?”

  “College,” I said. “I have to decide if I’m going to college. Did you?”

  Jimmy Henry let out his breath in a long cloud of smoke.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I went to college.”

  “For what?” I said.

  Jimmy Henry said, “For what?”

  “Like teacher or what?” I said.

  “Oh,” he said. “For what. Not for anything. History, sort of, but I never finished. When I got out of the army I never finished.”

  “Finished?” I said.

  “Degree,” he said. “I never got a degree.”

  He said, “You like school. You should go to college.”

  “For what?” I said.

  “Oh, that doesn’t matter,” he said. “You can pretty much decide when you get there.”

  I said, “I have to decide by Thursday night.”

  Jimmy Henry said, “Thursday night?”

  “For my report,” I said. “It’s due Friday. Did you go to Denver University?”

  “Iowa,” Jimmy Henry said. “Simpson College. Indianola, Iowa.

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

  Jimmy Henry got up, and before he could go away from the table I said quick, “Is that where your people are?”

  I picked at the blue paint on the table where old wood showed through in the shape of a bird that was flying. I picked at the bird wing until it came apart into not a bird wing, and Jimmy Henry sat back down. He leaned on his elbow on the table and he picked at a long string coming out of the sleeve of his tie-dye T-shirt and he looked out the dirty kitchen window.

  “No,” he said. “They used to be. I don’t think there’s anyone there anymore.”

  “Where did they go?” I said. “Like your mom and dad?”

  “My mom died,” he said. “When I was a kid. My dad got married again. A couple times.”

  “Your mom died?” I said.

  “Long time ago,” he sa
id.

  He said, “I never lived in Indianola too much, just when I was little. When my mom got sick I lived for a long time with my aunt. Aunt Betsy. In Nebraska. And my grandma.”

  I said, “How old were you when your mom died?”

  My voice was small, and Jimmy Henry was looking faraway out the window, to the wall of the house next door.

  “Thirteen,” he said.

  “What was her name?” I said.

  “Marie,” he said. “Marie Anthony Henry.”

  I said, “What happened to your dad?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “They were divorced. I don’t really remember him. I think he moved to Florida.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  It was quiet, and Jimmy Henry smoked, quiet.

  “Indianola, Iowa?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It was a cool place to be a kid. Farms and all. Fields.”

  I said, “Did you live on a farm?”

  “No,” he said. “I think my dad sold insurance.”

  I said, “What about your grandma? And your Aunt Betsy?”

  Jimmy Henry said, “They were old ladies when I was little. They died a long time ago. They’re buried in Indianola. For some reason they all go back there to get buried. Rookery Bend.”

  I said, “Rookery Bend?”

  “Rookery Bend Cemetery,” he said.

  He said, “Just some place on Earth they all go back to.”

  “Her, too?” I said. “Your mom?”

  He said, “All the Henrys.”

  He sat there and looked out the dirty window. His hair was hanging down in his face.

  “ROOKERY: THE nests or breeding grounds of a colony of rooks”; “a crowded or dilapidated tenement or group of dwellings; a place teeming with like individuals.”

  “Rook: a common Old World bird”; “to defraud by cheating or swindling.”

  WE SAT on the metal steps in the alley. Elle had a cigarette. I had an apple. Elle hung her feet over the railing and bonged her cowboy boots on the metal steps.