Little Miss Strange

by Joanna Rose

  “Get off?” he said.

  “Off?” I said.

  “It’s good grass,” he said. “From Panama.”

  The back door was still open, and the afternoon sun was in the backyard, shining orange on the sumac leaves. There was dust in the air that glittered. I went out to the back porch, where the sun on the porch boards was warm, and I sat down on the porch boards. Warm under my butt. The fall grass in the backyard was tall and yellow and words whispered in it.

  “Hey,” Pete said.

  I jumped.

  He said, “See you around.”

  I said, “Where are you going?”

  My mouth was dry and echoey.

  I said, “Where are you going,” listening to it again.

  Pete was gone.

  I shut the door and went around front, along the skinny sidewalk, up the front stairs.

  When Lady Jane woke me up it was almost dark. She stood in my bedroom doorway, with the light on in the kitchen behind her.

  “Are you sleeping?” she said. “The front door was wide open. Is this your book? The Hobbit?”

  My eyes hurt from the light behind her.

  She said, “It was on the front porch, on the top step.”

  I said, “Are you going to make dinner?”

  ELLE HAD Mr. Massey for English. Mr. Massey’s class had to read The Pearl. He gave them a take-home assignment.

  Elle said, “What would it take for you to write my take-home assignment for me?”

  “I can’t write your take-home assignment,” I said. “I never even read that book.”

  “Look,” Elle said, holding up a copy of The Pearl.

  “It’s really thin,” she said. “You could read it in one day, I bet.”

  I took The Pearl and looked at the pages. One hundred forty-two pages.

  I said, “I’ll write your take-home assignment in trade for your truckers.”

  “Those overalls?” she said. “Pick something else.”

  I said, “The truckers.”

  Elle said, “How about my lacy shirt with the big sleeves?”

  I said, “The truckers.”

  She said, “How about that paisley vest with the shiny stuff?”

  “The truckers,” I said.

  She got the truckers out of one of her drawers and dropped them in a heap on her bed. I sat down and folded them up, tucked the buckles and straps in and folded the truckers up to take them home.

  “You never even wear these truckers,” I said.

  “Why do you call then truckers anyway?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “That’s just what they’re called.”

  “They’re called overalls,” she said, and she tossed The Pearl on top of the folded-up truckers.

  I read The Pearl that night and the next night. I wrote about it in fifth-hour study hall, wrote long answers to all the questions on the take-home assignment. I gave the answers to Elle after school so she could write them over in her own handwriting. She got an A.

  “Next time you better not write such long answers,” she said. “B would be better. Now you better tell me what that stupid book is about.”

  I said, “It was all in the take-home assignment.”

  “Well, I didn’t read it,” she said. “I just copied it over.”

  “Well, read it,” I said.

  “What?” she said. “Read that whole book?”

  “No,” I said. “Read the take-home assignment.”

  FOREST GREEN number fourteen. I started with leaves going up one strap, and came down the other strap with more leaves. I sewed a patch over one knee, even though there was no hole there, a patch of green velvet sewed on with royal purple number eight. Then purple flowers around the patch, and more leaves going out from that.

  The first day I wore my truckers to school, I wore them with my black T-shirt and the kelly bird beads.

  Marcia Henson looked at my truckers, and she looked at my embroidery, and she said, “Are those marijuana leaves?”

  I said, “I don’t smoke marijuana.”

  “You can go to jail,” she said. “Or worse. You can become a heroin addict.”

  “I don’t smoke marijuana,” I said. “These are asters, and these leaves are aster leaves.”

  I said, “You have a run in your nylons.”

  I walked away down the hall. I looked back once, looked back at Marcia Henson, who was sticking her leg out, looking for a run in her nylons.

  One thing about Marcia Henson, though. There was a little pink box in the back of her shelf in the locker. It said “Miss Deb,” and it was Kotexes.

  THE ALLEY was out of the wind, and Elle and I walked along, sliding across ice puddles. I had a pack of Kools.

  “I can’t believe you bought Kools,” she said.

  “I like Kools,” I said. “Kools are cool.”

  Elle said, “Say ‘out of sight.’ Don’t say ‘cool.’”

  “That’s really stupid,” I said. “I hate ‘out of sight.’”

  We were behind Someone’s Beloved Threads when three boys turned into the alley ahead of us.

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “Let’s go in here.”

  I went to bang on the back door of Someone’s Beloved Threads, but Elle said, “Hey.”

  She said, “That’s your boyfriend, Pete.”

  She said, “He hasn’t been around here for a long time.”

  “He goes to Mountain View,” I said. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  It was Pete and Buddy and some other kid who wasn’t a Mexican kid.

  I said, “Hi, Pete.”

  Elle said, “Hi, you guys.”

  The other kid who wasn’t Mexican said, “I know you. You got Massy for English.”

  Elle said, “Yeah, I seen you in there.”

  Nobody said anything else, just looking around the alley and down at the bricks, and then Pete said, “Know anyplace to hang out? Maybe smoke a little get-high?”

  He said it to me.

  I said, “No.”

  “Get high? Grass?” Elle said. “We can go over your house.”

  She said it to me.

  I said, “No.”

  Elle said, “Downstairs at your house.”

  I looked at Elle and tried to make my face say ‘shut up,’ but Elle said, “Come on Sarajean. Let’s go over your house. We can go in downstairs.”

  I said, “I don’t have the key.”

  “Well, that other place,” she said.

  Buddy said, “Is your old man home?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think so.”

  “Forget it, man,” he said. “I ain’t going near that fucker. Come on you guys, let’s go see is Rita at home.”

  Pete said, “See you later.”

  He said it to me.

  The three of them walked past us, down to the end of the alley.

  “God damn it, Sarajean Henry,” she said. “Shit.”

  “What?” I said.

  “I want to smoke some grass,” she said. “Don’t you want to try it?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Can’t you get some of Margo’s?”

  “I can never find where she hides it,” she said. “Shit.”

  I said, “I don’t like Buddy.”

  Elle said, “I wonder who Rita is.”

  She looked after the three of them. They turned the corner, out to Seventeenth Avenue.

  “Come on,” Elle said, and she headed down that way.

  “Oh, man,” I said. “I don’t want to follow them. Come on, let’s go into Constanzia’s.”

  Pete and Buddy and the other kid were out on the corner.

  “Hey, you guys,” Elle said. “You can come over my house. I live upstairs from Together Books. My mother’s not at home.”

  Pete looked at me.

  Buddy said, “Far out.”

  Elle said, “Well, okay, come on.”

  She went first, back up the sidewalk, and then Buddy and the other kid and then Pete and then me went after her. She op
ened the sidewalk door with her key.

  “Up here,” she said, and she went in. Buddy next, and then the other kid. Pete went in, and I went last, up the stairs.

  “Nice place,” Buddy said when we were all inside. “You live here with your mom?”

  “Yeah,” Elle said. “My name is Elle. E-l-l-e. In French that means girl.”

  She said, “So you got some grass?”

  Buddy laughed, and Elle laughed. Nobody else laughed. I stood by the kitchen door, and Elle opened the front window and looked out.

  Buddy took a joint out of the pocket of his shirt, and he lit the joint with a silver lighter. He took a hit and handed the joint to Elle. Elle smoked the joint just like Buddy, holding it between her thumb and pointer finger. She gave the joint back to Buddy, and he held it out to Pete, and Elle started coughing loud. The air filled up with the sweet burny smell. Pete came over to where I was standing by the kitchen door and gave me the joint. I took a tiny hit and held the smoke in and didn’t cough, and I thought maybe Pete smiled when I gave it back to him. After the second time Pete brought the joint over to me, a warm buzzy blanket wrapped up around my chest. I slid my back down along the doorway and sat on the floor between the kitchen and the front room, Elle laughing, and then Pete left and I got up and went in the kitchen, and rubbed my hand on the green velvety chair cushion, and the colored light came in through the jars on the window sill. When I went back out in the front room, everyone was gone, until I looked over the back of the couch and saw Buddy, and Elle was lying under Buddy, little bird sounds coming from Elle, Buddy lying on top of her, his blue-jean butt bumping, and Elle’s skinny freckly arms around him, grabbing at his butt.

  I went back in the kitchen, and I didn’t hear the little bird sounds in there. What I heard was my own heart inside me.

  I went back in the front room, and didn’t look at the couch, out the door and down the stairs.

  Icy bits of snow coming sideways through the air, and the sky high and white. My chapped lips burned, and I pulled my hands up into my sleeves. I couldn’t remember what summer felt like, couldn’t remember my lips not chapped and my fingers anything else but cold. I folded my arms across my chest tight, tight over the sore bumps that were going to be breasts, Elle’s breasts already bigger, not just hard little nipples but real breasts under the nipples, and maybe Buddy’s hands on Elle’s chest where she had breasts.

  Breasts. Boobs. Titties. Stupid words, no good words. Big soft breasts like Margo, hanging down under her soft blouses, soft, swinging moving breasts. Cassandra Wiggins’s breasts, high hard bumps under her black T-shirt that disappeared to nothing when she wore her black sweatshirt. Sasha’s breasts getting her shirt wet when Dylan Marie cried. Elle’s daddy.

  I crashed right into John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski, knocked him into the side of a building.

  I said, “What are you doing here?”

  He said, “Jeez, Sarajean, it’s a sidewalk.”

  “Well,” I said. “Sorry.”

  John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski said, “What’s the matter with you?”

  I started to say “Nothing.” I meant to say “Nothing.”

  I said, “Marijuana.”

  “You look it,” he said. “You should see your eyes.”

  “What’s wrong with my eyes?” I said.

  I looked at my face in the window of a building, and couldn’t see anything except the outline of me and John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski standing on the sidewalk, and then, in the next window, me and John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski again, walking on the sidewalk.

  He said, “Got any more?”

  “No,” I said.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “That’s far out. I didn’t know you get high.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “I mean, I just did. Once. It was the second time.”

  He said, “I thought you just read books and got all As and shit.”

  “As and Bs,” I said.

  He said, “Where are you going?”

  “Nowhere,” I said.

  John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski turned off Seventeenth Avenue onto Clarkson Street, away from my house. I turned with him, looking at his feet, my feet and his feet, just the same, same steps, same shoes.

  “Hey,” I said. “Black hightops.”

  Another block, walking into the wind and icy snow bits on my face, the only warm part of me my arms wrapped around me.

  “I got to go in here,” John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski said.

  It was a restaurant, a big window fogged over from inside, people sitting along the window in booths. All across the top, over the window, was a beautiful sign with swirling letters made of leaves and flowers, all different colors. I tried to read the words in all the leaves and flowers up there, and I leaned back and back, stepping back and back, and my one foot went down off the curb and I sat down hard on my butt in the street. John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski cracked up. From sitting in the street I could read the words—CELESTIAL TEA PALACE.

  Lady Jane came out of the door that was at one side of the big window.

  “Sarajean?” she said. “Sarajean. Are you alright?”

  She came over to the curb.

  “Get up out of the street,” she said.

  Another lady came out of the door.

  “JFK, baby,” the new lady said. “Where have you been? It’s freezing out. You kids come in here and get warm.”

  Lady Jane held the door open, and I followed John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski and the other lady inside, him still laughing. I started to laugh, because of him laughing, the laughs coming up out of me like hiccups, surprising me, like I didn’t know I had to laugh.

  John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski said, “Okay, now try and maintain.”

  I quit laughing long enough to say, “Okay, JFK Baby.”

  Then the laughing was all over me again, and JFK Baby pushed me into a booth and slid into the booth next to me. Lady Jane and the other lady stood at the end of the booth, looking at us, their arms folded across their chests exactly the same, each with a pencil sticking out from behind one ear, looking at us in the booth.

  JFK Baby said, “Frostbite of the brain.”

  Lady Jane said, “Do you want some lentil soup? We have lentil soup.”

  “I guess so,” I said, trying to hold my voice in a line.

  Lady Jane and the other lady went away. I shoved John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski with my shoulder.

  “Sit over there,” I said.

  He got up and sat in the seat across from me. He pulled his arms out of his coat and took the blue stocking cap off his head, and his stringy blond hair crackled with static electricity.

  I said, “So, JFK Baby,” and I started to laugh again.

  “Just JFK,” he said. Serious.

  “Okay,” I said, trying to be serious back at him. “Okay, JFK.”

  I said, “Is that your mom?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  He pushed a basket of crackers at me, little packs of two crackers each, and I tore at a pack and put both crackers in my mouth at once, and took another pack. John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski watched me eat crackers until the basket was empty, and then he said, “Try and maintain.”

  There were some guys sitting at the counter by us, but they were turned around eating, not looking at us. A lady in the booth past us sat with her head right behind John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski.

  I leaned across the table and whispered, “What were we just talking about?”

  “Nothing,” he whispered back. “But if you don’t stop now, you’re going to accidentally eat that cracker basket.”

  I swallowed hard to hold any laughing in, starting to laugh again, and Lady Jane came back with two bowls of soup and a basket of more crackers. She set the bowls of soup down, one in front of me, one in front of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski, and then she sat down next to me.

  She said, “It’s almost dark. Pretty late for you to be wandering around in this neighbo
rhood alone, isn’t it?”

  “I wasn’t alone,” I said. “I mean, I was, but that was before I was in this neighborhood. Before that, when I was alone, was when I crashed into JFK here.”

  I said, “JFK Baby.”

  The laughing got me again, and Lady Jane looked at me. JFK ate calm, even spoonfuls of soup.

  A guy behind the counter, in a little window there, yelled out “Order up,” and Lady Jane jumped up and went back there.

  JFK said, “I’d shut up if I was you. That would keep you safe.”

  “Safe from what?” I said, looking behind me. I couldn’t exactly tell, but the guy was maybe leaning his head by me, like listening.

  JFK kept eating soup, shaking his head.

  It was warm enough in the café that I took off my jacket. My hands were stinging from finally being warm, and my nose was starting to run, thawing out a little.

  JFK’s mom went by with a plate full of a big sandwich. She wore a name badge that said Lulu.

  I said, “Your mom’s name is Lulu Karpinski?”

  “No,” he said. “Bell. Nancy Bell. She just made up Lulu to go with Bell for her name badge.”

  I said, “Your dad is named Karpinski?”

  “He was,” he said. “He’s not around anymore. So, is Lady Jane your dad’s old lady now?”

  “Well,” I said. “She doesn’t live there, if that’s what you mean.”

  He said, “Your mom never came back, huh?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t even remember her.”

  “I remember when she left,” he said. “I remember my mom saying when she left.”

  I crunched the empty cellophane plastic wrappers in my fist, and when I let go, they popped apart like I had never crunched them.

  “Your mom knew my mom?” I said.

  “My dad never came back,” JFK said. “He was around sort of after he got out of the army, and then he just quit coming over to our house, and then someone told my mom he went back east for a job.”

  He broke crackers into his bowl.

  “I never liked him much,” he said. “Lalena’s mom came back.”

  “Elle,” I said. “You’re supposed to say Elle. Besides, Margo didn’t leave, Margo got busted.”

  Lady Jane came back over to the booth.

  She said, “I have one more table to finish, and then I can leave. If you want to wait, I can walk with you.”