by Joanna Rose
“Well,” I said. “Okay.”
JFK lived in a square brick apartment building on Clarkson Street, just past the dead end of Tenth Avenue, past the parking lot of Saint Therese Carmelite. It wasn’t a very big building, two floors. The hallways had long orange and brown rugs. It smelled like tuna fish. JFK and his mom lived on the second floor, in the back. Their front room was full of sun, and warm. JFK pulled his hat out of his pocket and dropped his coat on the couch.
The walls of the front room were covered with posters. A girl with no clothes, just her necklaces covering her up. A fairy ship in black light colors. There was a KEEP OFF THE GRASS sign over a doorway. I went and looked in the door.
“That’s my mom’s room,” JFK said.
It was dark in his mom’s room. I turned on the light. A mattress on the floor piled high with blankets. A dresser with a mirror. There were photographs stuck into the edges of the mirror, and I went up to the mirror and looked close.
“That’s me,” JFK said.
Pictures of JFK when he was a baby, his mom holding him up for the camera, his mom kissing him on his head, him sitting in his mom’s lap. JFK when he was older, standing next to an old lady in blue jeans and a straw hat. JFK with his face painted with blue stars. JFK smiling with no front teeth.
“She’s my biggest fan,” JFK said. “That’s what she say, she says, ‘I’m your biggest fan.’”
My own face was there in all the middle of all the curling edges of the photographs, my own face looking out from the mirror. Brown hair in a mess. Red nose. Chapped lips. I had never seen me in a baby picture.
“Uh-oh,” JFK said. “Stuck in the mirror. Be careful.”
“What do you mean?” I said, watching my mouth move around the words.
“Get high, get stuck in the mirror,” he said.
“I forgot we were high,” I said. “Do you think we’re still high?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Do you want to smoke some more?”
“No,” I said. “I got to go.”
“Hey,” he said. “Are you bummed out?”
“I got to go,” I said. “’Bye.”
I went out the door, down the long hallway, orange rugs, outside. I walked on the sidewalk, watching my shoes on the sidewalk, walked back to Ogden Street. Blackbird was still there. I stood on the sidewalk in front of my house, peeling red paint, curtains closed across the upstairs windows. Downstairs window all boarded up.
I went in, finally, and Jimmy Henry was sitting at the kitchen table, the Rocky Mountain News all spread out in front of him.
“Home so soon?” he said.
I said, “Yeah.”
I got out a box of crackers and sat across from him.
“Do you have any baby pictures?” I said.
I stuffed my mouth with crackers, three crackers, four.
“Of you?” he said.
I nodded.
He said, “No.”
“How come?” I said, cracker crumbs spilled out of my mouth.
He took a big breath and rubbed his face with his hands. When he breathed out, he blew the cracker crumbs off the table into my lap. I started to laugh, a little laugh, and kept laughing. I took the cracker box into my room and shut the door, sat on my bed, and when I wasn’t laughing anymore I was crying, quiet crying, hugging the cracker box close and crying.
THE SNOW piled in a smooth mound in the flower box. There were no footprints in the snow outside the door, and the sign said CLOSED, even though it was Saturday morning. I tried to open the door. I banged on the window, looking in. No lights. I banged again. Then I went around to the alley, stepping high in snow that came up to my knees. I banged on the back door of Someone’s Beloved Threads. No one came.
I went down Seventeenth Avenue. Together Books was open, and the light inside there was warm and yellow. I went into Together Books instead of upstairs to Elle’s.
There was the lady sitting at the desk, and the certain smell in there, old paper smell.
I said, “Hi.”
She looked up from the book she was reading. “Hello there,” she said.
I went to the shelf of poetry books. They were all leaning against each other, skinny odd sizes, different shapes. There were pictures on the wall there, Walt Whitman in his hat, and a picture of Emily Dickinson. I wandered along the back wall, past the gardening books, all green. Cookbooks. Spirituality. Literature, five shelves. Philosophy. I wandered all around until I was back to the front door.
“Looking for anything special?” the lady said.
“No,” I said. “I guess not.”
I went back outside.
The snow came down in thick flakes that fell straight, no wind. It didn’t even seem cold. I kicked the snow off the bench outside the window and sat down. There were no cars, and some people walked by quiet across the street.
Cassandra Wiggins came out of the doorway and turned up the other way, walking fast up Seventeenth Avenue. Disappearing in the snow. Then Margo came out.
“Sarajean,” she said.
“Hi,” I said.
She said, “Where’s Elle?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
She said, “Isn’t she with you?”
“Well,” I said. “She was. I don’t know where she is now.”
I said, “Maybe over at her dad’s.”
Margo looked at me, looked at my face. I looked at the snow.
“Lots of snow,” I said. “Over a foot.”
“Yeah,” Margo said. “Well, I have to go to work. There’s soup up there for later, just heat it up. Don’t you want to wait upstairs?”
“That’s okay,” I said. “’Bye.”
Margo walked up the block. I watched her as far as the food co-op.
After a while I went back to Someone’s Beloved Threads. I banged on the door, looking in through the window and banging, and Erico came through the striped blanket. He came and opened the door.
“Not open today,” he said. “Mama’s sick.”
“Sick?” I said.
“A cold,” Erico said. “In bed.”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay. ’Bye.”
Erico shut the door and I watched him go back into the kitchen, back through the striped blanket.
I banged on the door again. Erico came back out, and opened the door.
“Can I come in?” I said. “I can work in the shop today while Constanzia’s in bed. I can work for you today.”
Erico looked at me, and he looked past me out at the snow.
“I can be the shopkeeper,” I said.
“Why not?” he said.
He held the door open for me, and I stamped the snow off my sneakers and went in. The bottoms of my blue jeans were frozen and stiff with crusted frozen snow. Erico turned the sign around so it said OPEN, and then he went back behind the counter and he turned on the lamp on the table. I went around to the lightbulbs, pulling the strings, lighting up the shop.
“So,” he said. “You want to be the shopkeeper. How much do you want to charge for this day’s labor?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll just be here to work, in case anybody comes in.”
Erico smiled at me, and my face got warm.
“I’ll make you some hot chocolate,” he said. “With cinnamon.”
He went back through the striped blanket. Behind the counter, I sat in Constanzia’s chair and took off my sneakers. They were wet and the laces were packed with snow. My socks were wet too, and I took them off and got some other socks out of the sock box. The sock box was all odd socks that had lost their mates, ten cents each. I picked out a purple wool sock and a green wool sock. When Erico came back out and I said, “I have to borrow some socks until mine are dry.”
He set a cup of hot chocolate down on the table next to Constanzia’s chair. Cinnamon smell steamed up out of the cup.
“Thanks,” I said.
“I’ll be upstairs,” he said. “I can hear you if you holler.”
“Ok
ay,” I said.
I took the hot chocolate and went to the front window, and looked out through the hanging clothes. The quiet snow fell. My toes burned and tingled, turning warm in the green and purple socks.
There was a new box of stuff behind the counter, by Constanzia’s work table. I poked through the clothes in there, and then I set my hot chocolate down on the table and sat down on the floor next to the box. I pulled out the blue jeans, three pairs, and set the blue jeans aside, by Constanzia’s chair, so she could measure them. I took out a shirt and put it on a hanger, and put the hanger on a special nail in the counter. Two shirts. Three shirts. I folded up a red sweater and put it on the work table. In the bottom of the box was a blue-jean jacket.
I pulled out my box of embroidery stuff from under the counter and pulled the embroidery hoops loose from all the thread. Fit the hoops onto the wide plain back of the blue-jean jacket. The colors of embroidery thread were all tangled together in the box, beautiful silky colors shining in the dark light of the little lamp. Violet number twenty-five. I started making a row of French knots straight across the back of the blue-jean jacket, violet French knots shining in a row. When I went all the way across, I started a second row of French knots. Turquoise number fourteen. Nobody came in all morning.
Around noon Erico came back down.
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
When he came back, he said, “I called the doctor. When he comes, send him back through here.”
He wiped his hand through his hair, through the snowflakes all in his black hair.
“Why?” I said. “Is Constanzia sicker? You said just a cold.”
“A fever now,” he said. “Just to be safe, we call Doctor Michaelson.”
He went back upstairs.
I went to the window and watched for Doctor Michaelson. A man went by, but he kept walking, past the door. A man and a lady came in.
I said, “Are you Doctor Michaelson?”
The man said, “No.”
The lady said, “No.”
They didn’t look like a doctor. They both looked around the shop for a while, and the lady tried on sweaters from the box. I went and sat behind the counter and didn’t make any more French knots.
A fat man with a beard came in and he wore a big coat.
He said, “I’m Doctor Michaelson.”
“Here,” I said.
I went to the striped blanket and pulled it to the side. I pointed to the stairs.
“Up there,” I said.
The lady bought a white mohair sweater for four dollars, and then she and the man left. I started another row of French knots, pale pink number ten. I listened for sounds from upstairs. When Doctor Michaelson came back down the stairs, out through the blanket, I got up from Constanzia’s chair.
“Is she okay?” I said.
Doctor Michaelson looked at me over the tops of his glasses.
“Who are you?” he said.
“Sarajean,” I said. “Sarajean Henry.”
“Well, Sarajean Henry,” he said. “I think she’ll be fine.”
He left.
Erico came back down the stairs, putting on his jacket as he came through the blanket.
“A prescription,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
He hurried out the door, and I went to the window and watched Erico’s back, watched Erico hurrying and slipping through the snow.
I sat back down in Constanzia’s chair and worked on the row of pale pink knots. The shop breathed when the heater came on, and the warm air blew on my feet in the green and purple socks. I looked at the ceiling. I had never been upstairs.
I started a row of spring green number twenty-one, and Erico came back when I was halfway across. He went through the shop and up the stairs without saying anything.
Then Elle came in, snow all in her hair, snow on her shoulders, stamping her cowboy boots, slamming the door behind her.
“Sh,” I said. “Constanzia is sick.”
“I thought I’d find you here,” Elle said. “I went to your house.”
“Margo asked me where were you,” I said.
“Shit,” Elle said. “What did you say?”
She looked in the little mirror on the counter and smoothed her hair behind her ears.
“Did you tell her you were at my house?” I said.
“Well,” Elle said. “Not really. I just kind of let her think that.”
“Where were you?” I said.
Elle said, “Guess.”
I started another French knot.
“No,” I said. “I don’t want to guess.”
“I kind of went to a party,” she said.
“All night?” I said.
Elle picked at the corner of her eye where the eyeliner was smeared.
I said, “Did you tell Margo you were going to my house, and then stay out all night?”
“I got drunk,” she said. “I threw up in the toilet at these guys’ house.”
“What guys?” I said. “Were you there with Buddy?”
“And some other guys,” she said. “Pete was there. It was far out. Until I threw up. There was a guy there with a guitar. I drank peach wine.”
I said, “Did you stay all night there?”
“Yeah,” she said.
She tried to see the top of her head in the mirror.
“Is my part straight?” she said.
“You slept at their house?” I said.
“Well, kind of,” she said. “On the couch. These guys have this apartment right on Colfax. Up by Colorado Boulevard.”
“You slept on the couch?” I said. “Where did Buddy sleep?”
“He left,” Elle said. “But I met this other guy. I can’t remember his name. So what did you tell Margo?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“What are you doing?” she said, looking at the rows of French knots.
“I’m working,” I said. “Constanzia is sick. I’m staying here to keep the shop open.”
Elle went to the front of the shop and looked out the window.
“It’s snowing like a mother,” she said. “We’re going to get maybe another foot.”
She came back to the counter, leaned on her elbows, watched me make a French knot.
“That’s beautiful,” she said. “Is it yours?”
“No,” I said. “It was in this box of stuff.”
Elle said, “Want to go back over those guys’ apartment with me tonight?”
“No,” I said.
She came back behind the counter and sat on the floor, her back against the counter, across from me. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes.
“I don’t feel very good,” she said.
“Want some aspirins?” I said. “Is it a hangover?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I don’t think you get a hangover if you throw up.”
She said, “Why don’t you want to go over there with me? It’s just a little way up Colfax.”
“I don’t like Buddy,” I said. “Those guys are too old to hang out with.”
“I don’t have any fun when you’re not there,” she said.
I stopped in the middle of a spring green French knot. She still had her eyes closed, her head leaned back against the counter. There was a new hickey down low on her neck, a little purple half-moon shape, down low where her freckles started up again. Above that her neck was white and thin, up to her pointed chin. I set the blue-jean jacket on the arm of the chair and went over next to her. I bent down, and my knee cracked. She didn’t open her eyes. I touched the hickey. It was smooth. Nothing at all, just color.
“Don’t let them do that to you,” I said. Whispering. “It’s ugly.”
A tear wet the corner of her eye and ran down the side of her cheek. I wiped at the tear with my finger. Her eyes still closed.
She said, “What do you know.”
“Nothing,” I said. “I don’t know anything.”
Elle opened her eyes and looked at me. H
er beautiful cinnamon-colored eyes, all red now, her pale eyelashes wet, her pointed freckled nose with a tiny clear drop hanging off the end.
The door of the shop opened. Elle wiped her nose on her sleeve, and I stood up. Two ladies came in, laughing, stamping snow off their feet, snow in their long hair.
“Hello,” I said.
“Where’s Constanzia?” one lady said.
“She has a cold,” I said. “In bed.”
The lady said, “Oh.”
The other lady said, “Is Erico here?”
“Upstairs,” I said. “Should I holler?”
The two ladies looked at each other and started laughing.
“That’s okay,” she said, the lady who asked was Erico here.
They went to the back of the shop by the big pieces of material hanging up. Talking. Their shoulders touching. From behind they looked the same, long brown hair, blue jeans, hiking boots. One taller. Laughing.
Elle stood up next to me.
“I guess I’ll go home,” she said. “How long are you going to be here?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Until six I guess. Want to come over tonight?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe. Maybe I’ll come back later.”
“Okay,” I said. “There’s soup. Margo said there’s soup.”
She left, and when she went out the door, another lady came in.
“Hello,” I said.
The new lady said, “Hi,” and she looked around.
It snowed all afternoon, and I made five more rows of French knots. Midnight blue number twenty-four. True red number six. Light orange number fifteen. Dove gray number eighteen. Pale yellow number twenty-one. Erico didn’t come back down until it was almost time to close. I heard him in the kitchen, and I went back and looked through the striped blanket. He was standing by the sink.
“Hi,” I said.
He looked up from running water into the kettle.
“Why don’t you take this tea up to Mama?” he said.
I stepped into the kitchen. Erico put the kettle on the stove, and he took down a red and yellow box of teabags from the shelf. He put a teabag in a white mug, hanging the tag carefully over the side.
“Is she better?” I said.
“She slept all afternoon,” he said.
I leaned on the kitchen table and watched the kettle. Erico watched the kettle. When it started to whistle he turned off the gas and poured the hot water into the mug, filling the mug, setting the kettle back on the stove, picking up the mug, dangling the teabag in the mug. Swishing it around.