by Joanna Rose
“There you go,” he said, taking the teabag out, dripping.
I took the mug, and I went up the narrow wooden stairs by the striped blanket.
At the top of the stairs was Constanzia’s and Erico’s apartment. The front room was small, a couch covered with another striped blanket, and two big soft chairs facing each other. A table with a radio and a television with a coathanger attached to the top. The walls were dark old paint, and pictures in frames. A picture of Jesus with his heart all lit up. A picture of Virgin Mary standing on the world, stars all around her head. I went down the little hall, and the first door was Constanzia’s bedroom.
She was in her bed, a big bed, in a tiny room. There was one lamp, a little glass lamp, on the table next to her, not very bright. She was awake, sitting up against a pile of pillows, in all the blankets. She said something in Spanish, looking at me.
“Hi,” I said, whispering.
“So,” she said, in a voice like a cold. “You are our shopkeeper today, sí?”
I set the mug down on the table, next to a pile of beads, by the lamp.
“Are you better?” I said.
She took the mug, wrapped her hands around the mug and held it, not sipping, holding it. She leaned back into the piled-up pillow and closed her eyes.
Her long hair was loose around her shoulders, tangled in a knitted dark shawl. Her nightgown was white colored, tiny buttons at the front, gathers at the cuffs, a thin edge of lace. There was the flowery smell of powder, there was the smell of the tea.
The only other furniture in the room was a big dresser of dark wood, next to the window. A lace scarf was laid across the dresser top, and a statue of Virgin Mary stood in the center. There were small photographs standing in little frames, and a silver-handled hairbrush. I pushed open the curtain. The snow fell through the light of the streetlight.
“It’s still snowing,” I said.
Constanzia sat up and sipped at the tea. She pushed her hair back over her shoulder.
“Do you want your hairbrush?” I said.
I picked up the silver hairbrush. The handle was cold and smooth, and the silver was designed across the wide back of the brush in swirls. I took the hairbrush over and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Shall I brush your hair for you?” I said.
Constanzia’s face wrinkled up into a smile, and she sat up a little more.
I took up the long hair on her shoulder, heavy black and long white mixed in, and I brushed the tangles out smooth. Constanzia closed her eyes, she sipped, and I brushed her hair over my hand. In the dark light of the glass lamp, the deep wrinkles of her face were soft, crepe-papery.
After a little bit Constanzia reached over and set the mug on the table and picked up the beads, shiny wooden beads with silver beads here and there, and a dark silver cross. She wrapped the loop of the beads around her hands and leaned back into the pillow. I brushed her hair out onto the pillow, and she closed her eyes again, clicking the beads in her fingers, her lips moving. When her lips stopped moving, when the beads rested, still tangled around her fingers, I got up off the bed and put the silver hairbrush back in its place on the dresser.
The photographs in the little frames were two little Mexican kids, laughing, in the sun, a young smiling Mexican lady with a lace scarf on her head, a man with dark hair and a mustache, wearing a white suit. Not smiling. Serious.
I left the bedroom, looking back once at Constanzia, her hair all around her face. Sleeping.
Erico was in the kitchen. He sat by the table, his legs stretched out in front of him, stirring a cup of coffee with a spoon.
“Sleeping,” I said. “Can I come back tomorrow and work again?”
He looked at me. Serious.
“If you want to,” he said. “I go to mass at eight. We open at twelve o’clock on Sunday.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ll be here at twelve.”
“’Bye,” I said.
Erico said, “Thank you. You are a good girl.”
“’Bye,” I said.
I went out, through the shop. At the door, I turned the sign around, CLOSED, and shut the door tight behind me.
It was still snowing. Erico had shoveled the sidewalk in front of the shop, and the snowplow had left a high pile of snow along the curb up and down Seventeenth Avenue. I climbed to the top of the pile of snow and walked along the top, up the street. At Together Books I looked up at Elle’s window. The lights were on up there, so I went in, up the stairs. The stairway smelled like dinner. At the top of the stairs I knocked and opened the door.
“Hello,” I said.
Margo and Cassandra Wiggins were on the couch, sitting close to each other, and Margo jumped up.
“Sarajean,” she said.
She pulled her shirt together over her breasts.
My face got hot and I stepped back into the doorway.
“I was looking for Elle,” I said.
“She’s over at your house,” Margo said. “She said she’s spending the night with you.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Well, I was at Constanzia’s. I wasn’t home yet.”
Margo buttoned her shirt up, getting the buttons wrong, walking over to the doorway.
“Constanzia’s sick,” I said, backing down the stairs. “I was working at the shop.”
“I guess I’ll go over my house.” I said, not looking at Margo, at the bumps of her nipples in her shirt.
“Okay,” she said. “She just left a little while ago.”
She stood at the top of the stairs, and I went back down, fast, back out into the snow.
I walked fast up Seventeenth Avenue, my breath making clouds in my face. My face was hot, hot that went all the way down my middle. All the way home.
Jimmy Henry was lying on the couch, the record player had a record on, Lady Jane was standing by the stove in a cloud of steam from a pot.
“Is Elle here?” I said.
Jimmy Henry said, “No.”
“We’re making spaghetti,” Lady Jane said. “Where have you been all day? Out playing in the snow? Do you ever make snow angels, we used to make snow angels.”
“No,” I said. “At Someone’s Beloved Threads. Was Elle here?”
“No,” Lady Jane said. “Here. Want to stir these noodles while I make salad?”
I dropped my jacket on the chair by the door.
“Okay,” I said.
I went into the kitchen and took the big spoon, stood there in the bubbling steam. I stirred.
MARGO’S BREASTS, dark round nipples hanging down, disappearing under her shirt.
SUNDAY MORNING the sun came up on the new snow. It was late in the morning, bright sun, when I got up. Lady Jane was making French toast, and Jimmy Henry was gone. He came back with the Denver Post. He offered me the funnies.
“So,” he said. “What’s up with you today?”
I looked at the French toast, and my stomach twisted with a cramp. I pictured piling the French toast in on top of last night’s spaghetti.
“Someone’s Beloved Threads,” I said. “I’m going to work there today. Constanzia is sick in bed. A cold.”
“Noon,” I said. “After mass.”
“No, thank you,” I said to Lady Jane, the French toast bright eggy yellow on the red plate.
I put on my purple T-shirt and my blue jeans and tied my hair back with my red paisley scarf. Then I changed into my truckers, which felt better.
The cold bright sun made my eyes water, and I got an ice cream headache in my forehead. I walked along the sidewalk in little shoveled paths beside the snow mountains the snowplows had left along the curbs.
Erico was out in front of the shop, shoveling. When I got up to him he stopped, leaning on the snow shovel, squinting in the brightness.
“She still has the fever,” he said. “She feels better, I think.”
I said, “Is it time to open?”
“Not quite,” he said.
He laughed.
He said, “But go
ahead.”
I went in and turned the sign around to OPEN. I turned on the lights, and the light behind the counter. I went to the front window and pushed away the clothes hanging across. The sunlight came in, lighting up the dust in the air.
The blue-jean jacket was folded up on the work table, the rows of French knots perfect straight rows. I ran my hand flat over them, rows of bumps. Rows of tiny colored nipples.
Erico came in and leaned the snow shovel against the door.
“I’ll make us some hot chocolate, sí?” he said.
“Sí,” I said. “Por favor.”
I wandered around the shop. Tucked the hangers of shirts back straight into the rack. I took the button box from the counter, sliding my hands through the buttons, looking out the window into the brightness.
Erico brought the hot chocolate with cinnamon, in a white mug, and he said,
“I’ll be upstairs.”
Lots of people walked by the window, and people were in and out the door. I stood by the window and watched, and Seventeenth Avenue was full of people. Cassandra Wiggins went by, and I went back behind the counter.
Margo came in.
“How’s Constanzia?” she said.
I looked out the window.
“She still has the fever,” I said.
I looked at the sweater boxes, at the blue sweater sleeve dangling over the side of the Large box.
“I don’t know what you girls find to do all night,” she said. “Staying up so late. Elle’s been dead asleep ever since she got home this morning.”
I poked my fingers into bits of beads and necklaces in the box on the counter.
“Well,” Margo said. “Come by later if you want to. You know you can come over anytime.”
She left. I went and folded the blue sweater.
It was almost four o’clock when Elle came in. She wore a red turtleneck shirt, and she had mascara and black eyeliner on her eyes.
I said, “I don’t even want to hear about it.”
“I just ended up staying home last night,” she said. “I was really tired, you know? I just stayed home. So, are you still working?”
The red turtleneck made her face look greenish. Her eyes were bloodshot under all the black.
“I got to go to the store,” she said. “Margo’s making cookies. She said come on over, so maybe see you later?”
She said, “’Bye,” and the door slammed shut.
I said, “’Bye.”
My stomach was hurting.
When it got dark Erico came downstairs. I was standing at the counter, stringing beads onto a long nylon thread. He came and sat in Constanzia’s chair, rubbing his face in his hands. I showed him the money box from the drawer.
“Look,” I said. “Busy day.”
He looked up, smiled, and he slapped his hands on his legs.
“Yes,” he said. “Busy day. Thank you, you are a good girl.”
He took the money box, and he took out a ten-dollar bill.
“Here,” he said. “A good day’s work. You want to come tomorrow, after school?”
“Thanks,” I said, taking the ten-dollar bill, looking at the president there. “Thanks. Yes, I’d love it, to work tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Erico said. “Thank you, Sarajean. And Mama too, Mama says, ‘Thank you, Sarajean.’”
“Okay,” I said. “See you tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll measure the new blue jeans in the box, okay? Tell her that.”
I walked home in the early frozen dark, my hand in my trucker pocket, my ten-dollar bill in my hand in my trucker pocket. No one was there when I got home. The lights were on, and there was leftover spaghetti in a pan on the stove, but no one was there.
I didn’t eat any spaghetti. My stomachache was back, a stomachache that came and went away, and then it would hurt again. I got on my bed with my book for English, Huckleberry Finn, and laid it open on my stomach.
I felt wet between my legs, and I reached my hand down into my truckers. My underpants were wet. My hand came up red. My stomach jumped at the red blood, and I got up and ran in the bathroom, shutting the door, pulling the trucker straps down off my shoulders. My underpants were red. I got my periods.
My hands were shaky, and I folded up a piece of toilet paper and folded it over the red spot in my underpants. I pulled my truckers back up, and I got my jacket, and I went out the door, to Safeway, walking careful with the toilet paper folded in between my legs. I got the small size box of Tampax tampons and took it to the cashier. I took it to the lady cashier.
She said, “One ninety-four.”
I gave her my new ten-dollar bill.
I wanted to say, “It’s my first period.”
I wanted to say, “It’s my first box of Tampax tampons.”
I said, “Thank you.”
I TOOK money from people, or I pointed to stuff. Blue jeans over there. Extra Large sweaters in the same box as Large. Baby clothes on the other side of the door. I worked on the blue jean jacket, starting a row of French knots, canary yellow number twelve, down the front, next to the buttons.
I worked in the shop all week, after school, and every night Erico gave me a five-dollar bill.
Constanzia stayed in her bed.
“Better,” Erico said. “She sleeps.”
“Better,” Doctor Michaelson said. “She is doing very well, considering.”
“What does that mean, considering?” I said.
Doctor Michaelson said, “She is very lucky to have such a helper.”
ON SATURDAY morning Constanzia came down to the shop for the morning. She sat into her chair.
“Look,” I said. “I arranged the shirts by color.”
“And see?” I said. “I found new buttons for this pink blouse.”
“And look at this beautiful blue-jean jacket,” I said. “How much do you think we should charge for it now, all decorated with French knots?”
“Constanzia,” I said, whispering to her close. “I got my periods. My first period.”
Constanzia took my hand and squeezed. She got up out of her chair, and she went up the stairs. She came back down, and she stood close to me, and she handed me a small white box, old white, yellowish white.
“A young woman,” she said.
Inside was a flat blue charm on a thin silver chain, lying on a piece of cotton. Bright blue, turquoise blue, sky blue. In the blue was a Virgin Mary, in her long robe, standing on the world. All blue.
“I have saved it for my granddaughter,” Constanzia said. “But there is no granddaughter. It is a Miraculous Medal.”
“But I’m not Catholic,” I said.
“The Holy Mother watches over all God’s children,” Constanzia said. “It is right for you.”
The back of the medal was silver, with an M, and a cross, and stars.
“Is it alright if I wear it?” I said.
Constanzia took the box out of my hand, and she took the medal by the silver chain and stepped around behind me. She fastened the medal around my neck, the tiny chain tickling there, the blue medal laying on the chest, just where I could barely see it.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
I tucked the medal its silver chain, inside my T-shirt, and I kissed Constanzia on her cheek, my lips on her smile wrinkles.
“A young woman,” she said.
She sat down in her chair. She went to sleep. A catnap.
I got a shirt out of a pile of shirts, and looked through the button box for matching buttons to sew on where they were missing. Constanzia coughed in her sleep, and I sewed buttons on the shirt.
THE SUN stayed bright and the air was cold, and the deep snow didn’t melt away. The snow stayed in drifts at the curbs, getting blacker each day from cars, and stained yellow spots from dogs. The temperature never got above ten degrees for two weeks. Erico came back at night when it was time to close the shop, came back from fixing people’s heaters and frozen pipes.
ELLE SAID, “All you do is sit in that shop.”
&nbs
p; She kicked the toe of her cowboy boot at my locker door.
“I have fifty dollars saved up,” I said. “I get paid five dollars every day.”
The second bell rang.
“Next week,” I said. “Constanzia is gong to teach me how to use her sewing machine.”
“What are you going to do with all that money?” Elle said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Save it.”
She said, “Want to buy a lid?”
I said, “A lid?”
“Grass,” Elle said. “A lid is a little baggie of grass.”
“For how much?” I said.
“Ten dollars,” she said. “One baggie costs ten dollars. We can split it.”
“Okay,” I said.
I gave her one of my five-dollar bills.
“Come over when you get off work,” she said.
“No,” I said. “Meet me at the shop at six, okay?”
“Okay,” she said.
At six o’clock I waited outside Someone’s Beloved Threads. It was dark and the sky was beautiful with stars. I waited until the clock on the wall inside the shop said six twenty, and then I walked down Seventeenth Avenue. I stopped outside of Together Books and looked up at Elle’s window. The lights were on up there. I sat on the bench, kicking the snow under the bench into a pile until I was frozen, and then I went up the stairs and knocked on the door at the top of the stairs. Cassandra Wiggins opened the door.
I said, “Hi.”
Cassandra Wiggins opened the door a little more.
“Come on in,” she said.
“Is Elle here?” I said.
“No,” she said. “Nobody’s at home. I just got here.”
“Well,” I said. “I better go. Elle might be over at my house.”
I stepped back away from the doorway.
“Wait,” Cassandra Wiggins said.
She said, “Why don’t you come in? I haven’t seen you for a while.”
She opened the door wide. The lights were on, the little light by the couch, the lights in the kitchen.
“I better not,” I said. “I better go see if Elle is at my house. You know, waiting for me there, maybe.”