Little Miss Strange

by Joanna Rose

“Give me that,” I said, grabbing the handful of papers.

  “Well, don’t cry,” she said.

  “Just shut up,” I said, down on the sidewalk, my wet stuff, and the cold wind up Colfax Street blowing more of my stuff away.

  I stacked my English book and my folders on the sidewalk, and jammed the wet papers into a folder, in with the dry papers that didn’t get blown away, and I picked them all up in one arm, and my wet biology book.

  “Why do you carry all that shit around anyway?” Elle said, handing me more wet papers. “Why are you crying? Quit crying.”

  “It’s my homework,” I said. “Just shut up.”

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “Just come on.”

  She pulled my arm, pulling me across the street.

  “Come on,” she said.

  “Leave me alone,” I said.

  “What, leave you alone?” she said. “You’re a mess. Wipe your nose on your sleeve or something.”

  “Just shut up,” I said.

  I wiped my nose on my sleeve.

  When we got to Someone’s Beloved Threads, Elle came in with me. Constanzia smiled and nodded and didn’t say anything, or get up from her chair. She was sewing a shirt sleeve. I put my books on the counter, and opened up the wet pages of my biology book. The pages were just wet at the edges, but the cover was soaked.

  “I dropped my book in a puddle,” I said to Constanzia.

  “Put it there, by the heater,” she said.

  I laid my book open on the floor, and the warm air blowing from the heater vent blew at the pages, lifting each page a little. I spread my homework papers across the counter, the wet ones and the dry ones, trying to put them in order, trying to see which ones were gone up Colfax Street.

  “See, it’s okay,” Elle said, leaning on the counter, poking in the box of broken necklaces. “You get all freaked out about nothing.”

  “It isn’t about nothing,” I said. “It’s about getting As.”

  “Bs are just as goods as As,” Elle said.

  “How would you know,” I said. “You don’t even get Bs. You get Cs.”

  “Cs and Bs,” Elle said.

  Constanzia laid the shirt aside and got up slow out of her chair.

  “I’ll be back after a little nap,” she said. “Erico is out in the alley, out back. Hammering at something.”

  She went through the striped blanket, and her slow steps went up the stairs.

  “I really like your hair,” Elle said.

  “Just shut up about my hair,” I said.

  “Why are you mad at me?” Elle said. “Did I knock your books into a puddle? No. I’m trying to be nice.”

  “Why?” I said. “Why aren’t you with your boyfriend?”

  “Look,” she said. “I don’t even like Pete. I don’t want to be his girlfriend. Buddy either. I think I like that guy Neal.”

  “You going to let him pull your hair and give you hickies on your neck?” I said.

  Elle let the broken necklaces pieces drop back into the box. My biology book pages blew in a papery drying sound. Erico hammering out back. I ran my fingers in little circles on the counter, leaving little circles on the glass. The door opened, and shut, and Elle was gone.

  AT LUNCHTIME Elle was by our lockers, and she was talking to a girl named Talia. Talia was an eighth-grader. Talia wore a leather coat, not a jacket, a coat. Talia wore her leather coat all the time, like an outfit, and blue suede boots.

  Talia smiled and said hi to me.

  “Sarajean,” Elle said. “Are you working today?”

  I said, “Yeah.”

  She said, “Want to go over my house with Talia and me first?”

  She leaned close to me when I unlocked my locker.

  “She has a joint,” Elle whispered.

  “Hey,” I said, whispering back. “What about that lid you were going to get? With my five dollars?”

  “I’ll have to owe it to you,” she said.

  I sorted out my books, my morning books on the shelf, taking down my afternoon class books. Talia leaned against the lockers. Talia had smears of white under each eyebrow, and she had glittery lavender eye shadow on her eyelids.

  Talia whispered to Elle. Then Elle whispered to me.

  “Unless you want to go now,” she said.

  Math was going to be a workbook day, just working at our desks. Biology was going to be handing back yesterday’s test and going over everybody’s wrong answers. Then study hall.

  I said, “I’ll meet you out back by the driveway.”

  THEY WALKED together, talking, walking next to each other on the sidewalk.

  “Baby powder,” Talia said. “You put baby powder on your eyelashes first, and then mascara, and it makes your eyelashes really thick.”

  Elle said, “Do you take your mascara off with Vaseline or something before you go to bed?”

  “No,” Talia said. “Just leave it on. It builds up after a while. I think your eyelashes just get thicker and thicker.”

  “Doesn’t it sting?” I said. “Baby powder? In your eyes?”

  Talia looked kind of sad.

  “A little,” she said.

  It was cold in Elle’s apartment, and no one was there. Elle turned on a radio that sat on the windowsill. Commercials came on, a guy jabbering fast.

  “New radio,” I said.

  Elle sat down on one end of the couch, and Talia sat on the other end. A big space between them. I leaned on the windowsill, by the new radio, the cold air from the crack under the window’s bottom edge coming up through my jacket.

  Talia opened her purse, a brown leather shoulder strap purse, and she reached around in it. She took out a big joint. Bright pink. She smoked some, and Elle smoked on it.

  Strawberry. The wet end of the joint tasted like strawberry.

  “Strawberry,” I said.

  Talia blew out a long cloud of smoke.

  “Strawberry Easy Widers,” she said.

  I took a big hit and held it in until I started to cough.

  “Easy Widers?” I said between coughing and coughing.

  “Easy Wider rolling papers,” Talia said. “They come in strawberry and spearmint. But the spearmint makes your mouth green.”

  She took the pink joint and smoked, not coughing, and handed it to Elle. Elle didn’t cough either. I didn’t stop coughing, and after Elle and Talia handed the joint back and forth a few times, Talia pinched the lit end out and put the joint back somewhere in her purse.

  She said to Elle, “Did you get high?”

  “Yeah,” Elle said. “What you want to do now?”

  “Let’s go downtown,” Talia said. “May Company. Try on makeup?”

  Elle went out the door, and Talia followed right behind her. I turned off the radio dial, and went out, shut the door and went down after them, hurrying down the stairs to one step behind Talia, to the leather smell of Talia’s black coat. We got outside, to the sunny sidewalk, and the cold wind.

  Elle turned around to me and she said, “How about you Sarajean? Want to go downtown?”

  I said, “I don’t know.”

  The sun lit up Elle’s hair, red, orange, blond, dark, bright, gold, and the wind blew it all into kinks and curls, like Elle hated. Talia’s hair was long and straight, light brown, hanging straight and shiny brown down the black leather. The wind shining in her hair. Talia taller than Elle, Elle small-looking. Their feet matched in steps, Elle’s cowboy boots, Talia’s blue suede boots, and I took one black hightop step for every two steps they took, then one step for every three steps they took, and when they crossed Logan Street, I turned, and disappeared out of the noisy wind, away from behind them.

  I went down Logan Street to the alley, and then into the alley, behind Bill’s Market, empty boxes all smashed and stacked up flat, behind Elle’s old house. Under the third-floor bathroom window, used to be a sunporch.

  At the Grant Street end of the alley I went back out to Seventeenth Avenue. Elle and Talia were down past Bead Here
Now. They went down the hill, to Lincoln Street, and turned the corner on Lincoln. Disappeared.

  The round Bead Here Now sign was squeaking, blowing in the wind. It was warm in there, out of the wind. Dark in there, out of the sun.

  The lady said, “Hi, there.”

  She was watering the plants in the big macramé hanging in the window.

  I said, “Hi, there.”

  I went in slow circles around the tables of colors, and then I went in smaller circles between the tables of colors. I bumped into a lady between the green table and the purple table.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Sarajean?” the lady said. “Sarajean, is that you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Yes, it’s me.”

  The lady was all dressed in blue, a blue skirt and a blue sweater, and she had a small blue scarf sitting on her head.

  “Fern,” the lady said. “Remember me?”

  “Fern,” I said.

  “From Saint Therese Carmelite?” the lady said. “Free School?”

  Then her face looked right.

  “Yeah, Fern, I remember,” I said.

  “Except I’m not Fern anymore,” she said. “I’m Sister Ann Josephus.”

  “Sister what?” I said.

  “Sister Ann is fine,” she said. “Fern was kind of a name I chose for a while.”

  She had a white shirt that buttoned at the neck, and a silver cross necklace.

  “Oh,” I said, “Are you a nun?”

  “Almost,” she said. “Look at you.”

  She put her hands on my shoulders. I was almost as tall as her.

  “Short hair,” she said. “But besides that, you look just the same.”

  “The same as in Free School?” I said.

  She laughed, and laughing made her Fern the rest of the way, Fern from Free School.

  “Look at that pretty short hair,” she said. “What is happening in your life? You still live in Denver?”

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “Same place as ever. I go to Mountain View Junior High.”

  She dropped her hands from my shoulders, and her face got serious, and I remembered how Fern’s face got serious so fast like that.

  “Same house?” she said. “On Ogden Street?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me and Jimmy Henry.”

  “What about Tina Blue?” she said.

  “No,” I said. “She never came back. That apartment is still empty.”

  I said, “Lady Jane tried to find her. Remember Lady Jane?”

  “Lord, yes,” she said. “Ruby Tuesday? Lucy in the Sky?”

  “So what’s your name?” I said. “I mean, what’s your name to call you?”

  “Oh, Sister Ann,” she said. “I haven’t taken my final vows yet, but I’m Sister Ann. Ann was the mother of Mary.”

  I said, “Mary, like Jesus’s mother?”

  “Yes,” she said. “That Mary.”

  “I have a Mary,” I said.

  I pulled the silver chain out from under my shirt and showed the bright blue medal.

  “Ah,” she said, “Beautiful.”

  She took the Mary medal in her fingers and looked close, her face by my face. Grayish blue eyes. Pale eyelashes. No smell. Her long bony fingers.

  “Constanzia gave it to me,” I said. “I’m not Catholic.”

  She stepped back and looked at my face.

  “Beautiful,” she said. “So grown-up.”

  My cheeks got warm and stiff into a smile.

  “And John Fitzgerald Kennedy Karpinski?” I said. “He’s kind of a friend of mine.”

  She said, “The last time I heard from Tina Blue she was back in Omaha.”

  I said, “Are you still a teacher? A nun teacher?”

  “No,” she said. “I work at a place called Saint Mary’s of the Valley. Out by Ogallala?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “I know about that place. It’s for girls that get pregnant when they’re still in high school,”

  She smiled.

  “Kind of famous, huh?” she said.

  “Do you still do macramé?” I said.

  “I teach some of the girls to do it,” she said. “I’m just here to go to a meeting. Kind of a meeting. At the Cathedral of the Holy Mother?”

  “The white church,” I said. “Margo likes that church.”

  “Margo,” she said. “And Lalena. Lovely Lalena.”

  “Elle,” I said. “We have to say Elle now. Because of Lalena being a whore in a song. Oh. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” she said.

  She said, “I have to go.”

  She leaned forward and kissed me on my forehead.

  “Be good, Sarajean,” she said. “I’m glad I saw you.”

  She turned around and started away, out from the tables.

  “Wait,” I said.

  She turned around.

  “That scarf,” I said. “How does that scarf stay on your head?”

  “Bobby pins,” she said.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Well,” I said. “’Bye.”

  “’Bye, Sarajean,” she said, smiling, and I could feel the place on my forehead where her lips touched.

  When I left I went as far as Bill’s Market. I bought the biggest bag of potato chips they had in there, and out on the sidewalk I filled my mouth up with as many potato chips as I could fit in there before I even started chewing seriously.

  At Someone’s Beloved Threads Constanzia was talking to two girls at the counter, and all three of them looked through a big box of stuff. She looked at me, smiled at me, smiled at the two girls, kept talking. I stood by the window, looking out the window, eating the potato chips. All of them.

  When the two girls left I went back behind the counter. I threw the empty potato chip bag in the trash back there. I sucked the potato chip grease off my fingers. Constanzia was sorting out the clothes.

  “Guess what?” I said. “I know a nun.”

  Constanzia stopped sorting out the clothes and looked at me.

  “Sister Ann something,” I said. “She used to be Fern. Now she’s a nun.”

  Constanzia nodded her head and started sorting out the clothes again.

  She said, “My sister became a nun. She became Sister Ursula when she took the veil.”

  “Bobby pins,” I said. “They keep those veils on with bobby pins.”

  WHEN I got home Lady Jane was there, but not Jimmy Henry.

  “Hey,” I said. “Remember Fern?”

  “Fern?” she said. “Oh yeah, how could I forget, the Jesus freak.”

  “She was a Jesus freak?” I said.

  “She totally weirded me out,” Lady Jane said. “She was always asking the weirdest questions.”

  “Well,” I said. “She isn’t a Jesus freak anymore. She’s a nun.”

  “You’re kidding,” she said.

  “I saw her today,” I said. “Sister Ann something.”

  “Perfect,” Lady Jane said. “A fucking nun.”

  “Boy,” I said. “I bet it’s a triple sin or something, to say that.”

  “Yeah, that’s what she always was talking about,” Lady Jane said.

  THE NEXT morning Elle was in the second-floor bathroom before first hour. She was smearing copper glitter on her eyelid from a little square plastic box that looked like blue pearl.

  “Wow,” I said. “Cool.”

  “Where did you go yesterday?” she said.

  She closed one eyelid and looked at the coppery stuff on there.

  “I guess I got lost,” I said. “Do you remember Fern, from Free School?”

  “Fern?” Elle said. “No, I don’t remember Fern.”

  She started copper on the other eyelid.

  “That color is beautiful,” I said. “Copper. It all goes. You’re a cinnamon girl.”

  “Is that a poem?” Elle said.

  “No,” I said. “I think it’s an old song.”

  Elle clicked the blue pearl box shut and she put it into a brown leather
shoulder strap purse.

  “Hey,” I said. “You got a purse. Is that real leather?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Real leather.”

  “Did it cost a lot?” I said.

  “Nope,” she said.

  She blinked her copper eyelids at me.

  AT THE end of the day, I got to my locker just when Talia and Elle were walking away, up the hall, walking together, not looking back. Talia taller than Elle. Elle small.

  IN THE morning, Lady Jane made oatmeal. She stood at the stove, stirring the oatmeal in the pot, wearing a long blue plaid shirt. Jimmy Henry’s plaid shirt. I sat at the table, looked out the window. Looked at the funnies that were still there from Sunday. Lady Jane put a bowl of oatmeal in front of me, and she sat down across from me with another bowl of oatmeal for her.

  “Where’s Jimmy Henry?” I said.

  “Still asleep,” she said. “Want some honey?”

  I scooped a glob of honey out of the sticky jar and stirred it around in my bowl of oatmeal.

  “Milk?” she said.

  I poured in some milk and stirred it around.

  “You’re going to be late,” she said.

  I stirred the oatmeal in my bowl.

  “Are you okay?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But I don’t think I’ll go to school today.”

  “Are you sick?” she said.

  “No,” I said. “I just don’t think I’ll go to school today.”

  “Why not?” she said.

  I scooped out another glob of honey and ate it off the spoon.

  “Is the coffee water hot?” I said.

  Lady Jane said, “Is something bothering you?”

  I got up and opened the cabinet, a mug, the jar of instant coffee. I lit the fire under the kettle.

  “Is something wrong?” Lady Jane said.

  I said, “I’m just letting my oatmeal cool down.”

  Jimmy Henry’s bedroom door opened, and he came into the kitchen. He had on his blue jeans and no shirt, no socks. Long, tangled hair.

  “Sarajean’s not going to school today,” Lady Jane said.

  Jimmy Henry got down a mug and looked at the jar of instant coffee.

  “Want to make some of that for me?” he said.

  I put a spoon full of instant coffee into his mug, and he sat down at the table.

  “Oatmeal?” he said, looking at the bowls. “So, how come you’re not going to school today?”

  “Because I’m a little truant,” I said.