Mary Jane

by Jessica Anya Blau

  “I’m Jimmy,” the rock star said, and he stuck out his hand. I put out mine, as I assumed he wanted to shake as Dr. Cone had done that first day. Instead Jimmy just held on. I paused, unsure as to why he was grasping my shaky hand, and then realized he was helping me down from the bench. I took a quick breath and stepped down, my eyes on the floor so no one could see my red face.

  “I’m Mary Jane,” I almost whispered. I glanced up and then away again. Jimmy didn’t look like an addict. But he did look like a guy in a band. His dyed-white hair was spiked up all over his head. His shirt was open to his navel, revealing a flat surface of curly black hair with two nipples popping out like tiny pig snouts from a bramble. He wore a leather cord around his neck, three blue feathers hanging off it. He, too, was barefoot and wearing cutoff shorts.

  “You know what we need,” Sheba said. Everyone looked at her expectantly.

  “Popsicles?” Izzy asked.

  “Well, those, too. But look at us. We’re a six-pack and only three of us have on cutoffs.”

  “We all need cutoffs!” Izzy shrieked, and ran out of the room. Normally, I would have followed her—being with Izzy was my job, after all. But I was disoriented by Sheba in the room and the fact that I was now wearing shorts so small, it felt like there was wind blowing on my bottom. I went silent and still, as if that might make me invisible, and listened to the grown-ups talking. They were smiley, energetic, and happy. No one seemed insane or addict-y.

  Mrs. Cone went to the freezer, pushed stuff around, and pulled out a single half Popsicle. The white paper looked like it had been ripped open with teeth; the Popsicle itself had the white acne of frost over it. “Mary Jane,” she said. “Maybe you and Izzy can walk up to Eddie’s and get some Popsicles.”

  “Sure,” I said. Izzy and I had walked up to Eddie’s every afternoon last week except the first day, when we’d gone to the Little Tavern. It turned out that no one in the Cone family cooked. At the deli counter of Eddie’s, Izzy and I had picked out dinner, to be served after I went home to have dinner with my parents. I picked out pasta salads, bean salads, roasted chicken and fried chicken, steamed corn and peas, and cheesy twice-baked potatoes. Also, because Izzy loved them, we always got bags of Utz barbeque potato chips. Dr. Cone had given me the number to their account, and told me I could get whatever snacks and foods I wanted too. So far, I had been too scared to use it for food for myself.

  Izzy tumbled into the kitchen, holding a heap of jeans. “Cutoffs!” she shouted. “One for me, one for Mommy, one for Dad.”

  Sheba began singing a made-up song about cutoff jeans. “Cut them off, little Izzy, cut them off. . . .” She picked up Mrs. Cone’s jeans and held them out to Mrs. Cone. Mrs. Cone slipped them on right there under her flimsy cotton dress. Sheba got on her knees and started cutting. She was still singing the “Cut Them Off” song.

  Dr. Cone examined his own jeans. “This is my only pair.”

  “I’ll buy you new ones,” Jimmy said, and then he started singing the “Cut Them Off” song too.

  Dr. Cone unbuttoned his chinos and I turned around before he dropped his pants. No one else turned around, though, so I went to the refrigerator and said, “Does anyone want some milk?” No one responded, but I took out the milk anyway. Izzy and I had bought it last week. It was good. Smooth. No chunks.

  By the time I turned around again, Dr. Cone was wearing his jeans, waiting beside Mrs. Cone, who had one leg cut off and one leg long.

  “Me next!” Izzy stripped off her dress and underpants so she was completely naked. I put the milk back and went to her.

  “You can wear your underpants.” I picked them up from the kitchen floor and held them open while she stepped back in them. “I’ll go get you a shirt.”

  I picked up Izzy’s dress and rushed upstairs. Her door was shut, keeping the witch out. Last week I’d spent a little time each day putting things in order, and I was pleased to see that her room was still tidy and organized. All her shirts were in one drawer, folded and arranged by color. I was wearing a rainbow-striped tank, so I pulled out Izzy’s rainbow-striped tank. It seemed like a fun idea to match.

  When I returned to the kitchen, Sheba was cutting Izzy’s jeans and Mrs. Cone had tied her dress around her waist like a shirt. “Do you want me to get you a shirt?” I asked.

  “Maybe there’s one in the laundry pile,” Mrs. Cone said.

  The laundry pile was on the couch in the TV room. Last Thursday, Izzy and I had watched Match Game ’75 while I folded and sorted everything. The piles of folded clothes remained where I had left them, lined up on the floor. But the couch now held a new pile of clean clothes.

  I ignored the heap, went to what I’d folded, and pulled out Mrs. Cone’s only clean shirt, a white tank top. I’d seen her in it before, and it was embarrassingly see-through. Would Mrs. Cone worry about her nipples showing with Sheba and Jimmy in the room? Maybe not, as Dr. Cone had just removed his pants in front of everyone. And no one even noticed when Izzy was completely naked. I liked the idea of all the girls being in tank tops, so I took a chance and hurried back with it.

  I handed Mrs. Cone the tank. She took it and then lifted her dress straight off her head so she was completely nude on top. My breath left my lungs. I tried not to stare, but I didn’t know how to stop. I quickly glanced around the kitchen. No one else was looking at Mrs. Cone. Not the rock star, who was monitering how Sheba cut the second leg of Izzy’s pants. Not Sheba, who had her eyes focused on the scissors. Not Izzy, who was staring at me, grinning, as if getting her pants cut into shorts was the greatest fun a kid could have. And not Dr. Cone, who stood with his hands on his hips, waiting.

  At Sheba’s urging, Dr. Cone took a Polaroid picture of all of us in our cutoff shorts. How strange it was to see myself, Mary Jane Dillard, in a photo wearing shorts the size of underpants, standing with Sheba and her furry-chested rock star husband; Mrs. Cone, whose white circular breasts had recently been flashed at me; Dr. Cone, with his goaty sideburns; and sweet Izzy, who was pushed up against my torso like we were two Legos snapped together. I looked so happy. So in place. I looked like there was nowhere in the world I’d rather be. And, really, that was true just then. There was no place I’d rather be.

  There was so much chatter and excitement around the new shorts that I’d forgotten that Jimmy was there for therapy. The moment ended when Dr. Cone gave Jimmy a little pat on the back and said, “Time for work, my friend.”

  “Let’s go to Eddie’s for Popsicles,” I said to Izzy. I went to the drawer that had held the scissors and pulled out two rubber bands so I could put a couple of braids in Izzy’s hair before we left.

  “Maybe we have to put a wig and sunglasses on you and get you to Eddie’s one day,” Mrs. Cone said to Sheba. “The customer-to-employee ratio is one to one. It’s a trip, man!”

  “Are we south of the Mason–Dixon Line?” Sheba asked, and the two of them drifted out of the kitchen. I started braiding Izzy’s hair as Dr. Cone and Jimmy made their way out the screen door to the backyard, a package of Oreos dangling from Dr. Cone’s right hand. Before he crossed the lawn, Dr. Cone came back, opened the screen door, and said, “Mary Jane, will you get some sugary sweets at Eddie’s too? And bring them and one box of Popsicles to my office?”

  “How many Popsicle boxes should I get?” I fastened a rubber band over Izzy’s braid.

  “As many as you and Izzy can carry.”

  “I can carry a lot!” Izzy lifted her soft little arm and made an invisible muscle.

  I wanted to ask Dr. Cone exactly what sugary sweets he wanted, but he turned and followed Jimmy across the weedy lawn to the garage-barn-office.

  Izzy dropped to the floor and shoved her tiny fingers between her tinier toes. She picked out fuzzy black dirt while singing Sheba’s cutoffs song. I had a feeling she hadn’t been washed since I’d scrubbed her Thursday afternoon.

  “Do you want to go swimming after we go to Eddie’s or do you want to take a bath?” I squatted beside her
and braided the other half of her hair.

  Izzy shrugged and kept picking.

  “We can decide after we get Popsicles.” I scooped up Izzy in my arms. She wrapped her legs around my waist and I hobbled out of the kitchen. In the entrance hall I found two flip-flops, each from a different pair. I searched around for the mate to either and then decided, what difference did it make?

  I put Izzy down near the front door and placed the mismatched flip-flops in front of her feet. “Look, it’s like two different Popsicles.” I could hear Mrs. Cone and Sheba on the second floor and wondered what they were doing there. What would they do all day while Jimmy was being cured?

  Normally, to get to Eddie’s, Izzy and I would walk past my house. That day we had to take an alternate route lest we run into my mother, who would disapprove of my short-shorts.

  “Let’s go up Hawthorne,” I suggested. Hawthorne was one street over and ran the same direction as our street, Woodlawn, meaning my mother rarely had any reason to drive on Hawthorne (though she always made it a point to do so on any holiday so she could see how people had decorated).

  Izzy took my hand and skipped, while I took bigger steps to keep us side by side. We looked at the big clapboard and shingle houses, most with a front porch of some kind and painted shutters. The colors were all Colonial, dictated by the neighborhood association. The white houses had black shutters; the ocher-colored houses had burgundy shutters. The yellow houses had green shutters, and the green houses had black shutters. The blue houses had either darker blue shutters or black shutters. Front doors were either black or red lacquer. And many of the porch ceilings were painted a sky blue.

  Izzy spotted a plastic Barbie van on a front lawn and stopped to play with it. I figured if the owner had left it outside, she shouldn’t mind if Izzy pushed it around a bit.

  “Do you think Sheba and Jimmy own a van?” Izzy asked.

  “Maybe,” I said. “They might have lots of cars.”

  “I bet they own a limousine.”

  “We can ask them.”

  “We’re not allowed to tell anyone they’re here.”

  “I know.”

  “What’s an addict?” Izzy scooted the van up the cobblestone walkway toward the steps of the wraparound porch.

  “Mmmm, it’s a person who does something that’s not good for them, but they can’t stop doing it.”

  “Like when I pick my nose?”

  “No. Because you stop. You pick and then stop.”

  “But Mom keeps yelling at me, STOP PICKING YOUR NOSE!” We were back at the sidewalk now. Izzy placed the van on the grass and took my hand.

  “But picking your nose isn’t bad for you. Addicts use drugs or alcohol.” I didn’t mention sex, though the idea of a sex addict had poisoned my brain since Dr. Cone had mentioned it. The words sex addict came to me at the strangest times. I never said them, but they hovered behind my lips like a mouthful of spit that I wanted to hock out. Like when my mother asked me to iron the napkins, I wanted to shout, “Yes, sex addict!” And when Izzy and I went to the Roland Park Pool and the lifeguard had blown her whistle and told Izzy to walk, I wanted to say, “Don’t worry, sex addict, I’ll make sure she walks!” Maybe I was addicted to the words sex addict.

  Izzy talked for the remainder of the walk. She named all her repetitive habits and activities so we could try to figure out if she was an addict. Right when we got to Eddie’s, she asked, “What about closing my door because of the witch?”

  An old man with dark brown skin that looked more cracked than wrinkled opened the door for us. He winked at me. I smiled and said thank you as we passed. That man had been working that door my whole life. He always said hello or smiled, though I was never sure if he recognized me.

  “Do you believe in the witch?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe the witch is just in your imagination.” I led us toward the freezer aisle.

  “Nah. Mom and Dad never said it was imagination.”

  Why would a psychiatrist let his daughter think there was a witch in the house? I wondered. But I said: “Then closing the door is a good thing.”

  “Do you believe in the witch?”

  “Uh, I don’t think so. I’ve never seen a witch.”

  “Do you believe in God?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Have you seen him?” Izzy smiled. I wondered if she’d heard this argument elsewhere and was repeating it. Or maybe she was just that smart.

  “Okay, I’ll believe in the witch. Let’s get a cart so we don’t have to carry the cold Popsicles in our arms.” On the way back to the entrance, we passed a man in a green apron stocking a shelf. A celery-stalk-shaped woman stood talking to him. I thought of what Mrs. Cone said to Sheba about the employee-to-shopper ratio being one to one. “I have an idea for a game, Izzy. You count the people shopping and I’ll count the people working.”

  The carts at Eddie’s were smaller than the regular grocery store ones. Izzy climbed on the far end, clasped her tiny fingers through the metal-cage edge, and rode backward. This gave me a small, interior thrill, as it was something I’d always wanted to do. Cart-riding was forbidden by my mother, who thought it was the childhood equivalent of racing a motorcycle without a helmet.

  “Okay.” Izzy’s head bobbed as she started counting. “Why?”

  “So we can find the employee-to-shopper ratio.”

  “What’s a ratio? I forgot my number.”

  “Let’s start at the far aisle. We won’t shop yet; we’ll just walk and count, and then we’ll go through the aisles all over again and shop.”

  “OKAY!” Izzy excitedly lifted a fist. “But what’s a ratio?”

  “It’s one number compared to another. So the ratio of me to you is one to one. The ratio of you to your parents is one to two.”

  “Because I’m one girl and my parents are two girls. Or a girl and a boy.”

  “Yes, exactly. There are two of them and one of you. Two to one.”

  “The ratio of me to the witch is one to one.”

  “Yeah, but I’m on your side, so the ratio of me and you to the witch is two to one.”

  “We’re a team.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The ratio of Sheba and Jimmy to me, you, my mom and my dad is two . . .”

  “Two to four.”

  “I was gonna say that.”

  We’d reached the far right aisle. “Okay, let’s start counting, and then we’ll walk along the checkout area and you count people in line and I’ll count checkers and baggers.”

  “Yes!” Izzy pumped a fist again and almost fell off the cart.

  “Ready?” We were poised at the far end. “No talking until we’re done with the count. And don’t get distracted by food you see.”

  “Okay.” Izzy nodded enthusiastically. She was taking this task very seriously. “Wait!”

  “What?”

  “Do you think any of these people are addicts?”

  Only a day ago I would have said, No way, not in Roland Park. But now that I’d met Jimmy and he appeared to be so normal—well, rock star normal—it seemed like anyone could be an addict. I mean, the more the words sex addict popped into my head, the more convinced I was that I was a sex addict. One who hadn’t yet kissed a boy.

  “Maybe,” I compromised.

  “Maybe,” Izzy repeated. She seemed unbothered by the possibility.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  I pushed the cart and we carefully started through the narrow aisles. When we turned down the canned goods aisle I sucked in a huge breath. My mother was standing in front of the stacked Campbell’s soups, running her pink fingernail along the cans. Her blond hair was in a blue headband and she wore a knee-length blue dress with a white scalloped hem. I had a similar dress, which I often wore to church.

  Izzy looked at me and I put my finger against my lips to make sure she didn’t speak. Slowly, I backed out of the aisle, turned, and went to the next
aisle.

  “Mary Jane—”

  I violently shook my head and put my fingers to my lips again.

  Izzy half-whispered, “Mary Jane, what about the ratio?”

  I pulled Izzy’s head toward mine, put my mouth against her ear, and whispered, “We’re hiding from someone in the next aisle.”

  “The witch?!” Izzy said loudly.

  I wondered if anyone in the Cone house ever fully whispered. They yelled so much that it had started to feel like plain old talking to me. And when they talked, it felt almost like a whisper.

  “Witches hate grocery stores.” I turned the cart around so I was facing the checkout counters. I couldn’t see each cashier, but would see if my mother went to the middle one.

  And then my mother turned up on the far end of the aisle we were on.

  I jerked the cart and dashed around to the canned soup aisle. What was my mother doing in the store now? She went shopping every Friday morning. Today was Monday! She’d already gone shopping for the week!

  I considered pulling Izzy from the cart and running from the store. We could wait behind the newspaper boxes, spying to see when my mother walked out.

  Then I remembered the gift corner. There wasn’t much there: packaged candies, boxed chocolates, and some coffee mugs and aprons that had eddie’s printed on the front. The wheels of the cart wobbled and clacked as I almost sprinted toward the gifts and then came to a jerking stop.

  “What are we doing?” Izzy whisper-shouted. “What about the ratio?!”

  “Let’s pretend we’re chefs!” I pulled two aprons off the rack and put one on myself quickly. I put the top loop of the other apron over Izzy’s head and then tied it around her waist. It was like a maxi dress on her. I was double knotting it behind her back when my mother strolled up.

  “Mary Jane?” My mother’s body was stiff, upright, an ironing board on end.

  “Mom! This is Izzy.”

  “Hello, dear.” My mother nodded down once at Izzy, who stared at her, openmouthed and bug-eyed, as if my mother were the witch. “Is it safe to ride on the cart like that?”