Mary Jane

by Jessica Anya Blau

  “Y’all want a sno-cone?” the girl asked. “My cousin’s got a sno-cone stand at the end of the block. I can get you some sno-cones.”

  “I’m fine, just happy to be here,” Jimmy said quietly. I could see that he liked the people who were helping us, but didn’t like being fussed over. Sheba, on the other hand, lingered with each person who shook her hand. She asked them questions: What’s your name? Did you grow up in Baltimore? Each person she talked to looked changed, like they’d been anointed, charged with some kind of power that passed from Sheba to them.

  When we moved, we moved as a single mass. The big guy, whose name was Gabriel, was the leader. The bodyguard guys kept everyone who wasn’t part of our group back a couple of feet as the knot of us shuffled across the store.

  We started in the Rock section.

  “My niece needs her world expanded a little,” Sheba said about me to Gabriel, who was still holding Izzy.

  “She’s got a hell of a voice.” Jimmy nodded toward me. “You’re gonna hear her on a record soon.”

  “One of yours?” Gabriel asked.

  “Oh yeah. Definitely.” Jimmy winked at me and I didn’t know if that meant he was kidding or serious. I couldn’t let myself think about it. I was afraid of ending up wildly disappointed.

  Jimmy, Sheba, and Gabriel picked out records for me and handed them to a guy named Little Hank. I soon figured out he was Little Hank because another guy helping us was Medium Hank. I didn’t ask where Big Hank was; maybe it was his day off?

  Little Hank sidled up to me and shuffled through what they’d picked out. “You’re gonna love this one.” I looked at the record he held on top of the pile. On the front was a woman with bluish hair, surrounded by a long accordian.

  “Is Little Feat the band or is Dixie Chicken the band?”

  Little Hank laughed so hard, he bent over. “No, man, Little Feat’s the band.” He shuffled to the next one. There was a photo of a grown man in a very small black bathing suit walking on the beach.

  “Boz Scaggs Slow Dancer. Is that the band name or the album name?”

  “No wonder they’re buying you music! No niece of Jimmy and Sheba should be so uninformed. Slow Dancer is the name of the album. Boz Scaggs is that guy’s name.” Little Hank flicked his finger on the bathing suit in the picture.

  “A guy named Boz? Is that his real name?”

  “Heck, I don’t know.” Little Hank kept shuffling through the records. He pulled out Steely Dan, who I’d heard of, and Rod Stewart, who I’d also heard of. I’d never heard of Dr. John, but the title of the album, Cut Me While I’m Hot, made me want to listen.

  In the Folk section, Jimmy picked out John Prine and Gram Parsons. I’d heard of them both because Sheba and Mrs. Cone had discussed them one night. Jimmy handed Little Hank a Joni Mitchell album.

  “Hell yeah, Jimmy!” Little Hank said. Then he leaned into me and almost whispered, “She’s soulful. I didn’t know who she was until I started working here, but Gabriel, man, he turns me on to every kind of music.”

  I wanted to be Little Hank so I could hear every kind of music. Then I realized I already was a version of Little Hank, as he was now handing me—well, not every kind—many kinds of music. As much as I liked wandering the record store, I was ready to flee it so we could get home and start listening.

  Little Hank and I rushed to catch up to the group. They had moved on to Soul/R&B. The bodyguards backed people away so we could slide into the inner circle.

  “He’s getting Black music,” Little Hank said to me as Jimmy and Gabriel discussed different albums. “That’s what real musicians listen to.”

  Gabriel handed Little Hank a stack of albums and Little Hank shuffled through them so I could see all of the choices.

  “I’ve heard of Earth, Wind & Fire,” I said. “I think. Maybe not. Is there another band with a similar name?”

  Little Hank thought I was hilarious. He laughed, shook his head, and showed me the rest of the albums: Al Green, Parliament, the Meters, the Isley Brothers, Sly and the Family Stone, Labelle, and Stevie Wonder.

  “This guy is blind.” Little Hank nodded toward Stevie Wonder, on top of the pile. “And he plays piano. He’s cool. Everyone likes him.”

  I’d heard of Stevie Wonder but hadn’t known he was blind. Maybe my mother would like him, since she believed that God had given blind and deaf people extra goodness since He took away one of their senses. A blind man attended our church and Mom always made sure he was seated near the front pew, close to our family, where she could help him in and out.

  Sheba handed Little Hank two more records. “These are for me, but you’re going to love them, Mary Jane. Let’s sing along to these tonight.”

  “Oh, you gonna be singing loud!” Little Hank said. We looked at the albums; the first was Shirley Brown, Woman to Woman. I liked the colors of the album, pink and brown, and I liked the photo, too, because it just showed her: upside down and right side up. Facing herself. Unlike most of the other albums with women on the front, she wasn’t posed in a sexy way. That made me curious about her. Next I looked at Millie Jackson, Caught Up. The cover showed a man and two women caught in a spiderweb. The back showed just the woman—Millie Jackson, I assumed—talking on the phone with a spiderweb framing her hair. She looked sort of sad in the photo, like she was getting her heart broken over the phone. There was another Millie Jackson album too. This one was called Still Caught Up. In the photo she was wearing a big hat and her lips were parted like she was about to kiss someone. It was definitely sexy and I wondered if Jimmy and Sheba knew her and if Jimmy, in their open marriage, was allowed to have sex with her.

  “My turn!” Izzy shouted, and Gabriel moved her up to his shoulders. She was riding so high, I worried she’d knock her head on one of the signs hanging from the ceiling.

  The crowd gathered in the Soundtracks section. Gabriel smiled down at me. “So what are we looking for?”

  “Uh . . .” Would this knowledgeable crowd think I was stupid for liking show tunes? “Just something for Izzy to sing in the tub. You know.” I was afraid to say what I was thinking, which was Guys and Dolls. What if, in spite of my great love for Guys and Dolls, it was actually the dumbest soundtrack ever made?

  “Something for the tub, huh?” Gabriel pulled alternately on Izzy’s ankles and she laughed.

  “We could try Guys and Dolls?” I said it as if it had just occurred to me.

  “I love Guys and Dolls!” Gabriel said, and I exhaled, relieved. Gabriel pulled the record from a bin and handed it to Little Hank. “What about Hair? Wanna try that one too?”

  “Hair?” I didn’t know it. We hadn’t gotten it in the Show Tunes of the Month Club.

  “Oh hell yeah,” Jimmy said. “It’s got naked people running all over the park.”

  “I want Hair!” Izzy yelled.

  “Is that the name of the song?” I asked Little Hank. “‘Naked People Running All Over the Park’?”

  Little Hank almost fell to the ground laughing. Gabriel added Hair to the pile Little Hank was carrying, and we all worked our way to the checkout counter.

  Gabriel slipped Izzy off his shoulders and onto his hip as if he’d been carrying her since birth. “You folks mind if we take a photo or two? For posterity. Never has anyone as famous as Jimmy and Sheba set foot in this store.”

  “Sure.” Jimmy nodded, but his face didn’t look happy.

  “And we gotta get a photo of Mary Jane before she becomes too famous to speak to us.”

  “Oh, I would always speak to you,” I said, and everyone laughed.

  Gabriel took Izzy with him and returned just a second later with a giant camera that had a large rectangular flash attachment. He handed the camera to one of the bodyguards and gave him a quick lesson on how to focus the camera.

  Gabriel stood in the middle and hoisted Izzy back up to his shoulders. He let go of Izzy’s ankles and put one arm around Jimmy and the other around Sheba. Izzy looked perfectly balanced, her tiny fists kn
otted in Gabriel’s hair. Jimmy pulled me in close against his side, as if to protect himself from the crowd. The rest of the people who had been in our group gathered around on either side, and the bodyguard with the camera snapped off three pictures. Then he stepped in closer, maybe making it so it was only Jimmy, Sheba, and Gabriel, and snapped off another couple shots.

  “One more, just to make sure we got a good one,” Gabriel said. “And step back so you can see Izzy on my shoulders and the sign above the register.”

  I turned around and looked up to see what he was talking about. Above the register hung a huge sign that read, “Night Train Music: The Greatest Record Store in America.”

  The flash exploded when my face was turned away.

  “I’m ready to go,” Jimmy whispered in my ear, and the flash exploded two more times.

  Little Hank rang up the records while Jimmy and Sheba talked to the employees who’d been shopping with us. I pulled out the ten-dollar bill I’d been carrying in my pocket and handed it to Little Hank.

  “Jimmy gave me a credit card,” Little Hank said, waving the bill away without pausing on the register. His long fingers moved so fast on the keys that they sounded musical.

  I leaned into Jimmy and handed him the bill. He bent his head down toward me, glancing at the bill. I could see in his eyes that he wanted to leave so badly, he would bust out of his own skin and abandon his body in the store if he could.

  “What’s this?” Jimmy whispered.

  “I’m paying for Izzy’s records. They’re a gift from me.”

  “Okay.” Jimmy looked up, with his eyes only, as a woman, a customer, wedged her way into the circle to talk to him. She was in a jumpsuit that was unzipped almost to her waist, revealing breasts that were smashed together like two loaves of bread on her chest. The woman immediately started talking in a run-on sentence, as if she wanted to say everything she could before someone moved her away from Jimmy.

  “My babysitter brought Running Water records to our house ’cause we didn’t have any, see, and she’s a heroin addict now too, just like you, see, and I still listen to Running Water. . . .”

  “Uh-huh.” Jimmy nodded. His eyes seemed unfocused and fogged over. He reached his arm toward me and I felt a small tug in my back shorts pocket. Jimmy had slipped the bill in there.

  One of the bodyguard guys escorted the woman away from Jimmy and then moved other employees aside so Jimmy could sign the receipt. Izzy and I carried the two bags of records as the employee mob walked the four of us out of the store and to the car, the crowd of fans and shoppers trailing behind.

  Gabriel laughed when Sheba put the key into the passenger-side door. “You gotta be kidding me, man. Jimmy and Sheba drive a station wagon!”

  “Well, we got the kids.” Jimmy nodded at me and Izzy and then got in the car and didn’t roll down the window. Izzy and I got in too. Izzy rolled down the window and leaned half her body out, watching everyone give Sheba hugs or kisses goodbye.

  When Sheba finally got in the car and closed the door, Jimmy said, “Let’s roll, baby, roll, roll, roll.”

  Sheba pulled the car out slowly. The crowd walked behind us, their hands on the back window and hood. It took a long, slow time to get out into the street and finally pull away.

  Once we could no longer see Night Train Records behind us, Sheba slapped the steering wheel with her hand. “That place was fabulous. I mean, there was nothing missing there. Nothing they didn’t have. And Gabriel knew everything about anyone who’s ever made a record. He knew everything about music.”

  “Yeah, it was cool.” Jimmy rolled down his window and took a deep breath. “If we go back, I’m calling Gabriel ahead of time and we’re going in after hours.”

  “Will he do that?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah,” Sheba said. “Jimmy and I usually only shop in closed stores.”

  “I don’t think we need more.” Izzy slid the records out of one bag and spread them across our two laps. She picked up Hair and stared at the cover, at the man with a neon-red-and-yellow Afro that radiated like a burning sun. The green lettering above his head repeated the word hair hair hair hair hair—upside down and right side up and sideways. I imagined people singing that word in ten-part harmony. My head felt a little dizzy and full of static, in the happiest way.

  Mrs. Cone seemed hurt that we had gone to the record store without her. For the rest of the afternoon, she acted like she was a stranger in the house. As Sheba, Izzy, and I played the new records on the turntable in the dining room, Mrs. Cone sat on a chair at the table, a glass of wine in her hand. She rarely sang along and didn’t seem to be enjoying herself.

  I was worried about Mrs. Cone, but mostly I was excited to hear the new records. There were so many that we started off by playing only one song from most albums, and two from some. Sheba picked the songs. I thought each one was the best song I’d ever heard, until she played the next one and then I’d think that was the best song I’d ever heard. Izzy requested that we replay “Family Affair” by Sly and the Family Stone three times because she loved singing it and holding hands with me and Sheba. “We have to sing it because we’re family,” she explained. Once we finished trying all the albums, we went back to Joni Mitchell’s Blue. Sheba wanted to practice the harmonies in “A Case of You,” and she wanted me to memorize it so we could sing it together tonight.

  I had the melody memorized after only hearing it once. The words took me a little longer, and I couldn’t figure out what they meant. Once I had them down, Izzy and I went off to the kitchen to make baked mac and cheese.

  We were stirring the cheese sauce and singing Joni Mitchell when Izzy asked all the questions I’d had about the song.

  “What is a case of you?”

  “I’ve been wondering that too.”

  “How do you drink someone?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s about love? About drinking up love?”

  “How do you drink up love?”

  “Hold the noodle pan still.” I poured the cheese sauce over the noodles while Izzy held the pan on either side. She didn’t really need to do that, the pan wasn’t about to move, but I liked to make her feel like she was involved in every step.

  “Could you drink a case of me?”

  “Yes! I love you so much, I could drink a case of you.” I handed Izzy the bowl of bread crumb mix we had prepared earlier. She sprinkled it over the mac and cheese slowly, as if the pacing were important. When the pan was covered, she dumped the remainder in the middle so there was a small hill of crumbs. I smoothed the hill out with my hand. Then Izzy put her hand over what I had smoothed and smoothed it again. My mother didn’t believe in touching the food you were preparing—all contact was made through a third party: knife, fork, spatula, spoon. Even when making a pie crust, my mother pressed it into the pan using two shallow spoons. But since I’d been cooking with Izzy, I’d found that to put your hands in the food, to touch, move, tear, bend, and sprinkle ingredients straight from your fingers, gave you a better sense of what you were doing, and made the doing more effective. It might have been my imagination, but I thought the food I prepared tasted better when my hands had been in it. My fingers knew things a spoon or spatula couldn’t.

  After dinner, Jimmy got out his guitar while Izzy and I served vanilla ice cream on Nilla Wafers with three marascino cherries on top. He was picking through different tunes when Dr. Cone said, “I know that one.”

  “Sing it, Richard!” Sheba said. Dr. Cone rarely sang with us. He usually patted his thighs or bongoed the table and nodded with the beat.

  “No, I mean I can play it on the guitar.”

  Jimmy smiled and shook his head. “Doc. Come on. We’ve been here all summer and you’re just now breaking the news that you play the guitar?”

  Dr. Cone smiled. “I was in a band when Bonnie and I met.”

  “No way!” Sheba laughed.

  “I played the guitar. And did some backup singing.”

  “But you barely sing now!
” Sheba seemed doubtful that Dr. Cone could ever have been in a band. It hadn’t seemed odd when Mrs. Cone told me, but as I looked at Dr. Cone now, hunched over his empty ice cream bowl, I understood why Sheba was laughing.

  Mrs. Cone pushed away her ice cream, as if she were done. “I play the flute.”

  “Get the guitar, Richard!” Sheba took another bite of her ice cream and Mrs. Cone pulled her bowl back and took another bite too.

  “And, Bonnie, get the flute.” Jimmy kept plucking.

  Dr. Cone looked at Mrs. Cone and they smiled at each other for the first time I’d seen since we’d returned from the beach. He got up from the table and returned shortly with a guitar and a small white case, which he handed to Mrs. Cone. I’d never seen the guitar in the house, which meant it had to have been in Dr. and Mrs. Cone’s bedroom closet. That was the only space in the house I had never entered.

  “Wait!” Izzy ran out of the room and returned with a tambourine. She placed it on my lap.

  “No, you play this. You’re good at tambourine.”

  I watched Mrs. Cone assemble her flute. She finally looked relaxed and even a bit happy. Dr. Cone tried to tune his guitar, and then Jimmy put his own guitar down, walked around the table, and took Dr. Cone’s guitar from him. In about a minute he had it tuned.

  “Okay. Here we go. ‘Stairway to Heaven.’” Dr. Cone started plucking on the guitar, his head bent, eyes honed in on his fingers. Jimmy was plucking the same tune, but looking at Dr. Cone. Each time Dr. Cone messed up, Jimmy said the chord, and then Dr. Cone jumped back in. Mrs. Cone picked up her flute and played along. I was surprised by how smooth and pure it sounded. Izzy picked up the tambourine, slapped it once against her thigh, and then looked up at me.

  “I don’t like this song. It sounds scary.”

  “Okay. Let’s clear the table.”

  “I think this song is calling the witch.”

  “Hmm, I don’t think so. Witches don’t like music. Not even scary music.”

  I stood and started picking up dishes. Sheba had laid a rolling paper on the dining room table and was filling it with marijuana, half singing “Stairway to Heaven.” Izzy and I put all the dishes in the kitchen and then returned to the dining room to say good night to everyone. Dr. and Mrs. Cone were so into playing their music, they could barely look up to kiss Izzy. Sheba was rolling a second joint. The first one was between Jimmy’s lips.