Mary Jane

by Jessica Anya Blau

  “Can we sing songs from Hair?” Izzy asked as we walked upstairs.

  “Yes. Do you remember them?”

  “Yes.” Izzy started softly singing: “Wearing smells from Labradors . . . patching my future on films in space . . . I believe that God believes in clothes that spin, that spin. . . .” The words were wrong, but I let her go. When she got to the Let the sun shine part, I sang along with her.

  We sang all through the bath, the wrong words mostly, and then we got into bed. I fell asleep in the middle of reading a Richard Scarry book. When I woke up, Izzy was snuggled against me, her face smashed into my shoulder, sound asleep. I slipped out of bed and silently changed into the shorts and top my mother had bought me at the start of summer.

  Sheba drove me home alone while Jimmy continued to play music with Dr. and Mrs. Cone. When we passed Beanie Jones’s house, Sheba lifted her middle finger, as she had every night since we’d returned from the beach.

  After we’d pulled up in front of the Riley house next door, Sheba leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “See you in the morning, doll.”

  I wanted to say I love you, but instead I said, “I’ll make you birds in a nest for breakfast.”

  “Beautiful,” Sheba said. “I’ve been dying for birds in a nest.”

  I got out of the car and waved as she drove away.

  12

  The next morning, when I came downstairs to the kitchen, my mother and father were sitting at the table. Neither was speaking. Neither was moving. The Baltimore Sun was in the center of the table.

  “Uh, everything okay?” I was worried someone had died. A grandparent in Idaho, or maybe a member of our church.

  “You tell me, Mary Jane.” My father looked at me with hard eyes. He seemed like a stranger, unrecognizable as he glared and made extended eye contact.

  “Tell you what?” I sat across from my father. My mother looked toward the newspaper. I followed her eyes, and then, with a sinking feeling, I pulled the paper toward me.

  There, on the front page, was a picture of me, Izzy, Jimmy, and Sheba with the staff at Night Train Music: The Greatest Record Store in America. Everyone was smiling except Jimmy, who was leaning into my ear. The headline said Sheba and Jimmy Visit Charm City!

  “Well?” my father said.

  I looked at the picture again. I was in the terry-cloth shorts Sheba had bought me and a tank top with no bra. I knew Jimmy was whispering to me, but it looked like he was kissing me. The wallpaper tattoo down his arm almost popped off the page in three dimensions. The combination of that tattoo and his mouth against my ear surely multiplied whatever crime my parents were imagining I’d committed.

  “Uh,” I said. I couldn’t catch my breath.

  “Beanie Jones called me at six a.m. to ask if I’d seen the paper,” my mother said. I couldn’t tell if she was more upset about the photo or about the fact that she’d had to hear about it from Beanie Jones.

  “Beanie Jones . . . ,” I began, then stopped. What could I say about Beanie Jones that wouldn’t make this situation worse? If my parents knew Jimmy had been naked with someone while I was babysitting, they’d be even more angry than they were now. Also, I didn’t have the appropriate vocabulary to say to my parents what Beanie Jones and Jimmy had done. I wouldn’t dare say the words sex or intercourse or open marriage. My mother and I didn’t even discuss my periods. (About a year before my first period, a box of sanitary napkins and an elastic sanitary belt appeared under my bathroom sink. After I started using them, the box was replenished each month, as if by magic.)

  “EXPLAIN.” My father banged a fist on the table and I jumped. I thought of Izzy Cone. How she’d probably never had even a second in her life when she felt afraid of her parents. Fear, I suddenly realized, was an emotion that ran through my home with the constant, buzzing current of a plugged-in appliance.

  I figured I’d start with the medical situation. “So, Dr. Cone is treating Jimmy—”

  “Jimmy.” My father snorted. “You’re on a first-name basis with an adult?”

  “Beanie Jones told me he’s a heroin addict.” My mother sniffed, then blinked. I’d never seen her cry, and I was worried she would.

  “No one is supposed to know they’re in town because of . . . well, because of doctor-patient confidentiality.” I was glad I remembered the exact wording Dr. Cone had used.

  “Beanie Jones certainly knew!” my mother said.

  “Dr. Cone told me I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone.”

  “Why were you with them if Dr. Cone was treating him? And why is a heroin addict traipsing around town with you anyway?” My mother glanced at the paper and then back to me.

  “They’ve been living on the third floor of the Cones’ house. Dr. Cone sees him in his office all day and Mrs. Cone entertains Sheba. That’s why I’m taking care of Izzy.” The truth seemed the least harmful explanation of all.

  “What kind of doctor is he? One patient all day long? Is he a real doctor?” my father demanded.

  “She doesn’t have cancer?” my mother asked.

  “He’s a psychiatrist. His office is in the converted garage. And she doesn’t have cancer.” I felt emotion, like the kind I’d been having at the Cones’ all summer, welling up in me. Tears started rolling down my cheeks.

  My father seemed unconcerned about the cancer lie. “Why is Jimmy kissing you?”

  “He’s whispering in my ear. Not kissing me.” I pushed the words out past what felt like a fist caught in my throat.

  “Why?”

  “He didn’t want to take the pictures. He wanted to leave. He was telling me that.”

  “Why was he telling you that? Has this man deflowered you?”

  “What? No! What? No, Dad!” That he had even thought of my “deflowering” was a shock. As far as I knew, my father was unaware that I even menstruated.

  “Tell us the truth.” Dad’s eyes were drilling into me again.

  “I swear. I’ve never even kissed a boy.” It came out as a whisper: a secret it didn’t seem my father—who had never before asked me a personal question—had a right to know. A secret that I hadn’t minded telling the Cones and Jimmy and Sheba at the beach.

  “And where did you get those clothes!?” My mother sniffed again. Her eyes looked wet.

  “Mom. I’m s-sorry.” I stuttered and choked on my last word. Then my throat opened up, and I was fully crying.

  “Stop that crying. Go to your room,” my father said.

  That was impossible. I remained in my seat, my back bumping up and down as I sobbed. Instead of deflating me, the crying acted as a pump and allowed me to summon the person I’d become at the Cones. For the first time in my life, I defied my father. “I can’t. I won’t. I need to go take care of Izzy.”

  “YOUR ROOM.” My father stood, came to the other side of the table, and hovered over me. I cowered.

  “But they’re waiting for me!”

  Like a biting snake, my father’s hand was instantly around my upper arm. He yanked me out of the chair and pulled me toward the stairs. I knew there were kids in the world who were actually pummeled by their parents or caregivers, and I knew that what was happening with my father wasn’t close to that. Still, it felt as invasive and destructive as I imagined a fist-beating to be. I broke free, as if to save my life, and ran to my room.

  Seconds later I heard the front door slam.

  I was facedown, crying and shaking from the exchange with my father, when my mother came in. I sat up and looked at her. “Mom! They need me. I can’t not go to work.”

  “Your father went down there to talk to them.” My mother sat on the end of my bed and stared at me.

  “They need me, Mom. They need me to take care of Izzy!” I couldn’t have told you what made me cry more: missing the Cones or feeling battered by my father.

  “Did that Jimmy person ever do drugs in front of you?”

  “No!” I took a few deep breaths, in and out, until I could slow the crying. “Dr. Cone helped h
im to quit drugs. That’s why he’s here.”

  My mother blinked. “Why would the Cones be so careless as to let a known drug addict into their home with a little girl and you?”

  “Mom!” I swallowed back the tears that were about to burst out again. “You let me watch Sheba’s show on television. You know she’s a good person! He’s good too.”

  “How good can she be if she’s married to a heroin addict?”

  “Sheba likes church, Mom. We sing church songs together.” I could feel my body slowing. Calming. Sinking into the bed.

  “Beanie Jones said she knew this was going on all summer long. She said they’ve been smoking marijuana and that other untoward business is happening in the house.”

  “Mom.” I sniffed it all in. Took another deep breath. “Beanie Jones is a nosy gossip and a liar. There is no untoward business. I take care of Izzy. Dr. Cone takes care of Jimmy. And Mrs. Cone entertains Sheba. That’s all that happens.”

  “Were they at the beach with you?”

  “Yes.” I looked at my lap.

  “Why did you go to the record store with them? Why would they take you to that store?”

  “Because it’s the best record store in town.”

  My mother snorted. “I highly doubt that.”

  “It is. The people in that store know all about every kind of music. The owner loves Guys and Dolls, just like me. And there was a whole wall of classical music and opera.”

  “On North Avenue? No, dear. Don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m not lying, Mom.” I was almost embarrassed for her. Did she think Black people only listened to the Jackson 5?

  My mother sighed. “What are we going to do with you? You lied to me. Every single day when you left this house, you lied to me.”

  “I know I lied to you.” It had been hard at first, but then it became so easy I barely noticed it. I felt bad about that—that I had become someone who spit lies so quickly they were more an involuntary reaction than a decision. “But really, my days have been spent taking care of Izzy and making dinner. It’s been mostly what you imagined. The only thing different is that Jimmy and Sheba were in and out of the house.”

  “Where did you get the clothes you’re wearing in the picture?”

  “Sheba bought them for me at the beach. I left them at the Cones’ house.”

  “Dr. and Mrs. Cone don’t mind having a summer nanny dressed like a . . . like a . . . dressed improperly?!”

  I remembered Sheba saying that her mother had called her a slut and a whore. In her own way, my mother was saying the same thing. But she was wrong. “The Cones don’t think about things like being dressed improperly. They just want people to be happy. And comfortable.”

  My mother shook her head. “You can stay in here all day.” She stood and left my room.

  I rolled onto my stomach and cried some more. I tried to imagine my father speaking with Dr. Cone. Combed hair facing unruly hair. A shaved face looking at a goaty-sideburned face. Stern blue eyes on clear brown eyes. Would Jimmy meet my father? Sheba? What about Mrs. Cone? Mrs. Cone’s nipples were always poking out. Did my father notice things like that? And if he did, would I be banned from the Cone house forever?

  At noon my mother came in with a ham sandwich and a glass of milk on a tray. She put the tray on the end of the bed and stared at me. I could feel that my eyes were almost swollen shut. My nose was probably red too. “Well, I hope you’re crying with regret.”

  I wasn’t. “Did Dad talk to Dr. Cone?”

  “Yes. He informed him that you wouldn’t be returning this summer.”

  “There are only two weeks left. I can’t go back for two weeks?”

  My mother stared at me as if I had transformed from a girl into a goat. “Of course not.”

  “But who’s going to take care of Izzy?”

  “That’s not your concern, Mary Jane. Do you not understand what happened? You have, unbeknownst to your parents, passed the summer with hippies and a drug addict while dressed like a girl who . . . like a girl who lives in Hampden!” Hampden was where Dr. Cone took us for burgers at Little Tavern. I thought it was probably better not to mention that.

  I was allowed to leave my room to help my mother with dinner. We didn’t speak as we prepared a chicken casserole and rice with peas. When my father came to the table, he set the paper beside his plate, looked up, and said, “At least they didn’t put it in the evening paper.”

  My mother sighed.

  “I’m sorry.” I mumbled. I wasn’t, though.

  “Do you know how humiliating this is?” my father asked me. “The entire office, every man I work with, every single one, saw a picture of you dressed like a prostitute, standing with a rock-and-roll heroin addict and Negroes in a record store. Do you understand what that does to our standing in the community?”

  I thought about what my father had just said. The Cones seemed unconcerned about things like standing in the community. It was like they were in a different Roland Park, a Roland Park where people weren’t keeping track of each other. Where people were just doing what they wanted, without concern as to how it was seen. Maybe a person’s standing in the community was an illusion. Like the witch in the Cone house. An imagined evil that created unnecessary rules.

  When I didn’t respond, my father said, “I asked you a question.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said automatically.

  My father put his hands in the prayer position. My mother did the same, then I did too. “Dear Lord, forgive my daughter for her sins and help her find her way to purity. God bless our relatives in Idaho, God bless this family, and God bless the president of the United States of America and his wife and family.”

  “Amen,” my mother and I said in unison. I glanced up at President Ford on the wall. His smile seemed tinged with anger.

  My father read the paper during dinner and my mother didn’t speak. I wasn’t hungry but I ate everything on my plate. After I cleared the table and helped my mother do the dishes, I returned to my room.

  I’d heard about depression before but couldn’t conceive of what it felt like until that week I spent in my room. I was tired all the time but I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t read. I didn’t want to sing or listen to music or even watch TV. Not that I could have anyway (the TV was in the den and the hi-fi was in the living room). I wondered if I was a bad person for having deceived my parents, or if I was a bad person for allowing myself to criticize my parents for being racist (and square!). But I couldn’t not feel critical. I was unable to unsee what I’d seen of them this summer.

  On Sunday morning, my mother came in without knocking and woke me for church. I had fallen asleep when the sun was already up, so likely had only slept an hour.

  “I expect you to wear pantyhose with your dress today.” My mother was as upright and stiff as a broom. This was her way of telling me she was still angry and I was still being punished.

  “Okay.”

  “And I want you to stand in the front row of the summer choir. You need to let the congregation know you haven’t changed.”

  “Okay.” I had changed. But what would anyone see? That I knew my parents were racist? That I now understood that cleanliness and order were nice, but giving love, feeling love, and showing love trumped housework? That I had seen that adults weren’t always right and could be just as confused and make just as many mistakes as kids? That I knew that when people messed up, they still deserved our love and affection? That I had been listening to amazing music made by many different kinds of people? That I was certain that sex wasn’t just something to be ashamed of or to hide, and that some people navigated it in ways I’d never before imagined (open marriage!) and that didn’t make them perverts? That I’d experienced how good it felt to wear a bikini and feel air and water on my skin? Or that it was okay when I thought of a penis while looking at a cucumber (or a zucchini) and knew I wasn’t a sex addict?

  “If anyone asks you about the picture in the paper, I want you to say that yo
u were working as the summer nanny for Izzy Cone and just happened to be pulled into the picture.”

  “Okay.”

  “If they ask why you were in that neighborhood, I want you to tell them that Dr. Cone had requested a certain record that was only sold there.”

  “Okay.” I couldn’t imagine anyone other than my mother asking why I was in that neighborhood, though maybe someone would ask why I was in the photo. The caption below the photo had said that Jimmy and Sheba were “passing through” town, and that they loved Baltimore and loved Night Train Records: The Greatest Record Store in America. No one else in the photo, besides Gabriel, was named, though the caption did list a couple of the records Jimmy and Sheba had bought.

  “Do you have a pair of pantyhose with no runs?”

  “I’ve got a new pair of suntan-colored L’eggs.” They were sitting in the white plastic egg they were sold in.

  “Good. Store them neatly back in the egg when you’re done with them.”

  “Okay.” In sixth grade I went to a slumber party where the birthday girl took all her mother’s L’eggs pantyhose eggs and handed them out so the empty open halves could be used as fake breasts under our nightgowns. One side of the egg was slightly pointy and one was round, so we swapped until we each had a matching pair.

  “And maybe a hat.”

  “Mom. It’s 1975. No one wears a hat but the eighty-year-old ladies.”

  My mother was unmoved. “We need to restore your reputation.”

  “You’ve never worn a hat to church. The only hat I own is that pink one Grandma Dillard gave me and I’ve only ever worn it in Idaho.”

  My mother looked at the ceiling as if she were working this through. “Fine. Pantyhose. And no runs!” She shut the door behind her when she left.