Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau

A couple of weeks into the school year, Mr. Forge asked if I would join the grown-up choir, which took over the Sunday services once summer had ended (relegating the children’s choir to special performances on holidays). At fourteen, Mr. Forbes said, I would be the youngest voice the adult choir had ever had. The only person I wanted to relay this news to was Sheba. I imagined her face, how happy and proud she had looked when she watched me sing at church.

After my first adult choir service, when we were hanging up our robes, Mr. Forge handed me a paper-covered, taped-up box about the size of a brick of cheddar cheese. “This came for you a couple of days ago, Mary Jane. How exciting to get mail!” Mr. Forge clapped his hands twice, I suppose to applaud my having received a package.

The box was addressed to me in care of the church. My heart thudded as I saw that my name and the words Roland Park Presbyterian Church were in Sheba’s neat, perfect cursive. The address of the church and the return address (no name but a building address on Central Park West) were in different handwriting. An assistant? The housekeeper who ironed all Sheba’s clothes? It certainly wasn’t Jimmy’s giant scribbles.

Mr. Forge stood by watching, as if he expected me to open the package in front of him and share whatever was inside. I looked up, smiled, and then turned and grabbed the robe I’d just hung up.

“Thanks for this. So, um, I’ll see you at rehearsal!” I quickly wrapped the box in the robe and held it against my chest. Before Mr. Forge could say anything else, I rushed up the stairs and out the side door to the front of the church, where I stood on the bottom step to wait for my parents. When they finally emerged, my mother was holding the elbow of the blind man, Mr. Blackstone. My father stared off into the distance as usual. It felt like hours before my mother released Mr. Blackstone to the sidewalk with his red-tipped white cane. I leaned in toward her and said, “I’m going to run home. I have to go to the bathroom.”

My mother cocked her head to one side like a pigeon. She rubbed her hand over her stomach to indicate a question.

“Yes!” I said. “Can I have the house key?”

“We can walk quickly.” My mother threaded her arm through my dad’s so they were linked at the elbow.

“Mom. This is an emergency.”

“What’s under your arm?”

“My choir robe. It has a hole I need to fix. Mom, I really have to go.”

“Give her the damn key,” my father said.

My mother unclasped the metal closure at the top of her shiny, stiff handbag, reached in, and then handed me her enamel Maryland flag key chain. “Leave the door unlocked and put the keys on the piano,” she said. I was already running down the street.

In the house, I trotted up the stairs, went into my bathroom, and locked the door. I shut the toilet seat and sat, then slipped my nail beneath the tape and carefully unwrapped the paper, making sure not to rip any of the stamps. Under the paper, I found a white cardboard box. Inside the box was a folded piece of paper. Underneath was an orange cassette tape with a label on it. On the label, in Jimmy’s chopstick scrawl, it said, For Mary Jane.

I unfolded the paper. The sight of an entire page filled with Sheba’s handwriting made me feel something that I could only identify as love. I read the letter once, but didn’t take it all in. The simple fact that Sheba had written me was like noise in my head that canceled out the meaning of half the words. I read the letter a second time. Slower.

Hey, doll,

I’m so sorry we didn’t get to see you again before we blew town, but we all worried you’d be in home prison for years if we tried to contact you.

Nothing was the same at the Cones’ after you left. First of all, Bonnie started cooking, and let’s just say she’s a lady who needs to find a better use for her hands. Izzy wanted to remake everything she’d made with you. Bonnie tried, and all but the hot dogs failed. Secondly, we didn’t sing as much. It just wasn’t fun without your voice filling out the melody (or harmony). Thirdly, that house is a mess! Did they have a maid before you showed up? I was too embarrassed to ask, but, boy, did they need one! Of course, we couldn’t drag any old person in, not with Jimmy doing the work he was doing with Richard, and with me trying to be incognito in your funny little neighborhood. (By the way, I hope you give that Beanie Fuckface Jones the finger every time you walk by her house. Someone needs to carry the torch now that I’m gone.)

Jimmy is still sober, Mary Jane, and this makes both my life and his life easier. He’s been in the studio with JJ and Aaron and a new drummer they’re calling Tiny Finn. The old drummer (Stan to the world, STAIN to Jimmy and JJ and Aaron) has decided he’s too highbrow for Running Water. He told them he wants to be with someone who will outlast the style of any particular decade and is now playing with Morris Albert. You know who he is, right? That guy who sings the song “Feelings.” When Stain left, Jimmy fired the producer, Roger, too. I never liked him anyway. He has hair like a dirty old mop, hands like a milk-fed farm girl, and acts like he’s king of the world. Jimmy’s producing the whole thing and I swear to you, Mary Jane, I think this is going to be Running Water’s best album yet. Jimmy wanted you to have a copy of the title song, so he recorded this for you. Keep in mind, what you’ll hear isn’t the finished version, but I think you’ll like it just the same.

As for me, doll, I’m reading scripts and I think I found a good one. It’s about a woman who uncovers corruption in a nuclear power plant. It’s definitely not a glamorous role, and I certainly won’t look pretty in the dumb worker jumpsuit and the ridiculous goggles I’ll have to wear. But, you know, maybe it’s okay not to be glamorous or pretty all the time.

I think we did it right those couple of months, don’t you? Great food, great music, and great fun. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that fun isn’t important because, damn, Mary Jane, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my strange life, it’s that fun counts.

I’m sending you love from afar, doll—tons of it from me and from Jimmy, too, of course.

Sheba

PS Can’t believe I forgot! 1. I left my nightgown, your new clothes, and your records hidden in the closet of the room Jimmy and I used. I hope you can sneak them all into your house somehow. 2. Richard and Bonnie separated. Poor little Izzy. Sweet thing. But, really, some marriages just aren’t worth fighting for. xoxo!

I picked up the cassette and flipped it around to see if anything was written on the other side. My father had a cassette player in his office, though I had no idea why or what he ever did with it. I’d have to wait until he went to work tomorrow to sneak in there and use it.

I placed the cassette back into the box and read Sheba’s letter for the third time. Just as I was finishing, I heard my parents enter the house. The stairs were carpeted, but I could hear my mother pattering toward me. Sure enough, in a minute there was a knock on the door.

“How are you, dear?”

“I’m okay.” I reached behind me and flushed the toilet.

“I’ll get the Pepto-Bismol.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Did you take your temperature?”

“Yeah. It’s normal.”

There was silence for a moment as my mother thought this through. “Must be something you ate.”

I stared at the cassette and letter. I could sense my mother breathing on the other side of the door.

“Did you have something after breakfast?”

“Nope.”

“Don’t say nope.”

“No.”

“You didn’t eat anything at church?”

I thought for a second. I had become such an accomplished liar over the summer that it was easy to say, “Yes. There were cookies in the robe room.”

“Who brought them in?”

“No idea. Chocolate chip. They were really soft.”

“Hm. Underbaked, I suppose.”

“Yup.”

“Don’t say yup.”

“Yes.” My eyes were on the cassette. On Jimmy’s writing. My name. I flushed the toilet again, and then folded up the letter and placed it back in the box with the cassette. While the toilet was still running, I hid the box in the back of the bottom drawer of the vanity, beneath a plastic container of pink sponge curlers. Then I turned on the water and washed my hands. I didn’t leave until I’d heard the gentle sh-sh-sh of my mother descending the stairs.

The next morning, after my father had left for work and while my mother was in the shower, I snuck down the hall to my dad’s office. Behind the massive desk were built-in cupboards, and in one of the cupboards was a tape recorder.

I opened the cupboard and glanced around. I didn’t want to move anything unless I absolutely had to. I stuck my arm in and wiggled past two stacks of documents. My fingers tapped something hard and plastic.

Carefully, I removed one stack of documents and set it on the floor. Then I removed the tape recorder and placed it on my father’s desk.

I stuck my head out the office door to make sure my mother was still in the shower, and then returned to the cassette player and hit stop/eject. The clear panel popped open and I shoved in the cassette with a satisfying plastic click. I pushed the door shut (another gratifying click) and hit play.

Jimmy’s voice filled the room, so clear it sounded like he was standing beside me. “Mary Jane! What the hell, girlie, you are missed! Here’s the title track of my new album. I sure as fuck hope you like it.” I nodded my head, smiling, as if Jimmy could see me.

I leaned closer to the tape recorder and heard some background fuzziness followed by silence. And then the song began with a simple drumbeat that had a wooden tick-tick-tick sound to it. Next a bass guitar came in, strumming a two-four beat. There was anticipation in the music; I could hear it was building to something. Just when I couldn’t take the tension of waiting, Jimmy’s raspy, throaty voice started in. “Mary Jane!” My body jolted at the sound of my name. My skin felt inflamed. I wanted to pat myself all over, like tamping out a fire on my flesh. As the song continued I was no longer in my father’s office, standing beside the cassette player. I was in the Cones’ kitchen. The smell of birds in a nest on the stove. Izzy’s hair glinting in the sunshine that bolted through the window. And Jimmy beside her, his furry chest exposed, playing guitar and singing in the grumble of a low-riding motorcycle.

“Mary Jane!” Jimmy sang. My head buzzed with tiny explosions as I imagined a version of myself that matched Jimmy’s throaty words. . . . “She feeds you, but she ain’t never gonna bleed you. . . .” Soon, the buzzing calmed and it felt like a glowing white light flowed straight out of the tape recorder and into my veins. I was filled by it. Floating. This song, Jimmy’s song, was about the me I had become at the Cones’. It wasn’t anyone my parents would recognize. It might not have been anyone they wanted me to be. But maybe, I hoped, I really was that person now. The girl Jimmy saw when he sang . . . “She don’t smoke, no—everything went silent for a beat and then—“MARY JANE! A voice sweet as honey, SUCKLE, honey, DROPS, honey, DARLING, honey, BABY, sweet, MARY JANE!”

As the final verse rolled in, the music fell back to just the clicking drums and Jimmy, who grumbled, “Mary Jane, Mary Jane . . . listen up now, y’all, ’cause I’m talking ’bout Mary Jane.” The music stopped and then Jimmy said, “Bawlmore. That’s how they say it down there. Bawlmore.”

I looked at my arms to see if the goose bumps I felt were visible (they weren’t). I put my hand on my heart. It was pounding. My lungs were taking in great gulps of air. As my heart slowed and my breathing calmed, I felt solidified. I was Jimmy’s Mary Jane! And nothing, not home jail, not my father, not my mother, and not even President Ford could shut down the person I’d become.

I peered out into the hallway again. My parents’ door was still shut. I hit rewind and backed the tape up to the beginning, and then I hit play once more. With my thumb on the toothed dial on the side of the recorder, I turned up the volume. Only a little. Just enough so that I could feel the music around me more. This time I sang along quietly so my mother couldn’t hear. “Mary Jane!”

When the song ended, I popped out the cassette, shoved it into the pocket of my nightgown, and then quickly put my father’s tape recorder back.

I met up with my mother in the hall. She was fully dressed in a plaid skirt and white blouse, stockings and shoes. Her hair had a flip-up curl on the bottom, which meant she’d worn a cap in the shower to keep it styled as it had been for church.

“Why aren’t you dressed for school? Is your stomach still bothering you?”

“A little. But I’ll go to school anyway.” I rushed into my room, trying to escape before there were more questions.

“Maybe you should skip choir practice and come home right after your last class. I was going to change out the planter boxes and put in mums. You can help with that.”

I stood next to my bed, staring at my mother. The song was playing in my head. Jimmy’s Mary Jane was “brave as hell” and “spoke no jive.” I needed to be more like her.

“I’ll pick you up, and we’ll drive right up to Radebaugh to buy the mums. I was thinking we’d do all white this year. None of those golden ones.” My mother had a hand on each hip.

“Mom.” I fingered the tape in the pocket of my nightgown. “Mom. I—”

“Spit it out, Mary Jane. No time to dillydally.”

“Jimmy wrote a song about me.”

My mother got an inch taller as her back pulled up. “Have you been talking to those people?”

“No. Sheba mailed me a cassette tape—she mailed it to me at church. And my song is the title song of Jimmy’s new album.”

“Must you call them by their first names?”

“It’s the title song of Mr. Jimmy’s new album.”

“Mary Jane, I don’t even understand what you’re saying. What is the title song of Mr. Jimmy’s new album?”

“‘Mary Jane.’ That’s the name of the song.”

“He wrote a song about you?”

“Yes.”

“What could a drug addict possibly sing about you?”

Why couldn’t my mother see what Jimmy, Sheba, and the Cones saw in me? Did I hide myself so much at home that I was virtually invisible? “Well, that I cook. And sing. Just . . . you know.”

“No. I don’t know.”

“I kinda . . . Mom. I kinda wish you did know.”

“Know what, Mary Jane? Will you make some sense here!” My mother looked at her slender gold watch, as if we were running terribly late. We weren’t. We were always early.

I took a breath and got braver. “I wish you knew who I am. Or, how other people see me. I can play the song for you.”

My mother lifted her wrist again, as if time were jumping forward faster than usual. “How long is the song? You need to be at school and I need to be at Elkridge for coffee on the porch with the ladies.”

“I dunno. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe two and a half minutes.”

“Have you already heard it?”

“I played it on Dad’s tape recorder when you were in the shower.”

My mother took a breath so deep her entire body expanded and contracted. “This doesn’t make me happy.”

“I know, Mom. I know. You don’t like how I changed this summer. But I do. This song is important to me. It’s . . . it’s about the me I became with the Cones and Jimmy and Sheba. I like that me more than who I used to be. I enjoy being the person they saw.” My face burned. I was embarrassed about what I’d just said; I’d always had the feeling that it was impolite and conceited for a girl to actually like who she was. But Sheba clearly loved who she was. And that seemed cool to me.

My mother stared at me like she was trying to bring a blurry blob into sharp focus. “Oh, Mary Jane. I hope I like the Mary Jane those people saw, too.” She turned and marched toward my father’s office. I followed.

My mother knew exactly where the tape recorder was. She pulled it out, set it on my father’s desk, and then pointed at it, as if to direct me to it.

I hit stop/eject, and the plastic door popped open. I slid in the cassette, shut it to hear the satisfying click, and then hit play. Jimmy said, “Mary Jane! What the hell, girlie, you are missed! Here’s the title track of my new album. I sure as fuck hope you like it.” My mother’s body jolted. She closed her eyes and put her hand up as if to say enough. I pressed stop/eject.

My mother opened her eyes. “You know this language is exactly why you shouldn’t fraternize with people like him.”

“I understand how you feel about it. But if you can get past the language—”

“And the tattoos. And the drugs.” My mother shut her eyes again. She held them like that for so long, I thought maybe she was praying. Finally she opened them and said, “I’d like to hear the song.”

I hit play again. Before the first word was sung, I put my thumb on the dial and turned up the volume. My mother watched the way people in movies watch someone cutting the wires to stop a bomb from exploding.

“Mary Jane!” Jimmy sang, and my mother’s eyes blinked rapidly at the sound of my name. I couldn’t bear to watch her any longer, so I stared at the tape recorder.

It wasn’t until the song ended when I finally lifted my head. My skin was instantly chilled, electric, as I saw that my mother was smiling. Her bottom lip quivered, just slightly.

“Oh my goodness.” Her smile broadened and that electric feeling turned into a buzzing that covered my body in something that felt like happiness. I could tell just then that my mother was proud of me.