Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau

I’d never heard so much conversation at a dinner table. Mrs. Cone told everyone about her first kiss, and then Sheba told everyone about every boy she’d dated up to Jimmy. Jimmy told a story about a rock star friend (Dr. and Mrs. Cone knew who he was, but I only barely recognized his name) who’d joined him on his last tour. The rock star cried and played sad songs on his guitar every single night because he was heartbroken over a woman Jimmy and Sheba swore was a real live midget who was mean as anything. Izzy was very interested in this story and had lots of questions about midgets, the first one being if a midget could drive a bus. Then Sheba, right there on the spot, made up a song about midgets that was so good and catchy, everyone sang the chorus the second time she hit it. The opening line was Midgets, they’re just like us, / they drive in their cars and they can sure drive a bus. . . . I was a little worried that people were being mean about midgets, but the song made it seem like the grown-ups, or Sheba, really, wanted Izzy to know that the only difference between most people and midgets was their height. When we were done singing, Dr. Cone explained to Izzy that just because that particular midget was mean, it didn’t mean all midgets were mean. She was an aberration (and then Dr. Cone had to explain the meaning of aberration). Every now and then Sheba—who was sitting beside me—reached out her hand and squeezed my shoulder or arm, as if to make sure I knew I was included.

When it was time for dessert, Izzy and I put all the sherbet bowls on a blackened cookie sheet as a tray (I had tried but failed to unblacken it). I carried the cookie sheet and circled the table as Izzy pulled off a bowl and placed one in front of each person, saying Madame or Monsieur as she did so. I had taught her how to say this when we were getting the dessert out of the freezer. She only had to repeat it three times before she had it memorized.

Over dessert, the conversation shifted to Jimmy’s treatment, with Sheba recapping what he’d gone through and what the future might bring. Izzy was deep into her sherbet and no longer paying attention. I was rapt, as I’d never heard anyone discuss a private issue so openly.

“Richard,” Sheba said, “I just think if he’s going to eat so much sugar, which can’t be good for him, he should be allowed a little Mary Jane as well.”

My back stiffened. My heart pounded and I felt burning in my cheeks. I looked from Jimmy to Sheba to Jimmy again. What did she mean?

Jimmy glanced over at me. I felt like his eyes were shooting lasers at mine. Then he burst out laughing. Everyone looked at him.

Jimmy dropped his head over his sherbet. He couldn’t stop laughing. Izzy said, “Jimmy! Why are you laughing?”

“Mary Jane!” Jimmy gasped at last.

Sheba looked at me. “Oh, Mary Jane! Did you think I was talking about you?!”

“Is there another Mary Jane?” I asked.

Sheba leaned over her chair and hugged me. She smelled like lemon and lilac. My heart calmed. The heat left my face. “It’s another word for marijuana.”

“Oh!” I laughed nervously. Was Sheba actually asking a doctor if her husband could smoke marijuana? What about the law? Wouldn’t Jimmy go to jail if he got caught? Didn’t Sheba worry about Jimmy doing something that was against the law?

Dr. Cone said, “Some people find marijuana relaxes them, Mary Jane. It isn’t the terrible drug your school may have made it out to be.”

“Oh okay,” I said automatically. I must have looked confused, because Sheba patted my leg as if to comfort me.

She said, “It’s illegal, but the government doesn’t know best about everything. Marijuana can be a lifesaver for someone like Jimmy, who needs to find some way out of his whirly-twirly-creative-genius brain.” Sheba spun both her pointer fingers in the air, like sign language for Jimmy’s brain.

I nodded. It had never occured to me that something that was against the law might actually be okay to do.

“It’s better than lithium,” Jimmy said. “The lithium makes me feel like my head is stuffed with wet cotton batting.”

Dr. Cone looked at Jimmy. “Maybe we can try a control test. You can’t do it alone.”

“What do you think, Mary Jane?” Sheba asked me, as if I should have an opinion. As if I knew anything about marijuana or drug addiction or getting sober. As if I’d ever even heard people discuss marijuana outside of the don’t-do-drugs talk at school once a year.

“Uh.” I felt a little shaky, but everyone was looking at me so kindly, I knew there couldn’t be a wrong answer. “I trust Dr. Cone. But, also, I just think it’s strange that marijuana is called Mary Jane. My name.”

Everyone laughed and my head went floaty and loose with feelings of foolishness. But foolish moments like this seemed worth the thrill and unexpected intimacy of being in on things with the adults.

After dinner, Mrs. Cone took Jimmy into the TV room, where there was a big, fluffy shag carpet. She wanted to show him a meditation technique she’d learned in California at a place called Esalen. I started to clear the table, but Dr. Cone said he’d clear and do the dishes if I’d put Izzy to bed.

Izzy climbed up onto my lap like a giant cat. She was sleepy and soft. And a little bit smelly. “Do you mind if I give her a bath first?”

“No, no, please do. That would be lovely.”

“I’ll go with you.” Sheba put her hand on my elbow and helped me stand. Izzy clung to me, her legs wrapped around my back. The three of us walked up the stairs together, Sheba humming the midget song.

In the bathroom, I put Izzy down on the floor, then turned on the faucet. Sheba sat on the closed toilet and started singing. “Midgets, they’re like you and me. Some go to church, some spend Sunday free. . . .” The bathroom had a black-and-white tiled floor and black-and-white wallpaper of swirling 3-D balls. Sometimes they looked convex and sometimes they looked concave and I was never sure if I was looking at the balls or at the space between the balls, which also looked like balls. If I moved my head around too fast, I felt a little dizzy.

While the water was running, I removed Izzy’s clothes and put them in the black wicker hamper. I suddenly realized I was singing along with Sheba, harmonizing. She sang a little louder, and so did I, and our voices echoed and reverberated through the bathroom. “Your doctor might be a midget too. Of course there are plenty of midget Jews. You know they buy teeny, tiny midget shoes. And the Black ones sing the midget blues. . . .”

Once the bath was ready, I picked up Izzy and placed her in. She splashed around, playing with the bucket of foam alphabet letters. When she stopped moving so much, I poured a palmful of Johnson’s baby shampoo into my hands and washed her hair.

Sheba sang, “I’m gonna wash that man right outa my hair . . .”

I joined in. I knew the song from South Pacific, which was one of my favorite albums from the Show Tunes of the Month Club.

Izzy tilted her head back so the foam wouldn’t get in her eyes, and tried to sing along with us.

I pulled Izzy’s foamy shampoo hair into a horn on her head. “Look, you’re a unicorn.”

Izzy shook her head back and forth. “Do I look real? Like a real live unicorn?”

“Yup.”

“I’ve really been wanting a baby,” Sheba said.

I turned the unicorn horn into two horns that curled. “Now you’re a ram.” To Sheba I said, “Will you have one?”

“What’s a ram?” Izzy asked.

“A big male goat.” I thought of Dr. Cone and his sideburns. He would look perfectly natural with forceful curved horns.

“If Jimmy stays sober for five years, I’ll have a baby,” Sheba said. “You can’t have a baby with an addict.”

“Can witches have babies?” Izzy asked.

“Yes, but it’s mostly the good witches who do,” I said.

“Who are the mamas of bad witches?”

“Shut your eyes.” I laid a washcloth over Izzy’s eyes. She leaned her head back. I filled a dented saucepan that was lying next to the tub and dumped the water over Izzy’s head to rinse out the shampoo.

“I bet good witches are the mamas of bad witches,” Sheba said. “And even though they’re good mamas, their babies just turn bad.”

I filled the saucepan again and did a second rinse.

Izzy removed the washcloth and set it on her head like a scarf. “Mary Jane says the witch in this house is a good witch and that she gives us makarino cherries.”

“Maraschino,” I said.

“How do you like that?” Sheba said. “You’ve got a witch who leaves maraschino cherries.”

I took the washcloth from Izzy’s head, soaped it up, and then handed it to her. “Stand and wash your private parts.”

Izzy stood and dug the washcloth into her butt and then her vagina, scrubbing back and forth with a crinkled little concentrating face. She sat and rinsed herself.

“My mom is a bad witch,” Sheba said.

“Really?” Izzy and I both looked at Sheba.

“God, yes. An awful witchy, witchy woman. She only loves my brothers.”

I wanted to ask questions but wasn’t sure if that was allowed. Instead I grabbed a towel and held it open for Izzy. Izzy stepped out of the tub and into the towel. “Why does she love your brothers?” Izzy asked, like she was reading my mind.

“She’s an old-fashioned witch who thinks boys are good and should get all the money and all the attention and girls are bad. Especially girls who like to kiss boys.”

“Do you like to kiss boys?”

I tucked the towel up at Izzy’s neck so she was wrapped like a burrito. I wanted to run and get her clean pajamas but didn’t want to miss Sheba’s answer.

“Yes. Especially Jimmy. I love to kiss Jimmy!” Sheba laughed, leaned over, and pulled the Izzy burrito into her arms. I went to get Izzy’s pajamas.

When I came back, Sheba was singing “There Is Nothin’ Like a Dame”to Izzy. I sang along while I unwrapped the towel and put Izzy in her pajamas. She peed and brushed her teeth and then I picked her up and the three of us marched into her bedroom, which was still clean, as Izzy and I spent a little time each day straightening it.

I tucked Izzy under the covers and then sorted through the stack of books we had laid by the bed.

“Madeline!” Izzy said. I dug out Madeline.

“I want to hear too.” Sheba climbed onto the bed and lay on Izzy’s other side, against the wall. I lay on the outside and opened the book.

I read the book and also floated above the three of us and watched myself reading the book. I was snuggled in close to warm, soapy-smelling Izzy, who fit against my torso like a foot in a slipper. Sheba was stretched out long with her arms flung over her head, her black hair pooled behind her like an oil spill. A steady current of contentment ran through me like a tuning fork humming deep in my bones. I hoped that I would be a mom one day and the person I loved to kiss would lie on the other side of our kid while I read stories. It seemed like a simple desire. The twins both wanted to be the first woman president. They had agreed that one would be president and the other would be vice president the first four years, and then they’d swap.

When the book was finished, Izzy was asleep. We lay there in silence. I could feel that we three were breathing in unison, our chests rising and falling as one. Then Sheba leaned up onto her elbows, looked over at me, and nodded toward the door. I slipped out of the bed and then reached my arm out to Sheba so she could stand on the bed and step over Izzy without waking her. Just as Sheba was straddling Izzy, her legs in a long upside-down V, Izzy popped open her eyes and said, “Wait.”

Sheba stepped off the bed and said, “What?”

“Is your witch mom a pretty witch or an ugly witch?”

“She’s pretty if you look at her picture. But when you talk to her, the bad witchiness comes out and you can see that she isn’t really pretty at all.”

“Can we see a picture of her?”

“I don’t have one with me. I’ll draw one tomorrow.”

“Okay. Good night.”

“Good night,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”

“Close the door all the way.”

“I will.”

“I never heard of a five-year-old wanting to sleep with the door closed,” Sheba said.

“The witch can’t get through my door.”

“Ah. I see. The maraschino cherry witch?”

“Yes, Mary Jane says she’s good, but until we’re ONE HUNDRED PURCHASE SURE, we have to close the door.”

“One hundred percent,” I said.

“ONE HUNDRED PERCENT.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” Sheba said. “Good night.”

“Wait,” Izzy said again. Sheba and I both stood still, looking at her round little face crowned in red curls. “If Sheba joins our team, then the ratio of us to the witch is”—Izzy pointed at us and then herself as she counted—“three to one.”

“Okay, I’m in,” Sheba said.

“That’s a good ratio,” I said. “Good night.”

Sheba sang, “Goooodniiiiight,” like the kids from The Sound of Music.

“Goooodniiiight,” I sang one octave higher.

“Good night. I love you,” Izzy said. I wasn’t sure which of us she was speaking to, but the words suspended me in motion. I stood halfway to the door, wondering if I should say it back. I’d never said that before, not to anyone. And no one had ever said it to me. But when I thought about it, I did love Izzy. And I kinda loved Sheba, too.

“Looove, looove, looove,” Sheba sang as she walked out the door. I knew it was the beginning of a Beatles song, because the twins had those records.

“Looove, looove, looove,” I sang after her, and then I went out the door and pulled it shut behind myself.

“How do you get home?” Sheba asked.

“I walk.”

“In the dark?” Sheba looked out the window on the hall landing. Tree branches moved in the thick blackness, like a giant’s waving arms.

“Well, I’ve never gone home in the dark before.” The sun set fairly late, but we’d had a long dinner, and then the bath.

“I’ll drive you. I want to see your house. Where exactly does Mary Jane, the harmonizing, churchgoing summer nanny live?”

I followed Sheba down the stairs and then into the kitchen, where Dr. Cone, Mrs. Cone, and Jimmy were sitting at the banquette. Jimmy was forearm-deep into a box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers.

“Richard, where are the keys to your car?” Sheba asked. “I want to drive Mary Jane home.”

“Over there on the . . .” Dr. Cone pointed his finger from left to right. He lost his keys every day and I found them every day. I had been putting them in the same place, on the covered radiator in the entrance hall, with the hope that he would understand that when he came in the house, he should just drop them there. So far he hadn’t. Understood or dropped the keys.

“I know where they are,” I said.

“I want to come.” Jimmy shoved a handful of Zonkers into his mouth and then dropped the box onto the table so it fell sideways. He scooted out from the banquette and picked up Sheba’s hand. “Let’s go!” Jimmy took my hand too and pulled me and Sheba toward the swinging kitchen door.

“Can you find your way back?!” Mrs. Cone shouted.

“Yes!” Jimmy shouted. Sheba and I were laughing as he hurried us out of the kitchen.

“Do you want me to come with you?!” Mrs. Cone shouted.

I heard Dr. Cone say, “She’s just down the street, Bonnie!”

“We’ll be right back!” Sheba shouted.

In the entrance hall, I handed Sheba the keys and she ran out the door with them. Jimmy ran after her and then I ran too, as if we were fleeing something. When I was halfway to the car, I ran back and closed the front door. Then I doubled my speed to catch up to Sheba and Jimmy.

Jimmy was in the car and Sheba was standing at the open driver’s side. She banged on the roof twice and shouted, “C’mon, c’mon!”

I hurried into the back seat as Sheba was starting the car. She pulled away from the curb before I had the door shut. I felt like we were in an episode of Starsky & Hutch. One of them was always jumping into a moving car.

“We made it!” Jimmy shouted.

Sheba did a kind of a yodeling yell, and then we all started laughing. I knew it was a game, that there was no one chasing us and no one to run from. Still, it felt exciting, exhilirating, like we really were on the lam.

Sheba and Jimmy rolled down their windows, so I rolled down mine. Sheba wasn’t driving too fast, but we were moving at the speed of someone who knew where she was going.

I scooted up and put my hands on the back of the bench seat. “Um. My house is the other way.”

Jimmy turned so he was looking right at me. In the darkness, with only the glow of the streetlight, he appeared to be made of spun sugar. I looked at Sheba. She, too, was shimmery.

“Ah, the other way.” Sheba pulled the car into a driveway, then backed out and turned the car in the right direction.

“Mary Jane,” Jimmy said.

“Yeah?” I hoped he was going to ask me something I could answer easily without being embarrassed.

“Mary Jane.” Jimmy was twirling a hand-rolled cigarette between his thumb and first finger. He stuck the cigarette into his mouth and then leaned forward and poked his big pointer finger into the lighter.

“Is this doctor-approved?” Sheba asked.

“You were there.”

“But did you discuss it further? Does he know you’re going to do some tonight?”

“I’ll confess when we walk in the door.”

“Wait.” I jerked upright, like my spine was being pulled on a cable. “Is that marijuana?!”

The lighter popped out. Jimmy took it and touched the glowing red coil to the tip of the cigarette. He inhaled deeply, held it, and then hissed out a long conic cloud of smoke. “Mary Jane, meet Mary Jane.”

“Just call it a joint.” Sheba reached out her hand and took the joint from Jimmy. Then she put it to her mouth and inhaled.

I felt like my brain was short-circuiting, like my hair might burst into flames. What if the police found us? Would Sheba and Jimmy go to jail? Would I go to juvey hall? But this was Roland Park. The only time I ever saw the police here was when someone called them. Which was very, very rare. The twins’ parents never even locked their doors. The Rileys, next door, kept their car keys on the floor of the car.

“Mary Jane?” Sheba reached her long arm back over the seat, offering me the joint. I shook my head. I did like the smell, though. It was sort of like a school eraser, but sweeter. A green and rubbery smell.

Jimmy took the joint from Sheba and inhaled again. We were at a stop sign now, on the corner in front of Beanie Jones’s house. Sheba punched in the emergency brake with her foot, put the car in park, and turned off the engine.

“Are you in a hurry?” Sheba turned so she was sideways in the seat. She pushed her hair back and I could see that some of it had fallen out the window.

“No. I don’t think so.” I knew my mother would be sitting in her chair in the living room working on something—her dinner menu for next month, the needlepoint pillow she was making for the TV room sofa, her lesson plan for Sunday school—while waiting for me.

Sheba took another hit, and then offered the joint to me again. Jimmy took it from her hand before I had time to say no.

“Tell me more about your parents.” Sheba took the joint from Jimmy.

“Hmm. They’re both from Idaho.”

“Do they like rock and roll?” Jimmy asked.

“No. My mom and I love show tunes. And the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. And my dad has one Marine Corps band record that he’ll play every now and then.”

“That’s cool. Like a lotta horns and shit. That stuff’s totally cool when you sit down and really listen to it.” Jimmy sucked on the joint again, shutting his eyes as if he needed to concentrate. I watched his face relax; the folds in his forehead melted. Maybe he really did need Mary Jane to calm his whirly-twirly-creative-genius mind.

“Mary Jane sings in the choir at church,” Sheba said to Jimmy. “And at Sunday school.”

“Ah, that’s where you trained that gorgeous voice.”

“I guess.” No one had ever used the word gorgeous when talking about any part of me. I could feel the word inside me like a warm liquid. Gorgeous. I knew I was blushing but figured it was too dark in the car for Jimmy and Sheba to notice.

Jimmy took a smaller hit, handed the joint to Sheba, and then started singing. “Jesus loves me, this I know. . . .” Little tufts of smoke puffed out with each word. “For the Bible tells me so. . . .” He took the song at a slower pace than it was usually sung. With his twangy, cello-sounding voice, he made it feel sad and lonely. Like a love song Jimmy’s rock star friend might have sung about the midget who broke his heart.

Sheba joined in, and the song filled out. Now it sounded so beautiful and pure that I could feel the notes landing on my skin like feathers. My eyes teared up and I worried I’d start crying.

“Take the third part of the harmony,” Sheba said to me, and this stopped me from crying. I cautiously entered the song—slowly and wistfully—in the next verse. “Jesus loves me, this I know, as he loved so long ago. . . .”

Crickets were chirping in the trees and even that felt like part of the song. Jimmy and Sheba each leaned toward me, so our heads were together in a triangle that almost touched as our voices braided together. We sang slowly and deeply until the moment was sliced open by another voice.

“Hello?” It was Beanie Jones. She stood just outside Jimmy’s window.

Sheba threw the joint to the floor of the car and Jimmy turned in his seat.

“Hi, Mrs. . . . uh, Mrs. Beanie.” I lifted my hand and nervously waved.

“Mary Jane, what are you doing?” Beanie’s head was moving from side to side like a bird’s. She had an enormous tense smile on her face. I could see that she was as confused as if Jesus Himself had been parked in front of her house.

“These are my friends from out of town,” I said quickly. “We were practicing for church.”

“Are you—” Beanie started.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Jimmy said.

Sheba started the car. “So nice to meet you!” she called. Then she hit the gas and pulled away from the curb, running through the stop sign. Jimmy stuck his hand out the window, his first two fingers open in a V. “Peace!” he yelled out.

There was silence in the car for about five seconds and then we all burst out laughing. I laughed so hard that tears streamed down my face. Sheba screamed and hooted with laughter and Jimmy was actually wiping tears away from his eyes.

“Beanie? Her name was Mrs. Beanie?!” He laughed some more.

“Beanie Jones,” I said. “Her first name is Beanie.”

“Jesus, who names a daughter Beanie?” Sheba asked, and I wondered, Who names a daughter Sheba?

We were on my block now. “Up there,” I said. “The one with black shutters and window boxes.”

Sheba stopped the car one house before mine, at the Rileys’. This seemed safe, as my mother, like Beanie, would walk out to see what was up if she noticed a car parked in front. The Rileys were at their place on the Chesapeake Bay most of the summer, so they wouldn’t be coming out to check on us.

“Dang, Mary Jane. That’s a damn pretty house.” Jimmy craned his neck and leaned his head out the window.

“It’s like a storybook,” Sheba said.

“So you’re a rich girl, huh?”

I’d never thought of whether we were rich or not. Everyone I knew had more or less the same, though I was certainly aware of the less fortunate. But rich? Rich seemed like people who wore long sequined gowns, smoked cigarettes from alabaster holders, and rode in limousines driven by a man in a flat, black cap. I assumed Sheba and Jimmy were rich. Weren’t all movie stars and rock stars rich?

“I dunno. My dad’s a lawyer. We don’t go on fancy vacations. I’ve never been to Hawaii.”

“Are you working for the Cones for fun or for the money?” Sheba asked.

“Well, it is super fun. But I agreed to do it at first because my best friends went to sleepaway camp and I didn’t want to go to camp and I didn’t want to stay home all day and help my mother. And I don’t love hanging out at the club.”

“Why didn’t you want to go to camp?” Jimmy asked. “I would have loved to have gone to sleepaway camp.”

“I went one summer and it wasn’t fun. There were so many people and it never got quiet and you could barely read. The only part I liked was when we sat around the campfire and sang.”

“Sweet Mary Jane,” Sheba said.

“Why didn’t you go to camp?” I asked Jimmy.

“We were dirt-poor. Poorer than poor.” Jimmy shook his head and smiled. “I’d never even met anyone who went to sleepaway camp. I spent my summers riding an inner tube down a rain gully—not even a goddammned river but the fucking culvert that ran through town. After a heavy rain, the water was black and there was trash bobbing it in like ice cubes in a glass of Coke. But it was fun as hell. Stole cigarettes from our parents. Rode that inner tube. Tried to find girls who’d let us touch their boobs. The usual.”

My sex addict brain repeated the words touch their boobs three times, rapidly.

“I couldn’t go to camp, because I was famous,” Sheba said. “But I might have loved it too.”

“Why didn’t you want to hang around and help your mother?” Jimmy asked.

“Um, well.” I shrugged. I’d never said anything bad about my mother.

“I don’t suppose your mom smokes pot,” Jimmy said.

“My family is very patriotic,” I said, as if that would preclude pot-smoking. “We love our president.”

Jimmy and Sheba both looked at me with gentle smiles on their faces.

“We’ll talk you out of that soon enough.” Sheba leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. “Good night, doll.”

“Good night.” I had lifted my hand to feel the heat in the place where she’d kissed me when Jimmy leaned over and kissed my other cheek.

“Good night, sweet Mary Jane,” he said.

“G’night.” I barely had the breath to say it.

I stepped out of the car, pushed the door shut, and then walked toward my house. Sheba and Jimmy both watched out the front window. I turned, waved, walked. Turned, waved, and then, finally, entered the house.

My mother was exactly where I had expected her to be. “Did Dr. Cone drive you home? I didn’t hear a car.”

Just then the station wagon cruised by our front window. It was impossible to see Sheba’s and Jimmy’s faces in the dark. “That’s him,” I said.

“How was the meatloaf?”

“I think it was perfect.”

My mother laid her needlepoint on her lap and looked at me, smiling. “That makes me very happy.”

“Maybe I’ll just use our menu for their dinners this month?” My mother worked so hard on planning our family dinners, I thought it would please her that more than just our small family would enjoy them.

“Excellent idea. Do you think she has any dietary needs? With her illness?”

“Um . . I don’t know,” I said.

“I have a feeling it’s cancer. Especially because no one knows—I tried to pull it out of a few women at the club today. People are very secretive about cancer. No one wants their neighbors to know about the hardships in their home.”

“Oh. Okay.” I wondered how many hardships were going on in the houses around me—hardships I’d never before imagined.

“Did they pray before dinner?”

“Yes,” I lied. The third lie. I would start losing count if there were too many more.

“In Hebrew?”

“No. In English.”

“Hmm.” My mother nodded once, decisively. “Well, good for them.”