Mary Jane

by Jessica Anya Blau

  “I love church,” I said. “I sing with my mom when she teaches nursery school, and I sing in the choir.”

  “Oh, I’m going to come hear you sing,” Sheba said. “I love church singing. I used to sing in church.”

  “I know.” One of the reasons I had been allowed to watch Sheba’s variety show was that she and her brothers always closed with a church song. They told the audience the song came from their hometown church in Oklahoma. I always wondered when they were ever in Oklahoma. As far as I knew, the family lived in Los Angeles.

  “I could put on a wig,” Sheba said. “I brought about seven of them.”

  “I want to wear a wig and go to church,” Izzy said.

  The conversation stopped when Mrs. Cone came into the kitchen wearing what looked like genie pants and a red lace bra. “Mary Jane, do you know where my pink blouse is?” she asked.

  “Oh, Izzy and I ironed it.” I scooted out from the banquette and went to the TV room, where I had left the ironed clothes in two neat piles.

  “We ironed everything!” Izzy shouted. Ironing had been one of our Friday activities. Izzy was as happy doing housework as anything else, so it seemed like I was taking care of two needs, or maybe three, at once: keeping Izzy occupied and stimulated, teaching Izzy how to take care of a home and family, and organizing the Cone household.

  When I returned with the blouse, Sheba was talking to Mrs. Cone about a woman she called “that bitch.”

  “. . . giving a known addict junk!” Sheba said.

  “Terrible.” Mrs. Cone was in my seat, eating the rest of my bird in a nest. Her eyes were fixed on Sheba.

  “And he just can’t say no. He pleases any woman in his sphere as if each one is his mother. Who he was absolutely never able to please.”

  “I can see that.” Mrs. Cone finished my breakfast.

  I handed her the blouse and then went to the stove and said, “Does anyone want another bird in a nest?”

  “Oh, sweetheart, Mary Jane, I ate yours!” Mrs. Cone was so nice about it, I couldn’t be mad. “Do you mind making more? Another for you and one for me.”

  “And me,” Sheba said.

  “I just want the nest.” Izzy was frantically coloring a picture of sunflowers.

  I was proud of my ability to cook for everyone. At home, I never prepared food unsupervised. I hadn’t realized how much I could do on my own until I came here and did it. The past few days I’d been thinking that maybe I should cook dinner one night for the Cones so they wouldn’t have to eat takeout or whatever I’d picked up for them at the deli counter at Eddie’s. But I feared that the offer would be ridiculous: a fourteen-year-old girl preparing a family meal. Still, breakfast had seemed a success, so I took a chance and said, “Should I cook you dinner tonight so you don’t have to eat already prepared food?”

  “Oh, Mary Jane, I would love it if you made dinner,” Sheba answered, as if the decision were all hers.

  “That’d be fabulous!” Mrs. Cone slipped on the blouse and began buttoning it from the bottom up, the opposite of how my mother had taught me (Start at the top to preserve your modesty and then work your way down).

  “And you’ll stay and eat dinner with me, right, Mary Jane? ’Cause I miss you at dinner.”

  “Of course she’ll eat with us.” Mrs. Cone fastened the last button. “Do you mind preparing dinner?”

  “No, I’d like it. I mean, I think Izzy and I need to clean out the refrigerator first, but if we do that, I’ll know exactly what you have and then I can plan.”

  “Maybe you could cook all summer,” Sheba said. “I really think Jimmy needs fresh vegetables, and a meat that hasn’t been fried on a grill or in a wok.”

  “Are you still a vegetarian?” I asked Mrs. Cone. We’d added Slim Jims to our daily Eddie’s run. Jimmy loved them and said he liked to alternate a sugary treat with a Slim Jim. Mrs. Cone, upon hearing that, had ripped open a Slim Jim and then a Chunky bar so she could alternate bites. I wasn’t sure if a Slim Jim counted as meat or not. It didn’t look like meat any more than Screaming Yellow Zonkers looked like corn.

  “You’re a vegetarian?” Sheba said. “No. Stop. Now is not the time to be a vegetarian.”

  “Okay! I’m easy!” Mrs. Cone laughed.

  Jimmy walked in the room wearing only boxer shorts. “Hey.” He ran his fingers through his shaggy hair. There was a tattoo of Woody Woodpecker on the inside of his thigh. I tried not to stare at it, as it was so close to his penis.

  Sheba stood, went to him, and hugged and kissed him like he’d been gone a month. “Hey, baby, you good? Mary Jane can make you some eggs in a blanket—”

  “Birds in a nest!” Izzy shouted.

  “Yeah, yeah, sure,” Jimmy said. “Are there any Zonkers left?”

  I rushed to the pantry and got a new box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers. Jimmy sat where Sheba had been. I handed him the Zonkers. Sheba scooted in beside him, so Izzy scooted down too. I went back to the stove, flipped the pancakes, and cut out the center of three. Jimmy stared at me as I cracked eggs into the holes. I nervously smiled at him and tried not to look at the fuzz all over his chest or the tablecloth-patterned tattoo running down one arm.

  “What about coffee?” Jimmy asked.

  “Yep, right here.” I’d found the coffee maker when Izzy and I cleaned out the pantry, and had been making a fresh pot every morning. The first day I did it, I didn’t know if anyone drank coffee, but since the pot was mostly empty by noon, it seemed like a task worth doing. I poured a cup for Jimmy and brought it to the table.

  “You are a living doll, you know that?” Jimmy stared at me so intensely that I couldn’t speak for a second. It felt like his eyes shot out electricity.

  “Mary Jane Doll.” Izzy sighed, coloring away.

  “Does anyone else want coffee?” I wrenched my eyes from Jimmy. Was I a sex addict? Is that why I kept looking at his nearly naked body?

  Dr. Cone walked into the room. “Are you the one who’s been making the coffee?”

  “I stopped drinking coffee when I stopped eating meat,” Mrs. Cone said.

  “Enough.” Sheba pointed at Mrs. Cone. “From now on, you drink coffee and eat meat. Got it? No alcohol and drugs, but lots of coffee and meat.”

  “And sugar,” Jimmy said.

  “Okay!” Mrs. Cone laughed again. “I’ll eat meat and drink coffee!”

  “HURRAH!” Izzy lifted two crayons in the air.

  After Dr. Cone and Jimmy had gone to the office and Mrs. Cone and Sheba went upstairs, Izzy and I started in on the refrigerator.

  “I’ll say good or bad,” I said. “If it’s bad, you put it in the Hefty bag. If it’s good, stick it on the table.”

  We both looked over at the table. It was stacked high with coloring books, crayons, dishes, coffee cups. Izzy read my face and went to the table, where she started stacking coloring books. I followed.

  “Fast motion!” I wanted this cleanup done quickly so I could get to the fridge, figure out what to make for dinner, and get to Eddie’s and buy what was necessary.

  Izzy laughed as she fast-motion shoved crayons into the box. I moved the dishes straight into the dishwasher, which I had emptied earlier in the morning. There were books on the table too: Freud’s dream analysis and The Diary of Anaïs Nin—five editions, each with a different-colored cover. I stacked the books in my arms and took them into the living room, where the built-in bookshelves were full. I had been collecting books from all over the house and stacking them in front of the shelves the past few weeks, with the eventual plan for me and Izzy to organize and alphabetize them. I figured the alphabetizing would help Izzy be ready for kindergarten in the fall.

  Once the table was clear, I returned to the fridge. Izzy stood by, holding a Hefty bag open with two hands.

  The first thing I pulled out was a foil-wrapped, thick, semi-gelatinous brown blob. “Bad.” I dropped it in the bag.

  Izzy looked in the bag. “Bad.”

  Next I pulled out a saucer that h
ad a shimmery slab of what might have originally been a meat but was now covered with a mossy green fuzz. “Bad.”

  “Bad,” Izzy repeated.

  I jumped to the vegetable bin, as it was a smaller space and would sooner give me a sense of accomplishment. There were several loose onions, half the skin gone, with divots of black and crumbs and dirt embedded in the exposed flesh.

  “Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad.”

  “Badbadbadbadbad,” Izzy said.

  With my thumb and forefinger I removed three different bags of half-deteriorated mushy lettuce. “Bad. Bad. Bad.”

  “Baaaaad,” Izzy brayed.

  The oranges were as soft as Silly Putty. The apples had wrinkled skin. And there was a bagged, flowering, multidimensional green entity that could not be identified.

  When nothing remained in the bin, I returned to the shelves. I pulled out an oily glass jar that appeared to have detached gray toes floating in murky brownish water.

  “What is that?” Izzy asked.

  “If we don’t know what it is, it’s bad.” I handed the jar to Izzy so she could examine it further.

  “It looks like thumbs.”

  “Ah! I thought it looked like big toes. But I think you’re right.”

  “Do you think the witch put the thumbs here?”

  “No.”

  “I think the witch put it here.” Izzy placed the jar in the bag.

  “Bad.” An opened chocolate bar that was chalky white.

  “Bad.” A brick of cheddar cheese that was green except for the corner farthest from the gaping-open clear wrap.

  “Bad.” Carrots (they should have been in the vegetable bin) that were as loose and droopy as overcooked spaghetti noodles.

  “Good.” I held up a jar of Grey Poupon and handed it to Izzy.

  “HURRAH!” Izzy put down the Hefty bag and ran the mustard to the table.

  “Bad.” Empty orange juice carton.

  “Bad.” Unopened Knudsen yogurt that had expired three months ago.

  “Bad.” A half-eaten taco half wrapped in tinfoil, with white cauliflower-looking mold erupting in spots.

  “Good.” I held up a jar of maraschino cherries.

  “What is it?”

  “Maraschino cherries. They’re really sweet.”

  “Can I taste one?”

  “Yes.” I opened the jar and pulled one out. “You know, maybe the witch put the cherries in the fridge. Maybe she’s a good witch.”

  “Are there good witches?”

  “Yes.” I placed the cherry in Izzy’s open mouth. She chewed thoughtfully.

  “I like the cherry.”

  “It’s definitely a good witch food. Good witches eat lots of maraschino cherries.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I read about it in a book.”

  “Can I have one more?”

  “Last one.” I dropped another cherry in her mouth and then stuck the jar on the table.

  Back at the fridge, I pulled out three deli containers of wet mush in colors varying in shade from green to brown. The Eddie’s price stickers on top were smeared out by oil and time. “Bad, bad, bad.”

  Izzy opened one container and sniffed. She jerked her head back and then sniffed again.

  “Close that,” I said. “The stink is filling the kitchen.” It was the smell of fishy garbage in summer, magnified.

  Izzy sniffed once more, her eyes crinkled up as if in pain. “Mary Jane! It’s so bad, I CAN’T STOP!”

  I understood the urge. The twins and I often dared each other to smell their mother’s limburger cheese, which was usually stocked in their fridge. Still, I took the container from Izzy, snapped the lid shut, and dropped the container in the Hefty bag.

  It wasn’t long before the Hefty bag was nearly full and the refrigerator was nearly empty.

  I had bought cleaning supplies and gloves earlier in the week. My mother wore gloves to protect her manicure. I didn’t have a manicure, and neither did Izzy, but it seemed like fun to wear gloves anyway. We scrubbed the cleared shelves and drawer until the inside of the refrigerator looked almost brand-new. And then we stood back, the door open, and stared in admiration.

  Mrs. Cone and Sheba walked into the kitchen. Sheba was wearing a short blond wig and giant sunglasses. Her body looked both slim and curvy in a tight floral jumpsuit. I’d never seen anyone dressed like that in Baltimore. If she was trying to go out unnoticed, she was failing.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the refrigerator look like this.” Mrs. Cone stood at the door, smiling. She was wearing the pink blouse and genie pants, and had tied a pink floral scarf around her head so she looked sort of like a dancer.

  “You both look so pretty.”

  “Ah, thanks.” Mrs. Cone leaned in and kissed the top of my head. No one had ever kissed me like that. Not my mom and not my dad. Sometimes I’d get a little pat on the back, or a squeeze from my mom that might resemble a hug. But a kiss on the head was totally new to me. What were you supposed to do when someone kissed you like that? Just stand there? Say thank you? I blushed, then grabbed Izzy and pulled her in close to me because my hands suddenly needed something to do.

  “We’re going to lunch,” Sheba said. “You think anyone will recognize me?”

  “I don’t think anyone would ever in a million years expect that you’d be in Baltimore, so they probably won’t recognize you. But I bet they’ll stare at you, just, ’cause . . .” I was too embarrassed to go on.

  “We’re going to make dinner!” Izzy said.

  “I know.” Mrs. Cone leaned over Izzy and kissed her head three times, before turning up Izzy’s face and kissing her fat cheeks.

  Just as all this kissing was taking place, Dr. Cone rushed into the kitchen, his hair a scrambled mess on his head. He left the door open and I watched out the window as Jimmy ambled across the lawn, eating from a box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers.

  “The Apollo-Soyuz docking is on TV now!” Dr. Cone went into the family room as Jimmy entered the kitchen.

  “We gotta see this, man.” Jimmy talked with his mouth full of Zonkers. “Russia and the US coming together in space. It’s fucking historical shit.” Jimmy walked into the TV room and Sheba, Mrs. Cone, and Izzy followed. I paused at the threshold of the kitchen, looking into the family room.

  “What is fuckinghistoricalshit?” Izzy climbed onto her dad’s lap. None of the adults seemed to notice that Izzy had just used a swear word.

  Dr. Cone clicked the thick brick-size remote control and turned up the volume. Mrs. Cone dropped onto the couch next to Dr. Cone. Jimmy sat on the other side of Dr. Cone, their shoulders touching. Sheba tucked herself down at Jimmy’s feet and wrapped her arms around his calves. They looked like a litter of pups.

  “Mary Jane!” Jimmy called. “Get your butt in here. This is his-to-ry!”

  “Here. Mary Jane.” Sheba patted the shag rug beside herself. I walked in and sat down, my back perilously close to Dr. Cone’s calves. Izzy climbed off her father’s lap and nestled into mine; her weight pushed my back against Dr. Cone’s legs. I looked up and saw that Mrs. Cone had tucked herself under her husband’s arm. Sheba put her hand on my knee, and at that moment every single body in the room connected into a single fleshy, leggy, arm-entwined unit. We stared silently at the TV as an American astronaut leaned out of his spaceship and shook the hand of a Russian astronaut who was leaning out of his.

  “I still don’t understand what is going on,” Izzy said. “Are they on the moon?”

  “No, they’re just connecting,” Sheba said. “The spaceships connected and now the people are connecting.”

  “Like us,” I whispered in Izzy’s ear, and she nodded and pushed herself deeper into my lap.

  No one stayed to listen to the newscasters discuss the moment. Dr. Cone and Jimmy returned to the barn-garage-office; Sheba and Mrs. Cone left to have lunch downtown. Izzy and I returned to the kitchen, where I picked up the phone and called my mother. She answered on the first ring. I knew sh
e was in the kitchen doing prep work for supper before she left for the club.

  “Mom, I need to stay at the Cones’ for dinner tonight.”

  “But I’m making meatloaf with pan-fried potatoes.”

  “They want me to cook. Mrs. Cone can’t—”

  “She can’t make dinner?”

  “No, not for the rest of the summer. They asked me to make dinner.”

  There was silence for a moment. I wasn’t sure if my mother was doubting my lie, or if she regretted that I wouldn’t be home to help her prepare the meatloaf and fried potatoes. Or maybe she’d miss my company at the dinner table. After all, my father rarely spoke.

  Finally my mother said, “Can you do that? Can you make dinner on your own?”

  “I think I can, Mom.”

  “Why can’t Mrs. Cone cook?”

  “An illness,” I said. “I’m not sure what.” My second lie to my mother.

  “Oh.” My mother gasped. “I hope it’s not cancer. Maybe this is why they hired you in the first place.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.” I had never lied to my parents until I’d started working at the Cones’. And though I felt bad that I was transforming into someone different, a girl who would hide things from her parents, the payoff seemed worth it. I’d get to eat dinner every night with Sheba and Jimmy. And Izzy! How could I not lie?

  “I’ll come down there and help you.”

  “No, Mom. They’re not letting anyone in the house.”

  “Oh. Oh no. Okay. Now, you call me if you need help. What does she want you to prepare tonight?”

  “She didn’t say. She just said meat and a vegetable.”

  “Oh, Mary Jane. She must be very ill.”

  “How about I just make what you’re making?” I suggested quickly, to distract her.

  It worked. “Meatloaf, pan-fried potatoes, and iceberg wedges with tomato slices and ranch dressing.”

  “Okay. And dessert?”

  “Orange sherbet. Just one scoop with three Nilla Wafers, each broken in half, and then stuck in the center like a blooming flower.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Remember to sauté the meatloaf filling before you mix it into the hamburger and bread crumbs. That way it’s more savory.”