Mary Jane by Jessica Blau (debian ebook reader TXT) 📗

around my waist and I hobbled outof the kitchen. In the entrance hall I found two flip-flops, each from a different pair. I searched around for the mate toeither and then decided, what difference did it make?

I put Izzy down near the front door and placed the mismatched flip-flops in front of her feet. “Look, it’s like two differentPopsicles.” I could hear Mrs. Cone and Sheba on the second floor and wondered what they were doing there. What would theydo all day while Jimmy was being cured?

Normally, to get to Eddie’s, Izzy and I would walk past my house. That day we had to take an alternate route lest we run intomy mother, who would disapprove of my short-shorts.

“Let’s go up Hawthorne,” I suggested. Hawthorne was one street over and ran the same direction as our street, Woodlawn, meaningmy mother rarely had any reason to drive on Hawthorne (though she always made it a point to do so on any holiday so she couldsee how people had decorated).

Izzy took my hand and skipped, while I took bigger steps to keep us side by side. We looked at the big clapboard and shingle houses, most with a front porch of some kind and painted shutters. The colors were all Colonial, dictated by the neighborhood association. The white houses had black shutters; the ocher-colored houses had burgundy shutters. The yellow houses had green shutters, and the green houses had black shutters. The blue houses had either darker blue shutters or black shutters. Front doors were either black or red lacquer. And many of the porch ceilings were painted a sky blue.

Izzy spotted a plastic Barbie van on a front lawn and stopped to play with it. I figured if the owner had left it outside,she shouldn’t mind if Izzy pushed it around a bit.

“Do you think Sheba and Jimmy own a van?” Izzy asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “They might have lots of cars.”

“I bet they own a limousine.”

“We can ask them.”

“We’re not allowed to tell anyone they’re here.”

“I know.”

“What’s an addict?” Izzy scooted the van up the cobblestone walkway toward the steps of the wraparound porch.

“Mmmm, it’s a person who does something that’s not good for them, but they can’t stop doing it.”

“Like when I pick my nose?”

“No. Because you stop. You pick and then stop.”

“But Mom keeps yelling at me, STOP PICKING YOUR NOSE!” We were back at the sidewalk now. Izzy placed the van on the grass and took my hand.

“But picking your nose isn’t bad for you. Addicts use drugs or alcohol.” I didn’t mention sex, though the idea of a sex addicthad poisoned my brain since Dr. Cone had mentioned it. The words sex addict came to me at the strangest times. I never said them, but they hovered behind my lips like a mouthful of spit that I wantedto hock out. Like when my mother asked me to iron the napkins, I wanted to shout, “Yes, sex addict!” And when Izzy and I went to the Roland Park Pool and the lifeguard had blown her whistle and told Izzy to walk, I wantedto say, “Don’t worry, sex addict, I’ll make sure she walks!” Maybe I was addicted to the words sex addict.

Izzy talked for the remainder of the walk. She named all her repetitive habits and activities so we could try to figure out if she was an addict. Right when we got to Eddie’s, she asked, “What about closing my door because of the witch?”

An old man with dark brown skin that looked more cracked than wrinkled opened the door for us. He winked at me. I smiled andsaid thank you as we passed. That man had been working that door my whole life. He always said hello or smiled, though I was never sure ifhe recognized me.

“Do you believe in the witch?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe the witch is just in your imagination.” I led us toward the freezer aisle.

“Nah. Mom and Dad never said it was imagination.”

Why would a psychiatrist let his daughter think there was a witch in the house? I wondered. But I said: “Then closing the door is a good thing.”

“Do you believe in the witch?”

“Uh, I don’t think so. I’ve never seen a witch.”

“Do you believe in God?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Have you seen him?” Izzy smiled. I wondered if she’d heard this argument elsewhere and was repeating it. Or maybe she wasjust that smart.

“Okay, I’ll believe in the witch. Let’s get a cart so we don’t have to carry the cold Popsicles in our arms.” On the way backto the entrance, we passed a man in a green apron stocking a shelf. A celery-stalk-shaped woman stood talking to him. I thoughtof what Mrs. Cone said to Sheba about the employee-to-shopper ratio being one to one. “I have an idea for a game, Izzy. Youcount the people shopping and I’ll count the people working.”

The carts at Eddie’s were smaller than the regular grocery store ones. Izzy climbed on the far end, clasped her tiny fingers through the metal-cage edge, and rode backward. This gave me a small, interior thrill, as it was something I’d always wanted to do. Cart-riding was forbidden by my mother, who thought it was the childhood equivalent of racing a motorcycle without a helmet.

“Okay.” Izzy’s head bobbed as she started counting. “Why?”

“So we can find the employee-to-shopper ratio.”

“What’s a ratio? I forgot my number.”

“Let’s start at the far aisle. We won’t shop yet; we’ll just walk and count, and then we’ll go through the aisles all overagain and shop.”

“OKAY!” Izzy excitedly lifted a fist. “But what’s a ratio?”

“It’s one number compared to another. So the ratio of me to you is one to one. The ratio of you to your parents is one totwo.”

“Because I’m one girl and my parents are two girls. Or a girl and a boy.”

“Yes, exactly. There are two of them and one of you. Two to one.”

“The ratio of me to the witch is one to one.”

“Yeah, but I’m on your side, so