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

Izzy kept coloring. I knew enough about the Cones now to know that Izzy likely saw Dr. Cone’s penis as he walked out of the shower or downstairs to the laundry room to find clean clothes. No one in this house closed doors, except Izzy, who needed to keep the witch out of her bedroom. I had almost seen Dr. Cone’s penis once as he walked past his open bedroom door toward his bathroom when I was in the hall. I turned my head quickly, but I could barely speak for the next half hour, as I was fairly certain Dr. Cone had seen me, and I worried he thought I had deliberately been looking toward their room because I was, maybe, a sex addict.

Sheba laughed. “I never saw my dad’s penis, but I used to see my brothers’ penises all the time. Boys are ridiculous. Everysingle one of them thinks that every person in the world wants to see his penis.”

Of course I knew her brothers from their TV show. Sheba’s brothers were wholesomely clean-looking with giant white teeth andhair that was so thick, you could lose a thimble in there. How odd to think of them with their penises out.

I carried the three plates, waitress style, to the banquette and slid in next to Izzy.

“Does Jimmy want every person in the world to see his penis?” Izzy asked. She leaned closer to the parrot picture. Her facewas three inches from it as she pressed hard with a purple crayon.

“Jimmy doesn’t even have time to think about that, because as soon as he walks into a room, women—” Sheba looked down at Izzy.She must have realized she was talking to a five-year-old kid, because she sat up straight and pulled her mouth tight.

I wondered what women did when Jimmy walked into a room. Did they ask to see his penis?

I stood and went to the fridge. Changing the placement of my body might change the subject. I opened the door and looked insidefor inspiration. “Anyone want orange juice?” Izzy and I had been buying freshly squeezed juice at Eddie’s. The charge of pulpytaste had shocked me when I’d first tried it, and now I couldn’t imagine drinking anything else.

“Me.” Sheba raised her hand.

“Me.” Izzy raised her hand too. They both still stared at the coloring books.

“I guess since you don’t have brothers,” Sheba said as I handed her a glass of juice, “you never had to deal with boys theway I did.”

“No.” I scooted in next to Sheba on the banquette. “But I’d always thought it would be fun to have siblings.” In my fantasy,my brothers and sisters and I would sing together, like Sheba had with her brothers on TV.

“Me and Mary Jane are snuglets,” Izzy said.

“Singlets.”

“That the word for it?” Sheba dug into the bird in a nest.

“Well, it’s what the mother of my best friends, they’re twins, calls me.”

“Her best friends are at sleepaway camp.” Izzy liked hearing about the Kellogg twins and what the three of us did when wehung out (they played piano, I sang; we had chess tournaments with the three of us and their mother; we walked around on stilts;we sewed halter tops, which my mother wouldn’t allow me to wear; and we rode our bikes to the Roland Park library, or Eddie’s,and mostly just looked at things).

“Do your parents dote on you?” Sheba asked. “Since you’re the only one around.”

“Hmm. No.” Was what my mother did called doting? “My dad doesn’t seem to notice me; he rarely talks to me. And my mother likesme to help her with things. You know, cooking and stuff.” In my mind, my family was like all the other families in the neighborhood,except the Cones, of course.

“So your dad ignores you? That’s awful! How could anyone ignore you, Mary Jane? You have so much charm.” Sheba kept coloring, as if she hadn’t said anything unusual. But everything she’d just said felt startling and unusual. It had never occured to me that there was something awful about my father ignoring me. I’d thought that was just how fathers were. And the idea that I had charm was equally startling. Other than my teachers praising my work, I’d received very few compliments in my life.

“Uh . . .” I couldn’t find words to respond. Fireworks were exploding in my brain.

“Do you like going to church?” Sheba asked, relieving me from further thought on my possible charm and my possibly awful father.

“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 closedwith a church song. They told the audience the song came from their hometown church in Oklahoma. I always wondered when theywere 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. “MaryJane, 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 clothesin 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.”