“Are we south of the Mason–Dixon Line?” Sheba asked, and the two of them drifted out of the kitchen. I started braiding Izzy’s hair as Dr. Cone and Jimmy made their way out the screen door to the backyard, a package of Oreos dangling from Dr. Cone’s right hand. Before he crossed the lawn, Dr. Cone came back, opened the screen door, and said, “Mary Jane, will you get some sugary sweets at Eddie’s too? And bring them and one box of Popsicles to my office?”
“How many Popsicle boxes should I get?” I fastened a rubber band over Izzy’s braid.
“As many as you and Izzy can carry.”
“I can carry a lot!” Izzy lifted her soft little arm and made an invisible muscle.
I wanted to ask Dr. Cone exactly what sugary sweets he wanted, but he turned and followed Jimmy across the weedy lawn to the garage-barn-office.
Izzy dropped to the floor and shoved her tiny fingers between her tinier toes. She picked out fuzzy black dirt while singing Sheba’s cutoffs song. I had a feeling she hadn’t been washed since I’d scrubbed her Thursday afternoon.
“Do you want to go swimming after we go to Eddie’s or do you want to take a bath?” I squatted beside her and braided the other half of her hair.
Izzy shrugged and kept picking.
“We can decide after we get Popsicles.” I scooped up Izzy in my arms. She wrapped her legs around my waist and I hobbled out of the kitchen. In the entrance hall I found two flip-flops, each from a different pair. I searched around for the mate to either 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 different Popsicles.” I could hear Mrs. Cone and Sheba on the second floor and wondered what they were doing there. What would they do 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 into my 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, meaning my mother rarely had any reason to drive on Hawthorne （though she always made it a point to do so on any holiday so she could see 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 addict had 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 wanted to 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 wanted to 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?”