“Her best friends are at sleepaway camp.” Izzy liked hearing about the Kellogg twins and what the three of us did when we hung 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 likes me 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 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.