“Don’t be mean.”
“No, I’m not being mean. I’m just saying that I noticed that lisp when she first came to school. But by the end of the year I didn’t hear it. My ears just stopped registering it.”
My mother brought the third plate to the table. “I hope you never said anything to her about it.” She was half scolding me, but her tone was lighter. Maybe I was being forgiven.
“No, Mom.” I went to the cupboard, took down three drinking glasses, and placed them on the table. “But it was the same for Jimmy’s tattoos.”
“I wish you didn’t call those people by their first names!”
“Okay. Well, it was the same with the tattoos. I didn’t see them after a while. And I didn’t see Sheba—Mom, she legally dropped her last name; she doesn’t even have one. . . .”
My mother shook her head. She put the frying pan in the sink to be washed after we’d eaten.
“So with Sheba, I forgot she was a big star. She became just a lady. She’s super kind and caring, Mom. She doesn’t hate anyone, not even drug addicts and not pastors or politicians. She loves singing and she loves the church.”
My mother pointed at the table. “Milk for me. You can have orange soda today, if you’d like.” Now I knew forgiveness was coming.
I took the orange soda from the fridge and poured two glasses, one for me and one for my father. Then I got out the milk and filled my mother’s glass. It was so thick, it looked like wet paint. I thought about the day Jimmy, Izzy, and I had drunk milk straight from the carton.
When I returned the milk to the refrigerator, my mother was standing by the stove staring at me. I could see that her bottom lip was quivering.
“Mom,” I said, and now my lip was quivering.
“I just don’t understand why you lied to us.” A tear ran down my mother’s face. My stomach lurched. My body stilled. I wasn’t sure what to do.
“Um . . .” My chest rose and fell as I tried to breathe. “I really wanted to work with the Cones. I loved the job and I knew you wouldn’t let me if—”
“Exactly, Mary Jane. You knew you shouldn’t be in a house like that.”
“No, Mom. I knew you wouldn’t approve of it. But you were wrong. They’re wonderful people. It was the best summer of my life.”
My mother stared at me and I stared back. We both were breathing hard, as if our lungs were twinned bellows. I had never before told her she was wrong about anything. And until this summer, I had never thought she was wrong about anything.
“Go tell your father lunch is ready.” My mother wiped the tear away and re-formed her face into a placid downturn. She sat at the table and I went to fetch my dad.
14
My home jail sentence was to continue, but with fewer restrictions, until school started. I could now leave the house with my mother, though I still couldn’t see the Kellogg twins, who had returned from camp. I was surprised by how little I was upset about not seeing them. I didn’t feel lonely; I was busy in my head—thinking, remembering, daydreaming. Working out who I had become after spending so much time with Sheba, Jimmy, and the Cones. I figured I’d find my way back to the twins soon enough.
My mother and I did all the usual things: shopping at Eddie’s, having lunch and tea at the Elkridge Club, preparing meals, working in the garden, and going to church on Sunday. After our conversation in the kitchen, my mother no longer seemed angry. She filled the air between us with directions, commentary, and general chatter about the house, the garden, the meals, the neighborhood, and the neighbors.
It wasn’t until the final two days of August, which I knew were Jimmy and Sheba’s last, that I considered sneaking down to the Cones’ only so I could say goodbye. I was grieving the fact that this wonderful summer was behind me, would never happen again, and the only souvenirs I had were the thoughts in my head. The clothes and records Jimmy and Sheba had bought me, along wth the Polaroid I’d kept, were still at the Cone house. By now they were likely buried under other clothes, records, dishes, dishrags, shoes, boxes, and junk mail.
Over those two days, I was desperate for an accidental meeting with someone from the Cone house. I scanned the aisles at Eddie’s, looked out over the pews at church, and kept my eyes on the sidewalks as we cruised down the roads of Roland Park. My mother hadn’t driven past the Cone house since the failed kidnapping. She took parallel streets instead.
When it was time for back-to-school shopping, I knew there was no hope of getting a goodbye moment with Jimmy and Sheba. Izzy seemed just as out of reach, as I assumed Mrs. Cone either didn’t do back-to-school shopping or did it beyond the bounds of the northern Baltimore corridor that roped in my family. Still, I searched the shops as we entered, even our traditional final stop, Van Dyke & Bacon, where my school shoes had been purchased each year since kindergarten. My mother was convinced that because I wore flip-flops, which had no restraint and exposed my feet to direct doses of vitamin D, my feet expanded a bit every day in the summer. She liked to wait until this sunshine-growth period was mostly over before we purchased my regulation school shoes （black-and-white saddle shoes or brown oxfords with only three grommets on each side）。