As the final verse rolled in, the music fell back to just the clicking drums and Jimmy, who grumbled, “Mary Jane, Mary Jane . . . listen up now, y’all, ’cause I’m talking ’bout Mary Jane.” The music stopped and then Jimmy said, “Bawlmore. That’s how they say it down there. Bawlmore.”
I looked at my arms to see if the goose bumps I felt were visible （they weren’t）。 I put my hand on my heart. It was pounding. My lungs were taking in great gulps of air. As my heart slowed and my breathing calmed, I felt solidified. I was Jimmy’s Mary Jane! And nothing, not home jail, not my father, not my mother, and not even President Ford could shut down the person I’d become.
I peered out into the hallway again. My parents’ door was still shut. I hit rewind and backed the tape up to the beginning, and then I hit play once more. With my thumb on the toothed dial on the side of the recorder, I turned up the volume. Only a little. Just enough so that I could feel the music around me more. This time I sang along quietly so my mother couldn’t hear. “Mary Jane!”
When the song ended, I popped out the cassette, shoved it into the pocket of my nightgown, and then quickly put my father’s tape recorder back.
I met up with my mother in the hall. She was fully dressed in a plaid skirt and white blouse, stockings and shoes. Her hair had a flip-up curl on the bottom, which meant she’d worn a cap in the shower to keep it styled as it had been for church.
“Why aren’t you dressed for school? Is your stomach still bothering you?”
“A little. But I’ll go to school anyway.” I rushed into my room, trying to escape before there were more questions.
“Maybe you should skip choir practice and come home right after your last class. I was going to change out the planter boxes and put in mums. You can help with that.”
I stood next to my bed, staring at my mother. The song was playing in my head. Jimmy’s Mary Jane was “brave as hell” and “spoke no jive.” I needed to be more like her.
“I’ll pick you up, and we’ll drive right up to Radebaugh to buy the mums. I was thinking we’d do all white this year. None of those golden ones.” My mother had a hand on each hip.
“Mom.” I fingered the tape in the pocket of my nightgown. “Mom. I—”
“Spit it out, Mary Jane. No time to dillydally.”
“Jimmy wrote a song about me.”
My mother got an inch taller as her back pulled up. “Have you been talking to those people?”
“No. Sheba mailed me a cassette tape—she mailed it to me at church. And my song is the title song of Jimmy’s new album.”
“Must you call them by their first names?”
“It’s the title song of Mr. Jimmy’s new album.”
“Mary Jane, I don’t even understand what you’re saying. What is the title song of Mr. Jimmy’s new album?”
“‘Mary Jane.’ That’s the name of the song.”
“He wrote a song about you?”
“Yes.”
“What could a drug addict possibly sing about you?”
Why couldn’t my mother see what Jimmy, Sheba, and the Cones saw in me? Did I hide myself so much at home that I was virtually invisible? “Well, that I cook. And sing. Just . . . you know.”
“No. I don’t know.”
“I kinda . . . Mom. I kinda wish you did know.”
“Know what, Mary Jane? Will you make some sense here!” My mother looked at her slender gold watch, as if we were running terribly late. We weren’t. We were always early.
I took a breath and got braver. “I wish you knew who I am. Or, how other people see me. I can play the song for you.”
My mother lifted her wrist again, as if time were jumping forward faster than usual. “How long is the song? You need to be at school and I need to be at Elkridge for coffee on the porch with the ladies.”
“I dunno. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe two and a half minutes.”
“Have you already heard it?”
“I played it on Dad’s tape recorder when you were in the shower.”
My mother took a breath so deep her entire body expanded and contracted. “This doesn’t make me happy.”
“I know, Mom. I know. You don’t like how I changed this summer. But I do. This song is important to me. It’s . . . it’s about the me I became with the Cones and Jimmy and Sheba. I like that me more than who I used to be. I enjoy being the person they saw.” My face burned. I was embarrassed about what I’d just said; I’d always had the feeling that it was impolite and conceited for a girl to actually like who she was. But Sheba clearly loved who she was. And that seemed cool to me.