Mary Jane by Jessica Blau (best motivational books .txt) 📕

I’d heard of Stevie Wonder but hadn’t known he was blind. Maybe my mother would like him, since she believed that God hadgiven blind and deaf people extra goodness since He took away one of their senses. A blind man attended our church and Momalways made sure he was seated near the front pew, close to our family, where she could help him in and out.

Sheba handed Little Hank two more records. “These are for me, but you’re going to love them, Mary Jane. Let’s sing along tothese tonight.”

“Oh, you gonna be singing loud!” Little Hank said. We looked at the albums; the first was Shirley Brown, Woman to Woman. I liked the colors of the album, pink and brown, and I liked the photo, too, because it just showed her: upside down and right side up. Facing herself. Unlike most of the other albums with women on the front, she wasn’t posed in a sexy way. That made me curious about her. Next I looked at Millie Jackson, Caught Up. The cover showed a man and two women caught in a spiderweb. The back showed just the woman—Millie Jackson, I assumed—talkingon the phone with a spiderweb framing her hair. She looked sort of sad in the photo, like she was getting her heart brokenover the phone. There was another Millie Jackson album too. This one was called Still Caught Up. In the photo she was wearing a big hat and her lips were parted like she was about to kiss someone. It was definitely sexyand I wondered if Jimmy and Sheba knew her and if Jimmy, in their open marriage, was allowed to have sex with her.

“My turn!” Izzy shouted, and Gabriel moved her up to his shoulders. She was riding so high, I worried she’d knock her headon one of the signs hanging from the ceiling.

The crowd gathered in the Soundtracks section. Gabriel smiled down at me. “So what are we looking for?”

“Uh . . .” Would this knowledgeable crowd think I was stupid for liking show tunes? “Just something for Izzy to sing in thetub. You know.” I was afraid to say what I was thinking, which was Guys and Dolls. What if, in spite of my great love for Guys and Dolls, it was actually the dumbest soundtrack ever made?

“Something for the tub, huh?” Gabriel pulled alternately on Izzy’s ankles and she laughed.

“We could try Guys and Dolls?” I said it as if it had just occurred to me.

“I love Guys and Dolls!” Gabriel said, and I exhaled, relieved. Gabriel pulled the record from a bin and handed it to Little Hank. “What about Hair? Wanna try that one too?”

“Hair?” I didn’t know it. We hadn’t gotten it in the Show Tunes of the Month Club.

“Oh hell yeah,” Jimmy said. “It’s got naked people running all over the park.”

“I want Hair!” Izzy yelled.

“Is that the name of the song?” I asked Little Hank. “‘Naked People Running All Over the Park’?”

Little Hank almost fell to the ground laughing. Gabriel added Hair to the pile Little Hank was carrying, and we all worked our way to the checkout counter.

Gabriel slipped Izzy off his shoulders and onto his hip as if he’d been carrying her since birth. “You folks mind if we takea photo or two? For posterity. Never has anyone as famous as Jimmy and Sheba set foot in this store.”

“Sure.” Jimmy nodded, but his face didn’t look happy.

“And we gotta get a photo of Mary Jane before she becomes too famous to speak to us.”

“Oh, I would always speak to you,” I said, and everyone laughed.

Gabriel took Izzy with him and returned just a second later with a giant camera that had a large rectangular flash attachment.He handed the camera to one of the bodyguards and gave him a quick lesson on how to focus the camera.

Gabriel stood in the middle and hoisted Izzy back up to his shoulders. He let go of Izzy’s ankles and put one arm around Jimmy and the other around Sheba. Izzy looked perfectly balanced, her tiny fists knotted in Gabriel’s hair. Jimmy pulled me in close against his side, as if to protect himself from the crowd. The rest of the people who had been in our group gathered around on either side, and the bodyguard with the camera snapped off three pictures. Then he stepped in closer, maybe making it so it was only Jimmy, Sheba, and Gabriel, and snapped off another couple shots.

“One more, just to make sure we got a good one,” Gabriel said. “And step back so you can see Izzy on my shoulders and thesign above the register.”

I turned around and looked up to see what he was talking about. Above the register hung a huge sign that read, “Night TrainMusic: The Greatest Record Store in America.”

The flash exploded when my face was turned away.

“I’m ready to go,” Jimmy whispered in my ear, and the flash exploded two more times.

Little Hank rang up the records while Jimmy and Sheba talked to the employees who’d been shopping with us. I pulled out theten-dollar bill I’d been carrying in my pocket and handed it to Little Hank.

“Jimmy gave me a credit card,” Little Hank said, waving the bill away without pausing on the register. His long fingers movedso fast on the keys that they sounded musical.

I leaned into Jimmy and handed him the bill. He bent his head down toward me, glancing at the bill. I could see in his eyesthat he wanted to leave so badly, he would bust out of his own skin and abandon his body in the store if he could.

“What’s this?” Jimmy whispered.

“I’m paying for Izzy’s records. They’re a gift from me.”

“Okay.” Jimmy looked up, with his eyes only, as a woman, a customer, wedged her way into the circle to talk to him. She was in a jumpsuit that was unzipped almost to her waist, revealing breasts that were smashed together like two loaves of bread on her chest. The woman immediately started