Mary Jane

by Jessica Anya Blau

Boys are ridiculous. Every single one of them thinks that every person in the world wants to see his penis.”

It had never before occurred to me that sometimes dishes weren’t just dishes, that things could represent ideas in more powerful ways than the ideas themselves.

We’d learned about the civil rights movement in school. It made me feel hopeful, like change was happening all around us. But sitting at Elkridge that day, I felt stuck in a time-warp atrium of segregated politeness.

What we’d never learned was that sometimes ideas of racism and anti-Semitism were sparked to life by the very people you lived with.

Did they only like me when I knew my place?

But it’s hard to have a balanced friendship when one person wants everything the other person has.”

Maybe a person’s standing in the community was an illusion.

I’d heard about depression before but couldn’t conceive of what it felt like until that week I spent in my room. I was tired all the time but I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t read. I didn’t want to sing or listen to music or even watch TV.

That I had seen that adults weren’t always right and could be just as confused and make just as many mistakes as kids? That I knew that when people messed up, they still deserved our love and affection?