Doll Hearts

by Colleen Clayton

  I flip the mirror back up, shake my head and get out of the car. It’s the last day of school. Who cares what I look like.

  We walk into school to commence with our final dose of public education for the year. Most of the morning and half of lunch I just sit in the office and take the tests that I flaked out on yesterday. And then blarg, fifth period Economics arrives and I have to go back to class. I cringe when I walk into the classroom. Not only because Julianne Mortification Particles are still floating in the atmosphere but also because Brandon Wright is staring at me. His eyes are trying not to call attention to themselves but they can’t help it. They flit about in this nervous beat that goes: Staring. Not staring. Staring. Not staring. He’s scared out of his mind. He’s scared that I’m going to diabetically implode in front of his face again.

  Whatever. He’s not even supposed to be in this class. Economics is a junior-level class but he’s taking it for a fun elective apparently. He never misses an opportunity to be smarter than everyone else in the room. A kickback, blow-off senior study hall would be beneath him.

  As soon as Mr. Fitch pulls the shades, dims the lights, and gets the customary last-day-of-school movie rolling, Brandon is at it, doodling away. About ten minutes into class I realize he’s doing the eyeball dance again. He’s glancing over at me in the semi-darkness, back and forth, back and forth, and I start to get the feeling that he’s not just drawing cartoon randomness. His doodling and scratching has purpose and that purpose seems to have something to do with me. I start to panic and have paranoid thoughts about what he might be drawing.

  I curl into my textbook, away from him, and veil myself with hair. Then, when class lets out, I reach over and snatch the paper before he can put it away. He doesn’t even get mad or ask for it back. He just stands up and looks down at me with a smug grin.

  “Keep it,” he says and then turns and walks out of the classroom. I look down at the paper and it’s not what I was expecting. It’s not me in a wheelchair being rolled through a gauntlet of whispering, pointing kids. And it’s not even me sitting in class cloaked under a curtain of long, brown hair.

  But it is me. Only younger. A lot younger.

  I realize that I know this picture. It’s a likening of a yearbook photo from kindergarten. Not my regular class portrait but one of those candid shots near the back of the book, in one of the collages they piece together. In the photo and in this drawing, I’m sitting on a swing but not swinging. And I remember this day, the clothes I was wearing, and the doll I was holding. I’d just come back from the nurse’s office after getting my insulin shot. All the girls had sectioned off into their little girlie knots to play games, clap hands, and tell secrets. But I was late. I was always late to recess because I had to go to the nurse’s office right after lunch. I remember sitting on the swing and feeling lost and homesick for Lindsey. We both live in Lakewood and see each other all the time, but Lakewood’s a big suburb with seven elementary schools. Back then, she went to a different school. Anyhow, I just sat on the swing dragging my feet around in the gravel, holding onto my Just Like Me Doll, and praying for recess to be over quicker. Then Mrs. Kaskela walked by and said: “Hey, stranger,” which made me look up. That’s when she snapped the photograph of me with two long, dark, perfectly woven French braids, wearing a crisp, blue dress, and holding a doll that looked and was dressed exactly like me.

  I run two fingers along the dark braids in the drawing and realize that I’ve forgotten about French braids. It seems impossible now, that my mother knows, or at least knew at one time, how to make perfect French braids. She knew how to do all kinds of things when I was little. She taught me how to hula-hoop, do cartwheels, and skip rope. We’d play Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, and tea party over and over. She’d dress me in elaborate outfits with coordinated tights, headbands, and shoes. She was a good mother. But then it’s like I grew up on her and she lost interest in me.

  I don’t want to fold the picture because a crease will ruin it. I open up my Economics notebook, slide it inside the pocket, and then head to my next class. On my way down the hall I think about the drawing and about that time in my life, age five or so. God, I was so thrilled when my mother bought those matching dresses for me and Bab—

  Whoa…

  And the name sneaks up on me.

  I haven’t thought about that name in years. And now I can’t get it out of my head. The rest of the day, I say it under my breath, over and over, so softly on my lips that I can barely hear it. I whisper her name and wonder where in the house she might be buried. Babette, Babette, Babette. The first, last, and only doll I ever loved.

  4.

  It’s Saturday morning. Do-or-die cleanup day. We haven’t even gotten started yet and I already feel like a picked dandelion left out on the sidewalk. I am literally wilting from thirst and fatigue. My glucose spiked in the night and I’m in for a long morning of a parched throat and aching head.

  Sitting on the picnic table on the back patio of my house, I down another bottled water and study the scene that is unfolding in my backyard. Over by the shed, stands my mother, who looks like she’s about to have a nervous breakdown. She’s in solemn discussion with a perky blonde, southern lady in her thirties named Ginny who calls herself a “therapeutic organizer.” Ginny is dainty and polished and the type that you picture singing along to musicals in her car.

  On the opposite end of the spectrum, in front of the garage, stands Billy from The Junk Detectives, a company that deals in resalable items. He is pacing around in front of his huge truck, smoking one cigarette after another, and constantly checking his watch. And then farther down the drive is a small, white van labeled Magic Genie Maids N’ Movers. Rob and Carla, the owners of said enterprise, are sitting next to it on overturned mop buckets, soaking up the morning sun, and drinking Starbucks. To the side of the driveway sits an empty Dumpster.

  Basically, it’s going to go like this: Billy the Junk Detective will be taking all of the resalable items that my mom doesn’t want and putting them into his store or selling them online, splitting the profits 50/50. Rob and Carla are being paid to help sort and clean. We’ve all been introduced to each other but Billy, Rob, and Carla haven’t been inside yet.

  While I’m waiting for my mom and Ginny The Organizer to finish their private discussion, Billy The Junk Detective walks up to me. He’s middle-aged and overweight, and not in that jovial, endearing future Santa Claus way, but in that sweaty, heaving, future heart patient way. His Carhartts have dried paint splattered all over them.

  “So it’s mostly dolls and figurines what your ma collects, yeah?” he says, taking a drag of his cigarette while trying to surreptitiously peek into the back sliding door of our house.

  “Mm,” I say, looking over at my mom and Ginny.

  I can’t hear what they’re saying but their eyes are closed so I know what they’re doing. They’re “imagining a bright beginning.” I read about this on the lady’s website last night. It’s like group prayer for hoarders. Before you start the actual cleaning, you wander from room to room in your mind, and “imagine a bright beginning” for each space. You close your eyes and visualize how you want the rooms to look, picturing them free of clutter.

  “You know the brand names? Of the dolls and stuff?” Billy the Junk Detective asks.

  I do but I’m not telling this guy. He’ll find out soon enough. I shake my head, take a gulp of my water.

  He waits a moment, takes another puff.

  “Madame Alexander or Ashley Drake ring a bell?” he says.

  I get up from the picnic table and walk away from this bloodsucking doll parasite. As I’m walking toward my mom and Ginny, my mom looks up and shakes her head like she’s clearing her thoughts.

  “Okay, let’s just get on with it,” she says.

  Everyone gathers around while Ginny reiterates for the second time how the process will work.

  “Okay!” she says, brightly, clapping her hands together like she’s the head cheerl
eader for Team Hoarder. “To be clear, we don’t throw inny-thing out or put inny-thing on the resale truck without first runnin’ it by Christine. Remember, Christine is the one in control here. Now the three of us, we’re goin’ inside to get started. We’ll call ya’ll in directly.”

  Rob and Carla nod and smile in agreement. They’re being paid by the hour to drink lattes and sit on buckets so they could care less when we get started. The Junk Detective, on the other hand, lets out a sigh. His payout is trickier. He’s not sure what he’s going to walk away with so he’s more anxious to get moving.

  Ginny, my mom, and I each carry a large plastic bin in through the backdoor of the house. Like always, we have to push our way through. Once inside, we set the three bins labeled Keep, Dispose, and Resale amidst the heaps in the kitchen. We remove things from around the entryway and set some stuff outside on the patio so that we have a clear path in and out.

  The three of us stand in the cluttered kitchen. My mom looks like she’s about to faint.

  “Now, remember, just like we discussed,” Ginny says. “One item at a time, one feelin’ at a time.”

  My mom shifts her weight and wraps her arms around herself. Ginny picks the first item out of the heap and opens it. It’s a bag and inside the bag is a box.

  “Okay,” she says. “This box is labeled “Boyd’s Bears Day At The Beach Waterglobe.” Does that mean somethin’ to you, Christine?”

  “Well, yes, but I have to open it,” my mom says. “I can’t feel anything until I see and hold it in my hands.”

  Ginny nods seriously and hands the box over. My mom tries to open it but it isn’t an easy task. The box is extremely tight and difficult to unfold but after wrestling with it for a while, she gets it open and slides the Styrofoam inserts out. She separates the molds, extracts the waterglobe, and holds it up. Her eyes widen as she looks at it. Inside the glass ball is a teddy bear making a sand castle.

  “What are you feelin’, Christine?” Ginny says, her face and voice filled with empathy and concern.

  “I’m feeling like—oh, my—like this is just adorable,” my mom says.

  She shakes the waterglobe making the fake snow float around.

  “I don’t remember buying this,” she says. “How can I not remember buying this? It’s stunning. This is definitely going into the Keep bin.”

  She gently twists the turnkey on the bottom. “Happy Days Are Here Again” tinkles around the kitchen and her face lights up even more.

  “Now, let’s talk about how you said you don’t remember buyin’ it,” Ginny says. “When do you think you might have bought this?”

  “Well, I’m not sure,” my mom whispers, hypnotized by the chiming music and falling snow. “Probably around Fourth of July?”

  I sigh, pick up the bag and pull out a shipping receipt.

  “Yes, July 1st,” I say, looking at the date. “Three years ago. This thing has been in our kitchen, in this spot, unopened, for three years.”

  “But now that it’s opened,” my mom says, emerging from her daze. “I can see that it’s perfectly beautiful. And I’m not getting rid of it. The waterglobe stays.”

  “But mom, you don’t need it!” I argue. “We have so much stuff to get rid of and there’s, like, a hundred more of these snowglobes buried in the house, I’m sure of it.”

  “First off,” she says, clutching the globe to her chest, “it’s a waterglobe, not a snowglobe. And secondly, it’s valuable. I don’t buy junk, Julianne, I buy collectibles. In twenty years, this will be worth a lot of money. I have my retirement to think about, you know.”

  “Your retirement.” I say, stuffing the receipt back into the bag before tossing the bag into the Dispose bin. “Mom, you had a retirement. A real retirement. But you blew it when you got fired. A person can’t retire on waterglobes and dolls. I’m seventeen and I know that.”

  We haven’t even started yet and things are already sliding downhill.

  “Okay, Julianne, you’ve made your point,” Ginny says, stepping a little closer so that she’s standing between my mom and me. “We’re just gittin’ started here, so let’s take a couple clinsin’ breaths.”

  Ginny closes her eyes and breathes deeply while making this yoga-type gesture with her perfectly manicured hands. On the third breath, she opens one eye, to see if we’re following along. My mom and I close our eyes and breathe, although it sounds more like annoyed sighing on our end. After a few of these “clinsin’ breaths,” Ginny continues on.

  “Okay, Christine,” she says. “You feel the sno—waterglobe is valuable so you should place it into the Keep bin.”

  My mom smiles to herself, puts the waterglobe back into its box, and then sets it in the Keep bin.

  And this is how it goes for the next forty-five minutes. In between telling Billy The Junk Detective to cool his jets and stay outside until we’re ready for him, the three of us debate the necessity, value, and sentimentality of each item that is placed into my mother’s hands. My mom is sweating buckets and looks like she’s aged twenty years in one hour. She keeps looking at me with frantic, hollow eyes. She can feel the frustration radiating off of me. After almost an hour, the Keep bin has been filled to the top, the Dispose bin has a mountain of unopened mail in it and bits of packaging trash, and the Resale bin sits totally empty. Our kitchen is still inaccessible and stuffed to the rafters with crap so my level of irritation moves from slow simmer to soft boil. Another minute of this and I’m going to blow.

  “I have to fingerprick,” I snap, moving out of the kitchen, trying not to fall over the empty bins and mess. “Also, I have to use the bathroom because, you know, even if I could get to it, our perfectly good half-bath over there doesn’t actually work.”

  I shoot my mom a dirty look then tromp my way down the hallway leading to the stairs.

  “Okay, you’re right, you’re right, I know! We’ll move faster!” she says, calling after me. I can hear her turn her attention back to Ginny. “Okay, let’s keep moving,” she says. “I’m going to fill that resale bin right now, I promise. We have to move faster.”

  My headache is in that cloudy, manageable stage but is drifting around in my skull looking for a good place to clamp down and explode. In my bathroom, I swallow two Tylenol while peeking out the blinds. Down in the backyard, Billy The Junk Detective is on tiptoe, peering into our dirty garage windows. The garage is packed with all kinds of goodies that I’m sure he would love to get his parasitic Junk Detective hands on. As much as I want rid of this stuff, it pains me to think of that dirt bag walking away with a single thing.

  I use the bathroom; check my phone and read a couple of texts from Lindsey.

  How’s it coming? What time will you be back?

  Remember, the Callahan Kegger starts at 9. MELT for dinner?

  Egh. Frankly, tonight’s plans are last thing on my mind because if we don’t get this cleanup done, I’ll be missing a whole lot more than just this one party. I’ll be missing every party all summer long and then some. She’s going to be crushed if I cancel because we look forward to this party all year. I keep my response vague and brief for now.

  Not sure when I’ll be done, I say. I’ll text you in a few hours.

  I add a hopeful smiley face to the end because, who knows, maybe my mom will turn a corner soon. Maybe Ginny will get through to her somehow and we’ll really start making some progress and then I’ll be able to slip out for a few hours.

  I go back downstairs to find Ginny has fallen headfirst into a mountain of crap and is struggling to right herself. With my mom’s help, she gets up, and then brushes her hands on her designer jeans. She waves it off, like this is just a perfectly normal part of her work day. Just another day at the Hoarder’s Inc. office.

  “Okay, now we’re going to try a little experiment, Christine, okay?” she says, chipper-like.

  My mom looks up from the revolting doll in her hands. It’s not a playful, sweet-looking babydoll but one of those porcelain adult dolls with a severe
expression that looks like the headmistress of a Victorian-era boarding school. Like an evil version of Mary Poppins.

  “I’m going to take one item and put it into the Resale bin,” Ginny says, “but only for a short while. After five minutes, you can put it back into the Keep bin if you like. I just want you to get a feel for what it might be like to part with somethin’, okay?”

  My mom’s eyes go all twitchy and nervous and she can’t help but glance over at me. I cross my arms and stare at her.

  “Um, sure,” she says, to Ginny. “Let’s do it.”

  Ginny reaches into the bin and pulls out a small stuffed animal.

  A Beanie Baby.

  Ick.

  In addition to being a high-end designer doll orphanage, our house is a graveyard for any and all worthless retail fads. Tamagotchis, Furbees, Pokeman cards, Silly Band bracelets and Beanie Babies to name a few. I look at the Beanie Baby dangling between Ginny’s fingers. Apparently, before I was born, there was a nationwide hysteria over these stupid stuffed animals. People went crazy collecting them because they were supposed to be worth a lot of money someday. I looked a few of them up on eBay one time. Even after twenty years they aren’t worth the price you would pay to ship them.

  Anyhow, this particular Beanie Baby, the one headed into the Resale bin, is an owl wearing a graduation hat marked 1997. Ginny sets it delicately into the bin. I picture Billy The Junk Detective walking in and seeing his Resale bin sitting empty except for one lonely, worthless Beanie Baby owl. Ginny sees the scornful look on my face so I wipe it off and straighten up a bit.

  “Can I talk privately with Julianne for a moment, Christine?” Ginny says to my mom.

  “Um, sure, but is something wrong?” my mom says looking at me then at Ginny while putting Evil Mary Poppins back into her box.

  “I just think she might need to talk through some things,” she says.

  “Okay,” my mom says, “But don’t touch anything until I get back.”

  My mom heads outside and Ginny looks at me.