by Dale Peck
A Real Doll
by A.M. Homes
I’m dating Barbie. Three afternoons a week, while my sister is at dance class, I take Barbie away from Ken. I’m practicing for the future.
At first I sat in my sister’s room watching Barbie, who lived with Ken, on a doily, on top of the dresser.
I was looking at her but not really looking. I was looking, and all of the sudden realized she was staring at me.
She was sitting next to Ken, his khaki-covered thigh absently rubbing her bare leg. He was rubbing her, but she was staring at me.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hello,” I said.
“I’m Barbie,” she said, and Ken stopped rubbing her leg.
“I know.”
“You’re Jenny’s brother.”
I nodded. My head was bobbing up and down like a puppet on a weight.
“I really like your sister. She’s sweet,” Barbie said. “Such a good little girl. Especially lately, she makes herself so pretty, and she’s started doing her nails.”
I wondered if Barbie noticed that Miss Wonderful bit her nails and that when she smiled her front teeth were covered with little flecks of purple nail polish. I wondered if she knew Jennifer colored in the chipped chewed spots with purple magic marker, and then sometimes sucked on her fingers so that not only did she have purple flecks of polish on her teeth, but her tongue was the strangest shade of violet.
“So listen,” I said. “Would you like to go out for a while? Grab some fresh air, maybe take a spin around the backyard?”
“Sure,” she said.
I picked her up by her feet. It sounds unusual but I was too petrified to take her by the waist. I grabbed her by the ankles and carried her off like a Popsicle stick.
As soon as we were out back, sitting on the porch of what I used to call my fort, but which my sister and parents referred to as the playhouse, I started freaking. I was suddenly and incredibly aware that I was out with Barbie. I didn’t know what to say.
“So, what kind of a Barbie are you?” I asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Well, from listening to Jennifer I know there’s Day to Night Barbie, Magic Moves Barbie, Gift-Giving Barbie, Tropical Barbie, My First Barbie, and more.”
“I’m Tropical,” she said. I’m Tropical, she said, the same way a person might say I’m Catholic or I’m Jewish. “I came with a one-piece bathing suit, a brush, and a ruffle you can wear so many ways,” Barbie squeaked.
She actually squeaked. It turned out that squeaking was Barbie’s birth defect. I pretended I didn’t hear it.
We were quiet for a minute. A leaf larger than Barbie fell from the maple tree above us and I caught it just before it would have hit her. I half expected her to squeak, “You saved my life. I’m yours, forever.” Instead she said, in a perfectly normal voice, “Wow, big leaf.”
I looked at her. Barbie’s eyes were sparkling blue like the ocean on a good day. I looked and in a moment noticed she had the whole world, the cosmos, drawn in makeup above and below her eyes. An entire galaxy, clouds, stars, a sun, the sea, painted onto her face. Yellow, blue, pink, and a million silver sparkles.
We sat looking at each other, looking and talking and then not talking and looking again. It was a stop-and-start thing with both of us constantly saying the wrong thing, saying anything, and then immediately regretting having said it.
It was obvious Barbie didn’t trust me. I asked her if she wanted something to drink.
“Diet Coke,” she said. And I wondered why I’d asked.
I went into the house, upstairs into my parents’ bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet, and got a couple of Valiums. I immediately swallowed one. I figured if I could be calm and collected, she’d realize I wasn’t going to hurt her. I broke another Valium into a million small pieces, dropped some slivers into Barbie’s Diet Coke, and swished it around so it’d blend. I figured if we could be calm and collected together, she’d be able to trust me even sooner. I was falling in love in a way that had nothing to do with love.
“So, what’s the deal with you and Ken?” I asked later after we’d loosened up, after she’d drunk two Diet Cokes, and I’d made another trip to the medicine cabinet.
She giggled. “Oh, we’re just really good friends.”
“What’s the deal with him really, you can tell me, I mean, is he or isn’t he?”
“Ish she or ishn’ she,” Barbie said, in a slow slurred way, like she was so intoxicated that if they made a Breathalizer for Valium, she’d melt it.
I regretted having fixed her a third Coke. I mean if she o.d.’ed and died Jennifer would tell my mom and dad for sure.
“Is he a faggot or what?”
Barbie laughed and I almost slapped her. She looked me straight in the eye.
“He lusts after me,” she said. “I come home at night and he’s standing there, waiting. He doesn’t wear underwear, you know. I mean, isn’t that strange, Ken doesn’t own any underwear. I heard Jennifer tell her friend that they don’t even make any for him. Anyway, he’s always there waiting, and I’m like, Ken we’re friends, okay, that’s it. I mean, have you ever noticed, he has molded plastic hair. His head and his hair are all one piece. I can’t go out with a guy like that. Besides, I don’t think he’d be up for it if you know what I mean. Ken is not what you’d call well endowed . . . All he’s got is a little plastic bump, more of a hump, really, and what the hell are you supposed to do with that?”
She was telling me things I didn’t think I should hear and all the same, I was leaning into her, like if I moved closer she’d tell me more. I was taking every word and holding it for a minute, holding groups of words in my head like I didn’t understand English. She went on and on, but I wasn’t listening.
The sun sank behind the playhouse, Barbie shivered, excused herself, and ran around back to throw up. I asked her if she felt okay. She said she was fine, just a little tired, that maybe she was coming down with the flu or something. I gave her a piece of a piece of gum to chew and took her inside.
On the way back to Jennifer’s room I did something Barbie almost didn’t forgive me for. I did something which not only shattered the moment, but nearly wrecked the possibility of our having a future together.
In the hallway between the stairs and Jennifer’s room, I popped Barbie’s head into my mouth, like lion and tamer, God and Godzilla.
I popped her whole head into my mouth, and Barbie’s hair separated into single strands like Christmas tinsel and caught in my throat nearly choking me. I could taste layer on layer of makeup, Revlon, Max Factor, and Maybelline. I closed my mouth around Barbie and could feel her breath in mine. I could hear her screams in my throat. Her teeth, white, Pearl Drops, Pepsodent, and the whole Osmond family, bit my tongue and the inside of my cheek like I might accidently bite myself. I closed my mouth around her neck and held her suspended, her feet uselessly kicking the air in front of my face.
Before pulling her out, I pressed my teeth lightly into her neck, leaving marks Barbie described as scars of her assault, but which I imagined as a New Age necklace of love.
“I have never, ever in my life been treated with such utter disregard,” she said as soon as I let her out.
She was lying. I knew Jennifer sometimes did things with Barbie. I didn’t mention that once I’d seen Barbie hanging from Jennifer’s ceiling fan, spinning around in great wide circles, like some imitation Superman.
“I’m sorry if I scared you.”
“Scared me!” she squeaked.
She went on squeaking, a cross between the squeal when you let the air out of a balloon and a smoke alarm with weak batteries. While she was squeaking, the phrase a head in the mouth is worth two in the bush started running through my head. I knew it had come from somewhere, started as something else, but I couldn’t get it right. A head in the mouth is worth two
in the bush, again and again, like the punch line to some dirty joke.
“Scared me. Scared me. Scared me!” Barbie squeaked louder and louder until finally she had my attention again. “Have you ever been held captive in the dark cavern of someone’s body?”
I shook my head. It sounded wonderful.
“Typical,” she said. “So incredibly, typically male.”
For a moment I was proud.
“Why do you have to do things you know you shouldn’t, and worse, you do them with a light in your eye, like you’re getting some weird pleasure that only another boy would understand. You’re all the same,” she said. “You’re all Jack Nicholson.”
I refused to put her back in Jennifer’s room until she forgave me, until she understood that I’d done what I did with only the truest of feeling, no harm intended.
I heard Jennifer’s feet clomping up the stairs. I was running out of time.
“You know I’m really interested in you,” I said to Barbie.
“Me too,” she said, and for a minute I wasn’t sure if she meant she was interested in herself or me.
“We should do this again,” I said. She nodded.
I leaned down to kiss Barbie. I could have brought her up to my lips, but somehow it felt wrong. I leaned down to kiss her and the first thing I got was her nose in my mouth. I felt like a St. Bernard saying hello.
No matter how graceful I tried to be, I was forever licking her face. It wasn’t a question of putting my tongue in her ear or down her throat, it was simply literally trying not to suffocate her. I kissed Barbie with my back to Ken and then turned around and put her on the doily right next to him. I was tempted to drop her down on Ken, to mash her into him, but I managed to restrain myself.
“That was fun,” Barbie said. I heard Jennifer in the hall.
“Later,” I said.
Jennifer came into the room and looked at me.
“What?” I said.
“It’s my room,” she said.
“There was a bee in it. I was killing it for you.”
“A bee. I’m allergic to bees. Mom, Mom,” she screamed. “There’s a bee.”
“Mom’s not home. I killed it.”
“But there might be another one.”
“So call me and I’ll kill it.”
“But if it stings me I might die.” I shrugged and walked out. I could feel Barbie watching me leave.
I took a Valium about twenty minutes before I picked her up the next Friday. By the time I went into Jennifer’s room, everything was getting easier.
“Hey,” I said when I got up to the dresser.
She was there on the doily with Ken, they were back to back, resting against each other, legs stretched out in front of them.
Ken didn’t look at me. I didn’t care.
“You ready to go?” I asked. Barbie nodded. “I thought you might be thirsty.” I handed her the Diet Coke I’d made for her.
I’d figured Barbie could take a little less than an eighth of a Valium without getting totally senile. Basically, I had to give her Valium crumbs since there was no way to cut one that small.
She took the Coke and drank it right in front of Ken. I kept waiting for him to give me one of those I-know-what-you’re-up-to-and-I-don’t-like-it looks, the kind my father gives me when he walks into my room without knocking and I automatically jump twenty feet in the air.
Ken acted like he didn’t even know I was there. I hated him.
“I can’t do a lot of walking this afternoon,” Barbie said. I nodded. I figured no big deal since mostly I seemed to be carrying her around anyway.
“My feet are killing me,” she said.
I was thinking about Ken.
“Don’t you have other shoes?”
My family was very into shoes. No matter what seemed to be wrong my father always suggested it could be cured by wearing a different pair of shoes. He believed that shoes, like tires, should be rotated.
“It’s not the shoes,” she said. “It’s my toes.”
“Did you drop something on them?” My Valium wasn’t working. I was having trouble making small talk. I needed another one.
“Jennifer’s been chewing on them.”
“What?”
“She chews on my toes.”
“You let her chew your footies?”
I couldn’t make sense out of what she was saying. I was thinking about not being able to talk, needing another or maybe two more Valiums, yellow adult-strength Pez.
“Do you enjoy it?” I asked.
“She literally bites down on them, like I’m flank steak or something,” Barbie said. “I wish she’d just bite them off and have it over with. This is taking forever. She’s chewing and chewing, more like gnawing at me.”
“I’ll make her stop. I’ll buy her some gum, some tobacco or something, a pencil to chew on.”
“Please don’t say anything. I wouldn’t have told you except . . . ,” Barbie said.
“But she’s hurting you.”
“It’s between Jennifer and me.”
“Where’s it going to stop?” I asked.
“At the arch, I hope. There’s a bone there, and once she realizes she’s bitten the soft part off, she’ll stop.”
“How will you walk?”
“I have very long feet.”
I sat on the edge of my sister’s bed, my head in my hands. My sister was biting Barbie’s feet off and Barbie didn’t seem to care. She didn’t hold it against her and in a way I liked her for that. I liked the fact she understood how we all have little secret habits that seem normal enough to us, but which we know better than to mention out loud. I started imagining things I might be able to get away with.
“Get me out of here,” Barbie said. I slipped Barbie’s shoes off. Sure enough, someone had been gnawing at her. On her left foot the toes were dangling and on the right, half had been completely taken off. There were tooth marks up to her ankles. “Let’s not dwell on this,” Barbie said.
I picked Barbie up. Ken fell over backwards and Barbie made me straighten him up before we left. “Just because you know he only has a bump doesn’t give you permission to treat him badly,” Barbie whispered.
I fixed Ken and carried Barbie down the hall to my room. I held Barbie above me, tilted my head back, and lowered her feet into my mouth. I felt like a young sword swallower practicing for my debut. I lowered Barbie’s feet and legs into my mouth and then began sucking on them. They smelled like Jennifer and dirt and plastic. I sucked on her stubs and she told me it felt nice.
“You’re better than a hot soak,” Barbie said. I left her resting on my pillow and went downstairs to get us each a drink.
We were lying on my bed, curled into and out of each other. Barbie was on a pillow next to me and I was on my side facing her. She was talking about men, and as she talked I tried to be everything she said. She was saying she didn’t like men who were afraid of themselves. I tried to be brave, to look courageous and secure. I held my head a certain way and it seemed to work. She said she didn’t like men who were afraid of femininity, and I got confused.
“Guys always have to prove how boy they really are,” Barbie said.
I thought of Jennifer trying to be a girl, wearing dresses, doing her nails, putting makeup on, wearing a bra even though she wouldn’t need one for about fifty years.
“You make fun of Ken because he lets himself be everything he is. He doesn’t hide anything.”
“He doesn’t have anything to hide,” I said. “He has tan molded plastic hair, and a bump for a dick.”
“I never should have told you about the bump.”
I lay back on the bed. Barbie rolled over, off the pillow, and rested on my chest. Her body stretched from my nipple to my belly button. Her hands pressed against me, tickling me.
“Barbie,” I said.
“Umm Humm.”
“How do you feel about me?”
She didn’t say anything for a minute. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, and slipped her hand into my shirt through the space between the buttons.
Her fingers were like the ends of toothpicks performing some subtle ancient torture, a dance of boy death across my chest. Barbie crawled all over me like an insect who’d run into one too many cans of Raid.
Underneath my clothes, under my skin, I was going crazy. First off, I’d been kidnapped by my underwear with no way to manually adjust without attracting unnecessary attention.
With Barbie caught in my shirt I slowly rolled over, like in some space shuttle docking maneuver. I rolled onto my stomach, trapping her under me. As slowly and unobtrusively as possible, I ground myself against the bed, at first hoping it would fix things and then again and again, caught by a pleasure/pain principle.
“Is this a water bed?” Barbie asked.
My hand was on her breasts, only it wasn’t really my hand, but more like my index finger. I touched Barbie and she made a little gasp, a squeak in reverse. She squeaked backwards, then stopped, and I was stuck there with my hand on her, thinking about how I was forever crossing a line between the haves and the have-nots, between good guys and bad, between men and animals, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop myself.
Barbie was sitting on my crotch, her legs flipped back behind her in a position that wasn’t human.
