Prettiest Doll

by Gina Willner-Pardo

  “Imogene! No!” I pulled my arm out of her grasp. “Quit making me! ”

  “Well, how the hell are you going to sing in front of a stranger if you can’t even do it in front of me?” she asked.

  “It’s easier in front of strangers,” I said.

  Sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like if pageants were held in the Dale Hickey Junior High auditorium, in front of Principal Sweeney and Mrs. Fogelson and all the boys I know. Les Dodge, who made out with Madison Belcher when he was twelve and she was fourteen. Joe DeWitt Jr., whose dad’s in jail for cooking meth. Landon Terwilliger, the first boy I ever kissed, who once said all the boys voted me the prettiest, and when I asked who was the smartest, he said they didn’t vote on that because who cared.

  I’d never be able to walk around in fancy dresses and smile over my shoulder and pose for everyone to get a good look if people I knew were the ones looking. Then it would be like I was showing off.

  “I hate you tearing yourself down,” Imogene said. “I’m sure you’re not as bad as you say.”

  “I am. It’s like you and swimming.”

  Imogene didn’t learn to swim until she was eight, and even now she can’t put her head down.

  “Oh, my God.”

  “See? That’s what I’m saying!”

  The bell rang. Everyone started heading toward their classrooms, looking for once as if it wasn’t so bad to be going inside, where at least it was warm.

  “What are you going to do?” Imogene asked, right before we had to split up, her to Algebra, me to History.

  “I don’t know,” I said, feeling a little flame of hot happiness deep inside, thinking that for the next forty-five minutes, anyway, I got to interview Revolutionary War heroes and not think about singing.

  I was all set to head home after school, but on the way Mama called my cell and told me to meet her at Grandma’s. I sighed. Grandma lives over on Gibbs Road, and it was starting to rain.

  When I got there, I let myself in with the key Grandma gave me for emergencies. I knew she wouldn’t be there: she works at the VA and her shift isn’t over until five. As I closed the door, I heard Mama calling from the basement, “Olivia Jane? Is that you?”

  “Yes,” I said. I pulled off my boots and headed down the steep, shag-carpeted steps.

  The basement is where Grandpa did all his taxidermy. There are a couple of heads mounted on the walls: a mule deer and a caribou he bagged decades ago. When I was little, I named them Bert and Ernie.

  There are two stainless-steel-topped worktables in the middle of the room, two chest freezers on opposite walls, a smaller table topped with a fleshing machine, a freeze dryer, and shelves full of supplies: sculpting compound, casting resin, Fish Coat, Clear-Tex epoxy, mannequins, plaques, glass and plastic eyes, pieces of driftwood, domes and cases.

  It’s the eyes that get me. I’m pretty much used to everything except the eyes.

  Mama was caping a mule deer. From the basement stairs, where I stood, I could see her using her field dressing knife to cut up the back of the buck’s neck and around the antlers. She was concentrating hard under the harsh glare of the gooseneck lamp, looking just the way she’d looked that morning, sewing on sequins.

  “Well, what’re you standing over there for?” she said, barely glancing up. “Come down here. Dry yourself off with that towel by the sink.”

  “I’m okay here,” I said. There was a weird smell in the basement, even though Mama always used deodorizer. “How come you’re not at Creech’s?”

  “I sweet-talked Jim. Carol-Ann was at Mulgrew’s picking up trophies for Jordan’s soccer team. Luckily. She woulda never let me leave. Jim’s an old pushover, though.” Mama squinted and leaned in close to part the hair at the back of one of the antlers. “I told him I had a lot of work here this weekend. He was real nice about it.”

  “Why do I have to be here?”

  “We gotta practice. I figured we could do it here as easy as at home.”

  “I’m the one who has to practice,” I said.

  “Well, but how you gonna know you’re doing it right if there’s no one around to watch you?” She put down her field knife and picked up her X-Acto to cut one of the ears off the head.

  I looked away. Ears are like eyes.

  “There’s plenty of room to walk,” Mama said. “Between the tables. Just watch out for the corners. You don’t want to get all bruised up.”

  “I’m not walking down there,” I said. Then, because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, I said, “I think I’m allergic to all the fur.”

  “Well, all right, then. Sing.”

  I thought of everything I wanted to say: I’m tired. It’s the weekend. It’s too cold down here. Please don’t make me. But the way she sat on the stool, hunched over, her forehead all wrinkled, breathing through her mouth with seriousness and trying-to-get-it-just-right, I didn’t want to argue.

  “Oh! You beautiful doll,

  You great big beautiful doll!

  Let me put my arms about you,

  I could never live without you.”

  She set the deer head on the tabletop and pulled her reading glasses off her nose, letting them dangle from the chain around her neck. She let her head bob a little in time with the words.

  She smiled when I finished. “Well, now, honey, that was wonderful. Just wonderful! How about one more time? And don’t forget to find those judges with your eyes and sing it just for them!”

  I knew I was being lied to, knew her nice words were faker than the glass eyes she kept in Grandpa’s old Rapala fishing lures box. The anger came on me all of a sudden. It took me over. I was speechless with it. I felt it rising up from down deep, clogging up the back of my throat.

  “Oh! You beautiful doll,

  You great big beautiful doll!

  If you ever leave how my heart will ache,

  I want to hug you but I fear you’d break.”

  I kept my eyes on the far wall the whole time, afraid to look at her, afraid she would see the anger on my face.

  When I sang the last line, I swear I saw Ernie blink.

  five

  IT rained all day Saturday. Mama made me practice twice. She kept smiling and praising. I kept saying I had a stomachache and needed to lie down for it to pass. But it wasn’t a stomachache, and it wasn’t passing.

  Sunday was church. The rain let up, but the sky was gray with thick, low clouds. Mama made pancakes, which is our Sunday tradition. We ate with napkins hanging out of our collars so we wouldn’t get syrup on our good clothes.

  Like always, we drove to church, even though it’s less than a mile away. The roads were muddy from the rain; Mama didn’t want to get her cuffs dirty. Also, walking is hard for her, since she’s so fat. She gets out of breath and sweaty after one block.

  We got there just as everyone was going inside to sit down. Mrs. Carle was playing “O Worship the King,” and Pastor Templeton was sitting near the pulpit, reading the Bible, not paying any attention to everyone talking. He’s round, with a fringe of gray hair around his bald head. His suit was frayed, with an old-fashioned looking vest that didn’t cover his middle. I wish he wore robes, like Father Moriarty at Saint Perpetua, which is Imogene’s church. But Baptist preachers are supposed to look like everyone else.

  Mama and I sat next to Trudy Dooley and her mother, Mabel Richter. Mama met Trudy when Trudy’s son Raymond and I were in first grade together. Raymond is at Dale Hickey, but he takes different classes, so I never see him at school. And Trudy says he won’t go to church anymore; he wants to stay home with Mr. Dooley and work on the Impala. “You’re so lucky, Janie,” Trudy said to Mama, leaning in close and fanning herself with the bulletin, even though it was cold and damp in the nave, “with a girl.”

  “Oh, I know. I know,” Mama said.

  “Boys are nothing but trouble, with their cars and their sports and their crazy friends and their, you know, changes,” Trudy whispered, holding Mama’s gaze in a meaningful wa
y. I didn’t know what changes she was talking about, but something about the way she said it, and knowing it was Raymond she was saying it about, made me a little sick.

  “Oh, I know,” Mama said. “Girls are easy.”

  They both looked at me and smiled.

  “Not easy,” I said. I felt offended. I didn’t want to let Mama off the hook.

  But they just laughed. Mabel Richter, who was almost deaf, said loudly, “Let’s save this for after church,” because she always assumes that, when people are laughing, they need a scolding. I saw Mama and Trudy sneak glances at each other. Mama put her hand up to her mouth to stifle a giggle. It was nice to see her with a friend. Suddenly I felt my lungs filling with air, the relief of a deep breath.

  When it was time for the sermon, Pastor Templeton stood up slowly and waddled to the pulpit. “I was thinking this morning about bad times,” he said, which was his way of starting a sermon about being submissive to the Lord.

  He droned on for an hour. I barely listened. If a minister wants you to pay attention, he should make an effort not to be so depressing.

  When church was over, Mama and Trudy and Mabel Richter made a beeline for the ladies’ auxiliary food table: ham and fried chicken and macaroni salad and pickles and ambrosia salad and brownies. Everyone was standing around, shoveling food into their mouths and gossiping. The air was sticky and warm and smelled of everyone’s breath mixed with Miracle Whip. Suddenly I wanted to be outside, no matter how cold it was. I took my paper plate and snuck out the side door.

  There’s a cement stoop at the corner of the building, back where the weeds almost never get mowed, across from the toolshed. I sat down and balanced my plate on my knees. I leaned forward and inhaled the good smell of church food. Mabel Richter is a pain in the ass, but she sure can fry chicken.

  I was spooning ambrosia into my mouth when I heard someone whisper, “Hey.”

  It came from the toolshed. For a split second, I thought about ignoring it, but then I heard it again.

  “Who’s there?” I asked, making my voice loud. Sometimes we get homeless people who’ve taken the bus as far as they can. I didn’t want anyone thinking I was going to hand over my lunch just because I was scared.

  “Danny.”

  I didn’t know any Danny.

  “You shouldn’t be out here. You shouldn’t be talking to me,” I said. “Now scat or I’ll get the pastor.”

  The shed door creaked open, and then I saw him and remembered.

  “Danny Jacobson? From that store with all the candy?” He looked mussed up and unwashed. There was straw in his uncombed hair. I couldn’t remember if he’d looked that way on Thursday.

  “Turner’s,” I said. “What the hell?”

  He ran his hand through his hair, trying to comb it with his fingers. Then he brushed off his jeans, as if there was dirt on them. I could see he was embarrassed to be so rumpled.

  “What are you doing in there?” I asked, but trying to be gentler this time. I felt bad that he was embarrassed.

  “Hey, keep it down,” he said. “I slept in there.”

  “Why? Don’t you live somewhere?”

  Maybe Danny was homeless. But usually, homeless kids have moms.

  “Texas,” he said. “Houston.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  He brushed his hair off his forehead, reminding me that he was fifteen, not ten.

  “I can’t be home right now,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  He looked over my head, toward the front of the church, where the parking lot is. I turned to look, too. A few people were hurrying toward their cars, but not many. Most everybody was still inside, eating.

  “I’m really hungry,” Danny said. “Can you get me something?”

  I eyed him, thinking maybe he was a criminal, running away from the police.

  “Just a brownie would be okay,” he said.

  I stood up and held out my plate. “Take it. I’ll go get more.”

  He grabbed the plate from my hands, picked up a chicken leg, and tore off a bite. He didn’t even say thank you, which was how I knew he was starving. Somehow, just looking at him, I could tell he was the kind of boy who said thank you under normal circumstances.

  When I came back, he was standing just where I’d left him, the plate almost empty except for the ambrosia.

  “Here,” I said, getting close enough to put two more chicken legs on the plate.

  He smiled. My heart suddenly felt like a big wad of something sticky—bubblegum, taffy—being pulled apart.

  “Don’t you like ambrosia?” I asked.

  “This stuff?”

  “Yeah. It’s fruit salad. Those red things are cherries.”

  “I don’t really like marshmallows unless they’re melted,” Danny said.

  I sat back down on the cement stoop and started eating. Danny lowered himself cross-legged onto the grass. He took a bite of another chicken leg, not as frantically as last time. There was a mustache of grease on his upper lip.

  “So what are you doing here?” I asked again.

  He kept his eyes on his chicken leg, still chewing. “At home it’s just my mom and me. My mom’s all right. She wants everything to be okay for me. I know that.” He swallowed. “But I can’t talk to her. She won’t listen. It has to be her way.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “And the thing is, she knows I don’t want to do it. And she doesn’t care. She says, ‘Do it for me, Danny. Do it for your mother.’ And when I say no, she gets mad all over again.”

  “Do what?” I finally asked.

  He was eyeing the ambrosia still on his plate. Carefully, he forked a cube of pineapple into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed.

  “I have a deficiency,” he said.

  “Is that like a disease?”

  “Not exactly. I was born with it. I don’t make enough growth hormone.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A chemical. My body doesn’t make enough. It’s why I’m so short.”

  “You’re not that short,” I said.

  I don’t know why I lied, except that it seemed like the polite thing to do. Everyone knows that boys are supposed to be tall. It would have seemed mean to agree with him about something so important and so awful.

  Danny gave me a look. “You don’t have to say that. I know what I am.”

  “I mean it. I know lots of boys shorter than you.”

  He shook his head and looked away, and after a few seconds, I said, “Okay. Not lots.”

  I felt so bad. But he looked relieved.

  “She wants me to have shots to make me taller. I’d have to have them every day. For years, maybe.”

  “Every day?”

  “And it’s expensive. She’d have to work another job to pay for them. She works too hard already, at an assisted living place, being a social worker.”

  “My mom works two jobs,” I said. “It’s not so bad. You get used to it.”

  “She’s pretty tired already. Her clients are old and sick and always needing help. She’s worn out.”

  I could tell he was mad. Not at me. Just mad about the whole dang thing.

  “Would the shots work?” I finally asked.

  “Yeah, they’d work. I’d be taller. So?” He shrugged his shoulders. “They wouldn’t make me a better chess player.”

  “Don’t you want to be taller?”

  He shrugged again. More silence. I fought an urge to fill it up with questions.

  “So I ran away,” he said. “About a week ago. I left her a note, so she’d know I’d be okay. I told her I would call her when I could.”

  “You can use my cell,” I said.

  “No, because then the police could figure out where I was and come and get me.”

  “Really?” I was impressed at how much he knew, how smart he was. “She must be worried.”

  At least he’d left his mama a note. But he should have told her why he was leaving. I never did find out w
hy Uncle Bread just up and left. He never said. It was disrespectful, really, after all he’d said about loving me like a daughter.

  “I can’t let myself think about that,” Danny said.

  “Do you have money for motels and food? Do you know where you’re going?” I asked. There was so much I wanted to know, all of a sudden.

  “A little money. I’ve been sleeping on the bus,” he said.

  “Where do you take showers?”

  “I wash a little in bus station bathrooms.” He looked embarrassed. “I’m probably not very clean.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “What are you going to do? ”

  There was people noise behind me, and I turned to look. Everyone was filing out of church, bundling into coats against the cold, heading off to their cars. I realized I’d forgotten it was cold.

  “I have to go. My mom’s going to be looking for me,” I said. “But I’ll come back later.”

  “I was going to go out,” Danny said. “I’ve been in this shed since yesterday. The bus doesn’t come until tomorrow morning.”

  “What bus?”

  “The one to Chicago.”

  “Is that where you’re going?”

  “That’s where I bought a ticket to,” he said. “But I got off here, just to stretch my legs, and then I went into that store—Turner’s, you said?—and that milk shake was so good. I lost track of time. The bus left without me. So I have to wait until Monday for the next one.”

  “What’s in Chicago?”

  He paused.

  “It just looked like a cool city,” he said.

  “My school’s up Mound Street a few blocks. Dale Hickey Junior High. There’s woods behind the basketball courts. I can be there around three,” I said. “I could bring more food.”

  He stood up and handed me his grease-streaked paper plate. “Don’t bring any of that ambrosia stuff,” he said. He turned and loped back toward the shed. “I gotta hide until they all clear out. Thanks,” he whispered, half looking back at me over his shoulder.

  I slipped in the back door and threw away the plates. Mrs. Carle was sponging down the countertops in the kitchen. “You been outside this whole time? You’ll catch your death,” she said. “I think your mama’s out front.”