The Doll’s Alphabet

by Camilla Grudova

  It was possible for some people though, that’s how there were so many Men and women, me included. To find a Man who had enough Exam prize money and also wanted to have children, that was the Goal of Life. I don’t remember my own parents. Boys and girls were taken away from home at age three. Girls were given five years of schooling in Life Skills and Prospects, then went to work in a Training Factory, which usually made boys’ clothes and toys, while boys stayed in school until sixteen when they started Examinations and began looking for a woman to care for them.

  It was common for boys to begin with an older woman, one who was no longer fertile and so couldn’t get them into trouble, while they learnt how to get relaxation and pleasure from women. Of course, the older women, despite those advantages, had competition from women my age, in their mid-twenties, who were more sexually appealing and desperate to get as young a Man as possible because there was more hope of them succeeding compared to the older Men. The odd idiot girl became attached to an older Man, who was obviously a failure at Exams and Life. These types of couples were the laughing stock of Society.

  Women stayed in Training Factory dormitories, where bed and board was covered, until around the age of thirteen. During that time we were given a small wage that we were supposed to eventually spend on things to make our home and ourselves appeal to Men—stockings or a kettle, for example. We were told that if you brought a Man home and didn’t have a kettle or toilet paper, he would laugh at you and leave. They were used to the comforts of their school dormitories. We left the dorm with enough money to rent a room and a suitcase full of practical things, ready to start looking for Men and find better jobs.

  When a woman first got out of the Training Factory dorms, the Men went crazy for her, especially if she hadn’t started menstruating. Usually they already lived with a woman who knew how to take care of them, and just wanted to use you. One could only learn so much from School and Books about Men, so it was considered good experience to learn what sort of Men were out there and what they liked, as long as you didn’t get pregnant or a disease. Some girls didn’t make it through their first year out of dormitories. I still became sad when I thought about the friends I had lost that way. After my first, I never went with any Man who didn’t have birth control, that’s how I survived. I met Rollo a few years after leaving dormitories, he was in his twenties and wise about birth control and sacrificed lots of nice things in order for me to have it, like higher grade tobacco and records.

  Girls who hadn’t started to menstruate were called Cheaps, because they didn’t require birth control. There were some Men who hung around the factory dormitories looking for Cheaps. Many girls, myself included, slept with those Men so we could learn, and wouldn’t make fools of ourselves when we went out on our own to meet better Men to live with. Once in a while a girl died from the pain, so you had to be careful and not be too young or careless. It could also cause Nightmares, and a Man did not want to settle down with a girl who had Nightmares or was nervous.

  Men liked stability and ease most of all, but still, there were those who only went for Cheaps and ruined lots of them.

  I continued to gain weight and blamed it on Paul’s small appetite, until my periods stopped. Pauline didn’t get a period on account of her anorexia. I started to wear jumpers over my dungarees to work, hoping no one would notice.

  There wasn’t even a chance of registering our baby because Paul had no papers. There was something liberating in that, though the thought of pain and maybe even dying scared me. There would be no one to take care of Paul, and he had become so used to having a regular home.

  Our neighborhood wasn’t well-off, so you didn’t see babies there, besides the dead ones in bins or wrapped up in cloth along the pavement. One weekend, in the early stages of my pregnancy, I took a tram to a better-off neighborhood, where successful Men lived, to try to see some Mothers. And I did, pushing prams. They looked cautious, tired, and blissful. I tried to peek into their prams to see a real, live baby, but I was shy. I could hear some of them crying and wondered how I could stop mine from making so much noise when it arrived.

  The women had nice make-up, faces, and clothes, and despite all the frightening trials ahead of me, I felt a mysterious excitement. They would have to give their children away aged three, but as long as I kept my child hidden, and alive, it was mine to keep.

  The flea markets had all sorts of plastic dollies, carriages, and colorful alphabet blocks but we were too afraid someone would notice us buying baby things and report us. Paul made a rubber-band ball, covered it with glue so no bands would become loose and swallowed by our child, and painted a red star on it.

  He also sewed some wonderful dolls using old socks with colorful yarn from old jumpers for the hair, and drew cheery faces on them.

  I gave birth on a Friday, after work. I had felt cramped and dizzy all day, and my NIGHTINGALEs were all shaky. When I got home, I ate four boiled eggs, which made me feel worse, and a few hours later went to the bathroom where I had diarrhea and gave birth at the same time. I stuffed toilet paper in my mouth and chewed on it so I wouldn’t scream. I wrapped the little thing, no bigger than a hand, up in paper and ran back into the kitchen to wash it with warmed up water from the kettle and disinfectant.

  It was a tiny, waxy child, like a little cheese rind, that barely ever cried. I think it knew by some survival instinct it wasn’t supposed to, and Paul was very attentive, feeding it milk and changing its rag diapers before it became upset. He was good with children, perhaps from reading so many children’s books.

  We were too scared to name it properly so we just called it Waxy.

  We decided that when our child was old and wise enough to choose its own real name, it could have one.

  Waxy was so small, I thought at first that giving birth wasn’t much different from menstruating, but then I fainted the Monday back at work. They gave me the afternoon off and an extra ration of beef-flavored bouillon, assuming I was anemic. My afternoon off was bliss, I lay on our couch with Waxy tucked underneath my nightie, and Paul read us all his books, one after the other.

  We left Waxy’s cord on until it became all brown and wilted and fell off. I flushed it down the toilet.

  Paul wanted to use the fridge as a hidden nursery for Waxy, but I was too scared of Waxy suffocating. We found an old picnic basket at the flea market that had a lid with lots of holes in it. We put a doll and pillow inside, and Waxy seemed to like it all right. We hid the basket behind a large framed picture of an old Man with a beard, also from the flea market.

  Paul went on long walks with Waxy bundled under his coat in a scarf, but I wouldn’t let him take Waxy to flea markets because of all the animals.

  Women there sold toads, worms, and chickens that looked diseased, without many feathers. I knew someone who had died from buying one of those chickens and eating it; it was safest to eat meat from one’s Factory rations. Some people boiled and fried the toads. One could also find rats, pigeons, rabbits. You were a desperate woman if you were trying to sell those, but some people were stupid enough to buy them, especially baby rabbits.

  I knew a girl who stuck an all-white pigeon feather in her hair because she thought it was rare and beautiful, but the feather was full of diseases and she went blind. Another girl bought a baby rabbit as a pet, but it bit her and she died horribly.

  There were women all around whose job it was to spray poison on wild animals; they had the worst skin and the thinnest hair. Very few of them had Men.

  Once, Paul came home from one of his walks with an old cracker tin with a picture of a boy in a green jumper feeding jam-covered crackers to a hound dog. The tin was rectangular-shaped, house-like, and Paul kept going on about how wonderful it would be if it were house-sized and we could live inside happily ever after, with the hound dog to watch over us, and nice white crackers to eat.

  The tin would get really hot and burn us, I told him, and it would be dark without windows. He became quiet, but soon seemed to f
orget about the tin. I used it to protect our coffee powder from vermin, but kept finding buttons, rolled-up bits of paper, and small plastic flowers inside.

  I asked Paul about it and he told me that once someone gave him a slice of ginger-powder cake with a penny hidden inside and it was the best thing that ever happened to him before he met me. He thought it brought good luck and wouldn’t listen when I told him I could choke on one of the buttons.

  When Waxy had wind, it opened its mouth in a strange silent howl. Paul covered one of his fingers in golden syrup and stuck it in the baby’s mouth to suck on like a soother, but one day it didn’t work and Waxy let out a horrible howl, its first one, the one it didn’t make when it was born, and I felt both elated it had made such a sound, and terribly frightened the neighbors would hear. Stuart did.

  He pushed back our wool door and barged into our kitchen with his pipe in his mouth. He stared at Waxy, whom Paul was holding.

  “Pauline’s tobacco isn’t enough for me and her,” he said, and took my tobacco tin off our table, leaving our kitchen without another look at Waxy.

  Neither of us could sleep that night, Paul kept mumbling on about the cracker tin again, but Stuart didn’t report us the next day, nor did Pauline seem to know about our little one. However, on ration day, Stuart came into our kitchen and took my tobacco again, along with a tin of meat. After a couple of weeks he told us there was much better tobacco available in the world, like Goodes’ tobacco, for example, and we knew the Factory ration tobacco was no longer enough to keep him quiet. It really ate into our budget. Paul sold more forks and spoons, but we still couldn’t afford to buy bread anymore. We had to eat our eggs and meat without toast, and soon our eggs without meat. Stuart ate all of Pauline’s and our tinned meat. He came into our kitchen whenever he pleased to help himself to our coffee and margarine, though he had enough in his own room, and his meaty smell was unbearable.

  Then Stuart became Sick.

  They did not have enough money for medicine. Pauline blackmailed us into giving it to them. Paul and I had to sell all of our chairs and most of my clothes, including my red sandals and also some of Paul’s books. Being Sick without savings was foolish—every responsible person put away a bit of money from their Exams and jobs into a Sick savings pot, even I had, and used it to buy a small bottle of disinfectant for having Waxy.

  They refused to sell their gramophone at the market, and Stuart kept it on all the time while he lay in bed and it used our entire ration of electricity. Pauline rubbed Stuart with disinfectant and gave him a terrible-smelling green syrup and little white vitamins but none of it helped and she threw the medicine away.

  Taking out the garbage a couple of days after Stuart’s illness started, I noticed the meat tins piled up on our hall were punctured with tiny holes, they looked like little cages.

  I didn’t know whether it was Pauline or Paul that did it. Paul seemed too innocent, and Pauline really did love Stuart.

  She sat at his bedside, feeding him cups of plain boiled water, and wearing a blue scarf over her head, like in the picture she had of a woman wearing a red and blue coat surrounded by glitter and other nice things.

  Pauline asked Paul to take Stuart water during the day when Pauline was at work, but I was never sure Paul did. He was so terrified of Waxy catching the Sickness that he kept our window open for fresh air, and spent as much time as possible outside, with a few boiled eggs and a thermos of coffee in a knapsack, Waxy deep beneath his coat. There was always a huge, nasty mess for Pauline to clean when she got home from work, Stuart could never make it to the bathroom and most of the time could not keep food down. All he wanted to eat was tinned peaches and apples, Pauline made us give them ours and I was terribly worried about Paul not getting enough vitamin C, though the smell of thrown-up tinned peaches in the hall made Paul swear he would never eat them again.

  Of course, Pauline couldn’t quit work, and Stuart died while she was away. She came home and he was all putrid and still. Two heavyset women wearing old baggy men’s suits came to take the body away. It cost an enormous amount and I had to pay for it. They gave Pauline harsh looks for allowing her Man to get Sick and die. One of the women was pockmarked, and both of them wore their hair in buns, one of them had brown powder in her hair, to make it look thicker than it was. I suppose there were lots of chemicals in their line of work and it ruined their hair and skin. Their shoes were heavy going down the steps, and Stuart’s body, wrapped in a green wool blanket, was terribly swollen.

  The night after they took Stuart away I had a dream he was still alive, but his legs were made out of tinned meat. He said they were too fat and made me chew on them until they were thin and graceful, but still an awful red in color, and terribly dry-tasting. I woke up with a headache from dehydration, and Waxy, who was sleeping in a small crevice between us, had a filthy nappy. Poor Waxy’s little legs were skinny and pasty like Paul’s fingers. I kissed them and wept as I changed Waxy’s nappy on the kitchen table.

  Pauline had the gramophone and lots of lingerie so she would have no trouble finding a new Man, but weeks went by without her bringing one home.

  Since she rarely ate, she had a stockpile of tinned meat, tobacco, and other goods which she placed around Stuart’s gramophone, I think as a memorial. The eggs and apples rotted, it smelled horrible passing her room. Around the house she took to wearing Stuart’s old robe, her lingerie underneath, and a navy blue tam-o’-shanter. She lurked in the stairwell like a spider, and sometimes pawed at our wool door, asking for odd things, such as buttons, forks, and socks. She didn’t take any interest in Waxy, but we said yes to everything she asked, it was too dangerous for us to move anywhere else.

  We couldn’t say no when she stuck her head through the side of our wool door and said in a loud whisper, “I’ve seen and heard you do Uncommon things to her, Paul, I want you to do them to me, or I’ll report you.”

  She came into our kitchen wearing nothing underneath Stuart’s robe, which was turning all ratty, and I could see she was completely hairless. It made me think of an awful mixture of things: maggots, babies, eggs, and old bread. “A Man registered for Exams wouldn’t know how to do things like that,” she said. She took Paul by the hand and pulled him out. Waxy cried. So did I, once they were both out of the kitchen. When he came back he said it was like trying to eat cold worms. He drank five cups of coffee and kept trying to pick at Waxy’s cradle cap. Pauline asked him to do it almost every day. Paul wet our couch more frequently, and I woke up all the time sweaty from bad dreams.

  I had a nightmare that Paul had NIGHTINGALE written on his back and I couldn’t scrub it off no matter how hard I tried. The next morning, I had to look all over his body to find it but I couldn’t.

  Paul doing things to Pauline would stop her from finding a new Man who would possibly report us, but I couldn’t stand how it made Paul feel.

  One morning, before work, I went into the bathroom and discovered

  PAULINE + PAUL

  carved into the door frame.

  I was very upset, so upset that Paul said he would change his name. He looked through his books and read all the names aloud:

  “George.”

  “Billy.”

  “Rupert.”

  “Cyril.”

  But none of them was quite right.

  His name was stuck to him like a tattoo. I liked the name Paul. If only there weren’t Paulines in the world. They were both thin with thin black hair, as if they had been made in the same Factory. If Paul, Waxy, and I just got up and left she would report us, and we would be chased. We really started to hate our home, we felt trapped inside. Paul said it was like living in the belly of a toad, and that Pauline was like a nasty tongue that licked everything so it smelled like her. She demanded more and more time with Paul, he had to spend his whole evenings and nights with her. It gave Waxy colic; I had to bang pots and sing so the other neighbors wouldn’t hear the crying. I didn’t get any sleep and got in trouble at work for wr
iting NIGHT, NIGHT, NIGHT, NIGHT on four sewing machines, forgetting the rest of the word.

  Paul acted morose around her, he just stood or sat and sulked when he wasn’t making love to her in Uncommon ways, but Pauline acted horribly silly, laughing and playfully slapping him and putting bits of golden syrup on her face with a spoon which she made Paul kiss off.

  We needed to make her even with us. If she had a baby too, she couldn’t report ours, Paul decided. Then we could run away and live the type of Life he had had before, lurking and hiding but free of Pauline, who would hopefully throw herself down the stairs or out of the window if she didn’t die from birth or shame.

  I told him it was impossible, Pauline couldn’t have babies because she was too thin. Paul said we just have to fatten her up like the witches do to children in the fairy tales he used to read to me when we had more time together.

  Paul started to have sex with her in the common manner, he was able to make her want to do it with him by being less morose and giggling along with her sometimes. He didn’t mind doing it the common way as he did doing Uncommon tricks, because it was to hurt Pauline in the end.

  Having sex the common way made Pauline feel sentimental, I think. She started to eat a little more, but it wasn’t enough. One weekend morning, I stood in the bathroom with my dungarees pulled down, examining my breasts in the mirror. They were all swollen with milk, and Paul stood watching me and fondling himself just as Pauline came upstairs. We had planned it out that way.

  He convinced her to eat bread soaked in milk, tinned peach juice, and golden syrup, boiled eggs and coffee with milk, often bringing it to her while she was naked in bed. She started to grow. The new fat did not look very nice on her. Her hair didn’t get any thicker. I thought she looked like a sweet bun with hairs and pigeons’ eyeballs stuck to it. She started to fill out her lingerie, and Paul tried to act very enthusiastic and In Love, but when he was lying beside me on our couch he would say in a flat voice, “I hate her, I hate her,” until he got so riled up he had to walk in circles around our kitchen, clapping his hands, until it was time for me to go to work.