Dolls Behaving Badly (12 page)

Thursday, Dec. 15

WE GATHERED AROUND
the kitchen table earlier this morning, our sad little version of the Last Breakfast. We even wore robes like the apostles,
though we weren’t eating fish but Safeway brand cornflakes. Laurel looked especially tragic, with her unwashed hair and ratty
nightgown, and even Stephanie was subdued, her ’50s-style poodle bathrobe slumped dejectedly over her shoulders. We ate in
silence. The only sound was our chewing.

Halfway through our stilted meal Jay-Jay appeared. He had on the never-before-worn khaki pants Laurel had given him for his
birthday, along with a wrinkled oxford shirt that looked vaguely familiar. He held typed papers in his hand and his face wore
a hopeful, expectant look. I knew what was coming. I watched as he sat down and began distributing the pages.

“My Christmas list,” he said proudly. “The Really, Really Wants are highlighted in red type at the top. The Really Wants are
in green, and the Wants But Don’t Have to Haves are in basic black.”

Laurel sucked in her breath but Jay-Jay didn’t notice. “I’ve itemized according to price, store, and website. This way you
won’t waste time looking for something at the wrong place.”

“Well,” I began. “This seems very industrious—”

“Or you can just give me money and I’ll buy the stuff myself. Gift cards work, too—as long as they’re not stingy.”

No one said anything.

“But wrap them up, okay? I want to see presents under the tree.”

We tried, Stephanie and I, to act interested in Jay-Jay’s spiel. We asked questions, we nodded, we fake-laughed. By the time
he caught the bus, even Stephanie looked frayed.

“My mom would totally light a joint right now,” she said. “Just to, like, get the edge off.”

When it came time to drive Laurel to her appointment, Stephanie was nowhere to be seen. I was disappointed. I needed her to
pat my back and tell me that everything was going to be, like, totally okay. I put on my boots, zipped my coat, and waited
in the trailer’s arctic entryway, thinking of the holy water in church and how we dabbed it on our foreheads as we entered.
Gramma stuck in her whole hand and splashed it across her face. She believed in stocking up on good fortune. She also didn’t
like the taste of the communion wafers and once took it upon herself to improve the recipe, rolling out dough over the kitchen
table and cutting small circles with the cap from Mother’s face cream. After seasoning to her liking and baking on wax-papered
cookie sheets, she tucked them inside a Tupperware container and carried them proudly to Mass. The priest blushed when she
presented them to him, stammering that only those appointed by god had the authority to make the communion wafers. Gramma
snatched her wafers out of his hands and sat out the rest of Mass in the bathroom.

“What a big
dupa
,” she huffed, as we filed out to the car. “God need to find a better cook.”

We ate those wafers on the drive home, and they were light and subtle with a small flavor of cinnamon, followed by a kick
of licorice. We held the flavor against our tongues, closed our eyes, and swallowed these blessings not from god but from
our fat and sweaty grandmother.

“Ready?” a shaky voice said. I opened my eyes to my sister standing in front of me dressed all in black, as if in mourning.
I followed her out to the car.

“Laurel—,” I began, but she held up her hand.

“Don’t. Please. Just drive, okay?”

We waited silently through two intersections, and then we were there. It was a Thursday morning, a nothing day, temperatures
in the low teens, yet more than twenty protesters stood in the parking lot waving signs with pictures of screaming fetuses
and tiny fingers blown up to giant proportions.

Laurel blanched. I reached over and squeezed her hand. “We can do this,” I said, but my voice wavered. The protesters surged
toward the car.

“Save your baby, don’t kill your baby,” they chanted, their signs bobbing and swaying. A camera went off.

“Carla!” Laurel clutched my arm and I hesitated, my hand poised over the doorknob.

“One, two, three,” I counted, and then I opened the door. The crowd swarmed.

“Jesus wants your baby to live,” a fat woman cried. “He sent me here to help you.” Her breasts pressed against my chest. The
door to the clinic was only twenty-five feet away but it might as well have been another country. We were packed tight; we
couldn’t budge. Laurel’s knees buckled and she fell against me. I gritted my teeth and pushed hard.

“Move,” I yelled, as I flailed against the fat woman. She refused to budge. “Move, damn it!”

They packed tighter, an array of jackets and faces and hats, their breaths stinking of coffee and righteousness. Laurel’s
teeth chattered in my ear.

“Let us through,” I cried, pushing harder. “Let. Us. Through.”

“Pray to Jesus,” the fat woman continued. “Get down on your knees and pray—”

Her head snapped back.

“You heard her,” a female voice sang out, followed by a familiar snap of gum. “She totally said to get the hell out of the
way.”

“Stephanie?” I asked.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Richards,” she yelled, as she yanked the fat woman’s ponytail harder. “I’ll get you out of here in, like,
a minute.”

She was dressed in camouflage tights and skirt, an oversized army coat hanging almost to her ankles. She looked tough and
ridiculous as she tugged the woman by the hair toward the clinic door. The protesters parted like the Red Sea.

“Fucking freaks,” she muttered, expertly punching a man in the gut as he barreled down upon us. She leaned over and wiped
a strand of hair out of Laurel’s face. “A few more steps and we’ll totally be there.”

A moment later we were at the door. I placed my hand over the small of Laurel’s back, her spine pressing my palm.

I helped her through.

Sometimes my grandmother’s ghost visits me. This has happened twice before: on the night Jay-Jay was conceived and during
the worst of my labor, when I was wet with sweat and howling for god to please, please, please put me out of my misery. Instead
he sent my grandmother, who appeared before me in her faded red-and-blue-flowered dress, her stockings rolled down, the toes
of her shoes cut to give her bunions room to breathe. She held my palm and recited recipe ingredients: two cups of sugar,
a pinch of cinnamon, three egg whites. By the time Jay-Jay’s head appeared, I had been through half the cookbook. Today Gramma
appeared in the clinic bathroom, the one right off the waiting room filled with empty urine specimen cups and surplus paper
towels. I was drying my hands when I caught a glimpse of her in the mirror.

“Gramma?” I said. She had on a horrid green dress and sturdy Reebok sneakers, and she was fiddling with one of the specimen
cups. “What are you doing here?”

“
Ach
, it cold outside,” she said.

“Did you come to see Laurel?”

“Such a clever cup.” She lifted it toward her mouth and I reached over, snatched it before it hit her lips.

“These are urine sample cups,” I hissed, feeling as if I were talking to Jay-Jay when he was young. “You aren’t supposed to
drink out of them.”

“
Nie
, not Laurel,” was all she said, looking at me with her blue eyes, layers of sadness in the shadows, small flicks of hunger:
Polish eyes. “I come to see you.”

“Did it have to be in the bathroom?” Gramma never gave a hoot for privacy and used to pee in a plastic bowl if one of us was
using the bathroom when she needed it. She’d dump the contents in the toilet as soon as it was free, wash her hands, and store
the bowl beneath the kitchen sink. No one dared breathe a word of this to Mother.

“Once, when I still young, I lost my baby,” she said. “It so small, like a teeny fish.”

“I know,” I interrupted. “Mother told us.”

Gramma stared at me with her blue, blue eyes. “You know nothing,” she said. Her voice was surprisingly harsh. “Sit. There
not much time.”

I closed the toilet lid, plopped down, and folded my hands as if in church. I had the feeling that whatever came next wasn’t
going to be pleasant, and in a way I was right. In another, I was very, very wrong.

“After the war, we move to Podlaskie, before we live near Warsaw,” my grandmother began. “That is after I marry Dionizy.”
Gramma sighed. “I never love him, but what the so, eh?”

I glanced nervously at my watch. Leave it to Gramma to pick the worst possible time to tell her story. Growing up, she didn’t
talk much about Poland. It was over and done with, she used to say. Then she’d bake a strudel or cream puffs and spend all
day in the kitchen as if in penance. “I should check on Laurel,” I said. “She probably needs—”

“
Nie
, she waiting for them to jab her blood.”

“Blood work,” I corrected.

But Gramma ignored me and continued. “The Russians ain’t as bad as the Nazis. It hard to get meat but we do okay. Momma and
Poppa and Lizzie follow a couple of months later. It take all Poppa’s money to bring us all there.” She sighed again. “I not
sure why he don’t smuggle us from Poland. Maybe it too hard to leave. We there almost a year and there is a knock on the door
late,
ach,
June 15, 1941, I never forget that date.” She spit over the floor. “Soldiers come for Poppa and Dionizy. They say they only
need to ask question. Dionizy forget his hat. I still see it on the floor by the door. It brown and yellow. I still hate that
hat.”

Gramma stared at her hands. “That the last we see of them. Momma learn the next day they on the transport. She think we are
next so she send me and Lizzie to the country. ‘Watch your sister,’ she say. Lizzie is eight year younger. We stay with friend
of cousin. Momma get taken three days later. I don’t say this to Lizzie but she find out. One night she gone. ‘Left to find
Momma,’ she write and that is all. I never see her again.”

I squinted at Gramma as if seeing her for the first time. “But the Russians were on our side,” I said. “They were the good
guys.”

Gramma spit again. “
Kurwiec
. They want Poland for themselves, all of us out. I never see Poppa or Lizzie again. Momma make it to Siberia, I get some
letters, then nothing. Dionizy the only one who live. After he come back we have a baby, a little girl, she have yellow hair
like the dandelions. I name her after Momma. I am already in love with Manny then, he from far away but a good man. Maybe
the girl is his, I not know. She die four months old. Dionizy pry her from my arms when I sleep, I cannot give her up. As
soon as the war over, I leave and come here. I steal money from Dionizy’s store, get on the boat, leave. I have no reason
to stay.

“I get letter from Manny, ‘Meet me in Chicago.’ I go but he ain’t there. I stay months and he never show up. Maybe he get
lost or change his mind. A few while later I marry your grandpoppa.” Gramma sighs. “Too many girls die.”

“Maybe it’s a boy.” I knew right away she was talking about Laurel.

“No, it a girl,” Gramma said, placing her moist hand against the side of my face for a moment. “
Do widzenia
,” she said, and then she was gone.

“Jesus,” I whispered to myself as I washed my hands over and over, and then went back to the waiting room, where Stephanie
read magazines and Sandee, dressed in her Mexico in an Igloo uniform, checked messages on her cell. She had taken off the
early part of her shift to be with us.

“You look awful,” she said, handing me a cherry Life Saver. “Your face is damp and sweaty.”

“I’m fine.” I laughed harshly, then covered my mouth with my palm.

“Mrs. Richards.” Stephanie’s head popped up from the magazine. “Listen to this. Tobias Wolff, the writer? He says that he
sometimes rewrites a story five times.”

I popped a Life Saver into my mouth, the flavor flooding my tongue with memories of elementary school and the promise of recess.

“I’m thinking of applying to Stanford,” Stephanie continued. “It would be totally awesome to study with Tobias. He wouldn’t
have to like anything I wrote. Just knowing his bald head was in the same room as one of my stories would be enough.” She
snapped her gum happily.

I picked up an old
People
magazine. Reese Witherspoon stared back at me with her pretty hair and pointed chin. “We have to stop her,” I said. “She
can’t do this.”

“Well, that’s really not up to us,” Sandee began. “It’s her body, after all, and what she does with it is her choice.”

“But she’s my sister.”

“If I got pregnant my mom would be ecstatic,” Stephanie said. “One more person on our welfare check. Not that I’d raise it
in that house. I’d run away and, like, go into foster care.”

“But you’d have it?”

“Oh sure,” Stephanie said. “Why not?”

“What about college and Tobias Wolff?”

Stephanie shrugged. “He’d totally have to wait.”

“Thank you, Stephanie.” I set the magazine down.

No one stopped me as I walked down the back hallway and through the first door. A young girl sat on an exam table wearing
nothing but a pair of Scooby-Doo underpants.

“Sorry,” I said. She didn’t even look up. Three doors later, I found Laurel huddled against the back wall of an examination
room wearing an ugly pink hospital smock. When she saw me she let out a muffled sob.

“I couldn’t do it, Carly,” she sobbed, gripping my hand so tight I let out a little yelp. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I couldn’t
do it.”

I hugged her hard, spit running out of her mouth and across my shirt. “Sorry,” she cried over and over. “So, so sorry.”

“Let’s get you out of here,” I said.

“The doctor,” she began, but I gathered up her clothes and shoes and pushed her toward the door. “I need to sign—”

“You don’t need to sign anything.” My voice was harsh and deep, and Laurel looked at me in surprise. I pushed her down the
hall and into the waiting room.

“We’re leaving,” I said. Sandee and Stephanie dropped their magazines and rushed over.

“Cool top.” Stephanie yanked Laurel’s smock down over her back. “Can I borrow it sometime?”