I had lunch with one of my old dolls last week. The lunch was my mother’s idea. A few days earlier, my mother had spotted the doll straddling the rafters in my parents’ garage, staring suicidally at the grease spots on the cement below. She’d clawed her way out of a storage box. My mom talked her down, gave her a cup of tea, and told her that she could stay in the spare room until she got on her feet. She had those molded tippy-toe feet that require high heels all the time and she always needed some sort of support to stand up by herself.

The doll looked awful. Both of her eyelids were stuck half-closed even though she was sitting up straight. She had to tilt her head back to look at me. What was left of her hair bushed out in frizzy clumps. There was a row of unsightly holes along her forehead where the hair plugs had fallen out. One of her cheeks was dimpled and smudged with dirt.

My mom drove the doll to the restaurant to meet with me and told us she’d be back in an hour. Before she left, my mom took me aside. “Darling,” my mother patted me on the arm, “try to be sensitive for a change. She needs to know why you never loved her. She’s been obsessing over being rejected for thirty years.”

The waiter had to bring a booster seat and two telephone books. When my doll reached for the menu, she slid down under the table.

“So,” I said as I picked her up and put her back on the booster seat, “what are you calling yourself these days?” I didn’t want her to know that I had forgotten her name.

“Well, as you may recall your mother always called me Suzie,” she said. She was embarrassed about falling. One of her legs had twisted back behind her head. “I’m going for a more sophisticated image now. You may call me Suzanne.”

I had some difficulty repositioning her so that she could sit up straight. She smelled like car exhaust from being in the garage for years and her dress was soft with dust.

“Well, great, Suzanne,” I said, sitting back down. I cleared my throat and eyeballed the room for the waiter.

“Your mother…” Suzanne paused for effect, “your mother has been very kind. She was always that. Kind.” One big tear appeared and stuck to her eyelashes, dragging her eye completely shut.

“Well, that’s really a matter of opinion,” I said. I turned around in my chair. Where was that waiter?

“You never liked me, did you?” she sniffled. “You never made me feel wanted.”

“I was just a little kid. You know how little kids are.” I opened the menu.

“You wanted a Barbie. Oh, don’t try to tell me different.” She waved her arms around wildly and nearly lost her balance again.                     “I know all about it. I was there.”

“Well, I did specifically ask for a Barbie,” I said. And I had.                I was nine years old and I wanted a Barbie for Christmas. All of my friends had Barbies, even my little friends, girls two, three, four years younger than I was.

I made a Christmas list. Barbie was the only item. That was it. One thing. I wanted just Barbie in her black-and-white-striped one-piece bathing suit, her long blonde ponytail, big pointy breasts, and spiky black high heels. I gave my list to my mom. I gave a copy to my dad on the off chance he might do some Christmas shopping on his own. I sat on Santa’s lap and had a picture taken with my two little brothers even though I knew the Santa scoop. I didn’t want to take any chances.

“I couldn’t have been more clear,” I said to Suzanne, who was dabbing her eyes with a napkin relatively the size of a king-size sheet. The waiter finally appeared at the table. “Um, do you know what you want?” I asked Suzanne.

“If you have the soup, I can eat your crackers,” she said. “And a packet of sugar, please.”

It was too warm for soup but I didn’t want her to start crying again I nodded at the waiter.

On that Christmas morning my brothers woke me sometime before three. Even though it was strictly forbidden, we snuck downstairs to sort and shake packages. Barbie was there; I could tell by the shape and feel of one of the boxes. The size was right and there was the distinctive rattle of a cellophane window when I squeezed. If I pressed hard enough, I could even make out the hard tip of a nose under the wrapping. I set it back under the tree in a prominent place at the edge of all the presents and went back to bed, leaving my brothers to pick at the scotch tape and mutilate the ribbons.
The soup was lukewarm and too spicy. Suzanne nibbled at a cracker stick the size of a fireplace log. “I’ll never forget when we first met,” Suzanne said, spilling crumbs down the front of her dress. “I knew immediately that something was wrong.”

I had waited patiently for my package. Now that I knew for certain Barbie was there, I could wait. I opened a pair of slippers, a book from my uncle, day-of-the-week underwear, white socks, an umbrella. I opened each present slowly, maturely, while my little brothers tore into their packages like piranha ripping flesh from a side of beef. I sat serenely in the center of the room, shreds of wrapping paper and bits of cardboard boxes floating down like confetti around me.

And then the package was in my hand. I acted nonchalant. “I bet you can’t guess what that is,” my mother said.

“What?” I said, feigning innocence. “I really have no idea.” I slid my finger under the tape on one end. I carefully folded back a flap of paper. “Absolutely no clue.” Slowly, oh so slowly, I ripped the paper straight down the middle of the box. “Why, it’s a…a…an eleven-inch fashion doll.” That’s what was written on the box. Not Barbie, not even Barbie’s little sister Midge, nothing but “eleven-inch fashion doll.”

Compared to Barbie, with her anorexic hips and cleaver-sharp facial features, the doll looking out at me from behind the cellophane was fat. She had a sour expression on her face like she had just sucked on a lemon. Her mousy brown hair was molded into hard wave-like ridges. She was wearing, of all things, a housecoat and fuzzy slippers.

“I know you asked for a Barbie,” my mother said. “But this doll is better than a Barbie.”

I looked at the doll, and then at my mom, and then back at the doll again. The doll looked exactly like my mom had looked before she lost thirty pounds, bleached her hair blonde, and cycloned it up into a beehive. This doll was my mom in her wedding picture.

“The look on your face,” Suzanne sighed, gnawing on her cracker.

“I thought it was a joke,” I said.

It had to be a joke. My real present was hidden someplace. There was no other explanation. The next few minutes were critical. If I whined or acted at all disappointed, I would look pretty darn bad when my mom whisked the real Barbie out of hiding.

My dad hollered from across the room. “Hey,” he said, “what’s that you got there? Is that a Barbie?”

I grimaced a smile back at him. “No, Dad, it’s better than a Barbie.”

My dad seemed confused. Apparently he was not in on the joke. “I thought you wanted a Barbie.”

I looked back at my mom. “What exactly is better about it?”

She glanced over at my little brothers. They were using their new boxing gloves to knock ornaments off the tree. She cupped her hand over her mouth and whispered out the side, “You don’t really want a Barbie. Besides, Mrs. Claus thought the price was better.”

For a moment I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me and then I remembered that this was a joke. I laughed. My mother laughed. My dad, still looking confused, laughed. I didn’t even bother to take the doll out of the box.

I helped my parents clean up the wrapping paper. I set the breakfast table without being asked. After breakfast, I cleared the plates, loaded the dishwasher, and wiped down the counter tops.

Every time my mom moved, I held my breath. When she got up and walked down the hall to her bedroom, I followed after her.

“Aren’t you going to get dressed?” my mom asked. “Go get dressed.” She closed her bedroom door.

I threw on some clothes and hovered by the door waiting for her to come out. One of my brothers tried to engage me in a boxing match but I gave him an Indian burn and he left me alone.

My mom finally came out of her room, empty-handed. “If you’re looking for something to do,” she said, “you can put away your gifts.”

Suzanne was tearing at a package of sugar with her teeth.

“I didn’t give up the notion that you were a joke or a test or whatever until it was time to go to bed that night.” I opened the sugar for her. “I made quite a scene.”

“I know,” Suzanne said. “I never got over it.”

“Sorry.”

Suzanne stuck her arm down into the sugar packet and pulled out a few jewel-like granules. “And so you got your Barbie.”

Christmas night my mom and dad had a fight behind their closed bedroom door. I could hear them yelling. My dad went out and bought a Barbie the next day.

“Your mother was right, you know. I was a wholesome alternative to Barbie and an incredible bargain, to boot. When you completed the enclosed card and mailed it, along with proof of purchase, to the manufacturer, you received an entire coordinated fashion ensemble sent direct to your house every month for twelve full months.”

As regular as clockwork, my mother left those packages on my nightstand. I ignored them. After a few days, my mother would fish Suzie out from under the bed or retrieve her from the bottom of my dirty clothes hamper and dress her in the new outfit; in January an ice-skating skirt with matching earmuffs, in February a crisp white dress covered in red hearts, and so on through the year. My mother would pose Suzie complete with hats and gloves on the edge of my dresser. Meanwhile, I pulled skin-tight toreador pants and a busty sweater onto Barbie so she could go on a car date with my girlfriend’s Ken doll. Barbie and Ken sat with their arms around each other on my pink throw rug, looking up at Suzie and smirking.

“I haven’t seen Barbie for years. Of course, she wasn’t packed into a box and stuck up in the garage for several decades.” Suzanne sucked on a grain of sugar. “Whatever became of her?”

“I saved her. Kept her in the box she came in. I saved her for my own little girl.”

Tears welled up in Suzanne’s eyes. “Of course,” she said.

“I gave her to my daughter for her seventh birthday,” I said. “I made quite a ceremony out of it. I thought she’d want a Barbie as much as I had wanted one.”

“And you all lived happily ever after,” Suzanne said.

“Actually, my daughter shaved Barbie’s head and then colored her scalp purple with a magic marker. Oh, and she drew an enormous spider tattoo on her back.” The waiter brought our check and politely averted his eyes when he spotted the pile of cracker crumbs and sugar on Suzanne’s lap. “Now her head’s gone. It’s been missing for at least six months. We think the dog might have taken it outside and buried it.”

Suzanne’s face turned white.

I left a ten on the table and walked Suzanne outside. “I’d like to make things up to you,” I said. “You’re more than welcome to stay with us. I couldn’t give you your own room but you could bunk with my daughter. I’m sure she’d be thrilled.”

Suzanne patted her hair and her hand trembled a little.

My mom was sitting in her car waiting for us. “How was lunch?” she asked.

“Great,” I said. I helped Suzanne into the car and buckled her seat belt. “Bye, Suzanne,” I said, swinging the door shut. I rapped on the window until Suzanne opened it a crack. “I meant what I said about you staying with us.”

My mother patted Suzanne’s hand. “Don’t you worry about a thing. I’ve made an appointment to get your hair replaced and I think some Borax will take care of the discoloration on your face. I’ve washed and ironed all your little outfits.”

“And we’ll play every day?” Suzanne asked my mom.

“Oh, you don’t really want that,” my mother said. “I’m going to wrap you and the clothes up nice and tight in cellophane. I’ve bought a moth-proof box to store you in. You’ll be cozy and safe and, who knows, in twenty or thirty more years, you might be quite the collectors’ item.”

Suzanne was still for a long moment and she turned to me. “Do you still have that dog?” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“And your daughter?”

“She still has her markers.”

Suzanne tipped her head back so she could see me better. Her eyes were filled with something that I can only describe as hunger.

“Will your daughter play with me?” she whispered.

“You could call it playing,” I said.

Suzanne disappeared from my mother’s house that night. There was a crop circle of dotted footprints in the dirt under the bedroom window where she must have practiced walking. Then the footprints, and a deep grove that could have been made by dragging a Ziplock bag of tiny clothes, led out to the main road.

Recently one of my brothers said he spotted her smoking a cigarette behind The Wicked Eye, a strip club downtown. She was wearing a ratty silk kimono and she had bleached her hair an alarming shade of red. My brother said he scarcely would have recognized her, except for the fact that she was the only exotic dancer he’d ever seen who was only a foot high. “That can’t really be what she wants,” my mother fumed when I told her. But I don’t know about that. I can see her onstage in front of an attentive audience, donning, and taking off, her calendar of outfits, one by one, January, February, March. Maybe she is finally happy. Maybe this is all she ever wanted.

L.L. Babb (CA) has published work in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Carquinez Review, and The Bohemian.