Patti removes the composition book from the bottom of
a shoe box in her bedroom closet. She keeps this
particular homework away from her mother. It is a
semester-long assignment, not due until the last week of
seventh grade, the week before school lets out for the
summer; still five months away. Even the rough draft
isn’t due until after the spring parent-teacher
conference, so her mother will never see the diary Patti
hands in. Her father won’t, either. He never asks her
about school anymore, anyway. Besides, she isn’t
supposed to see him until the long weekend coming up,
and that’s only if her mother lets her.
So far, the diary is sixteen pages in her composition
book, both sides. It doesn’t have to be this long. Patti
knows as she rereads it that she will never let anyone
look at it, not as it is. The teacher said the assignment
would be fun. It isn’t. She said it’s “creative writing, so
use your imagination.” Patti uses her imagination, and
is creative, but it still isn’t fun.
It seemed a good idea, a creative idea:
the diary of Barbie and Ken’s daughter,
what her life is like as the daughter of a
famous couple. Patti decides to make the
Skipper doll, which was just introduced,
their daughter, and have her write this
diary. Patti knows Mattel introduced
Skipper as Barbie’s younger sister, but
Patti changes that for the diary.
Changing it is a creative thing to do.
intended to write all of it the way she
did. Now, she’s surprised she wrote so
many pages, so many personal pages.
She needs to reread the diary again. To
eliminate what no one else should see.
Her bedroom door is locked and, with a
pencil, she sits at her desk, crosses out
what she’s written, and starts over.
Week 1:
Their names are so recognized
around the country that even I
think of them as Barbie and Ken,
so that’s what I’ll call them in
this diary, except that as their
daughter I won’t, I mean, I’ll
allow myself to not include their
registered trademark. However, I
probably should, since
sometimes I think of them this
way, as products, not as regular
parents. In fact, at times it feels
quite strange to call them, or for
that matter, even think of them as
Mom and Dad. They hate when
we’re alone and I call them
Barbie and Ken. I’m not
supposed to do that when it’s just
us.
Patti repositions the three dolls sitting on
the desk in front of her. She seats
Skipper between Barbie and Ken, leans
them against the wall. Patti can see
Skipper looks uncomfortable between
her parents. She doesn’t seem to be
trying to sit closer to either one of them.
Patti notices her indifference, or, more
accurately, discomfort, being between
them.
If I had been Mattel I would
have done the exact same thing:
introduced me as Barbie’s little
sister. It’s okay for Barbie to
have a little sister; however, a
daughter, not okay.
The bosses at Mattel must have
been angry when Barbie got
pregnant. Tsk, tsk. I don’t think
Mattel ever explained in their
marketing exactly why her
“sister” lives with her.
They gloss over this odd arrangement.
We are simply another happy
family.
When her father left, Patti remembers,
her mother became restless. At night she
would take Patti for drives. Sometimes it
was late when they went. Her mother
always had a reason for the drive, even if
the reason was just to spend time
together. It was often after she sent Patti
to bed, after her mother sat in the living
room for a long time. Patti would get up
to use the bathroom, and see her mother
sitting on the couch in the dark, a glass
in her hand, the air hazy from a cigarette
smoldering in an ashtray. Those were the
nights her mother would later wake her,
and she often wanted to leave in a hurry
as though she’d just remembered
something important she needed to do.
She didn’t want to wait for Patti to put
on her boots. Sleepy, and in her slippers,
Patti crossed the crusted snow on the
driveway, cold slush wicking through the
soles.
Week 2:
Barbie and Ken aren’t together
much these days. Ken is often
with another doll he has met.
Barbie knows this, too. You
could not say that “the other” is
taller, or slimmer, or more
beautiful than Barbie. Barbie
and her look alike, except for
their hair color. Also, they dress
in different outfits. But their
similarity doesn’t seem to matter.
Ken is distracted by “the other.”
It’s good that I don’t refer to him
as my father in this diary. I don’t
recognize him as my father. It’s
obvious Barbie doesn’t either.
Neither of us knows what to
expect from him now.
Her mother wakes her for these drives
often. They don’t talk much in the car.
It’s like being alone. Her mother is
distracted so Patti thinks of things to say.
It is lonely. But, Patti figures at least they
are together, warm in the car, under the
street lights that make drifts of piled
snow glitter.
I have to pretend to not know
that it is Ken’s apartment she
wants to drive by, but I figured it
out when I realized Barbie
drives by the same building over
and over. And she always drives
slowly.
The night her mother drove too fast and
went through the red light, a police car
followed them. It kept following them.
Patti had always felt an added safety in
the presence of police; however, this
night it was different. The car drove
behind them, hanging back, staying at a
distance. Her mother kept checking the
rearview mirror. She turned, but so did
the police car. She circled around, went
back the way they had come, but so did
the police car. This was the night Patti
heard her mother say things she never
thought her mother would say, the night
Patti knew things had changed in a way
they could never change back.
She wakes me up. “We have to
go to the store,” she says, “to
get a carton of milk.”
“But we have milk,” I say.
“I meant,” she says, getting
angry,“let’s go to the store for
ice cream.”
Sure, I think, okay, an emergency
ice-cream run. But I soon realize
what Barbie wants is to drive by
an apartment Ken has now rented,
that’s why we go for
night drives.
I look for a sign on the building,
and there is one. Wayside
Apartments, it says. Vacancy.
Month by month. There is a
phone number.
Barbie drives by the parking lot,
by a car that looks like Ken’s red
Rambler. She stares. That’s when
I understand this is his place
now.
The building is large. I wonder
which of the little windows, lit up
behind closed shades, is his. I
can’t tell which windows Barbie
looks at, because there are so
many. It reminds me of “Let’s
Make A Deal,” with Monty Hall,
door #1, 2, or 3. I don’t know
which door is correct.
Patti knows she is, again, off to a bad
start with the diary. She can’t have in it
what she’s written for Skipper. She can’t
turn the composition book in to her
teacher as it is. Patti hears her mother in
the living room. Before Patti takes it out
to reread and edit, to eliminate and
change all the things she can’t say, she
gets up to recheck the lock on her
bedroom door. She wishes the lock
wasn’t so easy to pick; requiring no more
than a bobby-pin. She wishes it required
a key.
She rereads, but she can’t bring herself,
at least not yet, to take out what she has
written. She thinks maybe she will
continue to write Skipper’s story, a story
that tells a truth, and just never hand it
in.
Week 3:
“Skipper, wake up,” I hear
Barbie say, “Let’s get ice cream.”
We drive past Ken’s
building.
I pretend to not notice where we
have driven to, and that she
drives the same streets every
night. Eventually, I sleep. I wake
when she nudges me in our
driveway. The next day after
school I check the freezer and we
do not have ice cream, though
getting ice cream is often the
pretense for our drives. I don’t
say anything. We never have it,
and I never say anything.
A full week goes by before
Barbie acknowledges to me that
Ken has a small apartment. I
don’t tell her that I already knew
this.
Patti can tell by the sound of heavy steps
that her mother has moved into the
kitchen. There is the sound of a cast iron
pan laid heavily on a burner. Her mother
bangs a cupboard closed, then another,
and Patti thinks she better put the diary
away. She’ll wait until her mother sits in
the living room before she takes it out
again.
She tells me Ken’s apartment has
nothing, only a bath, a fridge, a
hotplate, a black and white
television, a shabby couch, and a
closet for a bedroom. She says,
“It’s what he deserves.” She
says, “Serves him right.”
I wonder what it looks like
inside, this home with nothing. I
wonder if I could visit him, and
spend a night, sleep on the
shabby couch.
I want to ask if his apartment
has a telephone, but I know I
can’t ask her this.
Along with knowing where Ken’s
place is, Barbie also knows
where “the other” lives. I didn’t
know this until yesterday when
Barbie slowed down as she
passed a blue ranch house three
times. I realize now she is
checking if Ken’s car is there.
When his car is there and the
lights in the house are on, she
drives by, staring into the house
as best she can. When the lights are
off, she circles the block
many times, not paying attention
to the road. It makes me wish she
would just pull over in front of
the blue ranch and wait there
to see what-ever it is she is waiting
to see.
When Barbie is looking at the
blue house of the other, she says
absentmindedly, “Watch the
road for a minute.” I’m glad it’s
late at night and there are no
other cars. Still, it should be her
that watches the road. Not me.
We should not be in the car. We
should be at home, at our house,
with Ken.
It’s on a February night that Patti is woken by the sound
of the front door being opened. Outside her bedroom
window, through the fabric of the curtain, she sees a
light in front of the house. Out of bed, she peers through
the slit where the ruffles of the drawn curtains don’t
overlap. She sees her mother backing out of the
driveway, only her taillights on.
Once she is past the house, the headlights go on. It’s 4
a.m. The street is quiet and still. The snow falls slowly
as though it, too, is trying not to wake anyone. Patti
follows her mother’s taillights as they fade down the
road, into the falling snow, and when they are gone,
Patti, for the first time, realizes she’s alone now in a
different way. She looks around at her room. She sits on
the floor and leans against the door. She cannot fall
back asleep.
The following afternoon, Patti is lying on her bed,
reading through the diary. Her mother is in the other
room. She has woken up and is getting ready for work.
She’d tried a few jobs, but a month ago she started as a
cocktail waitress. On the white collar of her black
slim-fitting dress with the sheer mini white apron tied
tight around her waist, she wears a name tag that reads
“Joan at your service.”
Her mother says she makes the most money in this job
and sometimes it’s fun. Patti wishes she could go with
her on Friday and Saturday nights when her mother
works late. Her mother says, “It’s no place for a girl,”
which only makes Patti wonder why.
Three weeks ago Patti turned twelve years old and,
as of this week, her mother says she no longer needs a
babysitter. When it’s dark, or quiet, or windy or there is
a storm, Patti wishes she was still eleven, when she still
needed a babysitter. This embarrasses her.
“Maybe the sitter could come just on weekends,” she
says to her mother. “We could make popcorn and watch
a movie or something.”
“Does Patti need her babysitter?” Her mother teases in
a voice of exaggerated pity. Patti laughs with her
mother, and doesn’t ask again. However, Patti knows
alone at home is no place for a girl, either.
Patti’s friend invites her over to spend the night. That
afternoon, when the friend’s mother drives to the house
to pick Patti up she comes to the door. “I want to say hi
to Joan,” the other mother says. “Patti, can you tell your
mom I’m here?”
Patti has no choice but to explain that her mother is at
work.
“I can call her later,” the other mother says, “what time
does she get off?” The mother is waiting.
“She has to work until three tonight.” Patti looks away
at her bag on the floor, then glances at the mother.
The mother is looking at her. Her expression has
changed. “What time does she usually work until?”
There is no way to avoid answering, though Patti would
prefer not to. Again, Patti must say, “Three.”
“Who usually stays with you?”
To this, there is nothing Patti can say.
After this, the other mother invites Patti to sleep over
every Friday and Saturday. She calls the mothers of
other girls to do the same. Patti likes this new
arrangement. Her weekends are better now.
Her mother says the other mothers are questioning her
judgment, or feeling sorry for her. “An insult either
way,” she says.
Patti tells her it isn’t. She says it’s just them being nice.
“And we have fun!” she tells her mother. “It’s not
scary.” Patti realizes as the words slip from her lips that
saying this was a mistake. Her mother tells her it isn’t
good for her to be a scaredy-cat. She says it’s high time
she acted her age. Patti doesn’t know what high time
means.
It has been two weeks since her mother stopped
letting her go to her friends to sleep over.
Patti doesn’t understand this. She doesn’t understand
her mother. She doesn’t want to.
When alone at night, if she's afraid, she turns off
the lights in the house. She sits on the floor in
her bedroom and leans against her locked door.
When her thoughts get cluttered and hazy she
gets up from against her door, and slips into her
bed. This is often, now, the only way she is able
to fall asleep, but this sleep is on and off. She
wakes when she hears her mother put her key in
the front door, and only when she knows her
mother is in the house does she sleep through
until morning.
Patti knows she cannot let her mother see anything
she has written, but when she returns from school
the next day, her bedroom door is wide open. With
her books still in her arms, Patti rushes to her room.
Her closet door is open, but she sees the shoebox is
undisturbed; the same stuffed animals she’d left
piled on top of it still stand guard. She tries to
remember, but she can’t remember if she had even
shut her closet door that morning when she’d rushed
for the bus. After nights with little sleep she is
groggy in the morning.
The night the power goes out, she is in the kitchen
stirring Nestlé Quik into her milk. The house suddenly
goes dark and still. When the lights go off, so too, does
the fan of the furnace and hum of the refrigerator.
Everything turns off in unison, mid-breath, and it is
eerily silent. She hears the faint tapping of rain. The
wind picks up and the tapping gets louder. Patti wants
to be in her room. Her mother told her to call only in an
emergency. Patti doesn’t know if this is an emergency.
Branches that dangle from the weeping birch brush
against windows. Patti finds her way to the front
closet. She puts on her coat and boots in case she
has to run somewhere, to some neighbor maybe. But
Patti doesn’t know to whom she would go. In her
room, she sits on the floor at the foot of her door.
Rain has begun to pummel the roof, and the house
trembles with thunder. It’s when a strike of lightning
lashes across the sky with a piercing roll of thunder
that Patti scurries under her bed. She will not get
into her bed tonight. She’ll stay under it until her
mother comes home.
Week 4:
Barbie is so stupid. I hate her.
Ken is stupid, too. I don’t call
them Mom and Dad because I
would never even admit to
anyone that they are my mother
and my father.
* * *
The next thing she is aware of is a calm that is quiet
and still. Everything feels soft around her. She
opens her eyes. The pale blue of dawn has colored
her walls and she is in her bed, under her covers.
Her coat is folded on top of her boots by her door. A
stuffed owl, once her favorite, is tucked into the
crook of her arm, and somehow, her pillow has the
Chanel fragrance of her mother. Patti doesn’t know
why she tears up, but she pushes her face into the
pillow to muffle the sounds of sobs she can’t help
making.
On Friday after school, her mother takes her out to
Aunt Elża’s for the weekend. She’s not Patti’s real
aunt, but her mother’s best friend, who Patti’s
always called her aunt. Her mother doesn’t offer to
explain how this change came about; she only looks
over at Patti with a thoughtful smile. When Patti
asks, her mother says only that she thought it would
be nice for both of them. “Aunt Elźa likes to stay
home on weekends anyway, so this worked out.”
The first thing Patti packs in her overnight bag is the
diary. Not to write in it, but to protect it. She cannot
have her mother find what she’s written. She wishes she
had a diary with a key like other girls.
When they pull into Aunt Elźa’s driveway, her mother
turns off the ignition but goes into Aunt Elźa’s for only
a few minutes. Her mother and Aunt Elźa hug, and Patti
hears them speak to each other in hushed tones. They
pull slightly apart and Patti can hear Aunt Elźa’s voice
has the tenderness of a consoling murmur. “Joan,” she
says, and Aunt Elźa hugs her mother once more, as
though apologizing for everything that can go wrong.
Her mother moves over to Patti and tells her she will
come for her on Sunday as soon as she wakes. She hugs
Patti for what seems like too long. “This is so strange,”
her mother says to her.
Her mother smiles but she does not seem happy. She
tells Patti she has to leave to get back for work on time,
but Patti can tell she doesn’t want to go, that her mother
is now doing what she has to. When Aunt Elźa and Patti
wave from the porch, her mother looks away, and it’s in
standing there watching her mother back out that
Patti knows she packed the diary also to protect her
mother.
Patti and Aunt Elźa eat dinners together on TV trays in
front of variety shows. It’s like a slumber party.
Saturday, Aunt Elźa asks her if she wants to make
butterscotch pudding. It becomes Patti’s favorite flavor.
Patti’s mother picks her up on Sunday, and when she
asks her how it was, Patti, who has become accustomed
to watching the road, starts telling her mother all that
they did together, but when she glances over she can see
her mother doesn’t want to hear anymore.
Week 5
I want to write in my diary,
but I have nothing to say.
I feel bad saying I hate her.
I don’t, but I wish everything
wasn’t so screwed up.
I think all the kids at school
know Ken isn’t living with us.
I see girls whisper to each other,
then glance at me, then whisper
again.
The next Friday she drives Patti there again. This time
they stop at the supermarket before arriving and buy ice
cream to bring, her mother says, so they can have
something other than pudding.
The spare room at Aunt Elźa’s has a yellow bedspread
and yellow drapes. There are new slippers on the floor
which Aunt Elźa bought Patti to keep there, since the
prior weekend she forgot to bring hers. Patti likes this
pair better than the ones she has at home. She does not
tell her mother this..
Patti starts spending every weekend at Aunt Elźa’s. It is
her favorite part of the week. On school nights, she
talks to her father on the phone, and he has picked her
up for a couple of hours a few times. He mostly asks
her about her mother. Once, he did ask about school,
but Patti couldn’t tell if he was asking because he really
wanted to know, or if he was trying to think of things to
talk about.
Patti doesn’t want him to ask her to go to his apartment
for a weekend. She doesn’t know what she would do
there. And when she’s invited to sleep at a friend’s, she
declines. At Aunt Elźa’s, they cook something new each
weekend: popcorn balls, fruited Jell-O,
pigs-in-a-blanket. They make ice cream; Patti didn’t
know you could make ice cream.
Patti brings an extra pair of pajamas to her aunt’s to go
with the slippers. She pushes them under her pillow
when she leaves for the week, as though marking her
place. Sometimes, when she gets back she finds them
washed and folded under her pillow.
Week 6:
Barbie and Ken are not able to
work things out. It’s okay,
though. I think about being
adopted or in foster care with
another family, or actually,
maybe with an older sister, a
real one, but I don’t have a real
older sister. Barbie is not my
real older sister. I don’t have
one, so instead now I stay with
my aunt.
They have long talks, especially on Saturdays. Aunt
Elźa is upfront.
“Your parents are speaking to each other,” she tells
Patti. “On weekends they talk.”
“About what?” Patti asks, but she is not sure she
wants to know.
“About everything,” Aunt Elźa says, moving stray
strands of Patti’s hair from her eyes. “They are
trying to make things better.”
Patti is not sure how she feels. She knows she should
want her parents to do this; it has been a while since her
father left, but Patti likes how things are now. She
cannot tell her mother this. She is not even sure she can
tell Aunt Elźa this.
Week 6 rewrite:
Barbie and Ken do work things
out. Sadly though, when they are
driving in their new convertible
they have a bad accident. They
may die. They need to spend a
long time in the hospital and I
am to stay with my aunt. My
aunt takes me to see them, and
neither of them recognizes me.
That’s when, at the hospital, my
aunt puts her arm around me.
She says not to be shocked, or
stunned, or upset; I am not.
“When will they be done talking?” she asks.
“It might take awhile.” When Aunt Elźa says this,
Patti can’t decide whether she should act like she
wishes her parents would work things out soon, or if
she should show she wants things to remain as they
are, so Aunt Elźa will understand Patti likes being at
her house, likes being with her. It’s something Patti
wants to tell her, something she wants Aunt Elźa to
know, but Patti simply listens.
When her aunt goes out to garden her early spring
bulbs, or sits on the couch to read, is often when
Patti goes to the bedroom and takes out the diary.
* * *
One of Patti’s last Sunday mornings there, her mother
arrived excited and eager to pick her up. She got there
early but was immediately ready to leave. When Patti
came out of the bathroom, her mother had Patti’s
overnight bag in her arms. She’d gone into the bedroom
and packed it. Patti took the bag and looked inside. Her
mother had her slippers in it, but, thankfully, must not
have looked under the pillow; the composition book
wasn’t in the bag.
In that moment, distracted with relief, Patti didn’t stop
her mother from taking the bag to the front
door, where her mother stood with her hand on the
knob.
“Wait,” Patti said. She needed to tell her mother she had
to get something from the bedroom, but, she knew, if
she brought out her composition book now, her mother
would want to see it. Her mother always wanted to be
included in everything at Aunt Elźa’s house. Patti tried
to think of some other reason to go to the bedroom, and
tried to think how she could get the composition book
home.
“I want to get my pajamas,” Patti thought to say.
“Leave them here,” her mother said. “You can still
come back next weekend.” Then she stepped outside,
pleased with herself. “Let’s go, Patti. I have a surprise
for you.” With reluctance and hesitation, Patti shuffled
toward the door and toward her mother.
That next weekend would be the last Patti would
spend at Aunt Elźa’s, and she was only to go at all
because her parents were going away together “so
they could start over right.” When they dropped her
off at her aunt’s, Patti went straight to the yellow
room and lifted the pillow. The diary was still
underneath where she had left it, and the pajamas
were pushed under the pillow.
Aunt Elźa has never told her whether she found
the diary that week and if she read it. However,
after that last weekend at the house, Aunt Elźa
and Patti had a different relationship, one that
resonated with the hushed tones and trusted
murmurs of old friends.
The doctor tells us some patients
with amnesia never fully regain
recognition. Oddly though,
Barbie and Ken recognize each
other. I wonder if this is because
images of them together have
been plastered everywhere for so
long. Maybe they don’t recognize
each other at all really, maybe
they just recognize a famous
image. Maybe that’s all they’ll
ever recognize.
Sharon Toczyska Gusky received her MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars and has been a Fiction Contributor at Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Her work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review. She divides her time between Wisconsin and Philadelphia.
Photo credit: Tirachard Kumtanom