Two Fictions

Haircut

Today I am cutting my doll’s yellow hair. Her name is Suzette and she has a painted-on mouth and green eyes that open and close when you shake her. I dress her in different outfits depending on the day—on Saturdays, a red ruffled dress with buttons down the front; a blue bathing suit for swimming in bubbles on Tuesdays; and on Thursdays, a tutu and a halter-top made out of colorful beads that look like candy.

When I stand Suzette up tall in front of me, place her hard feet on the shoebox I’ve turned into a stage, her eyes stay open and unblinking, and when I lay her down on my bed, Suzette’s eyes close up like the petals of our tulips when the sun goes down. Her black lashes are so long they reach the under-eye hollows of her plastic face and I can’t help but lean down to kiss their softness.

I pick up the kitchen scissors, the same dull ones my mother uses to stab open bags of frozen vegetables. Suzette says she likes her hair how it is, long and heavy against her shoulders, but I don’t care anymore what she likes.

I shake Suzette when I hear my brother getting spanked in his bedroom down the hall.

We listen to my brother’s cries and cross our fingers in hopes that the spanking won’t last longer than it takes for me to sing the song about Mary and her lamb. Suzette cries, too, only you can’t hear her unless you get up close to her painted-on mouth, her little pursed lips that shine like rubies in the right light.

I cut close to her skull, watch the yellow clumps collect on my sea creature bedspread.

I am comforted by the feel of the scissors’ rusty blades cutting through the weight.

Soon, I know, my brother’s cries will stop and his bedroom will go silent.

I smooth my hands over Suzette’s hairless head and dress her in a gold gown and rhinestone shoes. I set the shoebox stage with fake flowers and green plastic men with parachutes on their backs.

I wait for the small sound of my brother’s knock on the door, the look on his face when he feels me pulling him in for a hug, my hands touching his yellow hair.

Top of the Hill

We played in dirt that turned into mud when the rains came.

My brother had a blue bucket, a shovel, and a dump truck cracked down the middle. I had a sterling silver fork I stole from the kitchen drawer. He filled his truck with grass and rocks and used his hand to drive it up the hill of dirt. He rolled the truck over the bumps in the hill, pressing his hand down hard on the plastic so that the wheels creaked, and crashed it into a tree. The truck landed on its side in a cloud of dirt.

We were surrounded by trees too tall even for the stray cats to climb.

We called down to our mother, but she couldn’t hear us from inside the yellow house.

We’d forgotten to bring the sticky buns she’d wrapped in tin foil for us.

“I’m hungry,” my brother said, but there was no turning back once we made it to the top of the hill.

I poked and stabbed at the dirt with my fork. I scooped some up and pretended to eat it. I said it was chocolate cake and told my brother to try a bite.

He opened his mouth; his teeth looked strong as stones. His nose was running and his face was pink where the wind kept hitting it. He chewed and swallowed and smiled, showing me the grit in his teeth. His eyes filled up with water, but he wouldn’t let himself cry. He called me a good cook and promised not to tell our mother about the fork.

When it finally started to rain, I kicked off my sneakers and flung them up at the gray metal sky, hoping to hit a cloud. I pulled off my brother’s boots so we could both be barefoot. We dug our feet deep into the black mud and opened our mouths wide to let the rainwater fill us up.

“My foot is a fish,” my brother said, and I could feel his toes swimming over mine underneath the mud. He put the bucket on his head like a hat and we listened to the rain pound against the plastic.

In the distance, our house looked like my doll Suzette’s house—too small to fit us and our stuff inside it.

I couldn’t find the green curtains that kept out the cold or the front door painted red like an apple.

I couldn’t find the chimney with its breath of smoke or the wooden horse on the porch that rocked us back and forth.

I couldn’t find the window we liked to fog up with our breath with our mother on the other side of the glass looking out.

I couldn’t find my brother’s face.

“I’m here,” he said, and I felt his breath hot against my arm.

I wiped his nose on the sleeve of my sweatshirt and fed him a piece of candy I found at the bottom of my pocket. We sat at the top of the hill with our shoulders touching and watched the wind whip the candy wrapper around in circles before taking it to a place where our eyes could no longer see.