Teeth_ Vampire Tales - Ellen Datlow [84]
Oh, Andy, I always say; Andy’s like a mom or something. Calm down, it’s only gravity, only six floors up, but still, if you fell, you’d be a plate of Rob’s Tuesday-night special, all bones and red sauce; smush, gross, right? But I love doing it. You can feel the wind rush up between the buildings like invisible water, stealing your breath, filling you right up to the top. It’s so weird, and so choice. . . . Like the feeling I always got from you, Baby.
It’s kind of funny that I never called you anything else, just Baby, funny that I even found you, up there in Grammy’s storage space, or crawl space, or whatever it’s called when it’s not really an attic but it’s just big enough to stand up in. Boxes were piled everywhere, but mostly all I’d found were old china cup and saucer sets, and a bunch of games with missing pieces—Stratego, and Monopoly, and Clue; I already had Clue at home, I used to totally love Clue, even though I cheated when I played, sometimes. Well, all the time. I wanted to win. There were boxes and boxes of Grampy’s old books, doctor books, one was called Surgical Procedures and Facial Deformities and believe me, you did not want to look at that. I flipped it open on one picture where this guy’s mouth was all grown sideways, and his eyes—his eye . . . Anyway. After that I stayed away from the boxes of books.
And then I found you, Baby, stuffed down in a big box of clothes, chiffon scarves and unraveling lace, the cut-down skirts of fancy dresses, and old shirts like army uniforms, with steel buttons and appliqués. At the bottom of the box were all kinds of shoes, spike heels, and a couple of satin evening bags with broken clasps. At first I thought you were a kind of purse, too, or a bag, all small and yellow and leathery. But then I turned you over, and I saw that you had a face.
Right away I liked touching you, your slick wrinkled skin, weird old-timey doll with bulgy glass eyes—they looked like glass—and a little red mouth, and fingers that could open and close; the first time you did that, fastened on me like that, it kind of flipped me out, but then I saw I could make you do it if I wanted to. And then I wanted to.
I played with you for a long time that first day, finding out what you could do, until Mommy came and bitched me out for being “missing.” How big was Grammy’s house? Not very, Mommy was just mad that she had to be there at all, even once a year was too much. Mommy and Grammy never really got along. Speak English, Mommy used to yell at her. This is Ohio!
So when she yelled at me I wasn’t surprised: What are you doing up here? with the door open and the afternoon light behind her, like a witch peering into a playhouse; I was surprised at how dark it was in there, I could see your face perfectly fine. I knew to hide you, Baby, even though I didn’t know why, I stuck you in the folds of one of the evening skirts and I’m just playing dress-up, I said, but Mommy got mad at that, too: Stay out of that stuff, all her Nazi dance-hall stuff, it’s all moth-eaten and disgusting. And anyway come on, we’re leaving now.
Can I take these? I said, pointing to the board games, I threw the games away when I got you home. You slept with me that first night, didn’t you? You got under the blanket, and fastened on. . . . It was the first time I really had it, that feeling, like when you spin yourself around to get dizzy, or when you’re just about to be drunk, but a hundred times sweeter, like riding an invisible wave. I could see into things when you did that, see into the sky, into myself, watch my own heartbeat. It was so choice.
It’s funny, too, because I never liked baby dolls, or dolls of any kind. Grammy bought me, like, a million Barbies, but I don’t think I ever played with any of them, or the Madame Maurice dolls that anyway aren’t meant to be played with, Mommy ended up selling those on eBay. But you were different. It wasn’t like we were playing, I wasn’t the mommy and you weren’t the baby, I didn’t have to dress you up,