Dollhouses

Look Sweetheart, A Dollhouse 3

A colored pencil sketch:  A high school sports field in the very early morning. A group of girls in purple and green uniforms run practice drills through florescent orange cones, the pale sky behind them a whitish blue with pink-rimmed clouds offsetting their hectic activity.  The coach, a short-haired, beefy woman in a grey tracksuit, black whistle dangling on a cord around her neck, shouts intermittent orders or encouragement from a short distance away.  

The Daughter sits on the edge of the field in a bulky jacket and sketches the scene onto the top sheet of a pad of thick, heavy paper that makes a satisfying pop when she runs her thumb along the corner edges. It's almost autumn and the air is crisp and frosty, teasing tones, shadows and shapes out that can't be seen in the later, warmer hours of the day. 

That's why she's here, biking to school long before she needs to. She doesn't like sports and only knows many of the girls by sight, but the combination of grass, sky, hair, flesh and cloth draw her in and the autumnal chill helps her see better, helps her capture the scene with more grace and ease in the lines than if she were sitting in the art room painting copies of photos cut from old magazines with the other kids in her art elective. 

It's that clarity of vision she wants, is drawn to, perhaps because everything else in her life seems so fuzzy, unfocused. 

She spends a lot of time alone with her paper, pencils and paints, but the Mother doesn't seem to notice. She breezes into the Daughter's room, throwing open the door without knocking to stand, sometimes with briefcase still in hand, and boast about high sales goals met, the ever-increasing, hand-rubbing jealousy of her female coworkers and how her male superiors would be utterly lost if it weren't for her. They need her. She practically runs that company. 

The Daughter waits, sketch pad on her knees and pencil in hand, for the Mother's self-congratulatory speech to be over. She can't continue sketching,  knowing what will happen if she does. The pained look of disappointment, the spiteful, untrue accusations if she turns her attention away for even a moment and the petty, but painful retaliation that will inevitably follow days or weeks later when there is suddenly no money for the school trip, outings that were promised several times over are labeled "wishful thinking" on her part, or things she needs she'll be told she never mentioned...and now it's too late. Oh, Sweetheart, don't you care about my happiness? We're best friends! Is that any way to treat your very best friend in the whole wide world? 

So she halts mid-stroke and listens attentively to a stream of words that mean nothing to her. 

And as she listens, she begins to feel as if she's stuck in the old dollhouse that sits proudly on its table with windows that don't open and a front door nailed shut, surrounded by seemingly real little pieces of furniture which are, in reality, just balsa wood and modelling clay. 

She doesn't want to play this game with the Mother anymore, but can't seem to find a way to stop. The ropes and binds of convention and expectation are starting to cut into her arms and legs, making her struggle and buck on the inside even as she placidly complies on the outside. 

So she sketches and paints, spending hours lost in the different shades and forms she can create on paper, and later on discount canvas in unpopular sizes she buys with her paper route money. 

Her art teachers tell her she has talent, that she's good at incorporating their instructions for improvement.  She works hard, and if she continues they say, she'll get somewhere with her art. Her schoolwork suffers from all the time she spends wrapped up in her pictures, but not enough to be labeled a real problem.

That's nothing, however, compared to what's happening before and after every gym class when she's forced to change into her gym clothes with the other girls in the stuffy locker room that reeks of disinfectant . 

She doesn't want to stare at them as they casually pull off their jeans and fashionable shirts to reveal bare hips and thighs, pink panties and breasts pushing at the seams of hand-me-down bras, but she wants to stare.  Partially to know if her own body is developing normally, and partially to take in the tantalizing, feminine curves that have begun to creep into her dreams and waking thoughts. Curves that blush her cheeks at the strangest of times. She doesn't trust her hands not to become independent and reach out without her permission to gently stroke the side, the arm, of the girl next to her. 

The Daughter sees no other option but to keep her eyes locked on the interior of her purple metal locker as she quickly pulls on her shorts, and then scurries out the door into the gymnasium as quickly as she can, sneakers squeaking far too loudly on the polished floor.

An etching:  

A high school winter art show. Students, teachers and family members in thick sweaters and coats standing in chatting groups. No one is looking at the pictures that hang on moveable walls in the over-heated central assembly room. The Daughter is wearing dark jeans and a flowy, colorful cardigan, an outfit only partially approved of by the Mother, who stands next to her dressed in a power suit, beaming. The Father can vaguely be made out in the background, talking to a group of other fathers. 

"That's my Sweetheart," the Mother says to a classmate's  bespectacled mother who looks a little bit lost. "She's so creative. I'm not surprised she won first place for her year. She's going to be an interior designer, you know."

This is the first time the Daughter has heard she wants a specific career. She nods and smiles politely at the parents who feel goaded into congratulating her, but she's really aching to wander over and talk to her friends from art room who are snubbing the rest of the crowd. She feels like a toy being waved around at Show-and-Tell by the Mother, and it embarrasses her.     

Later, after she's accepted her award to mild, impersonal applause, she asks her art teacher, a greying man in his fifties who always smells of cigarette smoke, exactly what an interior designer does, and is annoyed but not surprised, by the answer. 

Room design. Furnishings. Wallpaper. Which kind of lamps go where in a house. But also designing the look of kitchens, bathrooms and stairwells, dens, living rooms and utility closets. Some simply redecorate, others work with architects and design from scratch.

In her mind's eye, she sees the Mother as she arranges and then rearranges the miniature furniture in the dollhouse, forgetting the world around her for hours, a smile frozen on her glossy lips.  

"Thinking in that direction?" the teacher asks, eyebrows raised.

"No, I was just curious," answers the Daughter, and looks around the crowded hall for the Father and the Mother. It's almost time to go home.