Naked Land
THE GIRL
I liked Clarisse most because of her long floaty hair and her big pregnant stomach. Her hair was peach like a creamsicle. It licked all the way down past her butt.
I wasn’t allowed to have Barbies. My grandparents bought them for me without asking. I wasn’t really supposed to know my grandparents, either. Then Aunt Nelly gave me Clarisse.
When she lived in a box, Clarisse was named Midge. I felt that Midge was a name meant for a fat person. Clarisse was not fat, she was thin, and sometimes had a pregnant belly. I was four and this was an important distinction. Clarisse was the only doll that I didn’t name Bara.
Clarisse wore a purple shift dress with pink flowers. Her shift dress felt like gauze and her creamy hair hit her butt and her stomach was flat so other dolls pressed up against her.
I only had one doll who was a boy. My grandpa gave him to me but unlike my grandpa the doll did not have a penis. I named him Clomp. Clomp rammed his flat crotch against Clarisse’s. He loved the way her orange hair bent. Clarisse scissored with the other girls where she lived on the gray carpet. The other girls never got pregnant because their hair was less long and less soft than Clarisse’s.
Clarisse had freckles on her high cheeks. I had forgotten. Just now I started to type ‘Clarisse’ into Google then remembered to type ‘Midge.’ She had freckles and two thin braids by the front of her face. Hers was the only hair I did not chop with my scissors. Maybe because she had the ability to become pregnant and so became not just a smooth girl but a round person. Maybe because Clarisse was the doll that Aunt Nelly gave me.
Clarisse is gone and so is Aunt Nelly. Aunt Nelly had high cheeks and sometimes freckles. Aunt Nelly gave me Clarisse because Aunt Nelly got pregnant. I couldn’t believe it. Aunt Nelly dyed her hair blond. Her older siblings still called her Nells. She whispered and smoked and snickered. She was my only family who might be bad in the same way that I was. Then Aunt Nelly brought the man with the burns to Thanksgiving. She brought him to Christmas. The man with the burns picked me up and threw me high in the air and I knew he did it not because he liked me but because Aunt Nelly was looking. The man with the burns just called Aunt Nelly ‘Baby.’ Then Aunt Nelly’s stomach got round. Her stomach got big. The man with the burns’ first name became Uncle. He didn’t pick me up or throw me anymore. He kneeled next to where my aunt sat and touched her swollen stomach. She’d look down at the man with the burns and cradle her belly. She’d make her eyes soft so she looked like the stony Virgin. The one in the white veil who sat on my grandparents’ table. Holding onto her stone baby, looking down because her baby would turn into God and she did not want to miss it. The Virgin never looked at what was around her. My aunt looked down at her growing stomach and not at me or at what was there in the room happening.
Clarisse lived in Naked Land on the gray carpet. Aunt Nelly lived in Mesquite. In Mesquite everyone wore clothes because you had to around my grandpa. Then Aunt Nelly left Mesquite and she went to her own house in Pahrump and it had a pink rug. I liked to picture my aunt in that house with her box-blond hair and red toenails on a purple lawn chair. In her peach bikini. It looked kind of like Naked Land. I didn’t like picturing my aunt like that once the man with the burns moved into the house with her.
Some of the girls in Naked Land got bikinis but most didn’t. Most of them wore their plastic skin and their pointy tits and the glossy mound where vaginas were meant to be. Clarisse got to keep her gauzy dress on, even in Naked Land, cause it was purple and small and Clarisse was important. The girls in Naked Land all lay in a pile on the gray carpet. Sometimes Clomp would get in the middle of the pile of naked girls but they didn’t even really like him. Like how when me and my mom and Aunt Nelly would sit in my grandparents’ dark wooden kitchen, and we’d all just giggle like they were still little kids. Then my grandpa would stomp in wearing his robe and walk around really loud and open and close all the cabinets. We’d stop giggling. The girls in Naked Land were nice to Clomp when he got in their pile, but their legs and pokey arms and glossy mounds all clenched up tighter.
There are no boys to harm us, Aunt Nelly’s little daughter said except she couldn’t say her r’s yet so it sounded like ‘hawm us.’ We all giggled at that right there in our pajamas. Me and my mom and the little daughter and Aunt Nelly. After Aunt Nelly’s stomach had gone back to flat but now it was starting to round and to swell right back up again. We were alone in the dark house and our dads were all gone. We sat on the floor like a pile.
Clarisse got to leave Naked Land because her stomach snapped on with magnets. It made a sound like snap-snap and Clarisse became bulging and full. There was a plastic baby you could put inside Clarisse’s magnetic belly but I usually didn’t. The baby did not concern me. Naked girls would put on the nurse costume or stay in their bikinis but either way they were nurses. They stroked Clarisse’s floaty hair while she lay on her back with her huge stomach. Doctor Clomp would pull her legs open. Doctor Clomp stuck his blond head and arms between Clarisse’s legs. Clarisse would yell. I’d snap off her belly. Then no one had to be soft. No one had to be gentle. Clarisse went back to Naked Land with a tired face and her purple dress shifted.
CLARISSE
I live in Naked Land on the gray floor. There is a box above my head that flashes blue light and loud noises. I live here with the others. The girl with freckles and light hair leans over our bodies. She makes the sound that she makes when she sees me that is not my name. I hear that same sound from the box late at night when the girl’s mom watches her scary movie. I hear that sound and screams. I like when the mom’s movie screams. It is nice to hear in the air what gets caught in my throat. Like the days when I wear the plastic stomach and the girl lays me on my back and sticks the man between my legs. I know that in the girl’s idea of the world it would hurt and I want to let out the sound I am supposed to make. The sound of something breaking.
When the grandfather visits, the news talks from the box while they sleep. The grandfather leaves in the dark. In Naked Land we do not need to talk or to look to know what the grandpa is doing. We listen to reports from the news. The voices trapped in the box tell the same stories over. We lay in our plastic pile with our tangled hair and the grandfather returns and uses the button to change the voices. They become like the voice that gets stuck in my throat when I lay in the naked pile. When my purple dress shifts. The climbing, moaning sounds that leak from the box sound like they too are pretending. Someone arranged their dead limbs and their faces froze and they let out the sound that they thought they should make.
THE GIRL
The last time I saw Aunt Nelly I was nineteen. I asked her to help me open the bottle of Advil that I took from her bathroom cabinet. I knew they would count the pills that were stronger. My hands were shaking. It’s comforting that you can’t open child locks, my Aunt Nelly had said. The man with the snaking burns sat in his chair with his face in the other direction. I don’t know where Aunt Nelly’s kids were. Aunt Nelly’s stomach wasn’t pregnant or big. Her stomach was inverted. My aunt looked right at me, and I knew that she knew what I took mostly came in small plastic bags and a child lock wouldn’t make any difference.
Clarisse is in the dark, moldy basement. Or she’s in the bin at Goodwill or a landfill or her plastic melted and it stunk when they threw her into the incinerator. In the moldy basement her belly would be off. Her gauzy dress would turn brown and her peach hair would crinkle. All the girls laying there in a pile and it is still Naked Land but some girls are face down and some stare up from their backs at the water pocket swelling from the ceiling. I hope Clomp isn’t with them. They hear feet where they pass through the boards over their heads. There is no one there to make them scissor.
CLARISSE
I do not know what happened to the plastic stomach. It never came to the new room with the blue walls and the pink carpet. When I left the girl with light hair and the gray rug. The new girl has high cheeks and she calls me by the same sound as the first girl. Except the sound is not the same, the girl cannot say her r’s yet. My stomach never grows but still the new girl is gentle.
The girl learns to pronounce her r’s. She says the sound that she thinks is my name less. She keeps me up high on her dresser so I can look down at the pink ground or out all around me. The girl walks past the mirror and lightly touches my head.
I see the first girl in the new world only once. She does not see me. She is long and tall and in her short, black dress. Her eyes are bright red. She is alone in the new girl’s room and she takes an orange tube from her purse and it rattles. The new girl comes in with her high cheeks and their bones are teary. The first girl quickly drops the tube of pills and it rolls under the dusty dresser. I’m sorry about your mom, the first girl says and the second girl does not say anything but they wrap their arms around each other. Sound shakes from their throats and chests. It sounds like something breaking. It sounds not like the sound that they were told to make but the sound that their bodies felt. They stand there, their arms wrapped and alive.
I like it in Naked Land when we are alone. When someone in a red bikini’s hair catches on my fingers. When I used to leave Naked Land and the girl made plastic hands pet my head slowly. I look at Naked Land. I can see past my toes and ankles. I see them all lie there, gentle and still.
Maeve Barry lives in New York. Her stories are in/ forthcoming from FENCE, the Sewanee Review, Rose Books Reader, Sleepingfish, and elsewhere. You can read more of her work at maeve-barry.com.