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One day after school, I walked into our living room, turned off General Hospital, and joined my mother on the living-room sofa. She had a half-eaten liverwurst sandwich on her lap, so I quickly threw that out the sliding glass door and watched our dog, Mutley, spring out of his doghouse like a hyena.
"Listen up. We're at a crossroads, and I need your help. Everyone at school is talking about Cabbage Patch Kids, and the word is that Toys 'R' Us is getting a new shipment tomorrow morning. So what I'm going to need from you is to get in line at Toys 'R' Us first thing tomorrow morning and get me one of those dolls. You're go
"Why do I need to go to the store at seven in the morning to get one of these?"
"Because they are selling like crazy, and they will run out. They keep ru
My mom was always more reasonable than my father, but she lacked the determination and perseverance needed for the execution of such a task.
"Of course, sweetie, we can get you a doll, but I really don't see the point of getting there so early. Surely everyone else's parents aren't doing that."
"Yes they are! Everyone's parents are doing it. Mom, this is my childhood. This is the only one I get, and by the end of the week everyone is going to have one of these dolls except me, because you guys are stuck in the Dark Ages. I am trying to make the best out of my circumstances, but you and Dad just keep holding me back. This is just like what happened in nursery school when I had to repeat the year because you guys kept forgetting to take me."
"Nursery school is a waste of time," my mother would tell me when I would try to pull her out of bed. "First grade is where things really start to matter," she'd mumble as she rolled over onto a piece of cheddar cheese. My parents thought it was "too cold" throughout most of winter to get themselves dressed and wait for one of our "automobiles" to warm up. Even though I was only five, it was a safe bet to say that my whole life would be based on doing the exact opposite of what my parents did.
I took to calling our next-door neighbor Mrs. Rothstein. I was too embarrassed to ask her for rides myself, so I'd try to put on a German accent and pretend I was my mother. "Vould you mind taking Shell-sea to school today?" I'd say. "None of ze cars vill start."
Mrs. Rothstein knew it wasn't my mother calling but was impressed by my scholarly ambition and always ended up taking me when my parents faked paralysis.
It wasn't getting an education I was interested in, but more an ardent desire to avoid taking fucking naps in the middle of the day on a godforsaken floor mat. I had no time for sleep in the middle of the day. I wanted action, and naps just reminded me of my parents and the meaningless lives they had carved out for themselves. That wasn't the life I wanted for myself, and I certainly had no plans of becoming a geisha, which would be the only other career choice that would require me to practice sleeping.
"Okay, okay, I'll get the doll, Chelsea. I just wish you weren't so dependent on material things to make you feel like you fit in."
Easy enough for someone who walked around the house all day in a floor-length skirt hoisted over her boobs with no bra to talk about not fitting in. She didn't want to fit in. That was the difference. I did. I wanted a life for myself, and the life I had in mind didn't involve either of my parents. What she really wanted was to avoid having to put on a bra and some decent shoes that were necessary to tackle the New Jersey winter.
"If this were a Latter-day Saints doll, I'm sure you'd be there with bells on and a nipple ring."
"Chelsea, don't be ridiculous. No one's getting a nipple ring."
"I want the brunette Cabbage Patch with green eyes, one dimple, and no freckles." I had freckles, and I thought they looked like a rash. "She is the one I want. Not a boy one. A girl. Check for the coslopus. Do you copy?"
I had seen a couple of boy ones at school, and they looked like something straight out of a seventies porn video with their Jew Afros. All the other girls had the blond ones with blue or brown eyes, or the brown-haired with blue eyes. I wanted green eyes. I hadn't seen one of those yet but knew they were out there. This was my chance to make my mark and get the same thing every kid craved but also show some originality. For the very first time, I would have everyone ogling something I had.
At that moment my sister Sloane walked in and a
"Step off!" I told her. "Go to your room."
"Shut up, you can't tell me to go to my room. Why don't you go to your room and dry-hump your pillow?"
"Mom!" I wailed.
"Girls," my mother interrupted. "Pipe down."
"You do not need a Cabbage Patch doll," I told Sloane. "You are thirteen. You need to get a grip."
"If Chelsea's going to get one, then I want one."
"Sloane, you are a little old for a Cabbage Patch doll," my mother told her.
"Can we please focus on my doll? Did you get the brown hair with green eyes?"
"Chelsea, please write it down for me. It sounds very specific. How many different types are there?"
"Thousands!" I wailed. "I don't want a blonde or anyone with brown eyes. Green eyes. They have ones with two dimples, but I just want one dimple. The ones with two dimples look too fake, and the ones without dimples look like Chucky. This is a very precise assignment. No matter what, Mom, please, please do not screw this up. Under no circumstances are you to come home with a redhead."
I knew early on about redheads and how they were prone to melanoma. I wasn't about to invest in a child, only to lose her years later to cancer. Plus, I had a young childhood friend named Farrah Linklater, and her whole family had red hair. Thick, unruly red hair that would inevitably end up in one of the dishes they served at di
Just then my father walked through our front door in his ridiculous rain boots that he wore all year long regardless of the weather. He had three newspapers trapped in his armpit, which I knew meant trouble.
My father believed that he was a Thornton Wilder type of character and never tired of impressing upon us how important it was to read. He would bring three newspapers home every week for me to peruse-the New York Times, the Boston Globe, because he thought that was a very well-written newspaper, and our local paper, the Star-Ledger. Once a week he would expect me to write a report on my favorite current-events story in each paper. As if in the third grade I gave a shitstain about how Reagan was reaching across party lines or, even worse, whatever 7-Eleven they were remodeling in a neighboring town. These weren't exactly hot topics for third-graders. At that point in my life, I was looking to reach across my own party lines, and the clearest way to do that was with one of these goddamned Cabbage Patch dolls, not an op-ed piece in the New York Times. It never occurred to my father to maybe put down the paper once in a while and actually get busy looking for a legitimate job that might take him out of the house for more than two hours at a time.