The Sadness of Spirits by Aimee Pogson

Author:Aimee Pogson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2020-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

Dolls

Gasoline from the back shed. A spool of twine. It is a ritual burning straight from the grand history of ritual burnings. The girl stakes sturdy branches into the ground, assembles piles of twigs at their base. Each Barbie is easy enough to tie—she doesn’t put up a fight with those artfully pointed arms and legs; her dazzling smile never wavers. It takes a few minutes for the twigs to catch fire. They’re still a little new, a little green, but the girl stacks them into small tents, tucks bits of dried leaves between them. She blows the match carefully, her breath a shiver of molecules she can’t begin to understand, and the flame quivers and glows.

Jessica. Samantha. Rachelle. The Barbies have names and narratives she has spent years of her life perfecting. Their legs melt first, the outer rubber of skin giving way to a harder plastic beneath. The flames swallow clothes, the bathing suits that serve as the undergarments of each carefully clad doll, and they only grow bigger. Faces melt, and hair melts, and the smell of burning plastic is sickening.

She has to look away, and that’s when she sees her dad, poised near the garage door, extension ladder in hand. His mouth opens and closes, and then he’s taking big steps to the coiled hose, unreeling it across the yard. Water sprays down on the Barbies, but not soon enough to save them. “You could have set the whole goddamn yard on fire,” he’s yelling. “You could have caught yourself on fire. What the hell were you thinking?” His eyes fall on what’s left of the Barbies. “What the hell?”

The interrogation begins at roughly quarter after five when her mom gets home from work. They sit her down at the kitchen table and line up the charred remains of Jessica, Samantha, and Rachelle on a newspaper beside her. “This is a very unusual thing to do to your dolls,” her mom begins. “Why exactly did you decide to set them on fire?”

The girl shrugs. There really isn’t an answer for a question like that.

“I remember when I was your age,” her mom says, “my friends sometimes destroyed their toys. Maybe it was a kind of rebellion? Maybe they were suggesting they were too old to play with their toys? I don’t know. I never did it myself.”

Her dad nods toward the Barbies. “Most people would just pop off their heads.”

“I guess what I’m saying is that this is normal,” her mom says, “but your method. It’s a little sadistic. Why did you have to tie them to stakes?”

The girl considers this question, answers carefully. “It seemed more respectful than stacking them in a pile.”

Her parents exchange glances. “But why fire?” her mom asks.

Heat is essential. That’s what she’s thinking. It does this thing with the air where a small section of the world can become hazy and rippled. It can break materials down into their component parts. It can cause them to become other materials entirely. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting Barbies to become, but heat.

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