Virginia was playing “ex-husbands” with her dolls. Mommy had been married twice before she met Daddy, and she had told Virginia all about them.
“No, no, no, Don Lawrence,” said the blonde doll, Annie, to her Prince Charming doll. “You put that beer away.” Actually, that was more like something Mommy would say to Daddy.
“I am not! I am not!” Don Lawrence, Mommy’s first husband, said to Annie. “You can’t tell me what to do.” His prince clothes were lost, so he wore Surfin’ Sam’s shorts instead.
“Don’t come to bed smelling like a beer can,” Annie said as she huffed away.
“Hmm,” said Don Lawrence. Virginia put his hand on his chin.
“Clack, clack, clack,” Virginia said to imitate a knock on the door.
“Wonder who that is?” Don Lawrence said. Virginia hopped him to an imaginary door at the rug’s edge.
“Bill Bentley?” Don said after he opened the door. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to take my wife back,” Bill Bentley, Mommy’s second husband, told Don Lawrence. Bill Bentley was actually her Shawn doll. Virginia had seen a picture of Bill Bentley once, and she thought he looked nicer than Don Lawrence.
“You can’t have her!”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah!”
The two dolls battled, their plastic bodies rattling as they struck one another. Virginia locked their arms as they rolled on the floor.
“Wait a minute!” shrieked the Annie doll. “What are you two guys doin’?”
“We’re… we’re fighting over you, honey,” Don Lawrence told her.
“Yeah!” agreed Bill Bentley. “We both love you.”
“I don’t care!” Annie said. “I don’t care if you love me or not! You’re both losers! I’m leaving! And I’m taking Tracy! HMPH!” Tracy was a little girl doll she’d had for such a long time half of the doll’s hair was pulled out.
Virginia could play ex-husbands a million different ways, but she always ended with Mommy leaving them. And none of the boy dolls ever hit Mommy. That was a rule.
One time she played that Don Lawrence hit Mommy, and then she pretended Bill Bentley was a policeman and arrested him. Mommy said that’s what would happen next time.
“Now look at what you’ve done!” Don Lawrence said to Bill Bentley, now that Annie was out of sight behind Virginia’s back.
“Me?” Bill Bentley replied. “It was you!”
“Was not!”
“Was too!”
The two dolls began smacking each other and rolling around on the floor. Bill Bentley didn’t have any clothes on. Virginia vaguely wondered where they were, and then she started losing interest.
Sometimes Virginia thought about playing Annie and Don, her Daddy, meeting, but she never seemed to get that far. Part of the problem was that she didn’t have another boy doll except for Surfin’ Sam, who didn’t have a head anymore. Besides, she didn’t know exactly how to play her parents meeting. Whenever she asked Mommy how they met, she would say, “At a nightclub,” and smile mysteriously, but Mommy wouldn’t really tell her what went on at a nightclub. Virginia could tell. The only ideas she had about one were from watching old *I Love Lucy* episodes, and she had trouble imagining in black-and-white. Daddy always made fun of the way Ricky Ricardo would talk, which Virginia thought was mean. When she asked Daddy how they met, he always said, “At a bar.”
Once she tried to play marital counselor, but then the babysitter asked what she was playing, so she told her where her parents really were. When they got home, she was still playing it. When Mommy asked what she was playing, Daddy heard what she had told the babysitter. He had yanked her by the arm and spread his palm, but Mommy had said, “No, Don, you’re not supposed to hit anyone anymore, remember?” Virginia had been glad to hear that. She could always tell when Mommy had a black eye, no matter how much makeup she used.
Daddy was a salesman, and he was gone a lot. Mommy wanted to quit her job and stay home. Virginia thought that would be really cool, just like on TV. Daddy wanted her to keep working so they could buy a place in the mountains. Mommy hated her job and the mountains. She wanted a place at the beach, but Daddy said it was too expensive. Virginia thought Daddy was being mean, and they should have a place at the beach if Mommy had to work. Besides, the mountains were boring.
Mommy was sick when she picked her up that day. She had gone to work anyway, and now she felt worse. At home, she said she wanted to go to a doctor tomorrow, but Daddy said no. He told her she should just stay home and take stuff from the drug store. Mommy got really mad and said how much she had to miss work and how they took so much out of her check she might as well quit. Then she stormed down the hall and slammed the door. Daddy looked at Virginia and said, “What are you looking at?” Virginia thought that was a mean thing to say. He looked mad, so she just looked at her dolls. She liked it better when he wasn’t around. She decided she wouldn’t call him Daddy anymore. She’d think of a new name for him.
After he went down the hall to Mommy, Virginia heard her crying some more, so she crawled down the hall too and listened at the door in case she had to be a witness. Mommy wanted to stay home tomorrow, and Daddy said he would get her some stuff from the store. Virginia crept away.
Daddy opened their bedroom door so fast and hard the hall thundered. When he stomped into the living room, she looked hard at her dolls. Maybe he wouldn’t see her that way.
But he did.
“Come on, Virginia,” he snarled like he’d asked her a bunch of times, but she hadn’t done it yet. “We’re going to the store.”
“I don’t want to,” Virginia told him. “I’ll stay here with Mommy.”
Actually, she wouldn’t mind going to the store. It would be Christmas in a few weeks, and she liked to look at the decorations and think about which toys she wanted. She just didn’t want to go with Mr. Mean Man, which she decided was a good new name for him.
“You can’t stay with Mommy,” he said, his voice loud with disgust. “She’s sick.”
So Virginia followed him out to his van. At least she didn’t have to wear a coat. She thought her heavy winter coat made her look fat, but he hadn’t made her wear it even though it was night now and getting cold. He always let her wear whatever she wanted to. That was one good thing about him, but just one.
Mr. Mean Man drove straight to Discount City. Virginia liked Discount City. It had a big pink aisle where she could find all of her favorite dolls. When Mommy was sick, he always went there and bought the cheapest medicines he could find, the type that said “HEADACHE TABLETS” in big black letters. They were never anything Virginia had ever seen on TV. Mommy hated them, and she said they didn’t really work.
As they walked into Discount City, he veered left to get a cart. Virginia hoped he wouldn’t embarrass her by trying to make her ride in it; she was too big, and it would make her feel like a baby. Sometimes he would make her though, because he said she would wander off. She wondered what he needed a cart for.
Virginia didn’t follow him. She stayed by the door so she could visit the lost children.
In the metal-rimmed case above her, behind the sliding glass doors, she could see pictures of the lost children. The pictures were black and white, like the ones in the post office of the bad men she would look at when mommy took her there. One time, she asked mommy why the men had their pictures in the post office, and she said they were bad. Virginia asked her why the men got to have their pictures in the post office if they had been bad, and mommy told her because they had run away, so Virginia asked her if daddy would ever have his picture in the post office since she had thought he ran away every week. Now she understood about him being a traveling salesman. She had even heard some jokes about traveling salesmen, which she had thought were funny, but they were dirty, and she knew mommy wouldn’t think they were nice. She wondered if he did things like that.
Virginia loved the pictures of the lost children. She loved to stand and look at them and imagine what they were like and where they were now. In some of the pictures, they looked sad, like the men at the post office. She thought they looked sad because when the picture was taken, they had been living with their parents. Mommy told her their parents took the pictures, which meant it was when their parents still had them, so they must have had mean parents, maybe the bad men in the post office, or at least one mean parent like hers. Some were girls. Not just boys could be lost children.
Mommy always let her look at the lost children for a long time. Sometimes when they walked away, mommy had to wipe her eyes. Virginia knew what that meant.
“God almighty, is this where you’ve been?”
The smack on her bottom shocked her. He wasn’t supposed to hit anymore. Mommy said. Virginia was wearing pants, so it had surprised her more than hurt, not enough for crying, but she squeezed out some tears and sniffled them a little anyway because it hurt like when the mean boys had pulled up her shirt on the playground to show the other kids just because she tried to play with them.
“Why are you so interested in those posters?” he asked, ignoring her tears. “I don’t think you know who those children are.”
“I do too!” Virginia sputtered.
“Yeah? Who are they?”
“They’re the lost children,” Virginia answered, “like in Peter Pan.”
“No they’re not,” he said, disgusted.
“Yes they are,” Virginia said, sticking out her bottom lip. “They had mean parents, and they ran away.”
“No, they didn’t.”
“Yes they did, mean, just like you.”
“Do you know who those children really are?”
“Who?”
“Those are the children the boogie man got.”
With that, he rattled away. When he turned down the aisle by the pharmacy, Virginia noticed a display of Christmas trees. They were fake, but they looked real, realer than their real one last year. Virginia walked over to inspect the trees more carefully. Under one was a plastic Santa Claus and his sleigh and reindeer. Just as Virginia was really getting started playing Rudolph and thinking about all the mean things the other reindeer could do to him, she heard, “Virginia!” A moment later, Mr. Mean Man went whizzing by with his cart. He would probably try to give her another spanking in the van before they went home.
From the direction he had gone, she knew he was heading for the toys, where he would expect to find her, so she decided to go the other way. She snuck through Ladies Clothes, which she knew well since she shopped there with mommy. Moving through it was easy; since so many racks cluttered the floor, she could travel through the area by gliding in and· out of them, and without being seen by a sales lady, which was important because many of them knew mommy, so they might know Mr. Mean Man.
No one would find her over by the tools. She had never been there with Mr. Mean Man; mommy said, and she said it to his face, he wasn’t good at fixing things.
On the power tools aisle, Virginia saw a big man holding a drill. His long hair was tied back in a ponytail, and his beard was trimmed with gray. He looked like a man who would have a motorcycle. Once, a man who looked like him passed them on his motorcycle, and Virginia noticed mommy smiling, so she asked her why, and mommy said she used to have a boyfriend who rode a motorcycle.
“Mister,” Virginia said, tugging on the sleeve of his flannel shirt. His denim jacket didn’t have any sleeves.
“Huh?” he grunted, glancing around before looking down.
“I can’t find my mommy,” she told him, sniffing a bit.
“Lost your mommy?” he repeated, one eyebrow arching.
“Yes, and 1’m very worried,” Virginia told him, putting her hands on her hips.
“Why’s that?” he asked, a kitchen match rolling between his lips and arching his other eyebrow. She wished she could arch an eyebrow like that.
“I don’t think she’s in the store anymore,” Virginia said. “I looked all over.”
“Forgot you, huh?” he said.
Something on the back of his jacket caught her eye. Virginia glimpsed a skull and crossbones and some writing in funny letters she couldn’t read. What was the deal here? Halloween was way over.
“Yes,” Virginia said, nodding her head, “I think she forgot me.”
“Then why don’t you come with me, little girl?” he said, “on a magic carpet ride?” He swung her up on his shoulders, singing “Close your eyes, girl . . . step inside girl,” swinging her up on his shoulders,” Virginia didn’t know the song,
As he held her by the ankles, Virginia glanced around for Mr. Mean Man, but she didn’t see him or hear him calling her name. He probably thought he could sneak up on her over in toys and surprise her with another smack on the bottom.
As they came to the front of the store, the nice man, who was still humming and singing his song about a magic carpet, seemed aimed for the front door. This was great. Maybe he was going to give her a ride home on his motorcycle, and he would actually be mommy’s old boyfriend. That would be so romantic.
But he veered for the returns counter. Then Virginia heard, “Hey! What are you doing with her? That’s my kid!” Her new friend hoisted her down.
“This your little girl?” Virginia’s new friend demanded.
“Yeah, she’s mine,” Mr. Mean Man sputtered.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I got four at home just like her. She said she was 1ost.”
“Come on, Virginia,” Mr. Mean Man spat, grabbing her arm.
“Stop it!” Virginia howled, jerking her arm away. “I don’t know him! He’s not my daddy!”
“Virginia–” Mr. Mean Man said.
“My name’s not Virginia!” she screamed.
“What’s the problem here?” Virginia looked up to see another man wearing a tie and a plastic nametag that said “BILL” and “MAY I HELP YOU?” underneath it.
“My kid,” Mr. Mean Man said, “he’s got my kid.”
“He’s not my daddy,” Virginia said, her voice steaming higher before she screamed, “HE’S NOT MY DADDY!” and grabbed her new friend’s leg.
“Is she your child?” Mr. Bill asked her new friend.
“No, I found her over in power tools,” the big man said.
“And you say this is your child?” Mr. Bill asked, pointing at Mr. Mean Man.
“Yeah, she’s my kid,” Mr. Mean Man replied. Virginia thought he looked really mad. He looked like a pot about to boil over.
“Can you prove she’s yours?” Mr. Bill asked.
“What in hell do you mean–” Mr. Mean Man began.
“Yeah, you know,” Mr. Bill prompted, “like her social security card?”
“No,” Mr. Mean Man snapped, “I don’t carry it around with me. Do you carry your kid’s card with you?”
“I don’t have any children,” Mr. Bill said, smiling down at Virginia, “but if I did, I certainly would.”
Virginia smiled back and sniffed, hoping she seemed brave.
“I carry my kids’ social security cards,” Mr. Big Man rumbled, “all four,” as he pulled out a wallet attached by a chain to a belt loop. Social security cards accordioned from it.
“Why?” Mr. Mean Man asked. “Are they all on welfare?”
“Wait a minute,” Mr. Big Man said. “She told me she was with her mother.”
“She did? Is that true?” Mr. Bill asked Virginia.
“Yes,” Virginia said, in a very tiny voice.
“Virginia!” Mr. Mean Man screamed. People were gathering to watch.
“MY . . . NAME . . . ISN’T . . . VIRGINIA!” she screamed back at him. Then she started pumping tears.
“What is your name, little girl?” Mr. Bill asked as he kneeled beside her.
“Tracy,” she choked.
“Discount City’s policy for lost children,” Mr. Bill recited, “is to reunite them as quickly as possible with their parents. Do you know your telephone number, Tracy?” He was whispering now, bending close to her. Virginia whispered it back.
“What are you asking her?” Mr. Mean Man demanded.
“Do you know your mommy and daddy’s names?” Mr. Bill asked her, ignoring Mr. Mean Man.
Virginia told him her mommy’s name.
“What about your daddy’s name?” Mr. Bill asked carefully.
“I don’t have a daddy,” Virginia told him, looking dead at Mr. Mean Man.
“This is outrageous!” Mr. Mean Man stormed.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Mr. Bill told him. “Since you have no proof that this little girl is your daughter, and she says she isn’t, I’m going to take her to the office and let her call her mother.”
“I’d call the police on him, is what I’d do,” Mr. Big Man said, leaning into Mr. Mean Man’s face.
“Yes, well,” Mr. Bill said as he led Virginia away by the hand.
“Look, wait, I can explain,” Mr. Mean Man said. “She just doesn’t want to come with me because she’s afraid I’ll spank her again for running away from me in the store.”
Mr. Bill’s face didn’t change a bit, except he maybe frowned a little deeper for a second. Virginia could tell Mr. Mean Man wasn’t convincing them.
“You hit little girls, do you?” Mr. Big Man said, one hand curling into a big, square brick of a fist.
“Go ahead and call,” Mr. Mean Man insisted. “Her mother’s at home, sick. That’s why we came, to get medicine.” Mr. Mean Man began to follow them.
“Sir,” Mr. Bill said carefully, “I think it would be best if you waited here.”
“Wait a minute,” Mr. Mean Man said. “I know the telephone number.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Mr. Bill said, still unimpressed, “under these circumstances, I cannot allow–”
“Yeah,” Mr. Big Man said to Mr. Bill, “he might have just heard her. He might be one of them kind that can memorize real fast. All on welfare, are they?” he added for Mr. Mean Man, who threw up his hands and started for the door. Mr. Big Man followed him.
In Mr. Bill’s office, Virginia saw a window for looking out over the store. Through it, she could see Mr. Mean Man, who had come back into the store.
“There’s that mean man,” Virginia said to Mr. Bill, ducking beneath the window. “I hope he doesn’t see me.”
“Don’t worry,” Mr. Bill said as his fingers punched the telephone. “It’s a two-way mirror.”
“C’mere,” Mr. Bill said a moment later, “Your mommy’s phone is ringing.”
When she answered, Virginia said, “Hi, mommy, it’s me.”
“Virginia?” she said groggily.
“You forgot me. I’m at Discount City,” Virginia told her. “Can you come get me?”
“Where’s daddy?”
“I’m in Mr. Bill’s office.”
“What’s going on? Where’s your father?”
“Would you like for me to talk to her?” Mr. Bill said, reaching for the phone.
“Come soon, mommy,” Virginia wailed. “I need you.” Then she hung up, pushing the phone under and past his hand.
“She’s on her way,” Virginia told Mr. Bill.
“Okay,” Mr. Bill said, smiling like his face was going to fall apart, “I think it would be best if you waited here.” Virginia followed his glance to the two-way mirror. Mr. Mean Man was still there. He seemed to be looking up at Virginia. Then they heard pounding on the door below them.
“Don’t worry,” Mr. Bill assured her as he left. “He won’t get through that door. It’s made of steel, just like superman.”
As Mr. Bill opened the door downstairs, it bumped Mr. Mean Man. Through the mirror, Virginia could see and hear Mr. Bill trying to talk to Mr. Mean Man, who kept saying, “That’s my kid! You’ve got my kid!”
Then Virginia heard a sharp crack, and Mr. Bill was lying on the floor like he was dead, but then he sat up. Mr. Mean Man stomped on him. A bunch of guys wearing purple vests rushed over and pulled Mr. Mean Man off. When Mr. Bill stood up, his nose was bleeding. The guys in the purple vests were all trying to hold Mr. Mean Man, and he was trying to fight them. Then Virginia heard a siren.
The men around Mr. Mean Man were pushing and shoving at him. He would try to hit one, but another behind him would grab him. Virginia hoped they would beat him up to show him what it felt like. He didn’t have any right to hit her or mommy or Mr. Bill or anyone else.
Then the police were there, four of them, and when the purple vests parted, he started swinging at the police. They pulled out long clubs, and in a minute they had him down on the floor, handcuffed, and were dragging him out the door.
Virginia began to wish that mommy was there. Then she realized that if mommy got there right then, he would tell her what had happened, and then she would be in a lot of trouble. She began holding her breath for as long as she could, the way she would during the exciting part of a movie, hoping mommy wouldn’t get there before the police took him away.
She felt better when he was gone. That was that. The police would put him in jail, and he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone anymore.
When she saw her mommy come in through the front door, Virginia ran down the stairs to meet her and tackled her with a hug.
“Virginia!” she exclaimed. Virginia hugged her harder.
“Can we go home now, mommy?” she asked.
“Of course we can, but where is your father?”
“He left me here,” Virginia said. “He went away.”
“Was he drinking?”
Virginia shrugged. She had been telling lies all night, and they lay heavily upon her, like a brittle shell.
“I hope he doesn’t come back tonight,” mommy said.
“He won’t,” Virginia said, glad to tell the truth again. The police had taken him away. She wished she could tell mommy so she could be happy.
On the way to mommy’s car, Virginia walked an edge of curbing. As she balanced herself, she thought about how he hurt mommy with his hitting and arguing. She wouldn’t miss him. He wasn’t around much and they were happiest when he was gone. All of her friends’ parents were divorced, anyway. The police had him now. He couldn’t bother them anymore. As she walked the curb like a tightrope, she felt perfectly balanced. Then she slipped and skinned her knee.
“Oh Virginia!” her mommy said. “We better get something on that right away.”
In the car, things began to happen fast, as things in cars do.
“I can’t believe he did this,” her mommy said, sneezing. “That’s it, we’ve got to leave.”
“Where are we going, mommy?” she asked.
“To a place I’ve been thinking about going for a long time,” she said told her. “There’s no telling what he’ll be like when he gets home.”
“He won’t be coming home, mommy,” Virginia informed her, and then she told he the whole story, mostly, about the hitting, and Mr. Big Man, and Mr. Bill, the police and more hitting. Her mother stared at her for a moment before starting the car.
At home, they packed suitcases so quickly Virginia forgot her dolls. Then they were in the car again. After a while, they pulled up at a two-story house. Some women came out and helped them bring their things inside.
In the playroom, there were some other kids and some toys, but they were old and beat up, dolls with their hair pulled out, and wheels that didn’t go with anything. The other kids didn’t talk about their daddies, so she didn’t talk about hers.
