Translated from the Finnish by David Hackston
Johanna Sinisalo lives in the city of Tampere, in southern Finland, and is a contemporary Finnish SF and Fantasy writer. She is also a reviewer, columnist, comics writer, and screenwriter. She worked in advertising for fifteen years before turning to writing full time. Her first novel, published in the U.S. as Troll: A Love Story, was awarded Finland’s most important literary prize. Her first collection came out in Finnish in 2005, Kädettömät kuninkaat ja muita häiritseviä tarinoita [“Handless Kings and Other Disturbing Stories”]. She has edited The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy.
“Baby Doll,” which appeared for the first time in English in 2007, in The SFWA European Hall of Fame, edited by James Morrow and Kathryn Morrow, was previously collected in the 2002 Finnish anthology Intohimosta rikokseen; it has also appeared in French, and in several other languages. It is a dark story which extrapolates on all-too-familiar social trends. Bruce Sterling singled out this story as one of the highlights of The SFWA European Hall of Fame, describing it as a “Finnish denunciation of materialistic exploitation of children.” James Morrow calls it “a nightmare world of assembly-line Lolitas.” Cutting-edge Finnish SF apparently has much to offer the world SF readership.
Annette comes home from school and shrugs her bag onto the floor in the hall. The bag is made of clear vinyl speckled with metal glitter, all in rainbow colors that swirl around the iridescent pink hearts and full kissy lips. The vinyl reveals the contents of the bag: Annette’s schoolbooks, exercise books, and a plastic pencil box featuring the hottest boy band of 2015, Stick That Dick. The boys wear open leather jackets across their rippling bare torsos, and their jockstraps all feature the head of some animal with a large beak or a long trunk. Craig has an elephant on his jockstrap. Craig’s the cutest of them all.
Annette slings her bright red spandex jacket across a chair and starts to remove her matching stretch boots. They’re tight around the shins, but she can’t be bothered to bend down and wrench them off. Instead she tries to pry one heel free with the opposite toe, but succeeds only in tearing her fishnet stockings.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”
Mumps walks in from the kitchen, still wearing her work clothes. “What was that, darling?”
“I said, ‘Golly, I’ve wrecked my tights.’”
“Oh, dear, not again. And they were so expensive. Well, you’ll just have to wear the plain ones tomorrow.”
“I’m so not wearing anything like that!”
“Darling, you don’t really have a choice.”
“Then I’m not going to school at all!” Annette snatches up her bag and stomps off toward her room, but the TV is on in the den, and it’s time for her favorite show, Suburban Heat and Hate. “I’d look like a total dork!” she continues, half to herself, half to her mother, who can no longer hear her, as she throws herself on the couch.
The show begins. The plot’s as thick as it gets. Jake has just been discovered in bed with Melissa, but Bella doesn’t know that Jake knows she’s having an affair with his twin brother Tom. Jake meanwhile doesn’t know that Melissa is in fact his daughter, because years ago he helped a lesbian couple get pregnant.
“Let’s make a deal, darling.” Mum has come in from the kitchen and is standing by the couch.
“Quiet! I can’t hear a thing.” Just then Bella pulls Jake off Melissa, screaming a barrage of abuse, leaving Melissa’s enormous boobs and Jake’s white butt in full view. At school today Annette heard Ninotska telling everyone to watch this afternoon’s episode because Jake’s got such a fantastic butt. Annette doesn’t see what’s so fantastic about it. It’s paler than the rest of his brown skin, and it isn’t as hairy as other men’s butts. Still, tomorrow she’ll find an opportunity to tell Ninotska she got a glimpse of Jake’s butt, and of course she’ll say she thought it was totally hypersmart, and give a low giggle the way you’re supposed to when you talk about these things.
Mum waits till the commercials come on. “I have to go back to work the minute Dad gets home.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Lulu’s at a shoot. Dad’ll pick her up around nine or ten, and then it’s your bedtime.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“One more thing, darling. I’m going on a business trip tomorrow, and I’ll be away for two days.”
“You’re always going off somewhere.”
“Dad can help you with your homework.”
“Yeah, right, I bet he makes me watch Otso so he can play squash.”
“That’s what I mean by the deal. Promise me you’ll help Dad and all you kids will behave yourselves.”
Annette is pissed off—big time. Whenever Mumps goes away, they end up eating all sorts of weird meals that Dumps cooks himself, instead of pizza or deli sushi or toasted sandwiches like Mumps gives them. You need to tell Dumps at least a hundred times what stuff to buy at the store, and why you need it. Once when Mumps was away Annette spent an hour explaining to Dumps why she categorically had to have a new eyelash-lengthening mascara and a bottle of golden body-spray.
“On one condition,” Annette says.
“What’s that?”
“Can I go to a sleepover at Ninotska’s Thursday night?”
Although Annette hasn’t actually been invited, rumor has it Ninotska’s still deciding on the final guest list. Annette has noticed Ninotska checking out the Stick That Dick pencil box that Mum and Dad brought back from London. Annette could give Ninotska the pencil box, then later ask Mum for money to buy another—she could always say she cracked the old one.
Just in case she gets invited, she has to make sure she has permission to go. If you get invited you have to be able to say “Sí, sí, gracias” without worrying about it. Nobody is tragic enough to say they need to ask permission, and if you say “Sí, sí, gracias” and don’t turn up, you can pretty much forget about being invited anywhere again.
“Who’s Ninotska?”
“Ninotska Lahtinen from our year, stupid! She lives on Vuorikatu.”
“And why do you have to go over there?”
“She’s having her nine-yo party. And I’ll need to take a present. I can catch a bus if Dad can’t take me.”
Mumps sighs, and with that Annette knows she won’t have to sweat it anymore. The commercials finally end, and Annette turns back to the tube. Melissa’s a professional stripper. She’s wearing a bikini with golden frills. It’s so mega.
The apartment door opens, and Dumps comes in, having picked up Otso at the nursery. Otso is five-yo.
Mumps has laid the table with pasta salad from the deli. It’s all right except for the capers; Annette doesn’t like them and shoves the awful things aside. Dumps starts raving on about how they’re the most delicious bits, then spears a caper off Annette’s plate and stuffs it in his mouth, loudly smacking his lips. Otso only ever eats the pasta twists, but wouldn’t you know—nobody gives him a lecture about it.
“So Otso, how was nursery today?” Mumps asks, all treacly like a TV kiddie host. Did she really use that twittery voice on Annette when she was five?
“I’m going on a date! With my girlfriend!” Otso can’t say his f’s properly, and his speech therapist has her work cut out with his r’s too. The word “girlfriend” sounds like Otso’s trying to spit something out between his front teeth.
Mumps and Dumps exchange one of their grown-up looks. “Well, our big boy’s going on a date!” says Dad in the same cringe-o-matic voice as Mum. “When is your date, and who is it with?”
“Tomorrow, with Pamela. Her Mum’s picking us up.”
Mum and Dad simper at one another again, pretending to swoon, then shake their heads in the phoniest way, meanwhile smiling like split sausages.
“Pamela’s my main squeeze,” says Otso, shoveling down different colored pasta swirls.
Once Mum has gone back to the office, Annette flops down to watch the reality show Between the Sheets, in which the contestants try to find the perfect sex partner. “What first comes to mind when I look down your cleavage: (a) lemons, (b) apples, or (c) melons?” a male contestant asks a woman sprawled behind the curtain on a canopy bed when the door opens and Dad and Lulu walk in.
Lulu’s only two years older than Annette, but looking at her you’d never believe it.
She’s still wearing her photo-session makeup, a pair of giant false eyelashes, with so much black and gray around her eyes it no longer looks like makeup at all; the eye-shadow just gave her a tired and hungry look. Her lips feature a dark crimson pencil-line to straighten her Cupid’s bow, the puffy parts filled with a lighter plum-red, and there’s so much lip-gloss involved that her mouth appears bruised and swollen. Her hair has been curled in tiny ringlets and tied in a deliberately careless bun.
Not long ago Lulu got calls from photographers in Milan and Tokyo, and she burst into tears when they later told Mum and Dad not to bring her because she was too short after all. Before that disaster she’d been weighing herself twice a day, but now she’s checking her height three or four times a week. She has a special chart on the wall for marking her growth. The pencil lines are so close together they form a gray smudge.
Lulu’s face recently landed on the cover of the Finnish Cosmopolitan, a very big deal, so now her agent says she has to stop posing for the catalogs. Being associated with Monoprix and Wal-Mart won’t help her image. She’s far too sensual.
Lulu heads upstairs to rinse off her sensual makeup. Annette’s stomach twists and churns. She goes to her room and stands before the mirror and tries to stare herself down, as if she could make her face look more sensual by gazing at it angrily enough. She sucks her belly in, but she still resembles a flat squash.
“Annette! Bedtime!” comes Dumps’s voice from downstairs.
“Yes yes YESYES!”
“Annette’s a slut!” the boys start shouting as she walks onto the playground, pretending not to hear them. It’s fairly normal and not worth worrying about; anybody they’re not trying to pull they call a slut—and they’re not trying to pull Annette.
There are far worse things they could shout out.
Ninotska and Veronika are standing by the main entrance, whispering to each other. Veli and Juho walk past. Veli attempts to grope Ninotska, and Juho tries shoving his hand up Veronika’s black leather miniskirt. Ninotska giggles, squirms, and pushes him away, and Veronika dashes to hide behind her. Veli and Juho swagger toward the door, and on their way each boy sticks his index finger through the looped thumb and finger of the other hand. Ninotska and Veronika giggle until the boys are out of earshot.
Annette approaches the two girls. “Hi,” she says awkwardly.
Veronika and Ninotska toss their fountains of permed hair and look at her disdainfully. Ninotska’s skimpy shirt allows a wide strip of skin to show between her golden shiny hipsters and her spaghetti-strap top. She has a silver ring in her bellybutton.
“Ninotska, can you come over here for a minute?” says Annette, backing toward the Dumpster. “We need to talk.”
Ninotska glances at Veronika, a scowl on her face, then joins Annette. “Well, what’s the big deal?” she asks suspiciously.
Annette reaches into her bag and brings out the Stick That Dick pencil box. “You know, I’m really bored with this. You want it?”
Ninotska’s eyes light up, and Annette realizes her offer’s having the desired effect. “What makes you think I’d want your old crap?” Ninotska bluntly replies, but it’s all part of the script.
Annette shrugs. “Okay, fine then,” she says and starts to throw the thing in the Dumpster.
Ninotska’s hand shoots out, grabbing the box before it can join the rubbish. “Easy pleasy. I believe in recycling.”
Annette smiles as Ninotska slips the pencil box into her golden bag printed with the words EAT ME. “Hey, what’re you doing Thursday night?” she asks finally, and Annette’s heart leaps with excitement.
On the bed Annette has spread out everything she’ll need: best lace-chiffon nightie, makeup kit, perfume—plus books and stuff for the next day at school. Her nine-yo present for Ninotska is wrapped in silver paper, three shades of nail polish that Annette picked out herself because Mumps would’ve gotten something tragic. It should all fit in the flight bag borrowed from Mumps. Now Annette must decide what to wear for the evening. She plumps for a pair of lizard-scale leggings and a skirt with a slit up the side. She hasn’t got any swank-tanks like Ninotska, but her green top is fray-proof, so she takes a pair of scissors and cuts a good ten centimeters off the bottom, making it stop well short of her bellybutton. The ragged cut is totally glam; it looks a bit like those TV shows where the jungle women’s clothes are so tattered they reveal lots of skin.
Annette studies the nightie and the matching thong underwear. Then she looks in the mirror.
She slips off her skirt, leggings, and panties. She opens her makeup kit and removes a black eyeliner. With her pink plastic sharpener she gives the pencil a serious point.
She sits spread-eagled before the mirror and with careful pencil strokes draws thin wavy lines between her legs.
Ninotska’s Mum and Dad are away somewhere for the evening. In addition to Ninotska and Annette, Veronika and Janika and Evita and Carmen and Vanessa are all naturally at the pajama party. The sleepover boasts buckets of pizza-flavored popcorn and big bottles of high-energy soda, “so we can last through the night,” squeals Ninotska.
Once Ninotska has opened her presents everybody gets ready for the fashion show. Back home Annette thought her nightie was fantastic, but now it looks like an old woman’s shirt. It’s too long, reaching almost to the knees, and totally unrevealing. Everybody agrees that Evita’s nightie is the best. It’s slightly see-through, like violet blue mist, and it’s so short it barely covers her ass. Ninotska’s is nice, too, with wide frilly shoulder straps and loose laces on the front so it’s open almost all the way down, and it’s made of red silk. But because it’s her party Ninotska decides to be generous and votes for Evita’s nightie.
Around ten o’clock everybody gets all excited and snickery when Ninotska takes a stepladder and goes into her Mum and Dad’s room and comes back cradling a stack of DVDs. “Let’s watch a film.” The girls sort through the pile. Each DVD has naked men and women on the cover, sharing the space with titles like Hot Pussies and Grand Slam Gang Bang. All the girls start giggling, hiding their mouths with their hands, and Ninotska puts a DVD in the player.
The pounding music and the script with its endless shouts of “Give it to me, baby” and “Meats to the sweet” are all very monotonous, but they still stare at the screen—nobody dares not watch. Annette feels twitchy and uncomfortable, and sometimes it’s like there’s a second little heart beating under her stomach, and that makes her uncomfortable, too. She knows you’re supposed to stay the distance with this stuff, and you’re also supposed to pretend it doesn’t bother you in the slightest, the way boys watch slasher movies—if you let on you’re scared, everybody laughs and takes the piss. Even though the whole point of horror flicks is to upset you, and that’s why they get made in the first place, you’re still not allowed to be scared. And so they have to watch these grand slam hot pussies as if it didn’t mean anything.
Once the second flick is halfway over, and two black dudes simultaneously pumping a woman with gigantic boobs, Ninotska gives a loud yawn, and this is a sign that the guests are no longer expected to be interested in the film. She switches the machine off, slipcases the disc, and drops it on the stack.
“Who wants to check out my Mum and Dad’s room?” she asks, and everybody wants to, of course. The girls jostle behind Ninotska and make their way into a lovely bedroom with an enormous four-poster and a gold-framed mirror on the wall. Ninotska climbs the stepladder to the top shelf of the closet. She returns the stack of DVDs, then takes down a big cardboard box and jumps back onto the rug. She opens the box and spreads the contents across the bed. Red-and-black underwear that’s nothing but a belt with bits of fabric on the sides: in the middle they’re completely open. A pair of manacles with fur on the cuffs. Ninotska grabs a pinkish zucchini and gives the end a twist, and the thing starts shaking in her hand. “Brrrrr!” she says, trying to imitate the noise of the zucchini, then waves it in each girl’s face, and they all move away giggling hysterically.
“Has anybody ever tried one of these?” she asks slowly, challenging them, and Annette feels like Ninotska is looking straight at her.
“I’ll bet none of you would dare.” Ninotska glances across the group of girls. Somebody attempts a giggle, and then they all fall silent.
“I dare you. I dare you.”
The silence rings in Annette’s ears, her mouth is dry with anticipation, and she feels that any second now Ninotska’s eyes will stop at her.
Lulu’s chewing gum and trying to look mega, but every now and then she gives a quick laugh, her straightened, whitened teeth flashing between her dark red lips while the tabloid photographer takes her picture, over and over. Occasionally the female reporter glances at the LED screen to see how the photos are coming out. Annette is sulking in the den. She can look into the living room, but the people from the newspaper can’t see her, and she would refuse to be photographed next to Lulu even if they begged her.
In any case, they haven’t asked.
“So tell me, how does it feel being the new face of Sexy Secrets Underwear?” the reporter asks.
Lulu lowers her false eyelashes, so overlong they almost reach her boobs, and smiles. Annette knows that Lulu uses this posture so she’ll have time to think without seeming like a dork. Finally Lulu looks up.
“Okay.”
“People say you’re about to become the object of a national fantasy. Do you agree?”
The eyelashes tilt down, then rise again. “I guess.”
The reporter smiles and switches off her digital recorder. “Thanks, Lulu. That’ll be all.”
Annette simply has to walk out of the den before the tabloid people leave. She’s got her makeup on, and she’s wearing her shiny black dress—plus of course her high-heeled ankle boots, even though Mumps has told her not to use them on the parquet.
“Well, lookee here,” the photographer says, squinting at Annette, “there’s another stunning woman on the premises,” and he almost sounds sincere, but she can’t be sure.
“That’s my little sister,” Lulu says before blowing a bubble gum bubble. “She’s eight.”
Annette could kill Lulu. Annette thinks she looks at least ten-yo, but by now the tabloid people are already in the hall, telling Lulu the article will run on Friday.
Naturally Mumps has bought three copies of Friday’s paper. On the front page of the fashion section is a picture of Lulu, her head thrown back, a gush of curls cascading down her shoulders, her teeth showing between pouty lips and her eyes half shut. MODEL SENSATION LULU: I LOVE BEING THE STAR OF GUYS’ WET DREAMS! screams the headline.
Lippe from the next apartment has come over to share a glass of wine with Mum. Lippe admires Lulu’s picture, and then they gab about the contract. Though Mum whispers, Annette, sitting in front of the TV, can still hear her. With her hand to her lips, Mum says, “A hundred and twenty thousand euros.” At least they’ll get back all the money they sank into Lulu’s career, Annette thinks. A year ago Lulu took some modeling courses that cost ultrabucks, but thanks to that move a fancy agent saw Lulu at the graduation show and signed her up on the spot. Lulu doesn’t go to regular school anymore; she’s supposed to be studying with a private tutor and taking the odd exam, but Annette hasn’t noticed much evidence of this. There have been no reported sightings of Lulu reading a schoolbook.
Annette once applied to the modeling school, but you have to get through the preliminary round. They looked at her for about half a second and didn’t bother asking her any questions. A month later a letter came saying that she didn’t have “sufficient camera presence.”
Mum explains to Lippe that originally another girl had been tapped for the Sexy Secrets campaign, a seventeen-year-old from Turku called Ramona who’d already done a lot of modeling and was a runner-up for Miss Finland.
“Hasn’t her face been used to death?” asks Lippe.
“She’s well past her prime,” Mum says, nodding, “so Lulu got the contract.”
The door rattles, and Dad comes in with Otso. Otso’s cheeks are red, and he’s wearing a smart jacket, a white shirt, and a bow tie. He’s been on another date with Pamela: Dad took them to a film or something. Both Mum and Dad prattle about what a handsome little boy they have. Otso runs into Mum’s arms shouting “Guess what! Guess what! Me and Pamela got engaged!” which of course starts off such a wave of fawning and gushing that Annette feels like throwing up.
Annette is on the school bus. The journey is less than a kilometer, only a few blocks, but the law states that all school-aged children must ride to school in their parents’ cars or on a supervised bus. “For the protection of our children,” ran the ads a few years ago when the law went into effect. Annette is standing in the aisle, but her new platform shoes cause her feet to slide down toward the point, and she keeps losing her balance. Once the bus stops at the traffic light she raises her eyes, and the view out the window hits her like a punch in the face.
From a gigantic roadside billboard Lulu stares back at her, ten times larger than normal, her eyes dark, her lips shining cherry red, a wind machine billowing her hair.
When Annette finally gets off the bus, as if to further taunt her, another billboard appears, a startling three-panel display this time, looming near the school gates. And of course the star is Lulu, modeling three different lines of underwear—Naughty Red, Sinful Black, and Seductive Green, according to the words.
Each image bears the same caption: BABY DOLL.
Trussed in a bright red string, Lulu’s ass practically bursts from the first panel; with half-closed eyes she twists her head toward the camera, brushing her hands against her bare shoulders so that her false nails, painted the same color as her panties, gleam against her skin like drops of blood.
Then comes Lulu crouching, shiny black-laced boots matching her underwear, holding a ridiculous toy snake and making like she’s kissing the thing, its orange velveteen head sliding between her lips.
And finally there’s a shot of Lulu from the side, hugging a beige teddy bear. Her back is arched, and her boobs, wrapped in jade-green lace, thrust defiantly upward.
Lulu’s priceless tits.
But a few days later a miracle occurs.
Annette arrives on the playground for recess, and instantly her stomach starts tightening, her chest pounding, just like every other time she has to walk past the gangs of boys. She hunches her shoulders, lowers her head, and wonders where the mockery will come from today, the cries of slut and dwarf-butt, and of course the comments about her tits—bee-stings, milkduds.
One gang mutters something indistinct, but Annette manages to reach the pavilion without her face blushing bright red. All of a sudden he’s standing right next to her. His name’s Timppa, she knows that. He’s two years ahead of her and plays ice hockey with the F Juniors, and many times she’s heard Ninotska and Veronika whispering that Timppa is absolutely shagtastic. He’s still standing right next to her, looking at her, and Annette is so startled she almost runs away for fear of yet another insult, but Timppa gives her a friendly smile and doesn’t look a bit like all he wants to do is shove his hand down her top.
“You’re Annette, right?” he asks. Annette is so taken aback that all she can manage is a nod. She’s utterly speechless. Timppa must think she’s a total dork because she doesn’t know how to respond with something quick and sassy the way Ninotska and Veronika always do when boys talk to them. But Timppa doesn’t seem to care; he looks Annette up and down, and his eyes stop at the sight of her platform shoes.
“Awesome boots.”
“Thanks,” Annette stammers as Timppa reaches into his leather jacket and produces a packet of SuperKiss, which he holds out to Annette. “Gum?”
Annette takes one, fumbles off the wrapper, and pops the stick in her mouth just as the bell rings, saving her. Timppa backs away, smirks, and waves at her. “Catch you later, Annette.”
Annette stands there and forgets to chew her gum, her mouth half open. Her heart is about to burst out of her chest.
During the next lesson Annette writes TIMPPA TIMPPA TIMPPA on her arm with a sharp pencil, scratching so hard the skin almost breaks.
Ninotska and Veronika have of course noticed that Annette was talking to Timppa during recess, and they’ll be sure to catch up with her at their first opportunity, instead of Annette nonchalantly trying to hang around their gang.
“Well, well, our little Annette’s got a boyfriend,” Ninotska says, her eyes burning, and for the first time Annette feels like she’s somebody, not just that girl whose Mum and Dad brought her a Stick That Dick pencil box from London; suddenly there’s something a little bit glam about Annette.
“He’s not my boyfriend. We’re just…friends.”
“Then it must be the first time ever that Timppa Kujala is just friends with a girl.”
Veronika gives a hollow chortle. “He’s the horniest stud in the school.”
“Careful you don’t get burned, Annette, darling.”
Ninotska and Veronika shuffle off, their curls gushing, their little bottoms bouncing contemptuously, and Annette looks at them and says under her breath, “They’re just jealous.”
And with that a great warmth fills her.
Timppa is loitering near the gates when Annette leaves school. He asks her where she’s off to, and when she says she’s going home he says he’s headed the same way and suggests they walk together, fuck the bus law. Timppa spits on the ground and says the whole rule is a load of crapola; he walks to school whenever he wants to. Annette wants to sound mega and says she thinks it’s a dumb-ass rule, too, and for some reason she feels safe walking with Timppa.
Annette sees that Veronika notices her leaving with Timppa, and her sense of triumph is so great she’s able to chat almost normally with Timppa, even though the silences are long, and she ends up asking him the same questions over and over; but he doesn’t seem to mind, and he talks practically the whole way home about which hockey players he admires the most, the ones that have the fastest cars and the juiciest babes with the hottest knockers.
When they arrive at Annette’s building, Timppa shuffles awkwardly for a moment and stares at the ground. “Can I come in for a bit?”
Annette is about to faint. Even though Ninotska and Veronika have kissed lots of boys at parties, and while Carmen spent a whole semester walking around hand-in-hand with Pasi, nobody has ever had a boyfriend who wanted to visit. It could mean almost anything. Annette can hardly breathe.
“Sure, come on in.”
They enter the elevator, and Annette presses the button for the sixth floor. Inside the car they don’t say a word, and for Annette this is quite a relief. Finally they arrive; she opens her apartment door, shows Timppa in, and gives him a hanger for his leather jacket. This time she doesn’t drop her bag on the floor but carries it down the hall past the living room and the den, Timppa at her heels, then stops outside her bedroom door, on which there’s a large Stick That Dick poster and a piece of cardboard with thick red lettering: ANNETTEZ ROOM PRIVATE NO ENTRY!
Annette steps toward Timppa so she’s almost right up against him. “Want to see my room?”
Timppa doesn’t appear to be listening, he’s inspecting the other doors in the vicinity. One features a full-color poster of the world’s most glamorous supermodel, Marinette Mankiewicz. Her moist skin sparkles with hundreds of little pearly beads for a major wetness effect; her bikini looks wet, too, clamped tight against her tits and almost see-through. Lulu once told Annette it’s all done with oil instead of water, because oil is shinier and doesn’t dry out under the studio lights.
“Is that your sister’s room?”
“Lulu’s? I guess.”
“When’s she coming home?”
At first Annette doesn’t understand, but then it strikes her, and her stomach feels like it’s about to spill out around her heels, and her head starts to spin.
“Around four o’clock,” she mutters almost inaudibly.
“I can hang out and wait, huh?” Timppa asks, his eyes fixed on Marinette Mankiewicz, and Annette realizes that Lulu and the photographer have ripped off the idea behind this poster for their three-panel billboard—the Seductive Green Lulu with her tits pointing skyward.
“Make yourself at home,” she says and goes into her room, and only vast amounts of self-control prevent her from slamming the door shut much louder than normal.
After that Timppa visits almost every day. He comes around at the same time as Lulu and often doesn’t leave till late at night, after Mumps and Dumps have stood next to the Marinette Mankiewicz poster coughing or clearing their throats or knocking on the door, and Mumps says, pretending to be all thoughtful and considerate, “Right, I think it’s time for our Lulu’s beauty sleep!”
Ninotska and Veronika have been giggling to themselves and tossing their curls around and whispering so much that Annette can feel it in her stomach. They ask her, real smarmy, “How’s your boyfriend doing nowadays?” then burst into a hyperly loud chortle as if the joke gets funnier every time. At first Annette can’t understand how exactly Ninotska and Veronika learned that Timppa and Lulu have been hanging together, but it all becomes clear during morning recess when she’s walking behind a group of boys who haven’t noticed her, and she overhears one of them chattering about what a hottie Timppa has pulled; he then describes Lulu at great length and brags that Timppa’s on the verge of scoring. Timppa, naturally, has told the entire school.
Annette runs straight to the girls’ toilet and throws up, filling the bowl with globules of meat and potatoes. The ketchup makes it look like she’s been vomiting blood, and she decides that vomiting blood probably feels like this. A moment later, her puke-tears having dried, she feels slightly dizzy, but her thoughts are surprisingly clear.
As she leaves the stall, she bumps into Nana, one of the girls in her year, loitering by the sinks. She must have heard Annette barfing. Nana gives her a conspiratorial smile.
“Have you just started?”
Annette doesn’t understand. Nana pulls a bottle of Evian from her schoolbag and hands it to her. “If you want to stay fit while you’re on the program, remember to drink enough water. Don’t let yourself dry out. No calories in water, you see.”
Annette gulps down a mouthful of Evian and mumbles her thanks. Nana slips the bottle back in her bag. “One good tip: get yourself some xylitol chewing gum and use it after you’ve barfed. That way the stomach acids won’t take the shine off your teeth.”
Annette nods. Nana slings her bag across her shoulder and looks Annette up and down. “Yeah, you could do with losing a few kilos.” Nana moves toward the door, her little ass snugged tightly in her jeans. “Good luck.”
Mum and Dad are watching a movie on late-night TV. Timppa is around again.
Annette has a walk-in closet that runs along the wall she shares with Lulu’s room. When they were little, they used to play telephone. Every time Annette held the rim of a drinking glass against the back wall of her closet and pressed her ear to the bottom, she could hear what her sister was saying even if Lulu used a normal voice.
Annette visits the bathroom and dumps the toothbrushes out of the glass. She returns to her room, slides back the closet door, and makes her way through the hanging clothes. Chiffon, fake leather and the hems of her black and brightly colored miniskirts brush her face, and the heels of her shoes clatter as she pushes them out of the way. The closet smells of fabric conditioner, sweaty sneakers, and lavender sachet.
Annette holds the glass against the plaster. She knows that Lulu’s bed is on the other side, right up against the wall.
At first all she picks up is a lot of mumbling, moaning, whispering, and creaking bedsprings. Then comes a thump as though somebody’s arm or leg has hit the wall. The sound shoots right into Annette’s ear, and she almost jumps out of the closet.
“For Christ’s sake, what’s your problem? We’ve been together a whole month.” She can hear Timppa clearly now, sounding all shrill since his voice hasn’t yet broken. Lulu responds with a murmur Annette can’t quite make out.
“What’re you saving it for?” Timppa chirps. “I’ll bet you’ve already been screwed every which way, at least that’s what the guys are saying.”
Again Annette can’t hear Lulu’s reply—is she talking into her pillow or what?—but Timppa understands her, and he answers immediately.
“Don’t you know this town’s full of chicks just begging for it?” he scoffs. “Why should I waste my time on some snooty tight-twat? Shit, are you like planning to hold out till you’re fourteen or something?”
“No,” Lulu says. “I don’t know.”
“Then what’s your problem? Aren’t you on the pill?”
Lulu hesitates. “Well, not exactly.” Her voice is all raspy and apologetic, the way it gets when she’s embarrassed. “I haven’t quite got mine yet.”
“Your pills?”
“My…periods.”
“Bingo! Then there’s no need to mess with rubbers!”
Again Lulu says something Annette can’t quite hear.
“I just think it’s time our relationship took a step forward.” Timppa’s words sound like he’s reading them from a book.
Another loud thump, followed by a rustling sound, probably Lulu’s sheets. She whimpers a little.
“Stop it.”
“Stop it? You’re like a walking invitation, ass and jalookies on billboards all over town, and you have the balls to say stop it?”
Again the rustling of Lulu’s sheets. She mumbles something, and then comes Timppa’s voice, and this time it’s more of a whine. “When you lead a guy on like that, you’ve got to see it through.”
Annette stands upright, and her head hits the metal rod, but she doesn’t give it a second thought. She crawls out of the closet, sending her shoes clattering into the room. An instant later she’s in the hall banging on Lulu’s door.
“Lulu!”
A moment’s silence, then Lulu’s voice, trying to sound calm and normal. “Now what?”
“Mum says your guest has to go!”
From behind the door comes a stifled curse, still more rustling; the bed creaks. There follows a lot of low harsh muttering, and Annette hears a zipper being pulled up. Timppa comes out of the door, his hair messed up and his face all red. He glowers at Annette, who’s leaning against the wall minding her own business, and she stares back at him with a shrug and an innocent, slightly apologetic smile that says, Parents will be parents.
Lulu’s door stays closed, and after a short while the sound of soft sweet music floats out into the hall.
Timppa has stopped coming round and Annette is ferociously happy about it. But her triumph starts falling apart, cracking and flaking and blowing away with the wind when she realizes that Lulu hasn’t changed; she’s still always giggling and yawning and stuffing herself with laxative licorice candy. It’s the same Lulu who smiles mysteriously from beneath her false eyelashes, and for some reason she doesn’t seem to pine for the lost Timppa in the least.
The worst of it is the way Lulu had the nerve simply to forget Timppa, whose name still throbs where Annette scratched it on her forearm, TIMPPA TIMPPA TIMPPA.
He was Annette’s first chance to be the way everyone expected her to be, and Lulu acts like she took up with him just for the hell of it, then let him go for the same reason. As if Annette wasn’t the one who split them up in the first place.
Would it kill Lulu to show, even for the tiniest instant, that she knows what it feels like to be Annette?
In fairness, ever since the night with the drinking glass Lulu has acted almost friendly toward Annette, chatting with her and giving her stuff from her makeup kit that’s hardly been used at all. Sometimes Lulu looks at her with big wet spaniel eyes, which is actually pretty maddening, and Annette almost breaks a tooth trying to stay calm when Lulu gets all palsy-walsy. Annette knows Lulu’s just pretending, her way of covering up the wound Annette caused in coming between her and Timppa. And with that phony chumminess Lulu in snatching away the last precious thing Annette has, her pissy little victory.
And on top of it all Mumps keeps simpering, “It’s so nice to see you sisters getting along so well.”
Annette is vegging out before the television, the big noisy climax of some dopey rock show. Stick That Dick has dropped to number six on the charts, and now in the number one slot there’s the girl band Jugzapoppin’ who perform topless. After that there’s nothing on; even the trash channels are boring once you get used to them. Annette visits a chat room using the remote, but soon gives up. You can barely write two answers before somebody asks about your cup-size and what color panties you’re wearing. She surfs the net, then skips through different TV channels, but all she can find are unfunny sitcoms and grotty old movies.
One of them catches her attention.
The title of the flick is Welcome to the Dollhouse. At first Annette is only interested because the star is so unbelievably ugly. Why would they let anybody who looks like that be in a movie? The girl must be about eight-yo, Annette’s age, and she’s not even making an effort to appear older. She wears glasses, of all things, which tells you right off the film is ancient, because nowadays nobody, no girl that is, would be that insane; you either have an operation or at the very least get contacts. Annette follows the film for a few minutes, occasionally flipping through the other channels, but she keeps coming back to Welcome to the Dollhouse as though drawn by a rubber band.
The girl’s name is Dawn, and everyone at school hates her and calls her a dork and a dog and a dyke. She has a little sister named Missy who does ballet. Missy’s about six-yo. She wears a pink tutu and a pink leotard—a pink angel—her hair tied back in a bun, with flowers, cute as a doll. Dawn’s Mum and Dad spend all day fawning over Missy and neglect Dawn really badly, and Dawn hates Missy so much her stomach hurts. Okay, sure, Dawn never actually says Missy makes her stomach hurt, but Annette knows what it means when Dawn wraps her arms around herself, clenches her teeth, and shuts her eyes tight.
Then one day Dawn’s Mum asks her to tell Missy, who’s about to leave for a ballet class, that she can’t pick her up today, so Missy should ask the teacher for a ride home.
But Dawn doesn’t tell her.
And Missy is left standing alone outside the ballet school and gets kidnapped. Goodbye Missy.
Annette feels a devilish red glow of satisfaction, and yet at the same time terribly guilty, as if she were the one who’d gotten rid of Miss Goody Two-Shoes Sugar-Plum-Fairy Missy for good.
She changes the channel and doesn’t watch the end of the Dollhouse flick, but still the mood of the thing follows Annette for days, and she can’t quite shake that sickly-prickly thrill she felt when, with the police cars flashing their red and blue lights outside Dawn and Missy’s house, it became clear that Dawn had succeeded.
Lulu has a shoot somewhere on the other side of town. Mumps is in Gothenburg, and Dumps is supposed to pick her up after the session. Annette has of course been asked to babysit Otso. Surprised that the little Casanova’s not at Pamela’s place, she wonders, nastily, has Pamela found herself a more mega stud and finished with Otso just like that? Annette is lounging on the couch watching the celebs on Junior Pop Idol. Otso sits a meter from the TV, staring at the screen, and tries to sing along except when Annette hisses at him to be quiet. Four-year-old Jussi does a rendition of “I Want Your Sex,” then Kylie comes on, the same age, singing “Like a Virgin.” Kylie wears a shiny sequined dress and a pink ostrich-feather boa with matching lipstick. Halfway through the performance the telephone rings. Annette’s in a pretty ticked-off mood when she answers, interruptions being just about her least favorite thing.
It’s Dad, and there’s a lot of noise in the background. He’s had to borrow somebody else’s phone to call her. Some idiot smashed into his car, and on impact his headset phone flew out the window and broke. Dad’s got to take the car to the garage and get himself a new headset, and that will take some time. He says Lulu probably switched off her phone for the shoot, so could Annette send her a voice mail or a text message saying Dad can’t pick her up and she should take a taxi? He explains this over and over like it’s the most difficult assignment ever.
“Yes yes YESYES!” Annette screams and ends the call, but still she’s missed two more potential Junior Pop Idols; now a five-yo boy is singing “Hit Me Baby One More Time.” Otso joins in whenever Annette doesn’t try to stop him.
Annette picks up her mobile and has already selected Lulu from the quick menu when her hand goes limp.
This can’t be just a coincidence.
Annette stares at the phone.
“Welcome to the dollhouse, Baby Doll,” she says, then switches off the phone entirely.
Hours later the apartment phone rings for the sixth time, and each time the caller-name on the screen is Lulu.
The fact that nobody’s answering isn’t exactly unusual. Otso’s a light sleeper, so Dad often unplugs the phone after he’s put Otso to bed, and all the headsets or mobiles in the apartment are in a drawer or under a pillow or turned off altogether.
The phone rings for a seventh time.
The police car is parked in front of the building, but the lights on its roof aren’t pulsing red and blue like in the film; the car is totally dark and totally silent.
Dad carries Lulu inside, wrapped in a gray blanket. Her mascara has dribbled down her face, and one of her cheeks is red and scratched and bleeding. Her right eye is almost swollen shut, and her lower lip is split. Dad carefully lays her on the living room couch and staggers into the kitchen like he’s gone blind. He returns with a dish towel soaked in warm water and tries to wipe the mascara streaks off Lulu’s face, but she gently pushes his hand away.
“Remppu,” she whispers. Dad looks at Lulu; he doesn’t know what she means—but Annette knows, so she goes to Lulu’s room and pulls a drawer out from under the bed. Remppu is lying among the other junk with his spindly legs in a knot: a stuffed terry-cloth monkey whose long dangling arms have little orange mittens sewn at the ends. The terry-cloth loops have worn away on those places where Lulu used to suck on Remppu when she was a baby.
Annette walks up to Lulu and places Remppu in her arms. Lulu squeezes him against her chest and places her lips to his battered old head, near where Annette once tore off the eyes and Mum had to sew on a pair of blue buttons instead. Lulu closes her own eyes and lies there perfectly still.
The two policemen wander around the living room like flickering shadows. It’s as though Annette is not really in the same place where all this is happening; instead she’s standing outside somebody’s else’s apartment watching these events through the window. Her stomach’s filled with a heavy sweetness, as if her breath has turned to syrup.
“Messages sometimes disappear when the operators are busy,” says one officer. Dad nods blindly; he clearly doesn’t even hear.
“We’ve got some possible sightings of the four men, and of course we’ll try our best, but, sad to say, cases like this are getting more common all the time, so who knows?”
Dad bobs his head like an automaton. Annette stands there silently and doesn’t know what to do; she feels totally stunned. Now she realizes how stupid she was. She didn’t mean for this to happen. She thought Lulu would just disappear, would get lost somewhere in town and, like a child in a fairy tale, never find her way home.
Now Annette is annoyed that she didn’t watch Welcome to the Dollhouse all the way through; she doesn’t know what finally became of Missy.
Would Dawn have made such a dumb-ass mistake?
“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” an officer says.
Dad nods for a third time, then takes Lulu and Remppu in a single bundle in his arms and walks off toward Lulu’s room; beneath the blanket Lulu’s feet dangle as limply as Remppu’s terry-cloth limbs.
Mum and Dad are in the den talking all hushed and low, thinking nobody will hear them, but the walls are thin and Annette has sharp ears; she can easily sort out both their voices, almost every word, from the noise of the TV in the background.
Not that she wants to hear them, because her stomach is aching, and she’d much rather swat the voices away like flies and pretend they don’t exist, but she also feels compelled to listen, like that time at Ninotska’s nine-yo party when Annette kept her eyes on the screen even though she didn’t want to see any more grand slam hot pussies.
“The insurance will cover Lulu’s plastic surgery,” Dad says. “If we can believe the doctors, there won’t be any scarring. She can probably start modeling again in a couple of months. Thank God they finished the Sexy Secrets shoot in time.”
“The men who did this, if they ever get caught—should we try to get…restitution?” Mum asks indistinctly.
Dad sighs. “Caught? Not too likely. Wouldn’t matter anyway. The whole problem is that she never changed her clothes—she thought I was picking her up—so they’ll just say she was asking for it. Their lawyers will argue that Lulu brought it on herself.”
“Then we won’t see a penny?”
“’Fraid not,” Dad says.
Annette’s head and stomach start aching again. What could that mean, Lulu brought it on herself? No, no, she did it—she, Annette, caused all this just as surely as if she’d bought a gun and shot herself in the foot. Annette would give almost anything for this, of all things, never to have happened.
Word has circulated around the school.
The boys’ hand signals have become grosser than ever, and naturally Ninotska and Veronika keep trying to get all chatty with Annette. Annette vows to act hypernormal, a bit indifferent, even slightly chipper. She won’t show those dopes how much she’s really hurting.
“Four,” Ninotska trills. “Four horny dudes!”
“Was it one after another, or did they all do it together?” Veronika carries on.
Annette shrugs. “I couldn’t care less.” She walks off, and the hallway echoes with shouts of lululululululululululu.
Mum has brought home burritos from the deli. She cuts one into small pieces for Otso and squeezes ketchup over them from a plastic bottle. Otso would eat Styrofoam if it was covered in ketchup. Lulu won’t come down to eat. She won’t even leave her room, and that infuriates Annette, too—Lulu always has to make herself special somehow. Annette pokes at her burrito with a fork. She normally likes them, but now her throat feels blocked. Lately nothing tickles her fancy.
“I want implants.”
The words bubble abruptly out of Annette’s mouth, almost like vomit. Mum stops in mid-squeeze, the bottle gives a little fart, and Otso has a laughing fit.
“Implants? For you?” Mum looks confused, as though she’d never heard the word before.
“Everybody’s got them!”
“At your age?”
“Ninotska’s getting them, Sarietta’s already stopped being a milkdud, and today I heard Veronika’s shopping around!” Annette bangs her fork rhythmically against the table. “Anyway, Lulu’s got them. You gave her implants the minute the agent told you to!”
Everything freezes. Mum stares at her, eyes like saucers, and even Otso stops eating. The silence gets so intense that Annette’s ears almost hurt, and then Mum clears her throat.
“But…we don’t want the same thing happening to you that happened to Lulu,” she says, her voice all hoarse.
“You never want anything to happen to me, do you?” says Annette, giving Mum big saucer-eyes in return.
Mum doesn’t answer. All the doors and windows of her face are shut tight.
Annette slams her fork so hard it springs out of her hand and somersaults to the floor, clanging like a bell.
“I knew it! I knew you never wanted anything to happen to me!”
Mum looks at her, the side of her mouth twitching. This is a sign.
“Everybody thinks I’m just a child!” Annette screams. She upends her plate, sending chicken pieces and veggie bits flying out of the tortilla all over the tablecloth and onto the floor. “Nothing real is ever supposed to happen to me!”
Mum stands there frozen, and Annette picks up a knife and starts banging it against the table. Mum moves quickly and grabs Annette’s arm. “There, there, dear, we can ask Dad when he gets home,” she says, then carefully takes the knife away.