Under the sea

Under the sea. Under the sea. Life is better down where it’s wetter, take it from me.

The doll sang in a high weedy tone. Thinner and less body than a real voice. The voice sounded like it was under water, which seemed appropriate, given the doll.

She was a foot and a half tall, long red hair in two braids, each about six inches long. She had a purple top and a bright green mermaid tail that helped her stand upright. She had bulbous green eyes that sparkled. As she sang, the tail went translucent and flashed and strobed in time with the tune.

I love playing under the sea, she tittered.

Amanda kept pressing the heart necklace pendant that set off the sound. She was addicted. It was annoying.

“You want to take that in the water?” I asked. “I think it can get wet."

I watched my daughter stroke the doll’s hair. It was an Ariel doll to be sure but it wasn’t from Disney. I had found it at the thrift store. I couldn’t find instructions online for it, but I found a doll very much like it from the official Disney store. That one could be submerged in water. I had examined the doll’s base and the rest of it and everything seemed well sealed. The place you’d put the batteries was also multilayered and sealed to keep water out. I was actually impressed. It had come working from the thrift store so I hadn’t had to open the battery compartment yet.

“Yeah. Let’s put it in the water," Amanda said.

She was a vivacious 5-year-old. Often, I forgot how old she was. She sometimes carried on quite grown-up conversations with older kids and was very opinionated. But she was a tiny thing still. Surprisingly fragile in the way that only small kids who are past toddler stage but not old enough to go to school yet can be. You would forget how young they were and then see their little arms and think Wow they are still so small. I wondered how I would feel when she started kindergarten. Would I cry? Would I be able to let her go?

Amanda sat covered with bubbles so thick that all I could see were her arms and her head. She pulled the doll down into the bubbles and shrieked with glee. She yelled and ducked her head down, disappearing under the water. She came up spluttering.

“She glows under the water too, mom!” Amanda laughed.

The doll was covered with bubbles. I was reminded suddenly of the Harry Potter movie when they got the egg clue for the Triwizard tournament. There was a mermaid voice in the eggs that could only be heard under water. Ironically, I bet that once under the water, the voice of the knock-off was so faint you couldn’t hear it at all.

***

After Amanda went down for the night I went back to clean the bathroom. She had left toys strewn all over the bath with some bubbles clinging to the sides of the tub. I hated leaving bath toys too long without cleaning them up. Inevitably I would try to take a shower at 2 am before going to bed. I’d be exhausted and then would find myself having to bend double to remove toys. Better to do it early while I still had the will to move.

The Ariel doll was sitting on the counter, where I had finally gotten Amanda to let go of it. The eyes were the size of marbles and they glinted. I moved my head from left to right, tracking the eyes.

“What are you looking at?“ I asked her. She didn’t respond. I laughed.

***

I watched a couple of late-night comedy shows with my husband until he went to bed. He seemed more tired than usual that night. I stayed up another hour watching Downton Abbey and drinking red wine. I finished the bottle. It was 1:30 am when I went to take my shower.

Ariel was sitting on the counter, bright eyes staring. Her hair wasn’t in braids anymore. Had Amanda taken out the braids? I didn’t recall her doing that. They had been held in place by thin clear rubber bands. Maybe Amanda had figured out how to take them out. I wondered where the rubber bands had gone.

I started taking off my clothes. Pants first, then sweatshirt, shirt, tank top, underwear. I felt the doll looking at me. What if someone had implanted cameras in her eyes? What if I was being spied on?

This was insane paranoia of course. I was nuts. It was late and I had drunk too much wine. My head hurt a little.

Green shiny eyes. I stared at the doll. I picked it up and put it on the window sill facing out the window. Somehow, seeing the back of her creeped me out worse but I left her there.

***

I started to fall asleep while standing up in the shower. The water was hot and strong on my shoulders. My legs got a little rubbery. My head swam. I shook my head and opened my eyes. The steam was getting to me. I felt somewhat nauseous. I turned off the water and heard the drip drip drip, and then the large dribble of the water coming back down the faucet from the shower pipe.

I had always had really bad vision. I could see only an inch or two in front of my face before the world turned blurry. I always wondered if in the olden days vision like that would kick someone out of the gene pool. The effect was that I couldn’t see much while taking a shower.

The bathroom was a sea of fuzzy white with blobs of color by the window. I touched something dry with my foot. That was a towel. By my feet. That was a child’s toy, maybe the large boat they filled up with toys and floated in the bath. On the counter were fuzzy blue and red blobs that were likely more toys, a tablet, hair spray bottle, maybe a board book. Then there was that blob of red and green. The doll. I shuddered dramatically. It really was creepy.

I grabbed my towel from the rod over the tub and started to dry off. I dried my hair ferociously, then down to my legs and up to my torso.

Under the sea! A short burst of song. Then nothing.

I looked up at the blob that was the doll. I grabbed at it and brought it close up to my face so that the blob slowly turned into a doll. Red hair. Green eyes. Green and purple outfit. Nothing abnormal at all except for how creepy it still was. Maybe the battery was on the fritz. Sometimes kid toys would misbehave in the strangest ways if the batteries were getting low. I used to joke that the toys were all possessed. Few things creepier than a kid song playing at random from a dark and empty room.

I finished drying my face and felt around on the counter for my glasses. I put them on and looked again at the doll. I sat her on the ledge, facing me this time. I have my eye on you, I thought.

I felt that having kids was sometimes a real mind fuck. Songs were a prime example. If you had a kid who listened to the same songs or watched the same videos over and over, you’d start to hear them in your sleep. Literally. And when you woke and when you peed and when you drove somewhere. Stalking your remaining brain cells. Lion King songs and Little Mermaid songs and Frozen songs. Disney owed me shrink fees for the number of times I had been forced to listen to Let it Go in my lifetime.

The doll had already made the Under the Sea song start playing on a loop in my head. I groaned and felt my hair. It was still too damp. I took the towel and wiped my hair hard back and forth again. I got distracted by my phone’s screen lighting up and ended up checking my email for the next couple of minutes.

As I left the bathroom, I looked at the doll again. I noticed for the first time that her right arm was slightly shorter than the left. Just slightly off, like most things with knock off toys. Or was the left one too long? I looked again. Jesus. I need to go to bed.

I closed the bathroom door. We did that to keep the cats out.

I walked back to the kitchen to do some prep for the next day’s breakfast. I liked to have most of it together the night before so that I would have less to do while getting kids up.

Under the sea! Under the sea!

I heard it faintly. For a split second I wasn’t sure if it was something merely rattling around the synapses of my brain or if I was hearing it with my ears.

I’d always had a fear of becoming schizophrenic. Not being able to tell reality from fantasy, hearing voices, and seeing things seemed terrifying. A true loss of control. I would read stories about people losing their mind like that – I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, for example. I wondered if it would creep up on you, so that you truly mixed up the real with the fake, or if it would be obvious that it was a delusion trying to nest in your brain.

Under the sea! Under the sea! Better down where its wetter…

That was definitely a real noise outside my head. I walked up the stairs to the bathroom. The door was open. I must have left it not fully latched, I thought. Maybe a cat bumped into it and sprang it open.

The doll was still facing the door. No noise was coming from it. I picked it up and looked for how to get the batteries out. It had a rubber casing over the actual battery pack. I could remove the rubber casing but the pack under it needed a screwdriver. Great, I thought. I really don’t want to deal with this now.

I took the doll and I put it on the floor. I covered it with the wet towels that had been in a heap behind the door. I figured that this would at least muffle the noise until I got around to replacing the batteries.

I walked back downstairs, feeling wearier after the trip. I put peanut butter on some blueberry bagels and cut up an apple. I made some eggs on the stove. Just salt and pepper and Pam. The eggs made a satisfying sizzle and I started to zone out.

Under the sea - - Life is better down where it’s wetter – from – me.

I turned off the stove and stood still. I listened. The sound had been louder than last time. That made no sense. The doll was covered with towels. I shouldn’t have been able to hear anything at all.

I looked distractedly around. The kitchen was a bit of a mess. The counters were full of open packages and dirty dishes. The island had toys and books, groceries I had never put away, and a few decorative items that you could only see when the island was totally clean. Which was never. I sighed and moved things out of the way to make a small space on a corner.

I walked back up the stairs to the bathroom. I figured that I would bring the doll down and work on the batteries.

I stopped midway down the hallway and blinked. The bathroom door was open again. I would have sworn that I had clicked it fully shut this time.

I took a few more steps toward the bathroom door. Then I felt my heart seize up like a stone and drop off a cliff into my gut. The Ariel doll was sitting on the counter, staring at the door. Its crown was askew, and its arms looked even more imbalanced than before. The wet towels were still on a pile on the floor.

I turned around and looked at my kids’ doors. Both were closed. No sound came from either of them. My husband should have still have been asleep. I opened the door and checked to make sure. He was on the bed, facing away from the bedroom door and not moving.

I walked back to the bathroom. And started to shudder for real this time.

The doll wasn’t on the counter anymore.

I dug under the wet towels, light blue and brown, heavy with water. And there she was. She didn’t have her crown, but her hair was damp from the towels and she was face down, as I had left her before.

I picked the doll up and held it at arm’s length. I kept her at arm’s length as I walked down the stairs. I nearly tripped over a stuffed bear at the bottom of the stairs. Goddamn it! I kicked the bear angrily and it landed by the front door.

I strode into the kitchen with a fierce warrior rage and placed the offending item on the edge of the island in the bare space that I had prepared for her.

I stepped back and looked at her.

I searched my mind for what had just happened. I had walked into the bathroom. She was on the counter. I had placed her under the towels and then I had come back and she was on the counter. No, wait, she was on the window ledge and I had placed her under the towels. No, I had moved her to the counter first. But she was for sure under the towels and then I had gone downstairs and heard the song and she was back on the counter. Then she was back under the towels again. Right?

I rubbed my forehead and looked at the stove. The eggs. I touched them with my index finger. They were spongy and cold. I slid them into a bowl and covered it with saran wrap. I placed the bowl on the top shelf of the fridge.

I turned around to the island, half expecting that the doll wouldn’t be there anymore. But it was sitting right where I had placed it. I looked at the clock. It was already 2:30 am. Damn. I rummaged in the junk drawer. To be honest many of my drawers were functionally junk drawers.

I had a little set of mini screwdrivers that I had gotten from a Japanese dollar store when I had visited San Francisco for work a few years ago. They were small and cheap but great to use on little things like kid toys. I had no idea where any of the full-sized screwdrivers were anyway.

I pulled out the screwdriver with the largest Philips’ head and opened up the rubbery part of the doll. I felt a short vibration. Then I felt a small electric shock. I had been electrocuted once before when trying to fix an appliance on my own. It was a unique sensation. The numb tingle traveled up my fingers and into my forearm. I placed the doll back down. I looked at its arms again. That left arm was now about a half inch longer than the right. I could have sworn they were closer in length than that.

Curious, I wiggled the left arm. It shifted and then pulled out another few centimeters. I wiggled the right one and it barely moved. Now the left one was a good inch longer than the right. I turned the doll around again and pulled back up the rubber layer. I unscrewed the little battery compartment and pulled up the plastic cover. Then I dropped the doll and felt my pulse speed up. I could hear the blood in my ears.

Not possible, I thought.

I turned the doll upside down, and examined it inch by inch. I shook it. I looked at the front and the back and the bottom. I wiggled the arms and the legs. I examined how the head attached to the body. Then I sat the doll back on the counter and sat on a stool looking at it.

I got my shoes on, and went out to my car. I placed the mermaid doll on the seat next to me and drove 10 minutes into town. I drove around the Safeway to where the dumpsters were and found the first with an open lid. The air was crisp and damp and there was a single light hitting the dumpster from the store’s brick outer wall.

I marched over to the dumpster stolidly, Ariel doll in hand. I pulled my arm back and swung the doll by her hair up and over the lip of the dumpster. I heard a dull metallic thunk. My hand shook slightly and I closed it in a fist.

I got back into my SUV and drove away.

***

The next day my daughter asked what had happened to the mermaid doll.

“It broke,” I said. “It just broke.”