Those People

Even before getting off of the city bus, I know I am out of place. Reaching into my shorts pocket, I pull out my tiny worry doll Mama gave me, stroke her hair with my thumb, and lean my head against the window to get a better view. When the bus stops, I shove my worry doll back into my pocket, grab my bag, and exit into the parking lot. 

My teacher told me she could get me a table, so I thought it would be like the rummage sales at church. But everything looks much nicer. Really nice, like in stores. Things with expensive hooks and frames and shelves and walls and sides. Things I’ve never seen before. Things that cost a lot of money. 

I bet those people make a lot of money. 

Humidity bathes my skin within seconds, even at 8 a.m., but that’s how it is in July in the South. Bus fumes burn my nose, leaving me at the edge of the library’s parking lot. I can feel my one church shoelace untying the way it always does – slinging around and wrapping about my feet and ankles, trying to trip me. This means the other church shoelace will untie itself any minute now. Everything Grandma gets from the church has something wrong with it: small stains or rips, ill-fitting, doesn’t work right – but it’s free.

I stop to set my bag down, feel the heat on the pavement slowly rising with the morning sun. Bending at the waist to tie my left lace, salty sweat drips into my eyes, burns like ocean water. I reach my hand into my bag for tissues that aren’t there and notice the cute pastel hearts imprinted on my bag are melting from the heated asphalt. I touch the liquid goo that sticks to my hand, smearing pink and blue and green and yellow hearts across my black bag. By reflex, I wipe my hand onto my favorite t-shirt, staining it with colors. 

Even though the shirt is a man’s size and already has a small stain, it is the only thing Grandma got from the church that I like, because it’s soft and has the name of a college on the front. Now it looks like a house rag. After adjusting my t-shirt over the holes of my cut-off jean shorts, I re-roll the hem of my shorts neatly and head towards the main building.  

I am nervous again that I’m out of place. I don’t see any other young people except a couple of little kids. The only other two people like me are ladies older than my Grandma, selling handmade aprons and hats and baby bibs and quilts. I walk to the one wearing a long paisley dress and a hat with huge yellow flowers around the rim.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” I ask. “I just got here. Where do I go?”

As she turns from hanging hats on a rack, I see she is probably a great-grandma. Her friendly smile reveals huge horse-like dentures that take up her entire mouth; her dark brown eyes are sweetly doe-like. She points her short, unpainted fingernails at the end of a bony finger. 

“Right on down there with the flag. See the lady in charge.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

The woman I think is in charge stands behind the booth with an American flag hanging over it. A fan blows on her while she chats with other ladies and ignores me. I wait, listen to her gossip. 

When she turns to me, my stomach turns into knots. I feel her eyes all over me, staring at my hand-me-downs, the way they always do. She turns back to the other ladies, ignoring me. 

“Excuse me,” I said. 

She’s pretending she can’t hear me. 

“Excuse me!” 

This time, the librarian-looking lady in a blue dress motions to the woman that won’t shut up and ignores me. The woman turns, as if she’s never seen me before, “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you standing there!” 

Liar. 

“Are you joining us today? What is it you have?” 

“Handmade dolls.” 

I hand her the voucher for my table, and she wags her red salon-painted fingernails to follow her to the very far end, away from the other ladies like me. 

“You should be fine over here.” She gestures towards a pile of wooden tables and plastic chairs, like at the old school I went to when Mama was around. “Whichever one you’d like,” her lips smile, but not her eyes. 

Three other people in my section fill the front, selling handmade dolls in tent booths. I counted five parking spaces between us. They have racks and cases with fancy little decorations and price tags hanging neatly from each item. One lady perches realistic-looking dolls upright in little stands where everyone can see their beautifully sewn dresses and detailed faces. Everyone oohs-and-ahs at how much they look like real babies, which all look creepy to me. 

A lady everyone calls Granny Mae wears bows and pigtails and a dress like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. Her fair-skinned ceramic dolls sit in classroom chairs and on doll-sized playground sets around her tent. Each has printed information next to them: Their names and ages and birthdays. Each school outfit is made of velvet, silk, or cashmere, and their soulless eyes are made of glass. They are not the type of dolls children play with and cost more than Grandma’s grocery money for the month. 

Across from her, a wrinkled man with white hair and a beard and a funny hat sells strange tall figures that look a lot like him. They’re made from tree stumps and cost more than the soulless dolls next to him. His is friendly and smiles a lot, and his hands shake the way my music teacher’s did when she stopped playing piano. He tells me he made the wood shelves surrounding him, and I say he did a very nice job, which is true. 

Maybe I will sell all of my dolls and buy a nice setup like those people!

This is my first time trying to sell anything I’ve made. Displaying my dolls wasn’t something I thought about, because all I have is a voucher for a table, not a tent or anything else. No one said to bring a tablecloth or even an umbrella. Grandma thinks I’m here studying for summer reading. She would be plenty upset if she knew about my dolls. Mama tells me to hide them under my mattress all the way against the wall, because Grandma is old and can’t lift the mattress. 

I pull a chair from its stack and look around for a decent table to use. Just like in school detention, every table is marked up with graffiti: Lisa was here ’92 and Tara & Joe 4-Ever and SKOOL SUX. Scratched and faded and covered in layers of dirt and grime, there isn’t a best one. When I pull the closest one out, my finger touches old gum stuck to the bottom. I spit on my hand to wash off gum germs and use my t-shirt to wipe. This time, I look beneath the table before pulling it away from its equally ugly sisters and introduce a blue plastic chair. 

Now this dirty old detention table is making me more nervous, because I don’t have any cloth to cover its ugliness and nothing to shade me from the sun. When I get nervous after school, making dolls calms me down. I use cloth from parts of old clothes and a sewing kit and things from the yard to make them. Grandma thinks I’m doing her a favor by picking weeds and removing sticks she might step on or trip over. I use tiny gemstone crystal beads that Mama gave me to make their hair and clothes pretty. Seeing their colors dancing in the light feels magical, like I’m in another world, like I’m back with Mama. 

I open my bag and remove all eight of my hand-stitched dolls, lining them along the table. I named them all according to their colors. Jett, my favorite, is black. She’s not for sale; she always stays with me. The others I’m selling: Ivory is white; Rosy is red, Sunny is yellow, and orange is Marigold. I named green Emerald; blue is Sapphire; and purple is Violet. The last, I made white and all colors, like a rainbow; her name is Unicorn. She costs fifteen dollars, because she’s the most beautiful, and I wish I could keep her. 

Cars fill the lot, which excites me about making my first ten dollars. When I step back to look at my setup, my dolls can’t be seen at all. Remembering the stack of plastic chairs, I choose three blue, two yellow, and two orange and set them side by side in front of the table until I feel happy. Now they can be seen, sort of. 

The small plastic cup filled with warm water doesn’t stay full for long, but it also doesn’t quench my thirst. Making trips back and forth to the water fountain is making me hotter, even though I drink five full cups while standing there. When I stroll by someone baking muffins in a mini oven under the walkway, pangs of hunger hit me. Cookies and chocolate dipped pretzels and donuts and coffee fill the air. There was nothing to eat to bring from home, but I don’t even have enough to get a fifty-cent muffin.

Everyone already knows one another, sharing muffins and cookies. They talk about their kids, grandkids, someone got married, someone had a baby, someone is having twins, the new art supply store is about to open, those people on the news, the weather should cool off after the rain this week, and of course – gossip. 

It’s not unfamiliar to me to be in a place knowing no one, but I still hate it. I walk to each booth to see the ladies like me, but they are busy making sales. From a distance, I watch my space. No one seems to know it’s a booth, because it looks like a kid is playing with dolls there, so I decide to mind my table. 

The blazing sun creeps above, and a single long drip of perspiration trickles from the back of my head, all the way down my back and into my jean shorts. I rock back-and-forth on the hind legs of the blue plastic chair and notice my shoelaces untied again. I quickly sit up straight when I see people coming my way, attempt to hide my stained shirt beneath the table. 

Two women stop to look at me, scan me up and down. They walk about three or four empty tables away and stand there, whispering, staring, making me nervous again. The lady wearing an orange-flowered shirt that looks like a curtain threw up raises one eyebrow and wrinkles her nose.

“Why do they let those people come here?” 

They turn their backs to me, and when I see some others walking my way, I quickly tie my laces. Another woman in a bright red shirt and floppy hat greets them loudly. I hear them laughing and talking, and they suddenly get quiet. The floppy hat one looks at me, and when she sees I am staring straight back at her, she looks away and whispers before the others leave.

Floppy hat lady clicks her short heels all the way to my space. She reminds me of those people in the snobby senior magazines at the doctor’s office. But she’s no model, because her orange-red lipstick is stuck to her yellow teeth and her nose is permanently turned-up, like she has two sticks holding it. 

She picks up Rosy and examines her, makes some stupid faces, and tosses her back on the chair like a rag! I gasp, run to the other side of the table and check to see if her moss hair and rose petal eyes and gemstones are intact. They are. Before placing Rosy back in the yellow chair, I turn to the woman, “Why did you do that?!” 

She puts one hand on her hip and shakes the back of her other hand at my dolls, making a face like she’s touched a thousand germs. 

“What do we have here?” she says in a deep Southern drawl.

“Dolls! But why did you do that?!” 

I am both mad and nervous and decide I need to sit before I pass out from the heat, and because I want to hit this woman. My foot taps beneath the table so hard and fast, I can’t control it, and I almost bang my knee.

“I can see that, missy. You make these?” 

“Of course I made them! Why did you throw my doll?!” 

People must hear us, because now a small group gathers to listen. I notice the lady in charge marching over in her little clicky heels like she’s the general of the army. 

“Somethin’ ain’t right about them there dolls,” floppy hat says to the lady in charge. “There’s somethin’ eee-vil about ‘em.” 

She makes a clicking sound with her mouth after each sentence and pooches her lips. Her dried up orange-red lipstick gathers in the cracks of her lips every time she puckers them, and her face looks like a cat’s butthole after eating Cheetos. 

The lady in charge says tell me about your dolls, honey, in her fake-nice voice. So I pointed to each and named them: Ivory, Rosy, Sunny, Marigold, Emerald, Sapphire, Violet, and Unicorn. 

“What’s that black one over there?” demands floppy hat. 

“That’s Jett, but she’s not for sale.” 

The two women turn around and whisper some more, just like the girls at school. I reach into my shorts pocket to feel for my worry doll, but she’s gone. Now I am worried about my missing worry doll, because Mama said it’s bad luck to lose it. Sweat pours from my head like a slow fountain from both anxiety and heat, pooling onto my white t-shirt. The heat is unbearable now; my clothes are soaking wet, I’m hungry, and the water fountain is warm. I made no money. Worst of all, I feel like I’m back at school.

Floppy hat turns and points, tries to cover her mouth while she’s looking right at me, the same way girls at school do. 

“Voodoo,” I read her lips. 

I tell myself I should catch the early bus, so in less than a minute, I am packed to go, except for Jett. Now in a small group, the women watch as I walk away. When I get close, I shake Jett at their faces, her protection stones clacking in her long braids, making sure they see her big black heart stone on her chest. Every single eye bulges from their old-bitty-tittle-tattle faces, and all of their lips form into cat’s buttholes.

“She’s cursing you!” I hear someone gasp. 

They are behind me, but I know every single eye is on me now. I loudly laugh in a very cartoon-like witch tone as I head across the parking lot to the bus stop. Halfway, I need to stop and tie my shoes again. When I look up, my worry doll is about a yardstick in front of me. I grab and dust her off, and she is perfectly fine. This time, she isn't going into my pocket. 

The nearly empty bus arrives, and I find a window facing the crowd outside. I can see floppy hat and her crew still standing, watching. As the bus pulls away, I make crazy faces as if I’m laughing hysterically, while waving Jett against the window. 

I never want to be like those people.