Dollbaby: A Novel (3 page)

I
bby wasn’t sure what to make of the tall slender woman standing on the porch by the front door with her hair piled high on her head in a beehive hairdo. Her big eyes were all aflutter, and she was swinging her hips from side to side as she talked. Ibby couldn’t make out a word the woman was saying, but one thing she did know for sure. There was something peculiar about her.

She came down from the porch and started walking toward Ibby, waving her hand. “Come on now.”

The woman made her way to the gate and opened it, then bent over until she was eye level with Ibby. That’s when Ibby noticed she had one eye as dark as obsidian, and another as light as a washed-out sky, a combination that made her pretty face seem off-balance somehow. Ibby stared unabashedly. The woman didn’t seem to notice, or if she did, she didn’t seem to mind.

“You Miss Fannie’s granddaughter?” The woman blinked several times, then smiled a big smile.

Ibby kept staring, not quite sure what to make of her.

“Girl, you deaf? What you got there?” she asked.

The woman tugged at the urn in Ibby’s arms. Ibby took a step back and shook her head. Her mother had given her strict instructions to
hand the urn over to her grandmother and not some fast-talking woman waving her arms all over the place.

“Okay then.” The woman tapped her foot as if she were thinking. “You hungry?”

Ibby had barely eaten in over a week, not since her daddy died. Suddenly, she felt as if fire ants were trying to eat their way out of her stomach.

The cockeyed woman stood up. “Well, come on.”

Before Ibby knew it, she’d grabbed her hand and was pulling her along as if she were a small child. Ibby tried to yank her hand away, but the woman held on tight. The warmth of her hand somehow made Ibby feel at ease. Ibby let go a smile without really meaning to.

“Well, that’s what I like to see,” the woman said as they picked their way past the gnarly branches of the boxwoods and walked up the brick walkway toward the house. “My name’s Dollbaby, by the way. But you can call me Doll.”

Ibby tried to hide the expression on her face at the funny-sounding name.

“Got a daughter about your age. Call her Birdelia,” Doll went on.

Another name Ibby had never heard before.

Doll stopped short. “You got a birthday coming up, from what Miss Fannie tells me. That right?”

Ibby drew her hand away. Birthdays weren’t celebrated in the Bell household. No use making a fuss over something everybody has, Vidrine reminded Ibby every year on her birthday.

“How old you gonna be?”

“Twelve.”

“I knew it!”

Ibby looked up, startled.

“I knew you could talk.” Doll took Ibby by the shoulders and guided her up the front steps onto the porch.

When they got just inside the front door, Doll started up the wide
staircase with a heavily carved banister. Ibby held back, her attention drawn to the front parlor, where dark Victorian furniture and red velvet curtains made the room feel heavy despite the soaring fourteen-foot ceiling. There was an empty ashtray on the marble-topped coffee table. Ibby noticed the house smelled of stale smoke.

Pocket doors led to a second parlor where a wood-consoled television left just enough room for a lumpy, moth-eaten couch. Just beyond that, a crystal chandelier hovered over a walnut table in the dining room, where a massive china cabinet on the far wall was brimming with silver serving pieces. Ibby got a weird feeling about this fusty old house that looked as if time had stopped a century ago.

“Well, what you waiting on? Christmas?” Doll tapped her fingers on the banister impatiently.

When Ibby didn’t budge, Doll came back down the stairs and motioned for her to hand over the urn.

Ibby reluctantly gave it to her.

“Why you keep looking at me like that? Don’t they have maids where you come from?” Doll took the urn from Ibby and placed it on the hall table next to a vase filled with wilted lilies.

Ibby scrunched up her shoulders, wondering how Doll seemed to know what she was thinking. “We never had one.”

Doll cocked her head to one side. “Who clean the house then?”

“Nobody,” Ibby replied.

“Nobody? That something.” Doll twisted her mouth to one side. “Well, let me tell you how it is around here. I’m the keeper of the house. I do the cleaning, the tidying up, and a bit of sewing here and there. My mama, Queenie, she do all the cooking, a little ironing, and is the keeper of the peace, which you gone find is a mighty big job around this here house. You understand?”

Ibby looked up at Doll, not really understanding at all.

“What now?” Doll scratched her scalp with the tip of her red fingernail. “Why you keep looking at me like I got two heads?”

Ibby blinked a few times, but no words would come out.

“Don’t they have colored folks where you come from?” Doll finally asked.

Ibby shook her head. “I never talked to one before.”

Doll rolled her eyes. “‘Colored folks.’ You can say it. That’s what we are. And you better get used to it on account there’s lots of us colored folks down here in New Orleans. Now we got that out of the way, I’ll show you your room, then we can come down and get you introduced to your grandmother right proper and all.” She started up the stairs and spoke to Ibby over her shoulder. “Hope that ain’t all you got to wear, Miss Ibby. Might want to change into something more suitable to meet your grandmother.”

Ibby followed Doll up the stairs, wondering what was wrong with her T-shirt and shorts.

The second floor opened onto a spacious hallway lit by two bronze chandeliers. At the far end, a mosaic of sunlight sprinkled onto the Oriental carpet through a stained-glass window. Ibby went over and touched the window lightly with her fingers, following the design of the large white flowers.

“They got them stained-glass windows in all these old houses around here,” Doll explained. “That one there is of magnolias. Not my favorite. They kind of smell like sour laundry to me.”

As Ibby backed away, her arm knocked against a stone object perched upon a pedestal in front of the window.

Doll hurried over. “Be careful, child.” She put her hand on top of the sculpture to steady it. “This here is a bust of Miss Fannie. Your grandfather, Mr. Norwood, he gave it to her as a wedding present, but Miss Fannie never liked it much. That’s why it’s up here, ’cause she don’t want nobody to see it.”

The perfectly chiseled features left no indication whether the bust was of a man or a woman. The eyes had no pupils and were flat but nonetheless gave Ibby the feeling she was being watched.

“The person made that thing, he sure knew your grandmother.
You’ll see what I mean when you meet her.” Doll chuckled. “You got plenty of time to poke around up here later. Don’t want to keep Miss Fannie waiting.” Doll set her foot squarely on a smaller set of stairs nestled in the corner of the hall near the bust.

Ibby pointed to the four doors on the second floor. “Is one of these rooms for me?”

“No, baby. This floor’s all booked up, especially now that your daddy’s passed. Now follow me.”

They started up another set of stairs that got narrower and steeper as they went along. “I’ve never been in a house with a third floor,” Ibby remarked.

“Used to be the servants’ quarters, back in the day, when the house was built,” Doll said over her shoulder.

The third floor was tiny, consisting of a boxy hallway with one door, whose rusted hinges seemed reluctant to open no matter how hard Doll tugged. Doll kicked the door with the bottom of her foot. It finally opened with a creak to reveal a room just large enough for two twin beds and a diminutive chest of drawers. Doll switched on the overhead light, a single bulb hanging from the ceiling that sprayed a paltry glow on the faded yellow wallpaper peeling away from the wall in places.

“Didn’t expect you until tomorrow. Hadn’t had a chance to tidy up yet. Some animal been up here leaving droppings all over the floor. Never did find it. You run across it, you be sure and let me know.” Doll pointed toward a sliver of a door at the far end of the room. “That there’s the toilet. It only got a shower. You want to take a bath, you come down to the second floor and use the one in my sewing room. And there ain’t no closet. You can hang your clothes there.” She pointed to a wire suspended from the ceiling like a U.

Ibby looked disappointed.

“What?” Doll put her hands on her hips.

“Mama didn’t let me bring my radio. I was hoping the room might have a radio but I don’t see one.”

“You like music? Well, you come to the right place. New Orleans is
known for good music. I’ll see what we can do about getting you a radio. Now then, Miss Ibby, you got a dress you can put on?”

Ibby made a face. She’d worn a dress only once in her life, and that was to a wedding a few years back.

“I take it that be a no.” Doll put her hand up to her face and tapped her cheek with her finger. “You bring anything with you, like a suitcase, for instance?”

“Oh no!” Ibby’s knees almost gave way. She’d been concentrating so hard on bringing the urn that she’d forgotten her suitcase. “It must still be in the car,” she said in a small voice.

“Not to worry.” Doll put a hand on her shoulder.

Ibby gave her a funny look. Doll seemed to be reading her mind again. At this point, she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.

“You make yourself at home. I’ll be right back.”

She turned and bounded down the stairs, leaving Ibby alone in the room with a decrepit oscillating fan on the dresser that was making noises like a jet engine. She sat down on the bed and began to twiddle a strand of hair with her finger, the way she did when she was nervous. She pulled aside the faded gingham curtains on the window, only to find it loosely boarded up. She let the curtains fall back, noticing the thick layer of dust on the bedside table. She ran her finger across it, leaving a thin line. Then, with one clean swoop of her hands, she wiped the table clean, sending dust scattering into the air.

Ibby leaned over and put her head on the pillow that had lost most of its stuffing and watched the dust particles sifting sideways about the room. If Doll hadn’t brought up her birthday a few minutes ago, she might have completely forgotten about it. Her daddy always made her birthday special. He’d come into her room in the wee hours of the morning to sneak a homemade birthday card under her pillow. She’d pretend to be asleep as he kissed her on the cheek, the soapy smell of his Burma-Shave tickling her nose. She scrunched her eyes tight. There would be no more birthdays with her daddy. When she pulled her knees to her chest, she felt her heart beating. Why had she been
relegated to this tiny room in the attic when there were plenty of bedrooms on the second floor? She got the feeling that perhaps her grandmother didn’t want her here.

The next thing she knew, Doll was shaking her awake.

“You must be tuckered out from your trip. Gone five minutes, and you fall asleep. Here, slip this dress on.” Doll held out a perfectly starched blue cotton dress with a Peter Pan collar and puffy banded short sleeves, then shook her head. “Can’t do anything about them red sneakers you got on.”

“That’s a baby dress,” Ibby protested. “I’m not putting that on.”

“You a debutante or something? It’ll have to do until I can make you something more to your liking.”

“Whose dress is it anyway?”

“That don’t matter none,” Doll said. “Now put it on and be done with it.”

Ibby slipped the dress over her head. It was so starched, it puffed out like an open umbrella. Ibby felt silly.

Doll stood back and crossed her arms. “What’s wrong, baby?”

“I feel like Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz,
” Ibby said, pointing down at her red sneakers. “I hate Dorothy.”

“Now listen here. From the way I see it, that ain’t such a bad thing. Dorothy got what she wanted in the end, didn’t she?” Doll gave an impatient tap of her foot. “Your grandmother is waiting. And one thing you never want to do is keep Miss Fannie waiting.”

Ibby put her hands on her hips and mashed her lips together. She didn’t want to go anywhere looking like this.