Creepy-Eyed Doll

I used to have a hood without a coat attached, just a little disembodied fold of cloth with a drawstring. It was one of Mother's abominable castoffs, I think, something she'd worn as a child. As such, it had about a fifty-fifty chance of having been new in the nineteen-forties. Mother came from a large family, seven or eight kids, if I recall correctly. They all wore each other's clothes, and their parents' clothes, and clothes that'd belonged to other children in the neighborhood, children who were slightly further along in the outgrowing process than themselves. And, some thirty-five years later, I took my turn with those few outfits that'd survived the ravages of time and tots.

The hood was a curiosity among curiosities. It was small and sand-coloured, except under the seams, where a trace of pink had lingered. The drawstring had broken at some point, and been replaced with a piece of knotted yarn that didn't match either the old pink or the new faded beige. I sometimes put it on and stood at the mirror in puzzlement, trying to imagine the outfit it would go with. With an overcoat, it looked redundant. With a jacket, it looked...decapitated, a pale ghost-hood floating sadly above its host garment. Shawls and serapes made it look tatty, and it just looked bizarre peeping out from under a hat or scarf. It didn't go with a cardigan, nor yet with a poncho or cloak. It didn't match anything I had. It didn't match anything my mother had. It didn't match anything at all. This, I found rather sad: I liked the disembodied hood, and wanted to wear it.

I had a doll, as well, with shells for eyes. I found it behind a deserted abbey somewhere in Scotland. It didn't have any eyes at all, then. My father put in a pair of cowrie shells with blue eyes painted on. He used that horrible browny-yellow glue they used to make, so the eyes always looked rather infected, round the edges. My mother made an entire knitted wardrobe for the thing, for that creepy doll--little mohair coats, a white dress trimmed in red, socks, gloves, hats--I was jealous. She didn't knit anything for me. No. I got a disembodied hood.

I had, furthermore, a giant pinecone, which I'd found in Firenze--or was it Rome? Well, it was somewhere in Italy, any road. We went on holiday there, the whole family, when I was three or four. For the next fifteen years, I thought of Italy as a scorching-hot land of lizards, olive trees, and pigeons. I didn't remember the pinecone at all. I mean, I knew where it had come from, but I had no recollection of finding it. Funny, the things one picks out to remember:

INDIA: Dead folks at the train station, with flies on. Watching an insect traverse the same patch of ceiling for an hour, then finally moving it to another area with my own hand. (I couldn't bear to watch it waggle its antennae at the crack even one more time.) A particularly spectacular sunset, with purple clouds edged in gold.

SWEDEN: Purple shadows on snowbanks painted orange by the winter sun. Firepots burning outside shops. Pitch-black afternoons. Dead folks on TV, with flies on. (I went through a bit of a CSI phase, right in there.)

JAPAN: People talking incessantly. Getting lost--more lost than usual, that is. Delicious food, which probably had dead squids in. With flies on.

EASTERN CANADA: Reading Main Street, and thinking "My God--Sinclair Lewis must've been here!". Dead towns with flies on. A ridiculous tree in my parents' front yard, which had, over the years, suffered an invasion by a shrub. The two became inextricably entwined, and bloody enormous to boot. When I last saw them, more than five years ago, they were already a sight for sore eyes. Nowadays, they're quite monstrous. My sister sent me a snapshot--you can hardly see the house for this thing.

SALT LAKE CITY: Bewildering street names. Being on buses. Waiting for buses. Getting off buses at the wrong stop because of aforementioned bewildering street names. Dying of boredom and/or exposure while waiting for buses, and getting flies on.

TEXAS: Putting up an umbrella while passing under a certain bridge, for fear of being shat on by a bat. Long, squat buildings that went on forever, room after room after room, and none with any light in them. Roadkill, especially armadilloes, with flies on.

GEORGIA: Forests everywhere. Finding a can of Tab at a Winn-Dixie. Everything with flies on.

SCOTLAND: Grey things: the sea, the Isle of Arran across the sea, the sky, the buildings, the grass in autumn, the earth itself, the rain, the people, the doll I found behind the abbey. Dead relatives (flies on). Mrs. Grant, the horrid first-grade teacher who rubbed a scary picture in my face during reading hour.

LONDON: The fine art of bargain shopping, while not appearing to bargain-shop. Meaning to go to the Tower of London, and never getting round to it. Riding double-decker buses with open tops and pretending to be flying. (I think I'll give over with the dead stuff with flies on, now--it's beginning to get whiskers on.)

CAMBRIDGE: Daffodils along the backs--what's the difference between a daffodil and a narcissus? Reading whole books in Dillon's bookshop, without ever buying them. Putting a bra over my face to avoid smelling vomit. George Bush on the telly, vomiting. Gammon and pineapple crisps.

WESTERN CANADA: Well, I'm still here, eh? I suppose I could reminisce about the days when I got out more, but I already do that all the time.

I've probably forgotten somewhere. I've been to lots of places, but I didn't stay long, most of the time. India, I'm sure, has much more to offer than the one miserable pocket of poverty I happened to visit. I'd kill to see the Karni Mata Temple. If I ever get my health back, I think I will. All those rats, running wild and rampant--what a sight! (One could argue I could visit the alley across the street and see that, but one would be an insufferable smartass.)

This has been an entry without point--I have spent the last couple of days mostly asleep, so I've not much to report.