Haunted

  Just Cora and Betty. Chatting in French.

  Still, nobody's calling Cora Reynolds a crackpot. Maybe just a soft touch.

  County policy says they should've bagged the old dummy in black plastic and heaved it onto a top shelf in the evidence room. Forgetting her there. Betty, not Cora. Abandoned. Fermenting. Ignored with the numbered bags of dope and coke. The vials of crack and heroin balloons. All the guns and knives waiting to appear in some courtroom. All the seized baggies and balloons shrinking, getting smaller and smaller, until there's just enough left for a felony conviction. All those objects, used.

  But, no, they broke the rules. They let Cora take the old dummy home.

  Nobody wanted her to grow old alone.

  Cora. She was the kind of person, she couldn't buy just one stuffed animal. Part of her job description was to buy a stuffed toy for each kid who came in to give a statement. Each kid taken into custody by the court. Any kid pulled for neglect and placed in a foster home. At the toy store, Cora would take one little plush monkey out of a bin full of animals . . . but it would look so alone in her shopping cart. So she'd choose a furry giraffe to keep it company. Then a stuffed elephant. A hippo. An owl. At some point, there would be more animals in her shopping cart than in the display bin. And the animals left behind each had an eye missing, an ear frayed, a seam split open. Stuffing poked out. These were the animals no one would want.

  Nobody felt how Cora's heart dropped off a cliff at that moment. That long fall from the tip-top of the world's tallest rollercoaster, that feeling left Cora just skin. Just a skin tube with a tight hole at each end. An object.

  Those little tigers smudged with dirt, trailing loose threads. The stuffed reindeers crushed flat. They filled her apartment, those torn pandas and stained little owls and Breather Betty. Just a different type of evidence room.

  It's what human beings do . . .

  But poor, poor Cora. Now she's trying to cut off people's tongues. To infect them with parasites. Obstruct justice. She's stealing public property. Nobody's talking about misappropriation of office supplies: pens, staplers, copy paper.

  It's Cora who orders the office supplies. She collects everyone's time card on Friday. She hands out the paychecks on Tuesday. Submits all the expense reports to Accounting for reimbursement. Answers the phone: “Child and Family Case Services.” She gets a cake and sends a card around the department when it's somebody's birthday. That's her job.

  Nobody had a problem with Cora Reynolds before the little girl and boy arrived from Russia. Really, the problem was, Cora never sees a little kid, a freckle-faced, pigtailed little girl, unless somebody's fucked her.

  Every rapscallion little boy, every scamp in bib overalls with a slingshot stuck in his back pocket, Cora's only meeting him because he's been forced to suck cock. Every kid's gap-toothed smile, here it's a mask. Every grass-stained knee, a clue. Every bruise, an indicator. Every wink or squeal or giggle, there's a blank to check for it on the victim-intake form. It's Cora's job, keeping track of those interview forms. Keeping track of the kids, each case file, any ongoing investigation. Until what happened, Cora Reynolds was the best office manager ever.

  Still, what happens here is just damage control. You can't unfuck a kid. Once you bang a kid, there's no getting that genii out of the bottle. That kid's pretty much wrecked for good.

  No, most kids come in here quiet. Stretch-marked. Already middle-aged. Not smiling.

  Kids come here, and the first step is the evaluation interview with an anatomically detailed doll. This is different from an anatomically correct doll, but plenty of folks get them confused. Cora did. Got them confused.

  Your typical anatomically detailed doll is made of cloth, sewn like a stuffed animal. It has strands of yarn for hair. The big difference between it and Raggedy Ann is the details: A floppy stuffed penis and balls. Or a lacy cloth vagina. A drawstring pulled tight in back to make a puckered anus. Two buttons sewn to the chest for nipples. These dolls are something the intake kids can use to play-act. To demonstrate what Mommy or Daddy or Mommy's new boyfriend did.

  The kids stick their fingers in the dolls. Drag the dolls by their yarn hair. Hold the dolls by the neck and shake them until their stuffed heads flop. They hit and lick and bite and suck the dolls, and it's Cora's job to sew the nipples back on. Cora will find two new marbles when the little felt scrotum gets yanked too hard.

  Everything done to the kids gets done to those dolls.

  Nobody just stumbles into this line of work.

  Threads come loose from too many molested children molesting the dolls. Too many diddled little boys suck that same pink felt penis. Too many little girls have forced a finger, two fingers, three fingers into that same satin-lined vagina. Ripping it at the top and bottom. Little hernias of cotton batting were bulging out. Under their clothes, the dolls were smudged and dirty. Sticky and smelling bad. The fabric was rubbed into pills and snagged with scars where threads were gone.

  This little rag doll girl and boy the whole world gets to abuse.

  And of course, Cora did what she could to keep them clean. She stitched them back together. But one day she went on the Internet to find another pair. A new pair.

  Somewhere were women who made their career stitching tiny pocket-shaped vaginas or coin-purse scrotums. These kids, the women dressed in flowered calico dresses and bib overalls. But this time, Cora wanted something durable. She got on the Internet. She ordered a new pair, from some maker she'd never heard about before. This time, she confused anatomically detailed with correct.

  Anatomically correct, she asked for, boy and girl dolls. Lowest price possible. Durable. Easy to clean.

  A search engine offered her two dolls. Made in the former Soviet Union. With flexible arms and legs. Anatomically correct. Because these were the lowest-priced, and because that was the county purchasing policy, she placed the order.

  Later, nobody ever asked why she ordered those dolls. When the box arrived, brown cardboard and big as a four-drawer file cabinet, when the delivery guy wheeled it up on a cart and left it next to her desk, when he made her sign his clipboard, then it was Cora first figured this might be a mistake.

  The moment they opened the box, when they saw what was inside, it was too late.

  It was Cora and a county detective, pulling the metal staples and then digging through the mats of bubble wrap, digging until they found a foot. A pink child's foot, five perfect toes poking up, out of the Styrofoam pellets and bubble wrap.

  The detective wiggled one of the toes. He looked at Cora.

  “These were the cheapest,” Cora said. She said, “You don't get a lot of choice.”

  The foot was pink rubber, finished with clear, hard toenails. The skin smooth, without a freckle or mole or vein. At this, the detective put a hand around the ankle and lifted it to show a smooth pink knee. Then a pink thigh. Then a shower of white packing peanuts. Bubble wrap popping and falling away. And a naked pink little girl hung from the detective's fist near the ceiling. Her blond hair fell in curls, brushing the floor. Her bare arms hung down at either side of her head. Her mouth hung open, a silent gasp, showing white teeth small as pearls, and the smooth pink roof of her mouth. A little girl the age for Easter-egg hunts and First Communion and Santa's lap.

  With one ankle in the detective's hand, the girl's other leg sagged, bent at the knee. Between her legs, spread there, not just anatomically correct but . . . perfect, was the girl's pink vagina. The darker pink lips of it, curving inside.

  Still in the box, looking up at her, looking up at them all, was a naked little boy.

  A printed brochure fluttered to the floor.

  Then Cora's arms were around the girl, hugging her pillow softness, clutching for a sheet of wrapping paper to put around the little body.

  The detective smiled, shaking his head, squeezing his eyes shut, and saying, “Great job at procurement, Cora.”

  Cora held the girl, one hand cupped to hide the pink buttocks. One hand cup
ped to hold the blond head to Cora's chest, and she said, “This is a mistake.”

  The brochure said the dolls were soft molded silicone, the kind used for breast implants. They could be left under an electric blanket and would hold the heat for hours of pleasure. Their skin covered a skeleton of fiberglass with steel joints. Their hair was inserted, strand by strand, planted into the skin of their scalp. They had no pubic hair. The male doll had an optional foreskin that you could roll onto the head of its penis. The girl doll had a replaceable plastic hymen you could send away for. Both dolls, the brochure said, had deep tight throats and rectums, for vigorous oral or anal entry.

  The silicone had a memory and would return to its original shape, no matter what you did. Their nipples could be tugged to five times their original length without tearing. The labia, scrotums, rectums could be stretched to accommodate almost any desire. The dolls, the brochure said, could take years of violent, strenuous enjoyment.

  For clean-up, you just used soap and water.

  Leaving the dolls in direct sunlight might fade their eyes and lips, the brochure said in French, Spanish, English, Italian, and what looked like Chinese.

  The silicone was guaranteed odorless and tasteless.

  At lunch, Cora went out to buy a little dress and a little pair of pants and shirt. When she got back to her desk, the box was empty. Styrofoam peanuts and bubble wrap popped under her every step. The dolls were gone.

  In the ward room, she asked the dispatcher if he knew anything. The dispatcher shrugged. In the break room, a detective said that maybe someone needed them for a case. He shrugged and said, “That is what they're for . . .”

  Outside, in the hallway, she asked another detective if he'd seen them.

  She asked, where were they, the kid dolls?

  Her teeth were edged together. The spot between her eyes ached from her brows bunching in the middle. Her ears felt blood-hot. Melting, glowing hot.

  She found the dolls in the director's office. Sitting on the sofa. Smiling and naked. Freckle-faced and ashamed of nothing.

  Director Sedlak was tugging at a nipple on the boy's chest. With her fingers, her thumb and index finger, just the dark-red fingernails, the director twisted and pulled at the pink nipple. With her other hand, the director trailed her fingertips up and down between the girl's legs, saying, “Damn, that feels real.”

  To the director, Cora said she was sorry. She leaned down to brush some hair off the boy's forehead, and said she had no idea. She crossed the girl's arms across her pink nipples. Then, she crossed her plastic legs at the knee. She put both the boy's hands spread open in his lap. Both dolls just sat there, smiling. They both had blue glass eyes, blond hair. Shining porcelain teeth.

  “Sorry for what?” the director said.

  For wasting county funds, Cora said. For buying something this expensive sight-unseen. She thought she was getting a good deal. Now the county would be stuck using the old rag dolls for another year. The county was stuck, and these dolls would have to be destroyed.

  And Director Sedlak said, “Don't be silly.” She combed her fingernails through the girl's blond hair, saying, “I don't see a problem.” Saying, “We can use these.”

  But the dolls, Cora said, they were too real.

  And the director said, “They're rubber.”

  Silicone, Cora said.

  And the director said, “If it helps, just think of each one as a seventy-pound condom . . .”

  That afternoon, even as Cora pulled the new clothes onto the boy and girl, detectives came by her desk, asking to check them out. For intake interviews. For investigations. Asking to reserve them for some hush-hush off-site evaluation. For overnight, to use them early the next morning. For the weekend. The girl, preferably, but if she wasn't available, then the boy. By the end of that first day, both the dolls were booked solid for the next month.

  If someone wanted a doll right away, she'd offer the old rag dolls.

  Most times, the detective said he'd wait.

  All this flood of new cases, but nobody submitted a single new case file to her.

  For almost that whole month, Cora only saw the boy and girl for a moment, only long enough to hand them over to the next detective. Then the next. And the next. And it was never clear who did what, but the little girl arrived and departed, one day with her ears pierced, then her belly button, then wearing lipstick, then reeking with perfume. The boy arrived, at some point, tattooed. A chain of thorns around his little calf muscle. At another point, with his nipples pierced by little silver rings. Then his penis. At some point, his blond hair smelling sour.

  Smelling like marigold flowers.

  Like the bags of marijuana in the evidence room. That room full of guns and knives. The bags of marijuana and cocaine that always weighed a little less than they should have. The evidence room always the next stop for a detective after he checked out one of the dolls. The girl tucked under one arm, he'd be fumbling with a bag of evidence. Tucking something into his pocket.

  In the director's office, Cora showed the expense receipts that detectives would submit for reimbursement. One receipt for a hotel room, the same night the detective had taken the girl home for an interview the next morning. The hotel room was a stakeout, the detective had said. Another detective the next night, the girl again, one hotel room, one room-service meal. An adult movie ordered on the television. Another stakeout, he said.

  Director Sedlak had just looked at her. Cora standing there, leaning over the director's wooden desk, shaking so hard the receipts fluttered in Cora's fist.

  The director just looked at her and said, “What's your point?”

  It was obvious, Cora said.

  And, sitting behind her wooden desk, the director just laughed and laughed.

  She said, “Consider this tit for tat.”

  “All those women,” the director says, “all chanting and protesting against Hustler magazine, saying porno turns a woman into an object . . . Well,” she says, “what do you think a dildo is? Or donor sperm from some clinic?”

  Some men may only want pictures of naked women. But some women only want a man's dick. Or his sperm. Or his money.

  Both sexes have the same problem with intimacy.

  “Stop fussing about some damned rubber dolls,” Director Sedlak told Cora. “If you're jealous, go out and buy yourself a nice vibrator.”

  Again, it's what human beings do . . .

  Nobody could see where this was headed.

  That same day, Cora went to lunch and bought some Superglue.

  And the next go-round, when the dolls came back to her, before she handed them off to another man, Cora squeezed Superglue inside the girl's vagina. Inside both the kids' mouths, sealing their tongue to the roof of their mouth. To seal their lips together. Then she squeezed glue inside them both, in back, to weld their butts shut. To save them.

  Still, the next day, a detective was asking: Did Cora have a razor blade he could use? An X-Acto knife? A switchblade?

  And when she asked, Why? What did he need it for?

  Then he says, “Nothing. Never mind. I'll find something in the evidence room.”

  And the next day, the girl and boy were both cut open, still soft but covered with scars. Carved open. Dug out. Still smelling like glue, but more and more smelling like the ooze inside Breather Betty at home, leaking spots on Cora's sofa.

  Those spots, Cora's cat would sniff at for hours. Not lick, but sniff like Superglue. Or evidence-room cocaine.

  It's then Cora goes to lunch and buys a razor blade. Two razor blades. Three razor blades. Five.

  The next go-round, when the girl gets back to her desk, Cora takes her into the bathroom and sits her on the edge of a sink. With a tissue, Cora scrubs the rouge off her pink cheeks. Cora washes and combs the girl's limp blond hair. With the next detective already knocking at the locked bathroom door, Cora tells the girl, “I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry . . .” Saying, “You're going to be okay.” And Cora tucks a razor
blade up, deep inside the soft silicone vagina. Into the hole hollowed out by some man with his knife. Tilting the girl's head back, Cora tucks another razor down deep inside her silicone throat. The third razor blade Cora tucks just inside the girl's hacked-out, whittled-open butt.

  When the boy arrives back at her desk, just dropped there, flopped facedown over the arm of her desk chair, Cora takes him into the bathroom with the last two razor blades.

  Tit for tat.

  The next day, a detective comes in, dragging the girl by her hair. He drops her on the floor beside Cora's desk. Taking a pad and pen from his inside jacket pocket, he writes: “Who had her yesterday?”

  And, lifting the girl from the floor, smoothing her hair, Cora tells him a name. A random name. Another detective.

  His eyes narrow and, shaking his head, the man holding his pen and paper says, “Tha thon-atha-bith!” And you can see how the two halves of his tongue are held together with black stitches.

  The detective who brings back the little boy is limping.

  All five razor blades are gone.

  It's after that, Cora must talk to somebody at the county health clinic.

  Nobody knows how she got that biohazard sample from the lab.

  After that, every man in the department, he's pinching his ball skin through his pants. Lifting one elbow the way a monkey would, to scratch the hair under that arm. In their heads, they ain't had sex with anybody. No way could this be crab lice.

  Maybe about this time, a detective's wife comes downtown. Finding the little leak spots of blood you get with crab lice. A splatter of red pepper you find in your tightie whities or the inside of your white T-shirt, anywhere clothes come up against body hair. Little specks of blood, blood, blood. Maybe the wife finds it in her hubby's shorts. Maybe she finds it in her own. These are college-gone, suburban, and shopping-mall people with no real crab-lice experience. Now all their itching makes sense to her.