"Why do I need to go to the store at seven in the morning to get one of these?"
"Because they are selling like crazy, and they will run out. They keep running out all over the country! Don't you watch the news? This is go time. I know which one I want. Do you understand?"
My mom was always more reasonable than my father, but she lacked the determination and perseverance needed for the execution of such a task.
"Of course, sweetie, we can get you a doll, but I really don't see the point of getting there so early. Surely everyone else's parents aren't doing that."
"Yes they are! Everyone's parents are doing it. Mom, this is my childhood. This is the only one I get, and by the end of the week everyone is going to have one of these dolls except me, because you guys are stuck in the Dark Ages. I am trying to make the best out of my circumstances, but you and Dad just keep holding me back. This is just like what happened in nursery school when I had to repeat the year because you guys kept forgetting to take me."
"Nursery school is a waste of time," my mother would tell me when I would try to pull her out of bed. "First grade is where things really start to matter," she'd mumble as she rolled over onto a piece of cheddar cheese. My parents thought it was "too cold" throughout most of winter to get themselves dressed and wait for one of our "automobiles" to warm up. Even though I was only five, it was a safe bet to say that my whole life would be based on doing the exact opposite of what my parents did.
I took to calling our next-door neighbor Mrs. Rothstein. I was too embarrassed to ask her for rides myself, so I'd try to put on a German accent and pretend I was my mother. "Vould you mind taking Shell-sea to school today?" I'd say. "None of ze cars vill start."
Mrs. Rothstein knew it wasn't my mother calling but was impressed by my scholarly ambition and always ended up taking me when my parents faked paralysis.
It wasn't getting an education I was interested in, but more an ardent desire to avoid taking fucking naps in the middle of the day on a godforsaken floor mat. I had no time for sleep in the middle of the day. I wanted action, and naps just reminded me of my parents and the meaningless lives they had carved out for themselves. That wasn't the life I wanted for myself, and I certainly had no plans of becoming a geisha, which would be the only other career choice that would require me to practice sleeping.
"Okay, okay, I'll get the doll, Chelsea. I just wish you weren't so dependent on material things to make you feel like you fit in."
Easy enough for someone who walked around the house all day in a floor-length skirt hoisted over her boobs with no bra to talk about not fitting in. She didn't want to fit in. That was the difference. I did. I wanted a life for myself, and the life I had in mind didn't involve either of my parents. What she really wanted was to avoid having to put on a bra and some decent shoes that were necessary to tackle the New Jersey winter.
"If this were a Latter-day Saints doll, I'm sure you'd be there with bells on and a nipple ring."
"Chelsea, don't be ridiculous. No one's getting a nipple ring."
"I want the brunette Cabbage Patch with green eyes, one dimple, and no freckles." I had freckles, and I thought they looked like a rash. "She is the one I want. Not a boy one. A girl. Check for the coslopus. Do you copy?"
I had seen a couple of boy ones at school, and they looked like something straight out of a seventies porn video with their Jew Afros. All the other girls had the blond ones with blue or brown eyes, or the brown-haired with blue eyes. I wanted green eyes. I hadn't seen one of those yet but knew they were out there. This was my chance to make my mark and get the same thing every kid craved but also show some originality. For the very first time, I would have everyone ogling something I had.
At that moment my sister Sloane walked in and announced she wanted a Cabbage Patch, too. I told her to go take a hike in a fucking lake. There was no way she was going to get in on this action. We'd be lucky if my dad came back from the store with the limb of a Cabbage Patch doll, never mind two complete ones.
"Step off!" I told her. "Go to your room."
"Shut up, you can't tell me to go to my room. Why don't you go to your room and dry-hump your pillow?"
"Mom!" I wailed.
"Girls," my mother interrupted. "Pipe down."
"You do not need a Cabbage Patch doll," I told Sloane. "You are thirteen. You need to get a grip."
"If Chelsea's going to get one, then I want one."
"Sloane, you are a little old for a Cabbage Patch doll," my mother told her.
"Can we please focus on my doll? Did you get the brown hair with green eyes?"
"Chelsea, please write it down for me. It sounds very specific. How many different types are there?"
"Thousands!" I wailed. "I don't want a blonde or anyone with brown eyes. Green eyes. They have ones with two dimples, but I just want one dimple. The ones with two dimples look too fake, and the ones without dimples look like Chucky. This is a very precise assignment. No matter what, Mom, please, please do not screw this up. Under no circumstances are you to come home with a redhead."
I knew early on about redheads and how they were prone to melanoma. I wasn't about to invest in a child, only to lose her years later to cancer. Plus, I had a young childhood friend named Farrah Linklater, and her whole family had red hair. Thick, unruly red hair that would inevitably end up in one of the dishes they served at dinner. They were like a tribe, an Indian tribe who took up weapons against other single-hair-colored families. Red hair was always suspicious to me, like something made out of synthetic fibers. I imagined that when redheads slept, their hair wove together like the mangrove trees you find in the Florida Keys that grow underwater. They knew they were a minority, and the more consolidated they became, the greater the danger. The only thing I could imagine more suspicious than a regular redhead was a black redhead, but I knew that whatever company was in charge of Cabbage Patch dolls was not nearly progressive enough to throw that at the marketplace.
Just then my father walked through our front door in his ridiculous rain boots that he wore all year long regardless of the weather. He had three newspapers trapped in his armpit, which I knew meant trouble.
My father believed that he was a Thornton Wilder type of character and never tired of impressing upon us how important it was to read. He would bring three newspapers home every week for me to peruse-the New York Times, the Boston Globe, because he thought that was a very well-written newspaper, and our local paper, the Star-Ledger. Once a week he would expect me to write a report on my favorite current-events story in each paper. As if in the third grade I gave a shitstain about how Reagan was reaching across party lines or, even worse, whatever 7-Eleven they were remodeling in a neighboring town. These weren't exactly hot topics for third-graders. At that point in my life, I was looking to reach across my own party lines, and the clearest way to do that was with one of these goddamned Cabbage Patch dolls, not an op-ed piece in the New York Times. It never occurred to my father to maybe put down the paper once in a while and actually get busy looking for a legitimate job that might take him out of the house for more than two hours at a time.
I leaped up from the sofa and announced I felt a bout of diarrhea coming on, which was really the only ailment my father ever took seriously.
"What did she eat?" he asked my mother.
"Cat shit," I said, running out of the room. "The kids at school made me eat cat shit today, because I'm wearing jeans from Sears."
My father believed at the time that reading was the only way for me to succeed in life. "You must not let your mind get weak." He never mentioned anything about not letting your bladder get weak, which turned out to be fortuitous for him and the hundreds of pairs of pants he's ruined since.
My mother came into my room later to ask how much the dolls were, and when I told her, she told me that my father would not be happy. By this time in my life, I'd had enough of their shenanigans and bargain hunting, and I definitely felt like I had plenty of stored resentment to make a case for myself. I walked into the living room, where my father had parked himself with a corned beef on rye, and stated my case.