Social Suicide

anna parker

I guess the whole funeral aspect of it was my idea. It seemed poetic, somehow–lowering the shoebox of dolls into the ground, literally burying the last embarrassing vestiges of our childhood selves. Besides, it ensured that we wouldn’t give in to the temptation to play with them again. Callie and I would start sixth grade in the fall. In middle school, playing with toys was basically social suicide.

When I said as much to Callie, she just sighed and looked down at the stack of scavenged magazines on her pale-pink shag carpet. Magazine reading was one of the things my mother had listed when I asked her what she did for fun when she was our age. Other activities included painting her friends’ nails, going to the mall, and listening to music on something called a Walkman. The magazines Callie’s mother had on hand (the neighborhood bulletin, catalogs from places like Pottery Barn and J. Crew) weren’t especially exciting, but since Callie didn’t own any nail polish and there had recently been a shooting in the food court of our local galleria, they were our only option.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.” Callie drew her knees up toward her chest. She was sitting on the floor, her back against the footboard of her white-painted trundle bed; I sat a few feet away in a matching child-sized desk chair. “It’s just– what do you mean by that, exactly?”

“Social suicide?” I shrugged. I had recently learned the phrase from the film Mean Girls, which Callie’s mother wouldn’t allow her to watch until she turned thirteen. I wondered if Callie could tell that I hadn’t come up with it myself.

“Oh, you know,” I said. “Like, when you do something really embarrassing, and once people find out about it you might as well be dead because no one will talk to you.”

Callie nodded. “That’s what I thought. But I was just wondering, because out of context it isn’t really obvious, and you could take social suicide to mean killing a part of yourself for social reasons. And by that definition, not playing with dolls would be social suicide. Which is interesting, if you think about it, the way a phrase can mean the exact opposite thing if you just change the words around it.”

Callie made me dizzy sometimes.

“You know,” she continued, “sometimes I wonder whether it’s all worth it. Don’t you?”

“If what’s worth it?”

“All the social stuff. Like, changing who you are just so people will like you. Always having to think about what other people would think. It’s exhausting.”

“Can you help it, then?” For me, analyzing people’s ever-shifting perceptions was as natural and constant as breathing.

“I think anyone can help it,” said Callie, stretching her legs out on the carpet. “It’s just that most people never really try to.”

Probably she was just being Callie-clueless, but, in my now-nearly-habitual tweenage twerpitude, I took this remark as a personal affront. “You mean me,” I said. “You mean I don’t try to.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“So I guess you’re against the funeral thing too.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“I’m just being realistic, you know. If people see–” I motioned to her bed, piled high with stuffed animals. “You know. You have to hide this stuff. Everyone will think you’re a baby.”

“I know,” said Callie. Over winter break, at my suggestion, she had moved her elaborately decorated dollhouse into her closet. I had hoped its absence from the room would help us to curtail our urge to play with it, but we still ended up dragging it out almost every time I came over. Callie would get these sudden flashes of inspiration–turn to me, breathless almost, say, Listen to this! I was always jealous of that, the ease with which she could create worlds and draw others into them.

I looked at Callie. The expression on her face was one of resignation, almost martyrdom, like one of those angelic consumptive Victorian orphans in the books she liked so much. It made me feel guilty, which made me feel annoyed. This was her choice, too. I wasn’t forcing her into anything.

“I know,” Callie said again. Almost as if she had read my mind.

“So you’ll do it then?”

Callie let her eyes flicker briefly over to her bookcase, where a shoebox containing her six or so families of dollhouse dolls sat on the second shelf, then squeezed them tight shut. Took a shaky breath–in and out.

“Okay,” she said.

For someone who required convincing to carry out the plan at all, Callie was remarkably quick to take control of it. The drama of the situation appealed to her, I think, even if the idea of actually giving up her dolls did not. And I was glad to hand over the reins. The funeral was my idea, sure, but I would have felt stupid setting it up on my own. I needed Callie to take it seriously so I didn’t have to, so I could smile like an indulgent older sister and any outside observer would think I was just humoring her.

Callie was the one to come up with the program, dictating to me as I inscribed it on a sheet of the pale-pink personalized stationery she used for her mother-mandated post-birthday-party thank-you notes.

Opening Remarks… Ava Carruthers

“That’s okay, right? Since it was your idea?”

“Sure.” I shrugged, carefully nonchalant.

Scripture… 1 Corinthians 13:11

Funeral Oration… Caroline Alice Reed

Song… “Toyland” from Babes in Toyland

I put down my pen. “We’re going to sing?”

“I just thought because a lot of funerals have music. And usually it’s ‘Amazing Grace’ or something, but I thought this would fit better because it’s about toys and not death. I can do it by myself, if you want.”

“Great. Good idea.”

Burial Ceremony… Ava Carruthers & Caroline Alice Reed

Please join us for a reception following the service.

“I thought we could bake cookies the day before, and make lemonade, and maybe tea sandwiches. My mom could help.”

“Maybe…” I tried to sound noncommittal. The idea of standing in Callie’s kitchen, squeezing lemons or slicing sourdough or mixing up batter while her mother peppered us with questions about our plans, was one that made my skin crawl with anticipated embarrassment. “Or we could do something normal. Like go get frozen yogurt or something.”

“Of course,” Callie said quietly. “That’s fine too.”

We determined that the funeral would take place at my house. Callie’s had a bigger backyard, but mine had the considerable advantage of parents who did not feel the need to monitor our every move. I scouted out a fairly inconspicuous burial site (under the large beech tree in the corner of the yard, obscured from the house by its trunk) and dug the hole before Callie arrived with her dolls; once she did, all we had to do was set up the ceremony.

I watched as she took them out of their shoebox, one by one, laying them lovingly on the grass for a last goodbye. First the Montgomerys, the old-fashioned porcelain family that had been her mother’s: Papa, with his mustache and starched suit and midlife crisis that expressed itself in slowly betting away all of his money on the horse races; Mama, a sweet-faced blonde who secretly chafed at the expectations for Victorian femininity; mischievous sailor-suited Frederick; baby Lacey in her tiny white christening gown; dreamy but dry-witted Lydia, Callie’s personal favorite, who devoured the books on the painted shelves in the dollhouse library. The Ericksons, plastic and more modern-looking: career woman Janet; stay-at-home dad Paul; their spoiled-sweet four-year-old, Phoebe…

At this rate, her mother would be here to pick her up before the service even started. “Here, let me help.” I grabbed a handful of dolls and scattered them across our little section of lawn, ruining Callie’s neat rows. She pressed her lips together, but she didn’t object. Working together, we finished in just a few seconds.

“Okay.” I pulled the program from the pocket of my chambray shorts. “Should I start?” “Go ahead.”

“Okay. Um. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to honor the memory of our dolls. Who died.”

“They didn’t die–”

“Who didn’t die, because they are inanimate objects. But that’s how we’re going to think of them now, as objects, because we’re going into middle school. And we should imagine their personalities going up to heaven or whatever, like that balloon thing they do at real funerals. Except with imaginary balloons because we don’t want to destroy the environment. Amen.”

“Amen,” Callie echoed. “Now for the scripture. And the funeral oration.” She unfolded a sheet of notebook paper and began to read.

“‘When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.’ Paul said that to the Corinthians, and my grandma says that to my grandad when they argue about his model train habits.

“Unlike Paul and my grandad, we are not becoming men. But we are becoming middle schoolers. In five weeks, we will enter the hallowed halls of Hansen Junior High. We, too, need to start putting away childish things. And we are gathered here today–” She swallowed, and her voice quivered a bit as she repeated it – “we are gathered here today to ensure that we can never take them out again.” She gripped the paper tighter, then abruptly folded it up and placed it back in her pocket.

“Are you okay?” I knew she had at least half a page to go.

“Of course,” Callie said quickly, with a tight little smile to prove it. “It’s just, um. I was planning to say individual goodbyes, but now I realize that would take too long. And I kind of just want to get this over with. Would you mind–” She nodded towards the shoebox. “You know, the whole–? While I sing?”

“Sure,” I said. “I can do it.”

“Thank you.” Callie bit her lip. “I’ll– we can start now, I guess.” And, in her clear children’s chorus soprano, she began:

Toyland, Toyland,

Li-ittle girl and boy land.

Listening, I couldn’t help but cringe a little bit. Not because she was a bad singer–she wasn’t–but because of her unbearable earnestness, the sense that she didn’t find it the slightest bit ridiculous. It didn’t make me feel superior. It didn’t even make me feel less embarrassed for myself. It made me feel like I was kicking a puppy with a steel-toed boot.

While you dwell within it,

You are ever happy then.

I gathered up the dolls and put them back in the shoebox: first one by one, so as not to upset her further; then, when she looked away, by the handful. Callie noticed, I think, but we both pretended she didn’t.

Childhood joyland,

My-ystic merry Toyland.

I tried, as I had to some degree for the past six months, to convince myself that it was better this way. Like ripping off a Band-Aid. We were sixth-graders now. It was time to grow up.

Once you’ve passed its borders,

You can never return again.

I closed the lid of the shoebox, securing it with duct tape, then placed it in the ground. Callie watched as I layered shovelfuls of dirt over the top.

Anna Parker is a sophomore at the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, TX, where she majors in creative writing. Her work has received multiple gold keys and a national silver medal from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and she recently placed third in Ringling College's Storytellers of Tomorrow writing competition. She enjoys writing poetry, short stories, and plays.