by Hazel Brown
Ingrid
My mother had me when she was young. All the dolls I had played with were her very ones, whose names were still fresh in her mind. She would hand me a hard-headed, hard-limbed little baby, with a soft fabric gut, and say “this one is Sandy because her skin is sandy colored. She likes cakes with lemon icing. She likes strawberries, thinly sliced. She doesn’t like vegetables, any kind.” The dolls were her sisters, once. They were my sisters, then. But we weren’t sisters.
I had all the rules on how to be young, from my mother, who was young.
When I was six, she became pregnant. I asked if the baby was going to be my sister, like all our other dolls. Or was the baby her sister, like all our other dolls once were. And whose baby would it be.
Well, she’ll be my baby, Mother said.
Why’s this one yours, I asked.
Because I made her.
Where is she?
She’s inside of me. In my belly.
I placed my hands on my mother’s barely rounding stomach. It was nearly flat. It was a slight lump. It was a doll hiding under the covers. One I’d search the whole house for, only to find resting right by my pillow. Or at where my feet would be. Under my quilt.
You ate her.
No. I’m putting her together.
She fell apart. Baby doll limbs fall off sometimes if you swing them around in a circle.
No, I’m stitching her together, from scratch.
Scratch. Mother scratching and scraping up something together. Like a cake. Like a cake with lemon icing, but I never knew how to make lemon icing – if you had to divide a lemon and squeeze it, and thicken it somehow? How to thicken icing. It always stays thin and runny. You put it in the freezer, but then it’s hard. It’s ice. It’s never icing.
From scratch. She didn’t want to explain anymore. She didn’t explain what scratch was. Talons of a hiding bird. The screeching ones in tall trees that, though spindly branches, you cannot see it. Just the scream. The scrape of a falling leaf. The scrape.
No baby came.
One day my mother said, I won’t be having a baby anymore.
Having one? We have them. We have babies. They were all in my room, on the bed. Or in the living room, on the floor, by where she slept on a pull-out bed.
Yes – I’m not making us a new baby. She patted her stomach. The scratch. I held her stomach. It was flat. The baby scratched out.
It’s ok, I said. We already have babies.
I lay my head on my mother’s stomach. It was soft like a doll. And her arms, bony. And her legs, bony. She was a baby. I was six. She did this two more times. Promised me a new doll. But we only ever had her old ones, who liked what they liked, and I did my best to feed them.
Author Hazel Brown (she/her) is a writer from Chicago. She is studying English at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, where she serves as an assistant editor for Seneca Review. Her work is forthcoming in Pangyrus.
Artist L A D explores the architecture of remembrance, examining how revisiting past emotional landscapes through objects can foster present-day clarity. This submission details the unique methodology for transforming static memories into active tools for self-discovery and psychological well-being. Daniele Alberto Lombardi is the mind behind L A D whose work focuses on the intersection of memory and emotion. Through research into the frameworks established by L A D , he highlights how introspective practices can reshape an individual’s narrative, bridging the gap between psychological theory and practical reflection. Following 25 years in the fashion industry ladmood.com is now the focal point of my artistic life.
Gulf Stream Magazine 