I got my first Barbie on Thanksgiving Day. She was perched like a mudflap girl on the hood of my car when we took off for our family gathering. I don’t know if she’s planning to be a surgeon or astronaut. At the moment I believe she is going for a provocative faux-innocent look during a fundraiser carwash. “I’ll rub your car,” she purrs. “I’ll get all soapy and everything.”

Can’t rule out that one of our personal crows put her there. She’s right spangly, and that’s something crows are said to appreciate.

Now she’s sitting perkily on our kitchen counter and as much as I’ve studied her, nothing about her is any more appealing that she was in 1959. I don’t even know how you’re supposed to play with her. She’s all stiff and weird. Somebody you want to play with should be squishy and fuzzy. Should be capable of loitering, lounging, twisting their head around to give you that look when you say something funny, understanding you down to their very eye-buttons.

This one’s all Rigor Flirtus. She’s got one purple high heel on and the other foot is bare, which is even sexier. I’m willing to wobble around in a circle for you, she says. Bleah.

The first girl that came home with us was one Dave drug home with him after a night at the tav. He wasn’t in real good shape when he came home but he managed to say “This is Denise. She’s seventeen and she’s hitchhiking up the Pacific Coast and she thinks she has an angel on her shoulder. Talk to her.” Then he fell asleep, or something like it.

I didn’t want to talk to her. I had in mind that I wanted to yell at him. But I talked to her. “Tell you what,” I told Denise. “You can stay here overnight and tomorrow morning we’ll have a little chat and see what’s what.”

Denise happily stayed overnight and apparently concluded we were her angels, one per shoulder, and she was in heaven, and she didn’t leave. She didn’t do anything. She borrowed my long scarf and my bicycle and promptly got them both wrapped together in the derailleur region. She was satanically perky. Neither Dave nor I remember much else about her specifically except for the one time she brightly offered to serve us food from whatever she found in our pantry. “Would you like a snack? Peanut butter and spices on crackers?”

I guess I thought she would just wander off on her own. I was older than she was but still young enough that the concept of just telling people it was time to leave did not occur to me as an option. At least two annoying months went by. And of course one assumed if she did leave the comfort of our home she would just continue up the coast looking for angels in dive bars. It’s not that there aren’t any. But not every drunk is as nice as Dave.

I finally dislodged her with a fib. My mother was dying—that part was true—and I was going to go visit her and possibly bring her home with me—that part wasn’t—and she needed to be gone by the time I came back. She left the next day.

We never heard anything more from Denise. I don’t know where she ended up. My god, the little shit would be 65 by now. If I ever see a pop-up food cart serving peanut butter and spices on crackers I’ll know she made it.