Read an Excerpt
Part One
Barbie & Mab
If Los Angeles is a woman reclining billboard model with collagen-puffed lips and silicone-inflated breasts, a woman in a magenta convertible with heart-shaped sunglasses and cotton candy hair; if Los Angeles is this woman, then the San Fernando Valley is her teenybopper sister. The teenybopper sister snaps big stretchy pink bubbles over her tongue and checks her lip gloss in the rearview mirror, causing Sis to scream. Teeny plays the radio too loud and bites her nails, wondering if the glitter polish will poison her. She puts her bare feet up on the dash to admire her tan legs and the blond hair that is so pale and soft she doesn't have to shave. She wears a Val Surf T-shirt and boys' boxer shorts and she has a boy's phone number scrawled on her hand. Part of her wants to spit on it and rub it off, and part of her wishes it was written in huge numbers across her belly, his name in gang letters, like a tattoo. The citrus fruits bouncing off the sidewalk remind her of boys; the burning oil and chlorine, the gold light smoldering on the windy leaves. Boys are shooting baskets on the tarry playground and she thinks she can smell them on the air. And in her pocket, whispering secrets about them, is a Mab.
Maybe Mab was real. Maybe there really are girls the size of pinkies with hair the color of the darkest red oleander blossoms and skin like the greenish-white underbellies of calla lilies.
Maybe not. Maybe Mab was the fury. Maybe she was the courage. Maybe later on she was the sex. But it doesn't matter if Mab is real or imagined, Barbie thought, as long as I can see her. As long as I can feel hersitting on my palm, ticklish as a spider, as long as I can hear the cricket of her voice. Because without her then how would I be able to ever go inside?
Inside was carpeted in shag–lime green and baby blue, scratchy and synthetic, creeping insidiously over the floors and even up onto the sink counters and toilet seats in the bathroom. It was a kitchen with cows stenciled on the walls and real cows roasting in the oven. It was pictures of Barbie's mother when she was a young beauty queen contestant and model, flashing big teeth like porcelain bullets. It was Barbie's mother now, jingling with gold chains and charms, big-haired, frosted, loud enough to scare away even the bravest pinkie-sized girls.
Sometimes Barbie's mother came outside, too, to yank her daughter by one skinny arm from under a bush and pull leaves out of hair that was green from swimming too long in the chlorinated pool.
That day, Barbie had been lying there calling for Mab who was being especially obstinate and refusing to make an appearance.
"Barbie! We're going to be late! What are you doing?"
Barbie's mother was wearing her oversized white plastic designer sunglasses and a gold and white outfit. Her perfume made Barbie's head spin in a different and more nauseating way than when she and Mab attempted to get a buzz from sniffing flowers or when they spun in circles to make themselves dizzy.
"Oh my God! You're a mess! And we have to be there in forty-five minutes."
"Where?" Barbie asked her mother's tanned cleavage as she was dragged into the avocado-colored stucco house for grooming.
The agency was over the canyon in Beverly Hills. It had high ceilings, vast glass walls and enormous artwork depicting lipsticks and weapons. To Barbie, it seemed like a palace for the Giants. The Giants were the ones she had nightmares about. It was not that she was so afraid of them hurting her. The thing that made her wake sweating and biting herself with terror was that in the dream she was huge and heavy and bloated and tingling and thick.
She was one of them.
The agency was where the Giants would live.
Barbie wished Mab had come with her. But Mab never left the backyard. She said she was afraid of getting squashed. Barbie assumed that the fact Mab never went anywhere with her was proof that Mab was probably real. Otherwise, Barbie would definitely have imagined her here now.
The agent had a stretched, tanned face, like a saddle.
"Well, you certainly are pretty, Barbie," he said.
"Thank you," said Barbie's mother.
"What do you think of a career in modeling?"
"She's thrilled. She wants to be just like Mommy."
Barbie had noticed the plant when she walked in. It was the only thing in the glass and metal room that she wanted to touch. She got up and went over to it; she always examined plants. You never knew–maybe there were more girls like Mab waiting to be discovered, and in this case, rescued.
"You know I won Miss San Fernando Valley in 19 . . . well let's just say, I was a winner! Not that you'd guess it now!" Barbie's mother patted her hairdo and eyed the agent hopefully.
Barbie patted the agent's plant. There were no Mabs on it. But even Mabless, it was the most friendly thing in the room.
"Well, you certainly have a very lovely daughter, Mrs. Markowitz."
"Marks," said Barbie's mother.
Barbie, still stroking a leaf, turned to look at her.
"What's that?" asked the agent.
"Mrs. Marks."
"I thought it said . . ." The agent spryly shuffled some papers on his desk. He had long, tan, hairy arms and surprisingly small wrists for a medium-sized man.
"That was a typo," Mrs. Marks said. She noticed Barbie and her plant. "What are you doing over there! Come sit back down."
Barbie obediently left her Mabless plant friend and went back to her chair. Mrs. Marks (Marks? Barbie thought) folded her hands tightly in her lap, wiggled her rear end into the chair and glared at her daughter. Barbie folded her hands and wiggled her rear. Mrs. Marks smiled at the agent. Barbie smiled.
The plant, which had never seen a Mab, let alone been examined for one or housed one in its leaves, might have sighed silently from its corner when Barbie Markowitz-now-Marks left.
I Was A Teenage Fairy. Copyright © by Francesca Block. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
