(Also, if you haven't seen my first T.E.A. post, I'll link it here. It was also the 100th blog post!)
***
"No. No fireworks."
"Even if it's homemade?"
"Especially if it's homemade, Bell. Sorry to crimp your wings, but I can't risk any of you guys getting hurt. Because unlike dolls, humans typically don't melt and get disfigured for life if they catch fire. Typically." I winced. That last comment was pretty grim, although true.
"Aw, okay," Bell handed over a secret basket full of hand-crafted sparkler sticks. They weren't poorly assembled, but I doubted any doll I owned had the bravery to actually ignite it. "Can we have a fireworks show when you get home?"
"Yeah, sure. I think we have some left over from the 4th in the garage." I pointed a parental finger at Bell as she flew away. "But don't get any ideas!"
"Don't worry. Hey, where you do keep your matches?"
I rolled my eyes and turned to face Elsa and Steve, who were in a sense guarding the door to my bedroom. I waved my hand to let them know I wanted in. I didn't have a lot of time until my family needed to be on the road, and I still didn't have my travel bag fully packed.
"We're just here to let you know that everything's fine." Steve told me.
"What? What did you do in there? Why wouldn't everything be fine?" I asked.
"Nothing, nothing," Elsa giggled. "Don't look too hard at your bag."
I sighed and opened the door, seeing a black tin box inside my bag that hadn't been there before.
There was no mistaking the giggles coming from inside that box.
"Come on, guys. Out." I said, lifting the lid.
Carol and Meiling were inside, holding hands and laughing giddily like they had somehow gotten away with it.
"Aw, please? We really wanna go with you!" Meiling whined.
"Why? I'm just visiting my grandparents."
"Meiling loves travel," Carol replied proudly. "Or so she told me. So we won't care where you are going, we just want to see."
"You're going to see the interior of a car, that's what you're going to see," I folded my arms in a definite "no", but I was secretly considering their plea. If they wanted to see the world so badly, what was wrong with the little town of Nowhere, Up North? They were small enough to be hidden from the rest of my family. And I certainly wasn't up for hearing them bug me if I were to return home from not taking them. I got down real close to the tin. "Listen. You two can go-"
Meiling squealed. Carol shushed her.
"-Only if you keep this on the down low. The other dolls will get jealous and soon I'll have a mess on my hands. There's only so many of you a person can fit into one suitcase."
"We understand," said Carol, trying to contain her excitement. "We'll keep it a secret, won't we, Mei-Mei?"
"Sure," Meiling smiled. "When do we leave?"
"Tomorrow at eight."
"In the morning?"
"Yeah...?"
"We can do it, Mei-Mei."
"If you can remember to wake up." Said Meiling, tugging at Carol's jacket.
"If I can remember to wake up, too," I joked. "But then there's the problem of explaining your disappearance to the other dolls..."
"We can take care of it," Steve piped up. Elsa nodded beside him. "Carol and Meiling are going to be playing the world's longest game of Hide-And-Seek."
"Brilliant." Said Carol.
"Ridiculous." I said.
"So ridiculous that it might work?"
"We'll see. Tomorrow at eight."
The next morning, the truck was loaded and the rest of my family was ready to go. I just had one more thing to slide into my bag.
My sister, who is a morning person, and me, who is the opposite, clash frequently on these long car rides, and today was no different.
"Come on, we just want to go already. Why do you need to bring more things?" She said, pointing at the black tin box I was carrying.
"Earrings," I said plainly. "I forgot to pack my earrings."
"You don't need a box that big for earrings."
"You're right, I don't," I said, and lifted the lid so that only my sister could see. Her eyes widened at the sight of Carol and Meiling, frozen in her presence, but it was no use. My sister already knew about the Code. "Please don't tell mom and dad."
She shivered and pulled her sweatshirt closer around her skin, despite the early morning humidity. "I don't know why you insist on taking them everywhere with you."
I shut the lid. "Wouldn't you?"
"No. Dolls give me the creeps."
"They can probably still hear you."
"And that's why."
I groaned and slid the tin into the pocket of my hoodie. Eight hours couldn't pass soon enough.
Lucky for me, I mostly slept, only waking every so often for rest stops and pictures of the world outside. For once, it was a lovely day- without rain or extreme, baking heat- the main weather patterns of the north. I knew that Carol and Meiling would love to see this view, even if it was only clouds, trees, and asphalt. If my sister wasn't afraid of dolls, and my parents knew about the Code, things would be a lot easier for them. But my family is the religious type, not that I wasn't, but they were the kind of people that believed in ghosts and evil spirits. I wasn't sure if I did. None of the dolls I owned had ever reached a "Chucky" or "Annabelle" tier of evilness, so the ghost-fearing gene in my family skipped me. They called me the black sheep, the odd one out, my sister even going so far as to say I must be adopted, but their comments hardly bothered me. For I had the largest secret out of all of them, and it was a good one to keep. Still, sometimes I felt like my dolls kept secrets from me. How they did get here? Why were they alive? What did it mean to be living? Did they know about that themselves? Would we ever even know?
"Look around, ladies," my dad called from the driver's seat. "Does that building look familiar?"
My sister and I snapped from our dazes and watched as a tiny cottage with a green roof passed us by. That was the Irish-owned coffee cafe, the place we would walk to every morning with my grandpap whenever we had these times to visit him. I smiled. We were almost there.
The house that belonged to my grandpap was nestled into the side of a hill, amongst other houses whose residents were scarcely seen. It was a simple place to live, but the history it held was far from that. The glider on the back porch was assembled by his father, and the shudders aside either window were painted by his mother. The old milk jug that became a planter by his driveway was an heirloom, at least three generations old. And, lastly, the hand-woven rug that marked all visitors as welcome on his front doorstep had been placed there when I was a child, yet still old enough to remember who wove it. My grandmother.
My grandpap embraced each of us in a hug, firm because of his arms, and abrasive because of his beard. He had started growing it about three years ago.
(The above picture is of a toad found in my grandparent's yard, which is unrelated to the content, but he is cute, so he will stay.)
"How was the trip?" He asked, patting the spot next to him on the glider for my mother to sit. "Glad it was finally a nice day for you. I don't think we're supposed to get any rain the rest of the week. And you know what that means." He wiggled his eyebrows at my sister and I.
I'd almost forgotten. We were going to have to drive to visit my dad's parents, too.
"Are you trying to kick us out already?" My mother joked.
"Not if you brought me my favorite, love." My grandpap replied.
"The pie. It's still in the cooler. Dear, could you get that? We can have some now."
My sister exchanged weird glances, but neither of us complained. That was a good way to lose our slice of mom's famous peach-blueberry pie, which she only ever made if we were visiting grandpap.
We ate amongst friendly conversation, and, as usual for an old person, health updates. Bill is sick again. Ellen and Grace both have pneumonia. Carol's sister fell down the stairs and broke her hip.
At the sound of her name, I heard Carol clatter around in the tin, which was still in my hoodie pocket. My family all looked at me, expecting an excuse, as if I had set off the loudest sound in the world.
"Excuse me for a minute." I got up, went calmly inside, then ran into the bedroom I would share with my sister and took out the tin.
"I heard my name. Does that mean we're safe to come out?" Carol said.
"No, no, Carol was my grandmother's name." I told them, lifting Meiling and Carol out and setting them on the nightstand.
"Was?"
"Yeah... she's dead now. She died in 2016."
Meiling frowned, unable to understand the concept of death. Carol, for once, paid her no attention.
"Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to ask."
"It's okay. You had the right to know. Just... from now on, when you're in this house, don't answer to Carol." I tossed my hoodie onto the mattress and started to leave the room.
"Wait. Are you just going to leave us here?"
I have to. My family wouldn't understand," I began to shut the door. "You and Meiling can explore around here for a while. But don't leave the bedroom, okay? I'll take you out somewhere fun before the end of this trip. I promise."
"Okay..." Meiling whispered, sounding disappointed.
"Hey, chin up, chicken. It won't be long." I said, smiling, before shutting the door. I wondered how dolls viewed the passage of time. Was it slower or faster than humans? I shook my head and brought my pie plate to the kitchen. I had a lot of questions, indeed.
I was able to take a couple of pictures of them in front of a locomotive at the train station, but there was only so long that my sister was willing to distract the rest of my family for me to do so.
On the final day, we drove to visit my father's parents, who lived in a house that was nestled in another hill, as is with the geography of the north. This house had a chimney which was always smoking, an air conditioning unit that never worked, and a terrier dog that believed itself to be ferocious. I knew that this was Carol and Meiling's last chance to explore the world from outside the backpack, but I didn't trust that dog. There had to be a way to escape prying eyes and gnawing teeth to give my dolls the T.E.A. I had promised.
"What's up, kiddo?" My other grandpap said, rustling my hair with his knuckles like he always did. "Did you see that new pond they're building yet?"
"What?" I asked, setting down my book, which I had been comfortably reading for an hour now. I wasn't in the mood for interruptions, but a pond was something else.
"Yeah, the neighbors that just moved in to that old farmhouse next door got this huge plot of earth and they're putting a pond there. You should go check it out."
I got up from the easy chair. "Am I allowed?"
"I say that you are." Said my pappy with a wink. "Better hurry before they get home to find you, though."
I nodded. "Gotcha. I'll go now." I knew that my grandparents had a good relationship with their neighbors. They had to, after all, with only their two houses for miles and miles along this one road. Still, their neighbors didn't know me personally, and they might consider it trespassing if I wasn't careful to leave before they returned. Adrenaline filled my veins. This was my chance to show Carol and Meiling the world up north.
Sunset was approaching, and the hill was painted with slices of sunlight and shadow. A simple country backyard suddenly looked like a fantasy playground which I had never before experienced. My dolls were going to love it here.
"Coast is clear," I hummed, unzipping my backpack and letting Carol and Meiling crawl hastily into in my hand. "I promised you a vacation, and here it is."
"Woah..." Meiling gasped. "Can we move here?"
"What do you want to do first? I know this place like the back of my hand. I can take you anywhere."
Meiling pointed at a continuation of my grandparent's gravel driveway, the part that snaked back into the woods like a forbidden trail. "What's over there?"
"A surprise," I told her, as if crafting some excellent story. "It's a path that leads to the secret hideout of the fairies."
Meiling clapped her hands. "I want to see the fairies!"
I walked slowly, carrying them in my hand and allowing enough space between them and me to get a proper look at the landscape. A flower caught my eye along the side, and suddenly, my story was made up for me.
"You can't see the fairies. They're invisible. But they plant the flowers and help them grow, and they love to share what they make," I bent down and allowed Meiling and Carol to walk by themselves. "Go ahead and take one of the flowers. The fairies' gift to you."
"I want that big one right there! That big white one!"
"That's a daisy." Carol said proudly, glad to say that she knew at least one type of flower in nature.
Carol tried her best to stand Meiling on her shoulders to grab at the daisy, but they still needed a little assistance from a humans' hand.
Meiling happily plucked the head of the daisy and slid it into her hair, but it didn't take long for it to get itchy and she passed it off for me to carry as we went on exploring.
Aside from the odd clearing or clover patch, there wasn't much else to see on that path in the woods. We left for the open yard, where there was much more trouble for the dolls to get into. Namely, a set of limestone blocks that were cleverly arranged into a miniature playground.
I set Meiling down on the closest one, making beeping noises and announcing which "floor" she was on to make the ride more entertaining. Carol, however, seemed determined to climb the rocks herself. But there weren't nearly enough placeholders for one's feet or hands, and she kept sliding down.
"Don't worry. Hey, where you do keep your matches?"
I rolled my eyes and turned to face Elsa and Steve, who were in a sense guarding the door to my bedroom. I waved my hand to let them know I wanted in. I didn't have a lot of time until my family needed to be on the road, and I still didn't have my travel bag fully packed.
"We're just here to let you know that everything's fine." Steve told me.
"What? What did you do in there? Why wouldn't everything be fine?" I asked.
"Nothing, nothing," Elsa giggled. "Don't look too hard at your bag."
I sighed and opened the door, seeing a black tin box inside my bag that hadn't been there before.
There was no mistaking the giggles coming from inside that box.
"Come on, guys. Out." I said, lifting the lid.
Carol and Meiling were inside, holding hands and laughing giddily like they had somehow gotten away with it.
"Aw, please? We really wanna go with you!" Meiling whined.
"Why? I'm just visiting my grandparents."
"Meiling loves travel," Carol replied proudly. "Or so she told me. So we won't care where you are going, we just want to see."
"You're going to see the interior of a car, that's what you're going to see," I folded my arms in a definite "no", but I was secretly considering their plea. If they wanted to see the world so badly, what was wrong with the little town of Nowhere, Up North? They were small enough to be hidden from the rest of my family. And I certainly wasn't up for hearing them bug me if I were to return home from not taking them. I got down real close to the tin. "Listen. You two can go-"
Meiling squealed. Carol shushed her.
"-Only if you keep this on the down low. The other dolls will get jealous and soon I'll have a mess on my hands. There's only so many of you a person can fit into one suitcase."
"We understand," said Carol, trying to contain her excitement. "We'll keep it a secret, won't we, Mei-Mei?"
"Sure," Meiling smiled. "When do we leave?"
"Tomorrow at eight."
"In the morning?"
"Yeah...?"
"We can do it, Mei-Mei."
"If you can remember to wake up." Said Meiling, tugging at Carol's jacket.
"If I can remember to wake up, too," I joked. "But then there's the problem of explaining your disappearance to the other dolls..."
"We can take care of it," Steve piped up. Elsa nodded beside him. "Carol and Meiling are going to be playing the world's longest game of Hide-And-Seek."
"Brilliant." Said Carol.
"Ridiculous." I said.
"So ridiculous that it might work?"
"We'll see. Tomorrow at eight."
The next morning, the truck was loaded and the rest of my family was ready to go. I just had one more thing to slide into my bag.
My sister, who is a morning person, and me, who is the opposite, clash frequently on these long car rides, and today was no different.
"Come on, we just want to go already. Why do you need to bring more things?" She said, pointing at the black tin box I was carrying.
"Earrings," I said plainly. "I forgot to pack my earrings."
"You don't need a box that big for earrings."
"You're right, I don't," I said, and lifted the lid so that only my sister could see. Her eyes widened at the sight of Carol and Meiling, frozen in her presence, but it was no use. My sister already knew about the Code. "Please don't tell mom and dad."
She shivered and pulled her sweatshirt closer around her skin, despite the early morning humidity. "I don't know why you insist on taking them everywhere with you."
I shut the lid. "Wouldn't you?"
"No. Dolls give me the creeps."
"They can probably still hear you."
"And that's why."
I groaned and slid the tin into the pocket of my hoodie. Eight hours couldn't pass soon enough.
Lucky for me, I mostly slept, only waking every so often for rest stops and pictures of the world outside. For once, it was a lovely day- without rain or extreme, baking heat- the main weather patterns of the north. I knew that Carol and Meiling would love to see this view, even if it was only clouds, trees, and asphalt. If my sister wasn't afraid of dolls, and my parents knew about the Code, things would be a lot easier for them. But my family is the religious type, not that I wasn't, but they were the kind of people that believed in ghosts and evil spirits. I wasn't sure if I did. None of the dolls I owned had ever reached a "Chucky" or "Annabelle" tier of evilness, so the ghost-fearing gene in my family skipped me. They called me the black sheep, the odd one out, my sister even going so far as to say I must be adopted, but their comments hardly bothered me. For I had the largest secret out of all of them, and it was a good one to keep. Still, sometimes I felt like my dolls kept secrets from me. How they did get here? Why were they alive? What did it mean to be living? Did they know about that themselves? Would we ever even know?
"Look around, ladies," my dad called from the driver's seat. "Does that building look familiar?"
My sister and I snapped from our dazes and watched as a tiny cottage with a green roof passed us by. That was the Irish-owned coffee cafe, the place we would walk to every morning with my grandpap whenever we had these times to visit him. I smiled. We were almost there.
The house that belonged to my grandpap was nestled into the side of a hill, amongst other houses whose residents were scarcely seen. It was a simple place to live, but the history it held was far from that. The glider on the back porch was assembled by his father, and the shudders aside either window were painted by his mother. The old milk jug that became a planter by his driveway was an heirloom, at least three generations old. And, lastly, the hand-woven rug that marked all visitors as welcome on his front doorstep had been placed there when I was a child, yet still old enough to remember who wove it. My grandmother.
My grandpap embraced each of us in a hug, firm because of his arms, and abrasive because of his beard. He had started growing it about three years ago.
(The above picture is of a toad found in my grandparent's yard, which is unrelated to the content, but he is cute, so he will stay.)
"How was the trip?" He asked, patting the spot next to him on the glider for my mother to sit. "Glad it was finally a nice day for you. I don't think we're supposed to get any rain the rest of the week. And you know what that means." He wiggled his eyebrows at my sister and I.
I'd almost forgotten. We were going to have to drive to visit my dad's parents, too.
"Are you trying to kick us out already?" My mother joked.
"Not if you brought me my favorite, love." My grandpap replied.
"The pie. It's still in the cooler. Dear, could you get that? We can have some now."
My sister exchanged weird glances, but neither of us complained. That was a good way to lose our slice of mom's famous peach-blueberry pie, which she only ever made if we were visiting grandpap.
We ate amongst friendly conversation, and, as usual for an old person, health updates. Bill is sick again. Ellen and Grace both have pneumonia. Carol's sister fell down the stairs and broke her hip.
At the sound of her name, I heard Carol clatter around in the tin, which was still in my hoodie pocket. My family all looked at me, expecting an excuse, as if I had set off the loudest sound in the world.
"Excuse me for a minute." I got up, went calmly inside, then ran into the bedroom I would share with my sister and took out the tin.
"I heard my name. Does that mean we're safe to come out?" Carol said.
"No, no, Carol was my grandmother's name." I told them, lifting Meiling and Carol out and setting them on the nightstand.
"Was?"
"Yeah... she's dead now. She died in 2016."
Meiling frowned, unable to understand the concept of death. Carol, for once, paid her no attention.
"Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to ask."
"It's okay. You had the right to know. Just... from now on, when you're in this house, don't answer to Carol." I tossed my hoodie onto the mattress and started to leave the room.
"Wait. Are you just going to leave us here?"
I have to. My family wouldn't understand," I began to shut the door. "You and Meiling can explore around here for a while. But don't leave the bedroom, okay? I'll take you out somewhere fun before the end of this trip. I promise."
"Okay..." Meiling whispered, sounding disappointed.
"Hey, chin up, chicken. It won't be long." I said, smiling, before shutting the door. I wondered how dolls viewed the passage of time. Was it slower or faster than humans? I shook my head and brought my pie plate to the kitchen. I had a lot of questions, indeed.
We would stay for five days, two for travelling, and three for adventuring. We visited a national park, a legendary railroad, and a historic mansion. We took a picnic lunch everywhere we could, and I did the same with Carol and Meiling. They rode in my backpack, poking their little heads out to see the sights, and I would walk a little behind the rest of my family whenever we went out, if only to protect them, and me, from getting caught.
On the final day, we drove to visit my father's parents, who lived in a house that was nestled in another hill, as is with the geography of the north. This house had a chimney which was always smoking, an air conditioning unit that never worked, and a terrier dog that believed itself to be ferocious. I knew that this was Carol and Meiling's last chance to explore the world from outside the backpack, but I didn't trust that dog. There had to be a way to escape prying eyes and gnawing teeth to give my dolls the T.E.A. I had promised.
"What's up, kiddo?" My other grandpap said, rustling my hair with his knuckles like he always did. "Did you see that new pond they're building yet?"
"What?" I asked, setting down my book, which I had been comfortably reading for an hour now. I wasn't in the mood for interruptions, but a pond was something else.
"Yeah, the neighbors that just moved in to that old farmhouse next door got this huge plot of earth and they're putting a pond there. You should go check it out."
I got up from the easy chair. "Am I allowed?"
"I say that you are." Said my pappy with a wink. "Better hurry before they get home to find you, though."
I nodded. "Gotcha. I'll go now." I knew that my grandparents had a good relationship with their neighbors. They had to, after all, with only their two houses for miles and miles along this one road. Still, their neighbors didn't know me personally, and they might consider it trespassing if I wasn't careful to leave before they returned. Adrenaline filled my veins. This was my chance to show Carol and Meiling the world up north.
"Coast is clear," I hummed, unzipping my backpack and letting Carol and Meiling crawl hastily into in my hand. "I promised you a vacation, and here it is."
"Woah..." Meiling gasped. "Can we move here?"
"What do you want to do first? I know this place like the back of my hand. I can take you anywhere."
Meiling pointed at a continuation of my grandparent's gravel driveway, the part that snaked back into the woods like a forbidden trail. "What's over there?"
"A surprise," I told her, as if crafting some excellent story. "It's a path that leads to the secret hideout of the fairies."
Meiling clapped her hands. "I want to see the fairies!"
I walked slowly, carrying them in my hand and allowing enough space between them and me to get a proper look at the landscape. A flower caught my eye along the side, and suddenly, my story was made up for me.
"You can't see the fairies. They're invisible. But they plant the flowers and help them grow, and they love to share what they make," I bent down and allowed Meiling and Carol to walk by themselves. "Go ahead and take one of the flowers. The fairies' gift to you."
"That's a daisy." Carol said proudly, glad to say that she knew at least one type of flower in nature.
Carol tried her best to stand Meiling on her shoulders to grab at the daisy, but they still needed a little assistance from a humans' hand.
Meiling happily plucked the head of the daisy and slid it into her hair, but it didn't take long for it to get itchy and she passed it off for me to carry as we went on exploring.
Aside from the odd clearing or clover patch, there wasn't much else to see on that path in the woods. We left for the open yard, where there was much more trouble for the dolls to get into. Namely, a set of limestone blocks that were cleverly arranged into a miniature playground.
"This rock is a lot taller than it looks." Carol sighed.
"Have you tried flying?" I asked.
Carol lowered her voice, along with her eyes. "Um... I can't fly. I don't have any powers."
"Are you sure?" I whispered back.
"If I did, they would have come to me by now. Meiling was supposed to change that. The Avengers thought if I had someone to mentor, things would change for me. But they haven't. I'm a sorry excuse for a hero."
"No, you're not. Even heroes need a little help."
"Just use the Ella Vader!" Meiling called down.
"What's that, Mei-Mei?"
"She means elevator," I replied, allowing Carol to step onto my hand like the "platform" Meiling had previously used it as. "Do you want to me make the sounds like I did with Meiling?"
Carol laughed and rolled her eyes. "Sure. It'll be fun for her to see that."
I did, glad to know I wasn't the only one feeling a little stupid. It made Meiling happy, though, and that was all that mattered to us. I let Carol step off of the "Ella Vader" and onto the rock, but she barely had time to adjust to the uneven surface before Meiling called for play time.
"Chase me! Chase me!" Meiling squealed, and took off running as fast as her little legs could carry her.
"Be careful, Mei-Mei! Don't fall!"
"Warriors don't fall."
"You're a warrior now, huh?"
"Yeah! I'm gonna go defeat the Huns," Meiling stopped at the end of the rock, stuck out her tongue, and hopped over the next one. "I just crossed the biggest river in China!"
"You sure did!" Carol called.
"Watch me do this jump! I'm gonna be a great warrior, just like you!"
Carol beamed, and for a second, she was unable to find her words. "Want to see what a warrior can do, Mei-Mei?" Carol, who was now tired of running, pointed at rusted piece of farm equipment off to the side of the yard. "Bet you I can't climb that to the top."
"Bet you ten hugs." Meiling said, hopping down from the rock all by herself.
"Ten hugs? That's a lot," said Carol. "You're on."
It was no issue for Carol to find a way to get onto the equipment, but Meiling was a different story.
"I wanna go up, too!"
"No, Mei-Mei. This is dangerous for small ones like you. I have been climbing for a very long time."
"Then if I climb for a very long time, can I do that?"
"Sure." Carol replied, having her doubts.
"Okay! I wanna start now. Watch this!" Meiling ran over to the rock and began pawing at it. Since her hands and feet were smaller, they caught in the placeholders a lot easier than Carol, and in no time at all, Meiling was up on top of the rock again.
"You are raising a little warrior." I remarked.
"Don't I know it," Carol tapped the top of the metal rod and swung down from it like it was a set of monkey bars. "Come here, Mei-Mei! You owe me ten hugs."
Amidst the crickets and birds and other sounds of nature was the soft rumbling of rubber on rock. A vehicle was coming down the neighbor's driveway.
"Later. Get in the tin. Hurry!" I scooped Carol from the ground and Meiling from the rock and made sure they were safely inside before I took off running at a warrior's speed towards my grandparent's house. Sure, I hadn't gotten to see the new pond, but I had done something way more important.
The next day, we left the north. Bright blue skies and fluffy white clouds saw us come, and now they were seeing us go. The rest of my family was ready to get back to routine, or at least get back to their regular bedrooms to take a nap, but I still had one more activity planned for Carol and Meiling. After all, what is T.E.A. without teatime?
Once we settled back in the house and mostly unpacked, I brewed some Chinese white tea, (per Meiling's request), and she, Carol, and I shared it on the shelf in my bedroom they called home.
"So, you're telling me we couldn't find you because you were playing hide-and-seek." My Arthur Dent doll said skeptically.
"Yeah, I was in the basement cab-bin-net! It was really dark and scary in there." Meiling laughed not-so-secretly and winked at Carol with both eyes.
"It was a really good hiding place," Carol admitted. "Problem is, I thought Meiling was supposed to be finding me. So I was hiding, too."
"For five days?" Arthur asked incredulously.
"It was the longest game of hide-and-seek in the world," I nodded knowingly. "Cheers, girls."
When all the chaos had died down of being welcomed back, most of the dolls had settled down for a nap. Only Carol and a few members of the PSA remained awake. Of course, they had known something was afoot the entire time, and it was no surprise to them to learn that Carol had gone with me up north.
"Did the trip help with the uh... you know..." Clint signed something in ASL to soften the blow, but it only lead to more confusion.
"Your powers," Natasha stated. "Did it help you find your powers?"
Carol rubbed the back of her neck. "Um... well, I've got good news and bad news."
"Okay."
"Good news is, Meiling sees me as a hero no matter what. Bad news is... I still haven't got any powers."
Natasha crossed her arms and hastily turned away to keep herself from getting angrier. "That's fine. Just keep working on it. We're depending on you, Carol."
"But I am trying, I really am." Carol begged, but it was too late. Clint and Natasha were already heading off for bed.
Carol flashed me a look of devastation. I put down my pen and closed my journal. That poem could be finished some other night. "Want to talk about it?" I asked.
"No... I want that to be the last thing on my mind," Carol sat down and began swinging her legs over the side of the shelf. "Tell me about your grandmother. The one with my name."
"Oh, well..." I got up from my desk and paced over to the bookshelf. So many journals were already there, lined up neatly in a row, but their contents weren't so neat. Inside were poems about heartbreak and tragedy, memories, love, and grief. It was my grandmother that had gotten me into writing poems, more so than usual, at least, but she herself was far from a poet. "I guess I could."
I took Carol from the shelf and placed her on my pillow, then I laid down next to her.
"In November 2016, my grandmother Carol passed away. It was, to date, the worst two weeks of my life, guaranteed." I began.
"Two weeks? I thought it didn't take that long for humans to die."
"It doesn't," I sighed and began picking at my comforter. "It doesn't usually. She was at the hospital with a stroke. She had gone through a stroke before, so we didn't think the second one would be the end of her. We kept her on life support all through that time, unwilling to say goodbye."
Things were quiet for a minute. If I closed my eyes and tried to listen, I could almost, almost, hear her voice through the dead air. Her last words were to my mother, not to me. Which was okay. She deserved them more than I did.
"I never once visited her that hospital. My parents didn't want me to see such suffering. But I'm not sure that made me feel any better," I swallowed. "I wish I could have been there. One last time."
Carol touched my face. Her hand was chilly, but it was real.
"A lot of what I have now reminds me of her. It's bittersweet, in a way. I want to cherish her memory, but it hurts sometimes. Can you keep a secret?"
"On top of what I already have? Of course." Carol replied.
"A lot of my dolls I collect were to honor my grandmother. Moana, for example, was a big one for me. During the time my grandmother was in the hospital, her movie had just come out. My father took and sister and me to go see it, as a sort of distraction from everything else, I guess. I loved that movie, and when I saw that Moana, too, was grieving the loss of her grandmother, I knew I had to have a doll of her character. And, what do you know, Christmas Day, 2016, there she is, under the tree. Like a little shimmer of hope in the darkest of times."
"That's nice. Does Moana know?"
I looked to the shelf where she lay, keeping Magneto and Pocahontas by her side and Pua and HeiHei even closer. Moana had a big family, a family she chose as hers, just as my grandmother did.
"No. It figured it would be too much."
"I think she would be honored if you told her." Carol said.
"Not overwhelmed?"
She shook her head. "No. I wouldn't be."
"Maybe tomorrow," I said, shuffling in my sheets. "My grandmother Carol was a lot like you, in a way."
"Was she?"
"Yeah. Headstrong, definitely. Independent. Didn't take no for an answer. Asked questions constantly," I laughed shortly and nudged Carol's arm. "She always felt like she had to prove herself, though, as if her own family wasn't impressed with her. We totally were. We all were. We would be like, 'grandma, you don't have to cook dinner all by yourself. We came over for a reason. Let us help you', and she would be like, 'get out of my kitchen, I'm making dinner the way I want it to be'."
"That's pleasant."
"Okay, maybe not, but everything she did was out of love for her family. She took a big risk marrying my grandpap. She was eighteen years old, and she had to move to Japan, only speaking English, because my grandpap was still in the military. He was in the Navy, the Marines, and the Army. Nearly all four branches, and my grandma had to just go along with it, all the while raising my mom. She was the strongest woman I ever knew," I paused. "Until I met you."
"But I'm a doll."
"And because you are, that doesn't make you a strong woman?"
Carol settled back onto the pillow. "I guess not."
"People and dolls alike have different strengths. I believe a am a strong writer. That doesn't mean I'm a strong weightlifter. My grandmother had a strong resolve. That didn't mean she had strong arteries. Just because you don't have powers doesn't mean you're not a strong caretaker. Meiling loves you."
Carol put her head in her heads. "I know, but is it enough?"
"What kind of question is that?"
"What?"
"What you just described. 'Is love enough?' It's all there is."
"I just want to make the Avengers proud. They're counting on me for something big."
"Are you worried on not making the Avengers proud, or yourself proud?" I asked her.
"Both, I guess." Carol muttered.
"What if you look at this way. You don't need to make the PSA happy to make yourself happy. Be happy first as yourself, and eventually, in time, they will come to appreciate you as you are. With or without powers."
"Yeah... hey! I thought we agreed not to talk about this."
I shrugged. "Oopsy daisy," I turned over in my bed. "Thanks for listening to me, Carol. I feel like I can't talk to anyone about my grandmother. I'm afraid of making them unhappy."
"So we're both afraid of the same thing."
"Yeah."
"So what should we do?"
I let out a short breath of air. "We start small."
"We start tomorrow," Carol sighed, holding out her pinkie. "Promise me you'll tell Moana about your grandmother. I promise I'll learn to love myself as I am."
"One of those seems a little more daunting than the other." I laughed, touching Carol's pinkie to mine.
Carol looked at me straight in the eye. I saw her light brown eyes, the same color as my mother's, and her mother's before her. "We can do it. We're strong women."
See you when it's time for T.E.A.,
She
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