Rag Doll Girls

1

Lisa

After my trek to the grocery store, I was so exhausted that I barely made it up the stairs. Two of the three weak light bulbs in the narrow staircase were out as I slowly climbed to the second floor. When I spotted the garish yellow eviction notice stuck to the door of my shabby one-room apartment, I missed a step and lost my balance. At the last minute, I managed to grab hold of the railing with fingers that were numb from the carrier bag’s thin handle. The bag fell to the floor with a dull thud, but at least I didn’t.

Part of me wanted to just let go. Perhaps breaking my neck tumbling backward down the steep staircase would be the best solution to all of my problems.

I didn’t, though. Don’t ask me why, because I couldn’t tell you.

Somehow I found my balance, picked up my bag, and made it up onto the landing and over to the door, ignoring the big, bold letters declaring me to be homeless within the next ten days.

Ten days.

As if I’d be able to turn my life around in that time.

For the last thirty years, everything had been getting steadily worse, day by day, year by year.

But sure, I’d be able to turn everything around in a little over a week.

Optimist. Not something anyone had ever called me.

Not that anyone ever talked about me. If they did, they probably didn’t use my name.

That pile of lard in apartment 2D, perhaps. The monstrosity on the second floor, maybe.

I didn’t know and told myself repeatedly that I didn’t care. Other people were not my business, not my problem. I didn’t bother with them, and for the most part they didn’t bother me.

I found the keys at the bottom of my oversized purse, unlocked the door, and squeezed in through the gap.

No, I wasn’t so fat that I didn’t fit through a regular-sized front door. But the door didn’t open all the way. There were boxes stacked against the wall inside that prevented me from opening the door completely.

I really ought to move those boxes.

I had been told to move those boxes.

Those boxes were one of the reasons why there was a neon yellow eviction notice sticker glued to my front door.

Those boxes would never be moved. Not by me, at least.

Somehow I knew that.

In the same way, I knew that eating all the food in the bags that were cutting off the circulation to my fingers would do nothing to combat the clinical obesity weight issue that I’d been struggling with since my teens.

I wasn’t stupid.

But I also wasn’t very good at doing what was good for me. The right thing. Whatever you want to call it.

I made my way into the tiny kitchen and unpacked the groceries. The shop was just down the block, but I’d been gone for over an hour and a half, according to the red digits on the microwave. I was exhausted, and my 5XL sweatshirt was living up to its name, glued to my back with what I was sure was a large and very visible stain. A couple of hours. Two bags of groceries. And I’d spent all of my energy for the day. It was a little after eleven, and I was pretty sure that once I’d sat down on the sagging couch in my living room, I wouldn’t get up again—apart from bathroom visits and to get more food—until it was time to go to bed.

Of course, I had things on my to-do list. Urgent things, even. Like getting hold of my social worker, Brenda, and telling her about the eviction. Not that she would do anything about that. Not even help me find another apartment. I’m sorry, Lisa, she’d say, but the social services are here to help people who are willing to do what they can to help themselves. Who have exhausted all other possibilities. You haven’t stuck to a single one of the plans that you and I have drawn up. Your therapist tells me that you haven’t been working on any of the routines that you’ve agreed on. I can’t help you if you aren’t prepared to do some of the work yourself. I’m sorry, Lisa, but my hands are tied. I’ve explained this to you. You are no longer eligible for any more assistance from this office. You will have to make other arrangements.

Stupid woman. As if I hadn’t tried. As if I hadn’t intended to do every one of the things that we had discussed. That my therapist had insisted would help me break my destructive patterns.

But in the end, every one of those little steps had proved to be too hard, impossible even. Going outside on a regular basis. Getting exercise. Losing weight. Finding a job.

How was I supposed to suddenly be able to do all of those things when I hadn’t been able to do them before? When I didn’t have the first clue as to how one actually did any of those things.

It might not look that difficult from the outside, but then no one else, not even my snooty social worker, had any idea on the toll it took just to get down the block and pick up some food. They had no idea how hard it was, what an effort it required.

It looked so easy when everyone else did it. But for me, it was extremely hard. Always had been.

Make other arrangements. I knew what she meant by that, but … no. Just no.

I popped a frozen pizza into the microwave and made up a tray to bring into the living room. I usually brought enough food to last me until bedtime, already at lunch. That’s why I preferred processed stuff that didn’t need refrigeration. Didn’t need cooking. Potato chips didn’t require peeling and boiling and preparing. You could just eat them right out of the bag. And if, on some infrequent occasion, I didn’t finish the entire bag before I went to bed, they were still good for breakfast.

Why people bothered to cook at all was beyond me.

I carried the tray into the living room, switched on the TV, and made sure that I had everything I needed before sitting down on the sofa. The cushions had flattened after several years of use, but they were more or less perfectly molded to my wide behind, and I found it to be comfortable, even though it looked a bit sad. I’d be sorry to have to leave my sofa behind, but I couldn’t take it with me.

Not when I didn’t have anywhere to go.

I supposed that I would have to find a shelter of some kind. It would have to be a women’s shelter because I would never stay in a place with men. That would be an absolute requirement.

Getting a new apartment, now that I’d been evicted, and after losing my disability pension, was going to be impossible. As if I was any less disabled because the root of all my problems was the weight issue, as Brenda called it.

I didn’t have a weight issue, I had told her. I don’t have an issue with my weight. But you can barely walk, she’d said. I don’t have anywhere I want to go, I had replied.

I sat for a while staring at the dark screen on the TV, remote in hand, thinking that I ought to do something. Make a plan. Get up and get cracking.

But in the end, I just switched on the set and started surfing the channels. Once the pizza had cooled off a bit, I heaped Doritos on top of each slice and ate them slowly; my eyes peeled to the screen while episode after episode of various daytime soaps played out. So much drama, every day. I was lucky to be living alone, with no family or business associates to plot and scheme behind my back. The human race was doomed; I knew that much, even though my own interaction with the rest of the humans was kept to the strictest minimum.

When a soft chirping sound penetrated my concentration, it took me a while to understand where it was coming from. But of course. The phone. Brenda must have found out about my eviction somehow, and now she was calling to tell me what she intended to do about it. Or perhaps I had won the state lottery. Yes, that was probably it. This had definitely been my lucky day, so far.

I wiped my Dorito-yellow fingers on my sweatshirt and found the phone behind a sofa cushion. The battery icon was blinking. Well, it must have been hiding behind that cushion for a couple of days. Since I ordered that Chinese food, I guess. It was the only thing I ever used the phone for, that and making appointments. No one ever called me. Not even my social worker, come to think of it. Brenda always communicated through the post.

H-hello? I said, stopping to clear my throat, mid-word.

Lisa? The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. It wasn’t Brenda; I knew that much. The tone was all wrong.

Who is this? I said, lowering the volume on the TV.

"Det är jag," the voice said, and it took me several seconds for my brain to switch back to the language I’d spoken as a child. It’s me, she’d said. And with those words, she didn’t need any further introduction.

I didn’t know what to say. I just sat there with the phone to my ear, staring at the characters moving about on the screen in front of me. My ribcage started to constrict, and I felt myself getting light-headed.

A faded old memory appeared from somewhere in the back of my mind. A smiling, blond teenager, bouncing out the door to meet her friends while I sat on the sofa in our living room back home, a blanket over my legs and a bowl of ice cream on my lap.

I blinked rapidly to rid myself of the image.

Lisa? the familiar voice said again. "Är du där?" Are you there?

"Ja," I whispered. It was the first word of Swedish I had spoken in more than ten years, and it sounded strange, even to my own ears. I hadn’t realized that I had stopped thinking in Swedish, but now my brain had to scramble to find even the simplest words.

There was barely any air in my lungs, and I suddenly couldn’t remember how I was supposed to fill them. Some kind of survival instinct finally kicked in, and I drew a long, raspy breath.

I’m sorry to call like this, Astrid said, completely out of the blue, but I thought I should tell you that Mormor died.

The memory of the blond teenager was replaced by a quick flickering of images, like the pages in a flip-book: a little old woman, my mother’s mother, a small cottage in the woods, woven rugs on the rough floorboards, a slanted ceiling up on the loft, the winding trail down to the dock, the thick reeds surrounding our little stretch of sandy beach. No amount of blinking could stop the images from bombarding me. I hadn’t thought about any of that for years. Decades. Lifetimes.

Lisa? Did you hear me? Mormor is dead. And the funeral is Friday.

Friday. The word didn’t mean a thing to me. I knew it was supposed to, but it didn’t.

I think you should come, this woman who was my sister said, and there was a definite undertone of annoyance in her voice. Mormor was heartbroken that you never came to visit her; you meant the world to her, you know.

Did I?

I … I can’t, I stuttered. "There’s no way … This Friday? No. Sorry."

As if any other Friday would have been different. But no. I could just as easily have hopped on a space shuttle and hurled myself into hyperspace as get on a plane and travel around the world, back to the country where I’d grown up. Where my grandmother had lived her entire life. Where the remnants of my family still lived. Where I was still a citizen, and my social worker insisted that I should move back to. Never. No way. I’d sworn, when I got on the plane to the States a few weeks after my eighteenth birthday, that I’d never set foot in Sweden again. And that was a promise that I intended to keep.

Astrid sighed, the same way she’d done a million times when we were kids. Or, I was a kid, and she was a miniature adult already at seven and a half, fixing me with her annoyed stare whenever I didn’t behave in the way she expected from me. Mom and Frank are on a cruise off Bali or wherever, and they refuse to leave the boat and get on a plane because they won’t get a refund and they’ve been looking forward to this all year and … Honestly … A deep breath and I could picture her rolling her eyes. Except, I pictured her at nineteen, the way she had looked the last time I saw her, even though it slowly dawned on me that she must be much older now. I guess she looked like Mom, now. She always had taken after her.

Who’s Frank? I asked before I could stop myself.

The line went silent for a while. Frank? Mom’s Frank.

Mom has a Frank? Not that I cared. I hadn’t spoken to my mother in more than ten years. Not since Dad died.

I hadn’t gone to his funeral either. Why should I go to my grandmother’s?

I know you hate us and all that, Astrid said, and there was a tremble of emotions in her voice that I wasn’t prepared for. But I can’t stand the idea of no one else from the family turning up for Mormor’s funeral. I just can’t. Another deep sigh. I’ve never asked you for anything, but I am asking you now. You are all the family I have left, and I am asking you to please come home. Just for a few days.

I don’t hate you, I mumbled, embarrassed more than anything. Why would she say something like that? But when I thought about it some more, I realized that it might be interpreted that way. I’d left without saying goodbye, never called or kept in touch. I just … It’s not a good time.

Why not? What do you have to do that is more important than your grandmother’s funeral? Huh? Tell me, Lisa!

I went silent for a while. Well, I’ve just found out that I’m being evicted … I began. So I really need to focus on finding a new place … I fumbled for the remote and muted the TV completely.

Evicted? Astrid said. Why?

I mumbled something that might have been interpreted as a surly teenaged I dunno, but just as when I was fourteen, Astrid didn’t accept that as an answer.

No, tell me, she said. What on earth have you done? Have you any idea how much it takes to get evicted, even in the States? And how difficult it is to get a new place once you’ve been evicted by one landlord?

I mumbled something that even I couldn’t tell what it was supposed to sound like.

Another one of those annoying sighs. Well, then this might just be your lucky day, Astrid said, and there was a sharp edge to her voice. Because I may be able to help you.

You? The disbelief in my voice was evident. What can you do?

Well, if you’d kept in touch, you’d know that I am a lawyer now. I made partner three years ago, and I make a decent living. So does my husband. She paused for a moment. Whose name is Fredrik, not that you care. But anyway. Mormor left her cottage to the two of us, and I would like to buy you out. It won’t be a fortune, but it should be enough to help you get a new place. I can expedite the process and help you with all the paperwork and stuff if you do this one thing for me in return.

What?

Get on a plane and come to Mormor’s funeral. If her own daughter can’t be bothered to show up, at least both of her granddaughters should be there.

2

Astrid

I ended the call and put the phone down a little too quickly, a little too hard, as if the plastic had been hot or something. Fredrik looked up, the concern visible in his eyes and in that tiny wrinkle between his eyebrows.

So … your sister is coming for the funeral? he asked. His voice sounded casual, but I knew he must have heard what I’d said and had a million questions. Questions I wasn’t ready to answer just yet.

Instead, I just nodded and then turned away. I had to blink fast to keep the tears from welling up in my eyes. There was no reason to get emotional. It was just …

Wrapping my arms around myself, I walked over to the window, looking out onto the garden. It was dark outside, and I couldn’t really see anything, but I also couldn’t quite face Fredrik. I knew that he could never understand. His family was so close, all of them. So perfect. Two brothers and a sister, all of them happy, successful, married with children. His parents were still together, for crying out loud. There were about a million of them at every holiday and other get-togethers, of which there were many.

I would be alone at Mormor’s funeral, now that Dad was gone and Mom was off with Frank. Not entirely alone, of course. I’d have my own family with me, but … Still. It had felt so wrong.

Having to bribe Lisa to come had also felt wrong, and it had left a sour taste in my mouth. But if that’s what it took, then that’s what I had to do, I guess. She needed to be there.

How long since you saw her? Fredrik asked.

I finally turned toward him. Almost twenty years, I replied, picturing the chubby girl from my distant memories.

His eyebrows rose. So, she’d have been a teenager?

I nodded. Eighteen. It was just a month or so after her birthday.

Did she go to the US as an exchange student or something? He closed his book and got up off the couch. Time for bed.

I shook my head. Nothing normal like that. No. She just … left.

He laughed. Just like that?

I had to blink again. Yeah, I said and tried to laugh it off. Just like that.

My sister and I had never been what you’d call close. Not like Fredrik and his siblings. But part of what I’d been working through with my therapist Anita had been the void that Lisa’s leaving had created in my life. All through my childhood, I had been the older sister, one of two children, and then, in my second year at university, Lisa had disappeared.

I had tried to explain to Anita that it hadn’t made that much of a difference, her going away. I hadn’t suddenly become an only child because I’d been a grown-up by then, and I’d had my own life. We’d never been close. We had always been so different. Lisa had been a troubled child, who had grown up to be a seriously messed-up teenager that the whole family had tiptoed around, and honestly, it had been a bit of a relief when she’d left. Anita hadn’t believed me.

And judging by my reaction just now, she might have a point.

Reluctantly, I had to admit that it had hurt me when Lisa disappeared. And that I was angry with her. My harsh tone with her over the phone was a testament to that if nothing else.

I tried to tell myself that I wasn’t angry with her on my own account. I was angry because of what it had done to our parents when she just up and left. I was furious because of what it had done to Mormor. Our amazing grandmother, who’d always been there for us.

Lisa had been such a … weird kid. And things had happened that had made that weirdness sprout in all directions.

Part of me was relieved that she’d be coming back for the funeral, but a large part of me was afraid, too. I didn’t know my sister. Didn’t know what issues she still clung on to.

Surely, she had put all of that behind her. Surely, she had matured by now, shed that baby fat, found love, friends, an identity that didn’t revolve around her troubled childhood.

Whenever I’d thought about her over the years, I’d tried to picture her as happy. Successful. Perhaps even a mirror image of me. When I graduated from law school, I wondered if she might be in school as well. When I got married, I pictured her in love. When I became a mother, I wondered if I had nieces or nephews somewhere on the other side of the planet.

I’d never thought of her as struggling. Hearing about her eviction had given me an uncomfortable knot in my stomach.

What if my baby sister hadn’t been happy all these years? What if she’d been struggling all this time?

Pushing these disturbing thoughts from my mind, I told myself that it certainly wouldn’t be my fault if this was the case. I’d been here, all this time. She could have reached out if she’d needed me. She had chosen not to.

She was the one who left. She turned her back on me, not the other way around.

Fredrik walked up to me and wrapped his arms around me. My first instinct was to shy away. I felt embarrassed, even a little ashamed, after that phone call. And tense like a coiled spring at the idea of seeing my sister again. I took a deep breath and allowed him to hold me. It was going to be fine. Everything would be different now. It had been almost two whole decades. We’d be able to start over from scratch. Clean slate and all that.

3

Lisa

I had arrived at the airport four hours before my flight was scheduled for takeoff, but that was two hours ago and I still hadn’t made it through security. The automated check-in machine had been programmed by a sociopath, and somehow I hadn’t been able to find the paper where I’d written down my booking number, even though the last thing I did before I left the apartment was to double-check that I had it. After pulling out almost all the contents of my large purse, I finally found it right in the place where I’d first looked. By then, my pulse was racing, my body was covered in sweat, and I didn’t think I’d ever make it onto the plane.

I had kept an eye on the security checkpoint for a while now, sitting on a bench in the departures hall, but I still hadn’t worked up the nerve to walk over and get in line. There seemed to be a steady flow of passengers at all times. I had hoped for a lull, that I’d be able to get through the inspection relatively unnoticed. Pass through the humiliation of having to take off my shoes and perhaps be made to stand there with my arms out while the guard waved the metal detector all along my flabby contours looking for weapons with a modicum of privacy. But there was no lull. The constant departure of airplanes meant a continuous stream of passengers. I would have to get up now and get in line, or I would miss my flight.

Oh, I would love to miss my flight, but I couldn’t.

I had spoken to Brenda, and she had been over the moon when she heard about Astrid’s offer. And of course, I should go, and family was so important, and perhaps I wouldn’t even want to come back, perhaps I would want to stay in Sweden to be closer to my sister and …

No, I’d said. I’m just going for the funeral. Then I’m coming straight back. But it might take me more than ten days to sort out a new place, now that I’m going away, so …

Sure, Brenda said. She’d speak to the landlord and get the eviction pushed back a month. No problem. And oh, she was so happy for me.

Glad that someone was happy. I sure wasn’t. And by the sound of it, it didn’t seem Astrid was either.

Still, it must be nice to be able to do stuff like that. Make people do exactly what you want. Just whack them with a big money stick to keep them in line. I wondered what that felt like.

I took a final look at the large clock on the wall and got up from the bench, pulling my carry-on behind me over to the nearest line of people waiting at the security checkpoint. I did my best to look casual, as if I did this sort of thing all the time, but who was I kidding? No one. Everyone kept glancing at me, and I wouldn’t have been more uncomfortable strapped to an anthill covered in honey. In fact, that was just one of the places where I’d rather be right now.

The person in front of me stepped through the metal detector, picked up their bag on the other side, and walked off. See, it looked so easy when other people did it. The guard beckoned me forward with a tired gesture. I panicked. I took one step toward her, but that was as far as I got. The guard held up her hand and frowned.

Please place your phone, wallet, keys, and other metal objects in one of the trays and place your carry-on on the rollers, she said in a voice that suggested that she’d already said those exact words eleventy trillion times this morning.

I didn’t have anything in my pockets, so I