Free All This Heavenly Glory by Elizabeth Crane Page B

black lacquer shelves, and other items like a white leather chair in the shape of a hand [which
     Charlotte Anne admires but doesn’t ever want to sit in as it seems too weirdly literal, like she might just as well be sitting
     on someone’s real hand].) The kitchenette, always stocked with plenty of Tab and a full bowl of M&M’s, has a counter with
     three chrome-and-vinyl bar stools that swivel, one each in red, white, and blue, which makes Charlotte Anne feel very grown-up
     when drinking the Tab out of a tall glass with a straw. Rachel sometimes tries to make a game out of the kitchenette by pretending
     they’re in a bar, smoking pretzel rods, but the only guy who’s ever at the bar is Kenny, who has a habit of spitting pretzel
     crumbs when he pretends to exhale, and enjoys tossing their Pekingese up in the air like a football, which Charlotte Anne
     thinks is neither funny nor attractive.
    Rachel Richmond also has a lot of Barbies, most of whom, to Charlotte Anne’s surprise, still have their original hair. “Boys
     like long hair,” she says. At Rachel’s house, an afternoon of Barbies is a little different. Rachel Richmond’s Barbies have
     sex. Usually, after a brief courtship with a Ken (something like “Hey Ken, what’s up? Wanna come over?”), Rachel’s Barbie
     will start mashing on top of the Ken, most of the time with her clothes still on, screaming, “Oh Ken oh Ken oh Ken oh Ken,”
     at which point she usually tries to get Charlotte Anne to be the Ken and say, “Oh Barbie oh Barbie oh Barbie oh Barbie,” but
     Charlotte Anne, who understands that it’s good to have a Ken, doesn’t much like to be the Ken in this particular Barbie game.
     (At her own house, Charlotte Anne’s Barbie needs are satisfied by a Barbie and Ken fashion show, in which Barbie is heavily
     featured in a variety of evening wear hand sewn by Charlotte Anne’s mom. Charlotte Anne has only one Barbie and one Ken, who
     has only two outfits, a tuxedo and a pair of flesh-tone ultra suede pants with a matching fringed vest, so most of the time
     Ken and Barbie appear in the grand finale in their tuxedo and wedding gown, to an audience of no one.) Plus today, Rachel
     Richmond puts a Barbie book in the seat of her Barbie’s pants, with no commentary until Charlotte Anne, usually shy when it
     comes to asking questions about things she finds peculiar, dares to ask why she doesn’t just put the book in the Barbie book
     bag. “She’s not
carrying
it there,” Rachel says, as though this is the stupidest question ever asked. “It’s for when her stepfather beats her with
     a belt.” Naturally, this is the first time Charlotte Anne has ever heard of anyone beating anyone with a belt (within the
     Barbie world or outside of it), let alone preventive belt-beating measures, and although she is aware that she will soon have
     a stepfather of her own, C.A. harbors no concerns about possible belt-beating, as a trust was established early on when her
     soon-to-be stepfather bought her a pair of Click-Clacks (two glass balls, in this case a deep blue, joined together by a string
     you hold on to in the middle, allowing you to “clack” them together, quickly banned from the market in their original form
     due to a number of incidents in which the glass shattered and literally poked some people’s eyes out [there being absolutely
     no subliminal concerns on Charlotte Anne’s part that she was in any danger with the almost-stepfather, or existing mother
     for that matter, due to their not immediately taking away the Click-Clacks] and lending a renewed credibility to mothers everywhere
     in the habit of using that phrase), creating a noise Charlotte Anne’s mother found rather annoying (which in fact
was
rather annoying, even to her almost-stepfather, except for the almost-stepfather also thought that Charlotte Anne’s mom was
     especially cute when annoyed, and so Charlotte Anne and her stepfather giggled about it together,