Christina D’Antoni
Polly, Underwater
Something opens up inside me at night, usually as I’m doing the dishes. Hours of my life spent in the cove between the sink and the pulled-down door of the dishwasher. I text Cam, I need an understudy dishwasher. She texts back, Isn’t he in the other room? A second text: Did you know that men do only 35 percent of housework? I turn the water as hot as it will go.
The only part of dishwashing that I enjoy: placing the gel detergent square into the door’s pocket, snapping it shut. It reminds me of my childhood—the way I’d place my Polly Pockets into their plastic home and snap it closed.
I buried my favorite Polly Pocket in the ground. It was a class activity to celebrate the millennium, a time capsule to open in five years’ time when we graduated middle school. Our teacher asked us, What do you enjoy and why? Put that inside. I remember bringing home the shoebox and printed instructions to my mother. She told me not to bury my Polly Pocket, but I was the type to stick to the prompt. When I first put Polly into the box, I didn’t like how she rolled around. She needed her compact home to feel safe. It barely fit; Mom had to use tape, the box gaping at its sides.
Five years later, the hurricane hit. I used to resent this teacher and our collective mothers for letting us bury our possessions below sea level, in this flood-prone city. But now, I think of their labor. The teacher, drawing up the instructions on her PC, wrangling shoeboxes for us from the top of her closet; my mother, desk-weary, squinting to read the instructions, her hose-lined foot loosely holding a high heel. I think about the times my mother buried my childhood pets, tucking them into tissue boxes, printing off music, teaching me a song for the memorial on the recorder. Digging the hole herself. I remember watching her dig from the swing set, my belly bent over the seat, feet dragging the ground. Where else were they supposed to bury them?
I find the Polly Pocket on Etsy for $75—“Vintage ‘90s Star Bright Dinner Party Set.” The exterior pink shell, the interior purple, all of the household appliances a turquoise blue. The compact case opens on a hinge into the domestic: Polly in her dinner-party dress, inviting me in. A feature I’d forgotten, circular indentations on the floor, to stick Polly in so she stands still—in her closet, at her vanity, in front of the sink. I picture the flooded toys, the bloated dead pets, all the innocent detritus searching the earth. I buy it.
When Polly arrives in the mail, I test her resilience. I put Polly in the pocket of the dishwasher with the detergent. Seconds before, I held Polly in my hand—all one inch of her. I had the urge to play with her in the kitchen, introduce her to the jasmine rice.
The cycle starts, the whirring noises unnerving, the thought of Polly’s pencil-thin eyebrows washing off, or worse, Polly melts.
I stand there, leaning over the countertop to check my phone. A text from Cam: another boyfriend prank from Instagram, she can’t get enough of those. I close our texts, open Etsy, scroll through more Pollys. I come across second-gen Polly, the kind that came with rubber clothes. How would she fare, underwater?
I float the idea of sending an Instagram prank to my boyfriend, but I know he won’t buy it. Why are we texting our boyfriends from the other room? Then, my boyfriend texts me: Are we out of toilet paper? My gut reaction—to text back something spiteful, but part of me loves the intimacy of cracking the door slightly, pushing the roll through.
The cycle finishes. The steam sends a sense memory through my body: that good hit of my hometown’s humidity. Oddly, the pocket door’s still shut. I flip it open and Polly’s intact, covered in the detergent’s blue goo. I give her a quick spray with the sink hose and sit her in the soap tray, fold her at the waist. She watches me as I do another load.