Scratchy’s body

I wish I had a Scratchy. William has several—once Barbie dolls, or Polly Pockets, or My Little Ponies, all his Scratchies have hair. Laura has some serious problems keeping her things safe, since any doll with hair is fair play as far as William is concerned. You might think that at some point the fundamental life lesson of “keep your favorite stuff stashed up too high for the baby to reach” might kick in, but apparently not. Barbie Princess of the Nile always ends up on the floor. Gravity seems to overwhelm our household every time.

Scratchy substitutes, I’m afraid to say, for my hair, if not my actual loving presence. As Will gets bigger and I get less patient, sometimes I think if I have his hands twisting my hair up again another second I will just scream. So our various manifestations of Scratchy have probably saved my sanity, and she’s certainly kept Will from pulling out all his own hair. He takes such comfort in her. No baby blankets or dilapidated stuffed animals for this boy, nope—he needs Barbie with dreads.

The long-term favorite Scratchy is about as tall as my hand, with a huge outsized head with two bright orange ponytails. Scratchy always ends up nude, assuming she starts out with clothes, and this one is as Barbieesque in figure as you can get, with these strange painted-on white panties (no fake bra, mind you). Scratchy’s easily separated head is her most interesting attribute, though. We’ll be walking along at Target when Scratchy’s body falls off; Will skips along with Scratchy’s hair still firmly in hand, her wide blue-eyed disembodied head dangling in his sweet little hand, while one of us follows along behind him, scooping up the body to the occasional accompanying exclamation of dismay from the casual passerby. We never even blink at our regular body retrieval duty. Even the kids at Will’s school now just let us know where the body fell.

As creepy as I objectively recognize Scratchy to be, well, we don’t leave home without her. And we usually don’t even notice the oddness of Scratchy’s bodiless head, even when you can hear the little bit of broken neck still rattling around in there. I imagine Will’s kindergarten teachers will find him a tactile learner, one of those kids who has to cut out circles and squares before being able to fully understand the attributes of shapes. He certainly loves puzzles. For now, though, he’ll sit with Scratchy, still sucking those two fingers, his other hand rubbing one of her locks between his fingers, back and forth, back and forth, entering some baby Zen state of nirvana. Grown people use drugs for this, I swear. And I can’t help watching him, occasionally rubbing Scratchy’s hair myself, but failing to feel what he does, wishing I had some way with only my fingers to calm myself, to slow the universe, to be a child again.