Trying To Get Over
1968: Talking Christie, or Nella-Gayl Hurston, is the undisputed ruler of Nanã’s
In 1968, Mattel introduced the first Black Barbie doll, Christie. She came in four models: Talking, Twist ‘n Turn, Live Action, and Malibu. The first Black Ken doll, Brad, appeared the same year and was designed to be Christie’s boyfriend.
2014: Swap Meet, New Jersey. Ashlee screams when she sees the bag of Barbie crap marked $5. Her mother, an obscene dumpling in a stretch-romper, squints and says, “I’ll give you two,” to the bored old man selling off the lip of his pickup. “Take it,” he says as Ash’s mother, Cadence, snatches up the plastic bag containing Christie (now voiceless), Ken (now headless), some pieces of Barbie, and her best outfit (a strapless yellow flared pantsuit called Caribbean Cruise). When they get home, Cadence makes KD, struggles into her new electric-green caftan, and lights a cigarette. “You look pretty,” Ash, an inveterate liar, says, and is told to go to her room. Ellen is already talking to Selena Gomez about being finger-banged by Justin Bieber. Her room is a large, drafty dump that she has decorated by taping up hundreds of her pictures. They are always the same: in them, a prettier version of Ashlee shoots and stabs girls called CUNTY, HUNTY, and HORE. She dumps the bag on the bed and homes in on Christie, who is “fucking broken” but “sort of good.” She opens a white plastic case and pulls out an inert Black man—so this is Brad, Christie’s intended!—who makes the abject Barbie’s heart start up, O morbid organ, what is this electrical wizardry? she scribbles in her book, as she finger-combs her hair, and discreetly lowers the zipper of her hideous outfit. Brad is a specimen, she sees. Provenance unknown, he is a long, lean drink of YooHoo poured into orange board shorts and an olive-green v-neck sweater.
2015: Ashlee’s older brother, Darwin, isn’t allowed outside. When his little sister sleeps, he sneaks in and makes off with her toys. Nella and Kiel are horrified: he is a slowly-moving mountain, carrying a suede length of tools. “I’m just into dolls,” he says, stroking them like lizards until they are calm. It is Darwin who makes them leather valises and wallets, filled with ID, who sews her a white gown and forges two tiny white shoes. His boyfriend, Andrea, marries them one night. She wears the veil and strategically-placed black dahlias, and they have a wild, ecstatic party. Darwin has drugged his mother and sister, and after the toasts and pink champagne and dancing, the dolls retire to a four-poster, tulle-draped, bed that is deeply secluded in the back of Ashlee’s barren closet. They don’t sleep all night. Nella keeps remembering her vows, to Kiel—whose mistress never told him, or let him learn, who he was or where he was from—to show him that they live in a new world, with a Black president and hope and possibilities— “I want to be a fashion model,” her squawk box says. Darwin fixed it for her and fitted her with an ass-length, super-fly black weave. Kiel wakes up and says, “Model?” He wants to go back to Ethiopia, where he was erroneously shipped for one glorious year. Nella says that they can do anything. That she doesn’t want to model, though.
2016: She a crazy lady now I’m grinding yeah they got in the car and Kiel got out when the pigs shouted in a bullhorn he raised his hands smiling he smiled blam blam she wear sackcloth and ashes dance slowly a dead baby in her arms she cradled him the pink suit is in her cart magnified with his sacred blood WELCOME TO THE NEW WORLD the sign around her neck says pull its cord look at its titties three white boys seize her pull her black diamond off her arms her legs throw her in the trash “…then the African-American male waved a gun.” he waved his hand, his hand, “Hey officers, what’s the problem?” is almost the last thing he ever said and he said fik’iri, LOVE, she promised to take him to Ethiopia, see the Walia Ibex and Somali Wild Ass eat injera with spicy beans and vegetables. while the garbage truck opens its maw she remembers holding him as he died she recited Baraka I must, of course, finally. fall on my knees with love for you. Get up, he said, in a hot red stream. Nella pulls herself together and leaps from the truck. She will go to school, and be a fashion model, and every night fall on her knees with love and gratitude for she is possessed of the supernatural: she rises to six feet, and kills police officers with her eyes and she has known the love of a pure heart, one she will find again, if not here, Nella flicks her long nails at the puny city, in the pitch black and boundless sky.
1968: Talking Christie, or Nella-Gayl Hurston, is the undisputed ruler of Nanã’s—her divine, nine-year-old Black mistress—bespoke Barbie carrying-case, a gold butterfly butt-hinged Big Leaf Mahogany box lined in white satin and lilac plush.
Single, but certain her man is out there waiting, Nella has taken to luxuriating among her fine gowns and perorating, when the string in the back of her long neck is gently pulled. “I want to be a fashion model,” she says. Or, rhetorically, “Should I change my hairstyle?” Nella’s hair is an auburn bubble that clashes fantastically with her swollen, shocking pink lips. Change it, she says to herself and laughs. So that ofay buster Ken can fantasize about me harder. Ken does in fact want Nella: he is white, blond, and slight in red shorts, a striped red jacket, and cork sandals. He stares away from Barbie Fashion Queen, a stiff also decked-out in red stripes; cut with gold lamé accents, her swimsuit, mules, and turban remind him, nauseously, of Gloria Swanson. As Nella hums and writes in a tiny black book, he paws the elevated mound between his legs and cries, because she cut him there, when he reached beneath her pink halter-dress, for the lush handfuls of what he calls strange fruit— “Cracker, don’t you ever say that, don’t you think it,” Nella snarls and stops, her face soaked in tears. She has seen the news on Nanã’s sea-blue TV; she has heard her mistress sing along with Billie Holiday about sweet magnolias and the burning flesh of lynched Black men.She has heard her mistress sing along with Billie Holiday about sweet magnolias and the burning flesh of lynched Black men.Nanã attends to her with a jasmine-soaked Q-Tip and dresses her in the ermine robe, lined with tiger-skin. She gives her a black transistor radio and insists that she stay informed. “Nella, things are changing,” she says. “We will rise up, but they will keep their feet on our necks as long and as often as they can. Keep your eyes on the new world.” The doll is sleepy. She falls to Nanã’s lap and starts to dream of eating plum buns in the middle of a hurricane in Paradise. “Queen, you never forget who you are,” Nanã says, placing her on the pillow beside her and looking, for the first time, faraway like boys in her eyes and dreams like the gilded dust of Giza. It isn’t long before the case is given to a cousin, then another, then a shop, then worse and worse shops as its glorious contents—Nella had her own tap panties and frilled brassiere!—disperse, as the case cracks, and is finally chucked. Nella—or Christie, as she has resumed using her Mattell-given name—now wears green coveralls, a clumsy fade that reads QN, and combat boots, has hung onto her radio and book, a long white veil and a silky mauve teddy—why, she is not sure. Her heart is as hard as a shell-case. She knows what very few do: God is dead.
2014: Swap Meet, New Jersey. Ashlee screams when she sees the bag of Barbie crap marked $5. Her mother, an obscene dumpling in a stretch-romper, squints and says, “I’ll give you two,” to the bored old man selling off the lip of his pickup. “Take it,” he says as Ash’s mother, Cadence, snatches up the plastic bag containing Christie (now voiceless), Ken (now headless), some pieces of Barbie, and her best outfit (a strapless yellow flared pantsuit called Caribbean Cruise). When they get home, Cadence makes KD, struggles into her new electric-green caftan, and lights a cigarette. “You look pretty,” Ash, an inveterate liar, says, and is told to go to her room. Ellen is already talking to Selena Gomez about being finger-banged by Justin Bieber. Her room is a large, drafty dump that she has decorated by taping up hundreds of her pictures. They are always the same: in them, a prettier version of Ashlee shoots and stabs girls called CUNTY, HUNTY, and HORE. She dumps the bag on the bed and homes in on Christie, who is “fucking broken” but “sort of good.” She opens a white plastic case and pulls out an inert Black man—so this is Brad, Christie’s intended!—who makes the abject Barbie’s heart start up, O morbid organ, what is this electrical wizardry? she scribbles in her book, as she finger-combs her hair, and discreetly lowers the zipper of her hideous outfit. Brad is a specimen, she sees. Provenance unknown, he is a long, lean drink of YooHoo poured into orange board shorts and an olive-green v-neck sweater.
Provenance unknown, he is a long, lean drink of YooHoo poured into orange board shorts and an olive-green v-neck sweater.His hair is cropped close to the skull; his eyes are limpid pools of Black seawater, framed by pinking-sheared, jet-black satin ribbon; his nose is broad and assertive; his lips are wide and smiling, open just a crack for her tongue to slither through and— Christie gives her head a shake. No cause for this sort of thinking. He’s perfect; she is a pile of trash. So when he smiles at her as Ashlee slams their bodies together, shrieking “Make him cum,” she averts her gaze, and when she feels a roller coaster car slam her thighs and crash, she shivers. Faintly, but Brad—his name is Kiel, he says—notices. Nella, ye’inē t’ik’uri inisiti, he murmurs in Amharic. Nella, my dark goddess.
2015: Ashlee’s older brother, Darwin, isn’t allowed outside. When his little sister sleeps, he sneaks in and makes off with her toys. Nella and Kiel are horrified: he is a slowly-moving mountain, carrying a suede length of tools. “I’m just into dolls,” he says, stroking them like lizards until they are calm. It is Darwin who makes them leather valises and wallets, filled with ID, who sews her a white gown and forges two tiny white shoes. His boyfriend, Andrea, marries them one night. She wears the veil and strategically-placed black dahlias, and they have a wild, ecstatic party. Darwin has drugged his mother and sister, and after the toasts and pink champagne and dancing, the dolls retire to a four-poster, tulle-draped, bed that is deeply secluded in the back of Ashlee’s barren closet. They don’t sleep all night. Nella keeps remembering her vows, to Kiel—whose mistress never told him, or let him learn, who he was or where he was from—to show him that they live in a new world, with a Black president and hope and possibilities— “I want to be a fashion model,” her squawk box says. Darwin fixed it for her and fitted her with an ass-length, super-fly black weave. Kiel wakes up and says, “Model?” He wants to go back to Ethiopia, where he was erroneously shipped for one glorious year. Nella says that they can do anything. That she doesn’t want to model, though.
Nella says that they can do anything. That she doesn’t want to model, though.“I’m going to cure racism, scientifically, by isolating the cracker gene,” she says. “And look good while you’re doing it,” he says, flipping her over and burying his crenellated head between her legs. They fuck all night and morning. When the first dirty ray of sun beats through the crack in the door, they scurry for their packed cases, street clothes, and wallets. Nella wears a pink Chanel suit with pearls, a pink pillbox hat, white gloves, and black heels. She is holding a black purse and dozens of red roses. Keil is wearing a black suit with a frilled white shirt, a pink tie, black shoes, and a single rose in his lapel. They leap up and down, kissing Darwin goodbye. He smiles and carries them to their new, shocking pink convertible. “Be careful,” he says sleepily, and Nella laughs. They are driving, her hair is coming undone, pin by pin, and her copper-streaked hair is streaming behind them as they race away. She puts a tiny circle into a slot and Louis Armstrong starts singing, “What a Wonderful World.” They drive all day, not tiring, stopping at the bottom of New York City. Kiel takes her picture making a peace sign, and they get back in the car—
2016: She a crazy lady now I’m grinding yeah they got in the car and Kiel got out when the pigs shouted in a bullhorn he raised his hands smiling he smiled blam blam she wear sackcloth and ashes dance slowly a dead baby in her arms she cradled him the pink suit is in her cart magnified with his sacred blood WELCOME TO THE NEW WORLD the sign around her neck says pull its cord look at its titties three white boys seize her pull her black diamond off her arms her legs throw her in the trash “…then the African-American male waved a gun.” he waved his hand, his hand, “Hey officers, what’s the problem?” is almost the last thing he ever said and he said fik’iri, LOVE, she promised to take him to Ethiopia, see the Walia Ibex and Somali Wild Ass eat injera with spicy beans and vegetables. while the garbage truck opens its maw she remembers holding him as he died she recited Baraka I must, of course, finally. fall on my knees with love for you. Get up, he said, in a hot red stream. Nella pulls herself together and leaps from the truck. She will go to school, and be a fashion model, and every night fall on her knees with love and gratitude for she is possessed of the supernatural: she rises to six feet, and kills police officers with her eyes and she has known the love of a pure heart, one she will find again, if not here, Nella flicks her long nails at the puny city, in the pitch black and boundless sky.
