TITLE: dollhouse
AUTHOR: Saanvi Jawa
ARTIST: Ara Djati
TRIGGER WARNINGS: MINOR DEPICTIONS OF ABUSE, IMPLIED SEXUAL ACTIVITY, DEPRESSIVE THOUGHTS
The day begins same as all the rest.
Meera avoids the mirror. Last night was a particularly wretched man, leaving her feeling even more disgusting than she usually does. She washes her hands with the nice soap five times, scrubs her body clean thrice, ties and reties her hair twice before she can even muster up the courage to step outside of the bathroom. Othelia is awaiting her right outside the door.
“Rough night?” she smirks.
Meera doesn’t understand how she can treat their state as a joke, but she takes it in stride. “You have no idea.”
Meera reckons Othelia has some idea, for she’s been here far longer than Meera. But she’s better at hiding things and continues to make light of their dark, dark home.
The girls are sitting around the breakfast table. Miss Penny is nowhere to be seen, and Meera thanks the stars, for she does not know how to face the woman after last night’s calamity.
The man must’ve for sure left a complaint. Miss Penny might be considering her termination at this very moment. She imagines what the guy would’ve said to make his case more believable than hers.
Yer girl is absolutely incompetent.
No pain tolerance on that one.
Bit her once and she screamed like a little girl.
Fire that wretch if you want to keep your house’s reputation up, eh?
How would she make her case in front of Penny? She’s not incompetent. Her body is not an apple to bite into hard, chew ruggedly and spit out. She is a little girl.
She takes her seat as Amanda and Faizia share their last jobs with each other.
“Mine left me a healthy tip. Suppose he’s coming back, huh?” Amanda boasts.
“You got lucky, Ames,” Faizia says. “Mine smelled more like booze than man.”
The table jostles with laughter. Meera is unsure if she missed the joke, or just did not find it funny.
The girls here are so peculiar; almost a year with them, yet she cannot seem to figure them out. How are they so happy? There is naught to be happy about in their lives. They are objects, used and discarded. Their whole value, which miserable men determine, lies in their bodies. How have they learnt to be okay with it?
Suddenly, Faizia gasps, looking directly at Meera. “Oh honey, what is that on your neck?”
Meera stills. She is a mere deer, caught in the headlights. A fawn, seeking her mother.
She reddens immediately and puts a hand absently on the spot on her throat that has been stinging since last night.
“Is it—“ Amelia gasps. “Oh my goodness, you didn’t!”
By the happy looks on their faces, this clearly means a different thing to them than it does to her. They continue to shriek excitedly while shame overtakes Meera’s whole body. Out of the corner of her eye, she notices a grim expression on Othelia’s face. Meera would hate to think her only friend in this place disapproves of her because of actions she didn’t commit, didn’t associate with.
She cannot look at her, so she takes the coward’s way through and keeps her gaze trained on her plate. Suddenly, in pops Miss Penny. Certainly not a mother, but someone whose protection she appreciates in this moment.
The girls quieten down in her presence. The giggles hush.
“Good morning, my lovely flowers,” she waltzes in, arms spread wide.
She looks all over the room and lands her gaze specifically on Meera. “Ah, my peony,” she calls.
Each of the girls have an assigned flower name, because regular girl names are simply inferior. Or maybe they’re too humanising.
Meera stands up.
Miss Penny narrows her eyes. “Follow.” she commands.
Meera complies. She follows Penny to her room, the biggest in the house, decorated most extravagantly. She doesn’t come in here often, but the warm hues of the room give it a comfortable air. It is highly misleading.
“I’m sure you are aware of the complaint against you,” she begins calmly once they are both seated inside, Penny on the bed and Meera on the sofa facing it. “Mind explaining?”
“Uh,” Meera stammers.
Penny sighs disapprovingly.
“It wasn’t my fault, I swear!” Meera exclaims. “The—the man, he came out of nowhere; I didn’t expect it. It was a reflex, miss.”
“He’s the guest. Fact remains that you didn’t do your job properly. What shall your punishment be?”
Meera’s heart is beating hard, and the rest of her is shaking with fear.
“Punishment?! I haven’t done anything to deserve any!” she blurts. Immediately she shrinks back. In the back of her head, she thinks of how she’s never heard any of the girls raise their voice at Miss Penny. In the forefront, she realises why.
Miss Penny drags her up by the arm, harshly, to the mirror above her dresser. Meera bites back any noises of pain. A year bound to this place has made her tolerance for pain high. Tolerance for shock is where she’s lacking.
“Look at yourself,” Miss Penny commands sternly. “What do you see?”
She is forced to look into the mirror for the first time in a week. She goes long stretches avoiding it. She’s become rather excellent at it, for she has grown to prefer it. With every passing second she looks at her face, she only hates it more. She feels filthy and like a fraud. A sack of dirt, good for nothing. The kind of girl her parents would never, ever be proud of.
She sees herself as the rest of the world would, for a second.
Long, dark brown hair, tanned skin. A small mole near her lips, striking brown eyes. A petite figure, the kind which makes her look younger than she already is. Long, bony fingers absentmindedly touch her face; she forces them back down.
Then, the image shifts and she sees a scared girl.
She’s weak, there’s no blood in her cheeks, there’s mud smeared on her face. Through the fear, there is a monster in the girl’s eyes. A monster made of hunger.
Miss Penny from a summer ago asks the little growing monster if she wants to join her. She is told she has potential, she could be a work of art.
The monster agrees. The girl has spent the past year hating the monster for that decision.
“I see a mere girl,” Meera begins. “Surrounded by dozens of others whom you have robbed of their childhood. Of their voice and of their capability to make de—”
She is interrupted by a slap. It’s a hit on the back of her head, a mere reprimand. But a warning, hard enough to let her know just how much harder it could get.
“Ah, but you forget yourself,” Miss Penny tells her. “All of you here made a choice.”
There is a fire in her eyes. Meera returns it. “I made that choice when I didn’t know better. Why keep me here against my will?”
“Because you will realise that this is for your own good soon enough. Then you’ll be grateful.”
“Grateful?”
“Yes. To me. For all that I have done for you girls. Whatever maliciousness I have put you through, I have protected you from worse by tenfold,” she declares. “If you met a scary man in here, let that be a reminder that there were far scarier I have never let touch you. If you go hungry a day for the figure I desire you to have, remember that there could’ve been hundreds like those without an option.”
Tears form in Meera’s eyes. She tries blinking them back.
“If I have kept you in a dollhouse, protected and polished, play the part and do what is asked of you. Understood, Meera?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.
Meera forces herself to nod, extremely aware of the fact that Miss Penny just called her by her name, her real name, for the first time ever.
She leaves the room, the sound of her footsteps hanging in the air, matching the thump, thump of Meera’s heartbeat.
In the aftermath, she is allowed to reel. Allowed to let her tears fall free. And allowed to wonder if perhaps what Miss Penny said was true.
After all, they are dolls enclosed in a dollhouse, a house with three walls. One wall always left open for people to steal glances of their lives, to never allow them to slip up, to always have them keep up a show. Toys to be played with, discarded as and when wished, left to fend for themselves in the reverberations.
She dares to meet her own gaze in the mirror. Fresh with tears, she realises her ugliness is more than just on the inside. It surfaces on her darker days too and she, fearing her own face, burned by the look, looks away. Brave enough to argue with strange women yet not brave enough to look her own self in the eye. What a fool this place has made of her.
The day goes on the same as all the rest.
She avoids the mirror.
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