Antonio Hill - The Summer of Dead Toys

Come tomorrow at four o’ clock, he said to me quietly, and you can tell me how your year has been. I was so happy because I had lots of things to tell him, things about school, my friends, but the truth is we hardly spoke at all. When I arrived he was already there, sitting on the same towel as last summer. You’re late, he scolded me, although it wasn’t true. I’m wearing the bikini underneath my clothes, I told him, so he wouldn’t get angry. Then he laughed, and I realized he was joking with me, but he kept talking in an angry voice. Oh, really? I don’t believe you, as well as coming late you’re a liar. . and laughing he took me by the shoulders, laid me down on the towel and started tickling me. Let’s see if it’s true, he said again, and he put his hands under my clothes to see if he touched the bikini. OK, yes, it’s there. I laughed too, although his hands were warm. Very warm. Then he lay down on top of me and stroked my face, and told me again that I was very pretty. You’re prettier than last year. I was a little ashamed and he noticed my red cheeks. Are you hot? he asked. I’m going to undress you as if you were a doll, he said smiling. He was speaking in that funny voice. And I let him take off my T-shirt and pull down my trousers. You’re my doll, he whispered again and again. I could hardly hear him. With one hand he stroked my hair, my arms, tickled my neck. I closed my eyes. I didn’t see anything else, but after a while I felt a warm liquid on my tummy. I opened my eyes, afraid, and saw a sticky white stain. I tried to move because it made me feel sick but he didn’t let me. Shhhh, he repeated, shhh. . dolls don’t talk.

Leire had to force herself not to grab the pages from her. At her side, Héctor took her hand. She closed her eyes and kept listening.

That summer I learned to be his doll. Dolls close their eyes and let themselves be stroked. They also take their hand and put it where they’re told to. And open their mouth and lick with their tongue even though it sometimes makes them want to vomit. Above all, good dolls don’t tell anyone. They obey. They don’t complain. Like real dolls, they must wait for their owner to pick them up and then get tired of playing with them. It’s strange, you want them to play with you, although there are games you don’t like at all. And above all, you can’t bear the idea that your owner might forget about you, or replace you with another doll. At the end of last summer, the last day we played, he looked at me and said: You’re growing up. And, unlike most people who smile when they say that, I felt that he didn’t like it. Then in my bedroom I looked at myself in the mirror and saw he was right: my body was changing, my breasts were growing. . only a little, but enough that the pink bikini was too small. That’s when I decided to eat less.

“ Bastard!” Joana couldn’t stop the word coming out of her mouth. Inés looked at her, nodded and said: “There’s not much more.”

This year everything’s been different from the start. When he arrived he looked at me as if he didn’t recognize me. I was proud: thanks to hardly eating a thing I had barely put on any weight at all. But I was taller, that I couldn’t prevent. And I saw that he noticed, though he said nothing. I tried to fit into the bikini but couldn’t and I cried with rage. He didn’t even mention it. He looked at me as if I didn’t exist, as if he’d never played with me. And when one day I said we could go to the cave he looked at me strangely. He acted as if he didn’t know what I was talking about. But my mother was useful for once and arranged everything. She told the monitors what a bad student I was and how worried she was about me, I think to embarrass me. And he nodded, and said, “Don’t worry, we’ll help her. I’ll give her private classes in the evenings on the days I’m free.” I loved the idea: the two of us together, in a closed room. I felt special again.

The first day I waited for him at the desk in my room, the one I share with Inés. The silly girl insisted on bringing all her dolls. While I prepared the notebooks and books, I looked at them and told them: Today it’s my turn, today he’ll play with me. But he didn’t: he spent a while explaining some mathematical problems and then he gave me some exercises. Then he went over to the window and stayed there. When he came back I saw something was happening to him. His eyes were dark. And I said to myself: Now. I was waiting for him to speak to me in that hoarse voice, to touch me with those warm hands that at the beginning made me sick. But he just sat down and asked: What age is your sister?

I hated him. I hated him with all my heart. Before I’d hated him for what he did to me, and now I hated him because he’d stopped. And then, little by little, I saw how he was getting closer to Inés. No one else noticed, of course. Not even her. Inés can spend hours playing with her dolls and not notice anything. She doesn’t like games outside, or sports. She doesn’t much like other kids: Mama always says she’s too solitary. In school she has only one friend and hardly plays with anyone else. But he looked at her, I saw him while I was pretending to read; while my mother’s eyes watched me to make sure I would eat, I had my eyes on Inés. Then I decided to do something. I knew it was in my hands, that the games last summer were bad; in school they’d told us about it and we’d all put on revolted faces. Including me. Well, I wanted to end it all but I didn’t know how. And one afternoon, while the monitors and the children were on an outing, I went to speak to the priest. I meant to tell him everything: talk to him about the bikini, the games in the cave, his sweaty hands, even though I might die of shame.

“Fèlix!” exclaimed Joana.

“Yes,” replied Inés. “Father Fèlix.”

I knocked on his door and went into his office. And almost without noticing I started crying. Really crying, with my whole body. I cried so much he couldn’t understand my words. He closed the door and said to me: Calm down, calm down, first cry and then tell me everything, all right? Crying is good. When your tears are gone, we’ll talk. I felt like my tears would never end, like my stomach was a knot of black clouds that kept raining. But after a long time the knot began to unravel, the tears stopped and I could talk at last. I told him everything, sitting on an old wooden chair that creaked every time I moved a bit. He listened without interrupting, only asking a question when I hesitated. He asked if there was anything else, if he’d put his “thing” inside me, and I said no. He seemed relieved. Suddenly I wasn’t ashamed any more, or weepy, I just wanted to tell him everything. I wanted the whole world to know I’d been his doll. When I finished I felt like there was nothing left inside me, only the sudden fear of what was going to happen from now on.

But nothing happened. Well, the priest told me I should relax, that he would take care of everything, to forget these things. Don’t tell anyone else, he said. They’ll think you’re making it up. Leave it to me.

That was three days ago. The private classes have ended and when I meet him in the corridor he won’t even look at me. He is angry with me, I know. I know I broke the rules of good dolls. The second-last group of kids has gone. He’s gone too, but he’ll be back in a few days. I don’t want to be here to see him. I want to escape. Go where no one can find me and sleep forever.

The doorbell startled them all. Joana got up to answer it, while Leire embraced Inés. She had left the pages on the table and couldn’t hold back the tears any longer.

The person who entered with Joana was the last person they were expecting to see just then: Father Fèlix Castells.