Carmen Advises Her Cousin Dawn on Getting a Job at the Nursing Home (they speak Spanglish)

Sobrina mia, this  woman, the activity director, she’s a crazy lady. Last Christmas she gave guns to the old men and baby dolls to the old women.  Si!  Verdad! The guns were plastic machine guns that shoot bubbles.    The dolls had heads como  melones,  blue eyes that followed you up and down the hallway,  soft white bodies, pink hands, and feet with tiny toes. Dios  mia!  They were girl Chuckie dolls! Dolls from the devil. The old men with guns  started shooting anyone who came into their rooms--the nurses who stick the catheters into their  wrinkled pinas; the pobrecitas who empty the bedpans.    Soon they were shooting their sons and daughters, cursing them for living.  When  one viejo  put the gun into his mouth and tried to  kill himself with bubbles, they  pumped his  stomach, took him to the ICU.    They took away the  bubble guns--pronto. The old women hated the  baby dolls.  They threw them on the floor.  Except one old lady.  She held it all day and all night. She sat in the hallway in her wheelchair until the day she died, holding her doll, crooning  to  the back of its bald head.  “ See my beautiful baby, rockabye beautiful baby.” The Chuckie doll grinned at us como la cabeza de la muerte.  Si!  Verdad!   A true story. Someday  I will take you to the janitor’s closet.  In the darkest corner you will see the crazy doll sitting on a wheelchair staring at you. None of us will touch it.