Read Dolls Behaving Badly for Free Online

deeper and more binding.
     It’s our true voice, pure and pink and strong. It’s the thing we seek yet fear and doubt because, think of it: how many of
     us really want to know the truth about ourselves? Most of us, I believe, are happier with lies.
Letter #3
    Ms. Carlita Richards
    202 W. Hillcrest Drive #22
    Anchorage, AK 99503
    Dear Ms. Carlita Richards:
    Congratulations! As head librarian of Anchorage Community Libraries, I would like to commend you for having the highest outstanding
     library fine so far this year: $120.60, accumulated in daily fees for How to Save Your Own Life , by Erica Jong.
    Please arrange payment as soon as possible. Until balance is paid in full, your library card will no longer be honored at
     local branches.
    Shame, shame, shame on you, Ms. Richards!
    Sincerely yours,
    Margaret M. Miller,
    Head Librarian
    Anchorage Community Libraries
    Thursday, Oct. 6
    I lie. I can’t help it, they just slip out. Gramma never made a big deal out of my lies, at least not the small ones, which
     she called fibskis. She believed fibskis were the only thing holding the world together.
    “Think anyone wanna see themselves like they really is?” she’d snort. Then she’d roll dough out over the kitchen table and
     cut noodles while she told the story of her name, which was supposed to be Rachel but ended up Bethany; the midwife refused
     to write Rachel in the registry, since it was the name of the woman who stole her husband, so she wrote the name of her dead
     sister instead. By the time anyone realized this, it was too late and Gramma became Bethany, a combination of two names and
     similar to a small town in northern Alaska. Perhaps it was fate, for not only did I end up living in Alaska, but my name is
     also a fibski. It’s not really Carla, it’s Carlita. I don’t admit this often because it’s obvious to anyone looking at me
     that I don’t have an ounce of Spanish blood in my veins. Laurel could get away with it, since she is darker, but I have that
     pasty skin of someone who should have been blonde but turned brunette. I wasn’t purposely given a Spanish name. Mother, drugged
     out on painkillers and flying from champagne, goofed. I was supposed to be a boy and Mother had the name Charles all picked
     out, after her great-uncle, who started his very own tire company and made a fortune, only to lose it on a mad gambling binge
     when he was eighty-four, but that’s beside the point. He was the only rich one in a family of middle-class people trying to
     toe the line and pull themselves up. I was supposed to be a lawyer or a doctor. “Or maybe even a movie producer,” Mother used
     to sigh when telling the story. Then she’d take two aspirin and lie on the couch with a washcloth over her eyes. Talking about
     our muddled family history gave her a fierce headache, and we all knew to keep it down at such times.
    When the doctor handed me to Mother, all wrapped in a pink blanket with a frilly cap on my head, Mother tittered and tried
     to hand me back.
    “I seem to have the wrong baby,” she fretted, still groggy from the drugs. “I ordered a boy and this seems to be, why, it’s
     a girl.” Her face was all scrunched up and puzzled, and at that exact moment Daddy took a picture, which is still plastered
     in the photo album, Mother holding me away from her body and looking at me with distaste, while I stuck out my tongue and
     crossed my eyes.
    Later, when the drugs wore off and it finally hit Mother that she was stuck with another girl, she worried about what to name
     me. “Charles is such a good, solid name,” she insisted. “It seems a shame to waste it. Maybe we should name her Charles anyway?
     If we gave it a cute little spelling…”
    Daddy refused. Even then he was secretly plotting to try again. So when the Mexican aide came in to change the sheets and
     pointed at me and asked Mother, “What you name,” Mother explained her dilemma. I don’t know how much the woman