On the days when there is no Mother, Big Sister can go wherever she wants. Down lamplit streets and into shining playgrounds. She tries not to skip ahead; she feels a sticky-fingered guilt for missing anything. If Mother has been gone a very long time, Little Sister usually begs to come along.
˜
Today, Little Sister insists on the shops. Big Sister is worried that someone will hear her birdlike squawk. If they do, they will know what she knows: that she is no good at this.
‘It’s too late to go to the shops,’ she tells her sister. If they were to sleep right now, night would come, and then a whole new day.
‘Liar. You don’t even have the watch.’
Big Sister catches herself before she rubs the faded line on her wrist. She wants Little Sister to think that it had been her decision too. Father’s watch had wriggled like a dried-up fish with all the running, and the jumping, and the hiding. But she had held it tight. It was too big for her, but he gave it to her anyway. If he had given it to Mother, he would know that she is to blame for what has happened to his watch.
Thinking about time, the watch, and Father makes Big Sister dizzy.
‘If we go to the shops, then you have to go to sleep after,’ Big Sister relents.
Tick, tick, tick.
The watch’s leather had grown soft from rubbing against his skin, and then her skin.
Tick, tick, tick, like the heartbeat of a very small thing.
˜
At the shops, everything is nice and clean. They show their ID cards at the door, and then there are rows of bread and pasta. Behind, there are lines of plasters, creams, and antiseptics for every type of injury. And then the fruits. Big Sister’s face shines on the surface of candy-coloured apples. Not a single fingerprint-smudge on the cake display. Only the glass separates them.
‘We could break it?’ Little Sister whispers.
‘No,’ Big Sister says quickly. ‘That wouldn’t work.’
‘Tell me what colour it is then?’ Little Sister asks.
‘Yellow. For lemon.’
Tick, tick, tick.
The sound of the watch still beats in her ear. Little Sister looks worried, like she can hear it too. Neither of them can hear it, Big Sister decides. Then the rhythm changes. It whizzes past their ears and crackles like fizzy Cola. Like hundreds of cans being cracked open, one after another.
‘It’s just the shop assistants,’ Big Sister explains when it becomes too loud to ignore. Nicely dressed women appear, standing to attention, cracking the cans.
Crack, crack, crack.
Big Sister can remember what Cola tastes like.
˜
‘Okay, it’s at the end of the aisle,’ she says, taking Little Sister’s good hand, ‘you know the way.’ Little Sister still looks worried, but when she reaches the Barbie, she grins. Everything else is forgotten because Barbie is perfect; her lips are pink, and she has two perfect arms and two perfect legs.
Big Sister can make it even better. ‘Here,’ she says, ‘take Ken too.’
‘I don’t want Ken,’ Little Sister whispers. ‘Ken is bad.’
‘What has Ken done to you?’ Big Sister asks, surprised.
Little Sister shakes her head. ‘When is Mother coming home?’
She is not supposed to ask this here. It is against the rules, but it is no use complaining. ‘Should we give them some tea?’ Big Sister asks instead, as brightly as she can.
Little Sister lifts her head. ‘Real tea?’
‘Barbies can only drink Barbie tea,’ she clarifies.
‘Well, can we have real tea?’
‘Maybe. When Mother comes home, maybe, but now you have to do as I say and make the tea,’ she instructs.
‘Are we still in the shops?’
‘Yes, look, we’re sitting on the floor.’ Big Sister can taste the hot tea on her tongue. She would put so much sugar in it that her teeth would split like ice.
‘Can we use the nice cups? The ones Mother kept under the sink, in the box?’ Little Sister asks. ‘Barbie likes the red ones, with the white spots.’
‘Polka dots,’ Big Sister corrects, feeling relieved to see her sister smile again.
‘Pookey dots,’ Little Sister grins.
‘Peekey dots,’ she counters.
‘Pookey snots!’
They laugh, and Big Sister shakes her head because they should both swallow it up and not let it get too loud. Little Sister claps her good hand over her mouth, and Big Sister looks around nervously. She tries to stay right there, with Little Sister, on the clean shop floor.
‘Where is Ken’s tea?’ she asks, focusing again.
‘No tea for bad men.’
‘But Ken isn’t bad,’ she insists, ‘Ken is Barbie’s friend.’ She holds him up gently to the light so that his body twinkles. Who would not want to play with Ken? She did not like to think of Barbie all alone. How sad that would make her. Mother had cried and cried when Father did not come home. But he would. And when he came home, he would ask about his watch.
‘Mother said not to speak to bad men,’ Little Sister says darkly.
Big Sister shakes her head. This is all wrong. Not part of the game. She wishes that Mother would come home. How long has she been gone?
The ground whispers.
‘What’s that noise?’ Little Sister asks, pulling Barbie to her chest.
The shelves around them shudder. She tells Little Sister that the noise is thunder, cracking across the sky. It is a good idea.
‘In the shops?’ Little Sister whines. ‘You’re lying, we’re not in the shops. I don’t want thunder. I want Mother.’
‘Wait,’ Big Sister corrects herself, ‘I’m silly. It’s not thunder. It’s the sound of the cashier’s till opening and closing.’
Thud. Thud. Thud.
‘See,’ she says, rapping her knuckles against the floor. The noise hisses, making her want to shut her hands over her ears. ‘Can you see the till?’ she shouts instead to cover it. Her legs are shaking.
‘No,’ Little Sister pouts.
‘Ah,’ Big Sister says, ‘because we’re in the wrong aisle.’ Her sister does not look convinced. ‘Why don’t you talk to Barbie?’ Big Sister suggests.
‘I don’t want her anymore, I want Mother,’ Little Sister wobbles. She throws Barbie down on the ground. ‘Take her back,’ Little Sister says, ‘you’re cold anyway.’
It is the first time Little Sister has done this to Barbie. It feels like a closed fist hitting the soft part of Big Sister’s belly. She does not move. There is nothing she can do because Barbie has not fallen on the shop floor, but into the dirt and dust. Specks of light peep through the cracks in their tent, where Mother has been unable to plug the holes. They shine on Barbie. When Big Sister does not move, Little Sister thins her lips and stretches out to unravel Barbie.
‘Take your socks back,’ Little Sister says, unwrapping Sock Barbie.
‘But Barbie will keep us safe,’ Big Sister says, pushing the pink socks back.
‘Liar, liar,’ Little Sister sobs, ‘and she’s not really Barbie.’
‘She is,’ Big Sister whispers, because Sock Barbie has been Barbie for so long that she must be Barbie.
‘Where is Mother?’ Little Sister asks. ‘She’s gone to sell your watch, hasn’t she?’
Big Sister feels dizzy. She is sick at the thought of dirty hands weighing and measuring her father’s watch. The watch that touched his skin and softened to his shape.
‘When is Mother coming home?’ Little Sister asks again.
‘Mother is downstairs baking bread.’
Thud, thud, thud.
‘Who’s screaming?’ Little Sister cries.
‘That’s Mother singing,’ Big Sister says, because it could be Mother singing. ‘She’ll come home soon and wake us up for school.’
‘She’s not downstairs making bread?’
‘Shhhh, you have to be quiet now,” Big Sister says. ‘Let’s play another game—look, see—I’m invisible, do you want to try? No one will get us when we are invisible.’
The tent’s fabric flaps like a wasp trying to break loose. Big Sister feels as if she is about to be stung all over.
Thud, thud, thud.
‘No, I don’t like it. What if I can’t disappear? And then both you and Mother leave me behind?’ Little Sister says, looking down at her bandaged legs.
‘Mother hasn’t left you behind,’ Big Sister hushes.
‘But she’s been gone a very long time,’ Little Sister cries. ‘What if you go too?’
Mother has been gone a very long time. Big Sister takes Little Sister’s bad hand and begins tracing lines in the earth.
Squiggly piggly lines that can go wherever they want.
Crack, crack, crack.
A map that will eventually come together.
Crack, crack, crack.
Lines for Mother and Father to trace their way home, to this white tent. How will they know which exact tent?
‘I won’t leave you,’ Big Sister promises, but Little Sister says nothing.
Tick, tick, tick.
Big Sister takes a deep breath. ‘Where will we go next?’
˜
Ellen Flanagan is the inaugural recipient of the Irish Writers Centre New Writing Prize for ‘A Typical Barbie’, which is her first published piece of fiction. This new prize, which aims to discover, promote and encourage the talents of new, undiscovered voices in Irish writing, is a collaboration between the Irish Writers Centre and The Stinging Fly. For this first year, we directed the prize at beginner and emerging writers—specifically, writers working in either fiction or non-fiction who had yet to publish their first short story or essay (in print or online). In 2026, the competition will be open to short story writers who have not yet published a story in The Stinging Fly magazine.
