Babyland

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She’s hungover and prays it’s not obvious, smoothing out her greasy blonde hair, messy from the shirt swap. Her phone buzzes. Nurse Vicky.

You’re coming in? Birthday party today.

“Fuck,” Blair mutters, turning off her car with one hand and slipping a shoe on with the other. She’d almost forgotten. Birthday parties always require extra setup.

She weaves through the parking lot, patting the last giant, ceramic Cabbage Patch head for luck.

“Hey Emilio,” she says, passing by the front desk, twirling her keys around her finger. Emilio is the only Babyland General employee remotely close to her age and the best source of gossip. He’s always got a story about some crazy field party or secretly hooking up with football players.

He looks up, eyebrows arched. He’s been here for an hour already. “You’re late again.”

She turns and puts a finger over her mouth before heading to the back to put on her stethoscope and name tag.

“Finally.” Nurse Vicki stands. “Let’s go.”

Blair started working at Babyland General early in the summer when all her friends began leaving for college.There aren’t a ton of employment options in her tiny North Georgia town. There’s the Bojangles down the street and the Party City that she worked at a few summers back.Growing up, her mom always told her she could be a doctor. This was the closest she would get.

Nurse Vicki reaches into a cabinet and pulls out the

Cabbage Patch-themed paper napkins and plates as she briefs Blair. “Marley. Turning 6 today.”

Babyland sees hundreds of kids daily, but birthday parties get special treatment: back room access, snacks, punch, and the opportunity to be first in line to adopt the Cabbage Patch doll born that day. 85 dollars for some beady-eyed baby with yarn for hair. Money down the drain.

Blair hates kids. She never wanted any of her own and when she was a junior in high school and saw the white stick in her palm grow a little pink line, she took all her Party City money and got her brother to drive her 45 minutes down the road to Atlanta.

“I can’t believe they’re not allowed to teach us about sex in school, but there’s a whole tourist attraction telling kids that babies come from tree roots,” Emilio once said to her, when they were closing together after a particularly busy day. He was straightening up some cowboy-themed dolls on the shelf. “I can’t wait to get out of here.”

Blair didn’t know if he meant Babyland General or NorthGeorgia altogether. She could see him in downtown Atlanta in some skyrise apartment holding a martini. Maybe even New York City performing on Broadway.

“Marley,” Blair repeats, assuredly to Nurse Vicki, setting the napkins down at each tiny spot on the table. Marley and six of her friends arrive in smock dresses with bows in their hair. They are a loud bunch, and the shrieks they make when they pick a doll off the shelf make Blair’s headache worsen.

Nurse Vicki doesn’t seem to mind. Blair watches as she ushers them around the store, gently guiding their sticky hands away from the places they aren’t supposed to be and complimenting their shoes and bracelets.

“You look 6 years old today,” Nurse Vicki says gently to Marley, whose eyes light up.

“I am 6 years old today!”

“There’s a birth in 10 minutes at Mother Cabbage!” Emilio says, theatrically, over the loudspeaker. “I repeat, dilation is 8 leaves, all staff on standby.”

‘Births’ happen once an hour, on the hour, and are the highlight of most people’s trip to Babyland General. By this point, Blair knew the script by heart, but she rarely performed the births, choosing instead to be a support from the sidelines.

During a ‘birth’, a nurse stands at “Mother Cabbage” —a giant tree housing fifty Cabbage Patch babies in its roots. The tree’s branches are decorated with several little fairies, tied to twinkle lights, which flash different colors throughout the show. Surrounded by bald heads peeking out from cabbage leaves, the nurse guides the tree through labor.

Children guess if the baby is going to be a boy or a girl by chanting “pink, pink, pink” or “blue, blue, blue”, something Emilio once described as “antiquated and disgustingly binary.”

The tree receives a shot of “Imagicillin” for pain, a term that’s become a running joke between the employees. “Time for my Imagicillin” nurses say, before heading to the Mexican restaurant down the road for half-off margaritas.

On the nurse’s cue, the crowd yells “Push!” A floppy doll with an oversized head emerges from the leaves, held up high like Simba.

Marley loves it. She claps and cheers and holds her hands to her face in excitement as the baby crowns. “My baby, mama!” She says, keeping her eyes ahead, grabbing at her mom’s skirt. Her mom is watching through an iPhone screen. “Mama, my baby.”

“I’m too hungover for this,” Blair says out of the corner of her mouth to Emilio, who has walked up beside her in the back corner. He smiles. Mother Cabbage amuses him, even after months of the same show. He still laughs at all the corny jokes.

“Rough night?”

Blair spent her evening on the couch with her brother, drinking most of a bottle of wine and watching an old season of The Real World.

“I guess.”

Nurse Vicki signals to Blair, agitated. Emilio places a hand on her shoulder. “You’re up.”

It’s Blair’s job to take the freshly born doll into the doctor’s room, a small pink room, with big glass windows where the kids and parents can watch a staff member perform a series of fake medical measures. She takes the doll’s vitals. Weight, height, blood pressure—periodically lifting the doll up to wave to the ogling crowd. She emerges with a birth certificate and a carrying case for the birthday girl. Marley has chosen the name Kylie Peaches. Once Kylie Peaches is handed over, Marley squeezes her with all her six-year-old might.

“My baby.”

Vicki arrives at Babyland before anyone else, flicking on the overhead lights until fluorescence hums above. Her routine, honed over the years, is a sacred ritual. She starts in the school room, methodically adjusting each doll at its tiny desk. Yarn-haired heads turn towards the oversized cloth teacher propped up at the front.

The nursery comes next. She places chubby-cheeked babies into pastel-lined cribs, tucking blankets around them with practiced efficiency. She dusts shelves lined with tiny shoes and bottles.

Sometimes, in these quiet moments, Vicki will take a doll and cradle it in the corner rocking chair. She sways back and forth, the weight in her arms a comforting illusion. There, there.

Vicki got married in 1979 and a decade later had given up on ever having children of her own. She tried and tried but her body never allowed it, and then her husband got sick, and priorities changed.

For years, Vicki tended the church nursery on Sundays. Muffled hymns drifted in as she watched babies grow, join their parents, get baptized, and return to the nursery with families of their own. There were always new babies to care for.

At 8:30 Vicki walks out to the main entrance and sees Emilio arriving, wiping his eyes. He never spoke much to Vicki, but always showed up right on time and greeted the guests with a level of enthusiasm she appreciated.

“Morning,” she says and picks up a stray rubber band next to the sign-in sheet.

Birthday party days are Vicki’s favorite. The facility feels so lively when a party is taking place; noisy and hopeful.

She spends a few minutes sweeping the floor of the party room and putting some pink and yellow cardboard party hats on the Cabbage Patch dolls. Setting their bobbing heads upright, she whispers to herself, “Perfect.”

Emilio sits in his car, staring at his phone. There’s a text from the football player:

Hey. Miss you. Can we talk?

Emilio’s thumb hovers over the message. He types out several responses, deleting each one.

Finally, he pockets the phone without replying and heads inside. As he walks through the parking lot, he passes thegiant Cabbage Patch Kid statues. He pauses, looking at their frozen, cheerful expressions.

“Morning,” Nurse Vicki says as he enters, finishing her preparations for the day.

“Morning,” Emilio responds, forcing a smile. He moves behind the front desk to put on his name tag. He hopes he doesn’t look like he’s spent the morning crying.

He boots up the computer, arranges the sign-in sheets, and prepares for another day of manufactured cheer and make-believe births. As the first customers of the day approach, Emilio takes a final steadying breath. Show time.

“Helloooo! Welcome to Babyland General Hospital.” Emilio is relieved. “If I could have you sign in on this sheet before you head back,” His tone is convincing. “That would be lovely.” He pushes the sign-in sheet toward the blonde family in matching red seersucker. The kid in the mom’s arms is trying to jump out, reaching out toward Emilio.

“First time here?” He asks, waving gently at the reaching toddler.

“First time,” The mom answers, somewhat exasperated. She switches the toddler to her other hip. The older boy, standing next to her leg, looks up at Emilio.

“We’re going to a football game.”

“Yes,” The mom clarifies, “Heading down to Athens this afternoon.”

Emilio raises his eyebrows, “And you get to stop in here first? What a lucky day.”

The boy nods, eyeing his oblivious sister. “Dolls are for girls. For babies.” As if this place made sense at any age.

Emilio bends down, eye level with the boy, and hands him a sticker with a Cabbage Patch head on it. He catches a glimpse of Blair, hurrying through the front door, her scrubs wrinkled. He smiles. “Dolls are for everyone.”

After Marley and her friends have had their share of white frosting cake and apple juice, Emilio finds Blair in the break room eating a packet of toasted cheese crackers and scrolling on her phone. She barely looks up.

“Will you tell me something good?” Blair says, folding a leg up into the plastic chair that she’s perched in and placing her phone on the table, screen down. “Something juicy?”

Emilio cracks a Coke, leaning against stark cabinets. The hostile lighting makes him self-conscious. Are his eyes still puffy? “Nothing to report,” he shrugs.

Emilio had spent the summer divulging every thrilling detail of his love affair with the high school’s star running back. How they exchanged a few flirty texts and then started meeting up in the drama club room during lunch. Their first kiss in the front seat of the athlete’s truck. Everything, happening in secret. Exciting and devastating.

Emilio and Blair would pour over text messages searching for hidden meanings.

“He’s actually so sweet,” she said one afternoon in the lobby, holding Emilio’s phone. It was open to a small list that the football player had sent to Emilio. All the reasons he liked him. Your t-shirts.

Blair’s face falls. “Did something happen?”

Emilio looks down into his can of Coke. “I—”

“Alright, break’s over.” Nurse Vicki’s head appears at the doorway and then disappears just as swiftly.

Blair stands up and reaches into a cabinet for a spray bottle of disinfectant and a dish rag. “She’s not happy with me.”

Emilio takes another sip of Coke before placing it back in the fridge. They walk out together, Emilio making his way to the loudspeaker at the front to announce yet another birth and Blair returning to the Birthday Party room to help Nurse Vicki undo the damage Marley and her friends caused.

She’s not surprised to find that Nurse Vicki has already done most of the clean up.

“Sorry I was late this morning,” Blair says quietly, surprising herself with the level of sincerity in her tone. She knows this place is important to Nurse Vicki. More important than it is to her, Emilio, or most of the other staff members. When she first started, rumors were circulating that Nurse Vicki would take dolls home at night. She’d heard that there was a baby nursery next to Nurse Vicki’s bedroom and that she would treat the dolls like real children, changing them into pajamas and waking up in the night to rock them. Someone even said they saw a car seat in her Camry.

At first, Blair was unsettled by the rumors, but as she got to know Nurse Vicki, it began to make more sense. She was lonely and while Blair couldn’t understand the instinct to mother, she did understand loneliness.

“Just don’t let it happen again,” Nurse Vicki says.

Blair nods and begins to make her way out the door, eager to take her stethoscope off her neck and go on lunch break, but Nurse Vicki stops her.

“You know,” Nurse Vicki says, tracing her finger along the colorful mural on the wall. “This place has been around for over 40 years.” Her eyes follow her finger. “250,000 people come through the doors each year.”

Blair knows this spiel from orientation, but doesn’t stop her.

“I was there when it first opened, back when it was still downtown.” She looks at Blair who nods. “I had just gotten engaged.” Her usual stern expression has transformed into something soft, making her look years younger.

“We went to the ribbon cutting and he bought me my first Cabbage Patch doll. Xavier signed it himself.”

All the Cabbage Patch dolls had founder, Xavier Robert’s signature on their ass, something that thoroughly disturbed Emilio and Blair. They would joke about getting it tattooed someday, once they had left the hospital and had new jobs. “You could get my signature and I could get yours,” Emilio would say, smacking his own ass.

“We loved that doll so much, Blair.” Nurse Vicki continues. “It’s one of the few things I have left from him.” Blair shifts her weight, unsure how to respond.

Nurse Vicki’s eyes meet Blair’s, and she appears to return to reality. “This is a special place, whether you think so or not.” She doesn’t blink. “So, please, just be on time.”

Blair slumps onto the sun-warmed bench outside Babyland General, unwrapping her sandwich; a measly two slices of turkey she had thrown between some bread. She scrolls through Instagram with her spare hand, pausing on a photo of her former lab partner, now beaming in front of ivy-covered brick buildings.

First day at Emory! Can’t believe I’m here!

#CollegeLife #NewBeginnings”

She drops her phone into her lap just as Emilio plops down beside her.

“What is that?” he asks, eyeing her poor excuse of a lunch. “Looks awful.”

She glares up at him. “Rough morning, remember?” “I can pick you up something.” Emilio sits down.

Blair shakes her head, accepting her shitty sandwich. They sit in silence, watching minivans and SUVs circle the parking lot. Blair’s eyes follow a young couple entering the storefront, baby on hip. Her voice drops. “God, last year I thought I might have one of those.”

Emilio looks at her, confused. “What, a sandwich?”

She glares at him, then nods towards the retreating family.

“Oh. Shit, Blair. I had no idea.”

“Yeah, well.” She crumples her sandwich wrapper. “Crisis averted, I guess.”

Emilio considers placing his hand on Blair’s shoulder for comfort, but stops himself.

“What’s going on with you?” Blair finally asks. “I thought you and football guy were endgame.”

Emilio lets out a laugh. “Yeah, I don’t know. Turns out being someone’s little secret isn’t as romantic as the movies make it seem.”

“He wouldn’t–”

“He wouldn’t even say hi to me in the light of day.” Emilio shakes his head. “I get it, I do. But I couldn’t do it anymore. I want... I don’t know, a real life? Whatever that means.”

A family walks by, leaving with their young daughter clutching a freshly adopted Cabbage Patch Kid to her chest. The parents kneel down to snap pictures as the girl beams.

Blair and Emilio exchange a look.

“Real life.”

“Yeah,” Emilio smiles, getting up and heading to his car. “Whatever that means.”

Emilio returns from his lunch break with a greasy paper Bojangles bag filled with exceptionally seasoned fries.

“For the hangover,” he says, sliding the bag towards Blair, across the break room table.

“Oh my god, lifesaver,” She immediately takes a handful, hoping the starch and salt will finally do the trick.

Emilio glances at his phone, winces at a wall of blue text, and pockets it quickly. “Back to it,” he sighs, heading towards Mother Cabbage for the afternoon birth.

The fluorescent lights flicker as Emilio’s finger hovers over the intercom button. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes for a moment, then presses down.

“Dilation is at 8 leaves!” His voice echoes through the store. “All staff to Mother Cabbage for an imminent birth!”

Emilio weaves through the gathering crowd, nodding at the excited faces of children tugging on their parents’ sleeves and taking his place by Mother Cabbage.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he begins, his voice quieter than usual. A few heads in the back crane to hear him. Emilio clears his throat and tries again, this time projecting to the back of the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls!”

A child in the front row giggles, and something shifts in Emilio. His posture straightens, his gestures become more expansive. “Mother Cabbage is ready to bring another

beautiful Cabbage Patch Kid into the world!”

He reaches for the oversized syringe of Imagicillin, twirling it in his hands like a baton. “First, we need to make sure Mother Cabbage is comfortable. Who wants to help me give her some Imagicillin?”

A forest of small hands shoots up. Emilio picks a shy-looking boy near the back. As the child presses the plunger, Emilio lets out an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Ahhh, much better! Can you feel the magic in the air?”

The crowd leans in, captivated. Emilio’s voice rises and falls dramatically as he narrates the birth. He mimics the contractions of Mother Cabbage, his face contorting in exaggerated pain that has the children both concerned and delighted.

“It’s time to push!” Emilio calls out. “Everyone, on the count of three, yell ‘PUSH’ as loud as you can! One... two... three!”

The room erupts in a chorus of “PUSH!” Emilio reaches into Mother Cabbage’s roots, his movements deliberate and theatrical. With a flourish, he pulls out a doll, holding it high above his head.

“It’s a girl!” he announces as the crowd cheers. Emilio cradles the doll, gently wiping its forehead, and then his own with a cloth.

As he hands the doll to Blair for vitals, she gives him a thumbs up, mouthing “Wow.” It was his best performance yet.

The last birth ends and Blair finds herself straightening shelves near the adoption center. Her mind is still on the lunchtime conversation with Emilio. She pushes away worries that she shared too much.

A flash of red catches her eye. A little girl with curly auburn hair, no more than five or six, wanders away from her distracted parents. The child reaches for a doll on a high shelf, her small fingers grasping at air.

Blair watches, waiting to see if the parents will notice. They don’t. With a sigh, she approaches.

“Need some help?”

The girl nods shyly, pointing to a 1996 Olympic-themed doll. Blair reaches for it, but as she does, the girl bumps into the shelf. The doll tumbles down, along with several others.

“Oh shi—shoot,” Blair mutters, dropping to her knees to gather the fallen dolls. The little girl’s eyes well up.

“Hey, accidents happen. Want to help me pick them up?”

The girl nods, sniffling, and begins carefully placing dolls back on the shelf. Blair watches her small hands move with surprising care.

Blair picks up the Olympic doll the girl had been reaching for. She holds it out in front of her and really looks at it for the first time. Its big eyes stare back, its rounded nose slightly askew. Red yarn sprouts from its soft head in unruly curls.

Hideous, Blair thinks. But as she looks from the doll to the little girl, she sees something she hadn’t before.

“You know,” Blair says, “she kind of looks like you.”

The girl’s eyes widen, a mix of surprise and delight. “Really?”

Blair nods. “Yeah, look at those curls. And those freckles? Definitely twins.”

The girl giggles, reaching for the doll. Blair hands it over, watching as small arms wrap around it in a fierce hug.

“I love her,” the girl lisps.

As the last visitors file out, Nurse Vicki begins her nightly routine. She moves through the nursery, straightening tiny bonnets and adjusting blankets with care.

In the back room, she pauses at a locked cabinet. With a quick glance to ensure she’s alone, she opens it, revealing a worn Cabbage Patch doll. The signature is faded but still legible: Xavier Roberts.

Vicki cradles the doll, her eyes misty. “Hello, Charlie,” she whispers, running a hand over its yarn hair. “Did you have a good day?”

She walks to the rocking chair in the corner, sitting down with Charlie. As she rocks, she speaks softly. “Red hair, just like daddy’s.” She holds him to her chest, feeling his heartbeat against hers. “Just perfect.”

⁂

Emma Ensley is a fiction writer, artist, and graphic designer living in Asheville, North Carolina. She grew up in North Georgia and on the internet, and considers both places equally influential to her work. Her short fiction has appeared in Joyland, The Quarterless Review, and Peach Mag.

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