We, the Mannequins in This Abandoned Mall, Would Like to Have a Word With You
Remembering my happy place.
I was watching PBS with my mom and there was a story about a woman who goes around taking photos of abandoned malls in Northeastern Ohio. She says she does it because she’s interested in the architecture, which was all very high-’70s post-modernist deco. Lots of repetitive arches and curves, behind which a warren of stores catered to the hivemind of North American teenagers.
Seeing abandoned shopping malls stabs me in the heart every time. The dry fountains. The dusty mobiles still hanging from the rafters. The trees bursting through parking lots that used to be packed with cars.
It’s all very Planet of the Apes, but it’s also a eulogy for my youth. I remember how happy I was at the mall. Just pure, limitless joy. Every trip was a chance to get it right, to become the person I wanted to be. Nothing ever fit, but it didn’t matter. It was new and “in” and whatever it was would change my life. Whatever it was would take away all the misery and loneliness.
And I believed that. Every. Single. Time.
I wrote the below piece three years ago, pre-pandemic, as the outlet mall near my house was going under. It wasn’t a “real” mall, but it was still someplace to go. And at its height, it was a bustling patch of commerce here in the middle of nowhere.
Somehow it’s still hanging on, like a body that doesn’t know it’s dead. The food court is closed and there’s maybe five stores in the whole place.
It’s creepy AF.
We keep telling each other that it’s just temporary. That business will pick up.
God knows we’ve all been through economic downturns — remember when Gloria Vanderbilt jeans went out of style? That was bad. But then grunge slouched in and saved us. Ron in Young Men’s Wear wore a flannel shirt every day for five years.
But it’s hard to stay upbeat. Jeremy’s head is tilted upwards inquisitively as if he’s listening to music, or about to ask what perfume it is you’re wearing (that’s the kind of crap they talked about as they posed us).
He says he can see bulldozers outside in Parking Lot D. I told him it’s probably just a school bus, or maybe the paint on one of his eyeballs is chipped. He took a tumble last year when they were dressing him up as the Easter Bunny (he doesn’t like to talk about it).
Or maybe he has asbestos in his eyes. It drifts silently down from the suspended ceiling. The sales clerks used to tell customers it was fake snow, but that wasn’t very convincing in July. That’s when the state inspectors started coming by and business got slower and slower.
Sheila tried to karate chop one of them across the neck as they passed, but her hand fell off. Nobody bothered to screw it back on.
Sometimes I wave at her just because I can.
I wonder where we’ll go after this. They can’t knock the place down with us inside — that would be barbaric. I’m wearing 5-inch stiletto heels and a leather bustier. Not exactly travel wear, but it’ll have to do.
Tammy in Sleepwear has it worse. She’s a triple E cup and if you so much as jostle her, she falls flat on her face. One of the guys in the shoe department took her home with him for the weekend. When she came back, her wig was crooked and one ear was completely gone.
We didn’t ask.
Life used to be so good. Families streaming in and out, kids climbing all over us. A real sense of community. The last time anyone shopped here, they had their faces buried in a phone. They didn’t even glance at Tracy’s multi-layered power ensemble and statement necklace. It was like we didn’t exist.
Maybe we’re being sent to a mannequin retirement community. Someplace warm. My arms will be lifted over my head as I throw a beach ball provocatively to another scantily-clad young woman, our laughter tinkling eerily after the lights are turned off for the night.
Maybe there’s a mannequin Heaven where brick-and-mortar stores still thrive.
Maybe the grumbling engines I hear are the buses in Parking Lot D, ready to take us there.
Business all migrates online and nobody wants to pay for infrastructure or even beautification, which baffles me. People don’t even want things to look nice.
An abandoned mall is a good metaphor for the country in general these days. In the huge metroplex that I reside in, albeit in the 'burbs, there are still functional malls. They are more mementos of what once was, rather than promises of what could be. Now that I've passed the three-quarters of a century mark, I'm kind of a mannequin myself.