Donna wants to show us her collection. She’s extremely proud of it. She has thrown herself into this new hobby wholeheartedly, spending hours doing research on each new acquisition and writing up little explanatory cards to post under each of them. I prefer scrapbooking myself, but then we don’t have the money to be serious collectors like Donna and Mick.
The poodle, Maverick, prances at our heels. Maverick is a proud dog, exactly the right breed for Donna and Mick, who are proud people. Everything in their house has its place and nothing is ever out of it. Once, when we were over for dinner, Peter knocked over his glass of Cabernet by accident. It splashed on the white linen tablecloth, where every dessert spoon had been set exactly two centimeters above the plates, every sprig in the centerpiece canted at exactly the right angle. You could tell that Donna was unnerved by the unexpected ruining of her exactly-right. To be honest, that’s why we were surprised by this new hobby of hers. It’s not like knitting, with something useful to show for it at the end. But then I guess most hobbies aren’t really utilitarian in nature.
Leading us down the hallway to the basement door, Donna tells us that when she started, she wasn’t sure how to exhibit the pieces. She flips on the lights and guides us down the stairs. There’s none of that basement-as-an-afterthought for Donna and Mick. Tasteful paintings line the walls of the stairwell. Her light fixtures are all top-notch.
The dog pushes past our legs and rushes down the stairs in excitement. Bad dog, Donna yells after Maverick. Maverick sits at the foot of the stairs, panting.
As Peter and I come down the stairs, we see the walls have been painted a striking hunter green since the last time we were down here. That’s Donna’s touch, no doubt. She’ll have given careful thought to how best to showcase the work. She’s meticulous that way.
There’s a beautiful Navajo carpet that runs nearly wall-to-wall, and a high-end L-shaped couch sitting on it that faces the big-screen TV mounted on the wall. Peter has been coveting the surround sound on this unit since Mick played one of the David Attenborough animal shows for us on it. You could actually hear the crack of the bones as the lions ate. When the whales sang, a beautiful echo of their mating calls resounded throughout the room. The wonder of it offset David Attenborough telling us that many mating calls go unheard and unanswered now because of the human noise in the ocean.
Donna is telling us how she finally found the perfect-sized display cases at Hobby Lobby. They were meant as shadowboxes to display military gear, she says, but they work great for this, too. And she’s right. All around the walls, the display cases are hung. Each is painted black, which you would think would be too stark against the green background, but somehow it works.
There are five boxes so far. Not a lot, but Donna has made it clear that finding good specimens, ones not dehydrated or too scrawny or visibly damaged, it’s not so easy, and it’s expensive. She’s very proud of the quality of the specimens she’s managed to acquire.
She takes us to one of the boxes on the far wall, telling us that this is her rarest specimen so far.
We lean in to read the card she’s so carefully printed. Somali Female. Minnesota. Estimated Age: Four. Parents Captured in ICE Raid on TGI Fridays in Minneapolis.
Peter asks what makes this specimen so rare as he steps closer to observe the fastidious way that Donna has pinned the child to the backboard; there’s no blood or bruising where she’s carefully pushed the pins through the splayed hands, and she’s managed to hide all the other pins by going through the clothing.
Donna explains that it’s partially because the girl is too young to have been genitally mutilated yet, but also because she had to have her shipped from Minnesota and the paperwork was a nightmare. She leads us to the next display. The card on this one says Honduran Male. Texas. Estimated Age: Eight. Parents Captured in ICE Raid on Rendering Plant in Lubbock.
Donna leads us to each of the displays in turn. There’s one from Venezuela, one from Haiti, and one from Mexico, all impeccably done, just as you’d expect from Donna. She says that normally she wouldn’t have gone with something as banal as Mexico, but that it’s pretty standard to start with one the commonest specimens. Besides, she says, she’s still learning how to mount, so better to make her mistakes on something easy to replace.
The last thing she shows us is her work area in the corner. There’s a spreading board with cloth strips to hold little limbs in place, plastic boxes of long pins, and several different kinds of adhesives, all neatly arranged. Donna lovingly runs her fingers along the board’s edge. She tells us she’s got a bead on a potential purchase from the Central Valley in California. She lowers her voice conspiratorially. There’s a lettuce farm there, she says. She’s already got the display card typed out, she says, holding it out for us to read. She’s just waiting to take possession of the delivery.