WHIDBEY ISLAND — Some people have skeletons in the closet.

I have a dismembered woman in a yellow bikini and floral swim cap named Coco.

What’s up with that?

Coco is a 10-pound cast-resin lawn sculpture with four separate body parts: a head, hands, feet and a pair of curvaceous butt cheeks.

She was designed to appear as if swimming through a garden bed, complete with bright purple nails and pursed lips.

Instead, she looks like evidence from a very strange crime scene.

But Coco isn’t just a bizarre lawn ornament. She’s a reminder of the sentimental things we can’t quite bring ourselves to part with. Everyone has a Coco.

She came into my life in 1996 while I was living in Indiana, a gift from my friend Karen. My husband Max has been trying to get rid of her ever since.

Coco arrived after our in-ground backyard pool cracked beyond repair and had to be filled in. Karen had many fond memories of swimming there and wanted to thank us for all those summer days we shared.

Karen showed up at our door carrying a large cardboard box, glowing with excitement.

“Best gift I’ve ever given anybody,” she said.

Max sliced through the packing tape.

Inside were four wrapped pieces.

First came a slab of curvy buttocks clad in yellow bikini bottoms.

“What the hell?” Max said.

Next: life-sized feet with curled toes and bright purple nail polish. Then a pair of arched hands with matching nails.

Finally, the head and bust emerged: purple lipstick, a pointed nose, a floral swim cap and bikini-top cleavage.

It wasn’t sexy.

It was Coco.

Coco was made by Design Toscano, the company behind the wonderfully weird creations that filled SkyMall catalogs in the 1990s. Remember the gargoyles, garden yetis and dragon toilet paper holders?

Yep. That company.

Marketed as “Coco Swims the Channel,” she was designed by French artist Frederic Levesque, whose whimsical sculptures exaggerated everyday characters. Coco had the air of a flamboyant French beach diva who had overstayed happy hour.

Her name seemed especially fitting because I used to serve coconut-rum cocktails to Karen and the other neighborhood moms by the pool.

“You can put her where the pool was,” Karen said.

She paid more than $100 for Coco — a lot of money back then.

For a brief time, Coco sprawled on the lawn where the swimming pool once sparkled.

Those lips. Those eyes. That nose pointed toward the sky.

She looked as if Chucky’s grandma had retired to Florida and taken up lawn water aerobics.

Max’s campaign to evict Coco began almost immediately.

She was too sentimental to throw away and too strange to display.

Where exactly do you put a dismembered woman in a bathing suit?

Coco never really found the perfect place to show off her … assets.

For 30 years and seven moves, she lived in a box, emerging only when we had to decide where to stash her next.

At one point, she was tucked inside a spare suitcase in the garage.

Had I ever taken that suitcase through TSA, I imagine the conversation would have gone something like this:

“Ma’am, can you explain why you’re traveling with a severed head, hands, feet and buttocks?”

On our recent move to Whidbey, I rediscovered Coco while unpacking boxes in the garage.

“I meant to hide her better,” Max said.

I still get oddly excited every time I see her.

Not because she’s beautiful.

Or valuable.

I can practically picture the Value Village price tag: $9.99. Or $7.99 on Senior Tuesday.

The shoppers would lose their minds.

I decided Coco deserved an unbiased opinion, so I showed her to Momo, my 10-year-old granddaughter.

“Creepy,” Momo said. “I wouldn’t want to wake up and see her. Put that thing away. Why do you even have that?”

This from a girl who has six Fugglers, those stuffed creatures with scary eyes and Billy Bob teeth.

I asked readers to tell me about the things they couldn’t let go of.

Doug Blay shared the story of a light-up Elvis Presley plate rescued from a friend’s basement.

“It lived on our kitchen counter for a year or two,” Doug said. “It seems to survive every purge for yard sales, white elephant parties and other places where you’d expect it to be dispatched. But for some reason … it’s still with us. When I saw your post about unusual keepsakes, I dusted it off, plugged it in and voilà — it is back.”

Hunka hunka!

My friend Cheryl treasures a wishbone her late Aunt Sally saved from a 1960s Thanksgiving dinner in Akron, Ohio.

Sally’s children didn’t want it.

Cheryl gave it a place of honor.

“It’s in my junk drawer,” she said.

Unfortunately, Coco weighs 10 pounds and needs a junk room, not a junk drawer.

Another friend, Marcia, still has about 30 old board games — Candy Land, Simon, Operation, Twister, Monopoly — some from her own childhood and others her kids grew up playing.

“Too effing many,” she said.

Then she added:

“Too many good memories.”

That’s really what objects like Coco are about.

Not the object itself, but the memories attached to it.

Every time I see Coco, I’m transported back to those summer afternoons in Indiana. Kids splashing in the pool. The moms sipping coconut-rum cocktails while keeping one eye on the deep end.

Three decades later, Coco has survived seven moves across three states and Max’s repeated attempts to give her the boot.

Maybe it’s finally time for Coco to find a home where she’s appreciated.

Any takers?

Shoot me a text.

I’ll personally deliver her.

Or come and get her. Max will pay for the gas.

Got a story for “What’s Up With That?” Hit me up at reporterbrown@gmail.com or 425-422-7598.

Column honors

“What’s Up With That?” earned a second-place award in the regional Society of Professional Journalists writing contest and a third-place award in the national Society for Features Journalism contest. Judges cited the column’s “conversational, quirky, witty” style and described it as “fun to read and strangely informative.”

The 2025 submitted columns were “Behind the tinted windows of the kink store,” “Everett barber school offers $5 haircuts — if you’re brave enough” and “Dude, where’s your pants? These guys wear shorts in winter.”