House of Dolls (3 page)

 

 

 

She told Madison Blackberry all about her great-grandmother and about how she had died.

“You look like her,” Grandmother said.

Madison Blackberry looked at the photograph. Sometimes she felt as if her mother didn't care as much about her as she cared about her friends and her parties but at least Madison had a mother. She looked up and saw tears filling her grandmother's blue eyes with their light.

Madison Blackberry reached over and put her arms around
Grandmother. She smelled of chocolates and lavender and talcum powder. Madison Blackberry's tears poured down, wetting the soft fabric of Grandmother's blouse.

“Oh, little one, little one,” Grandmother said.

It was the first time her grandmother had called her that. Little, like the dolls in the dollhouse. Little, like someone you want to protect and care for and cannot help but love.

The next day Grandmother made a dress for Madison Blackberry that was even more beautiful than the new clothes she made for Wildflower, Rockstar, and Miss Selene. The dolls were
not jealous; they saw Madison Blackberry's face and they were relieved.

Madison Blackberry went into the storage closet. It was dark and dusty and smelled sourly of mothballs. She searched through the old shopping bags and gift boxes and winter coats and, finally, Madison Blackberry found Guy.

Then she went searching for B. Friend. Madison Blackberry never found his arm or his ruined glasses but she found the rest of him and she sewed him back together to prevent more stuffing from coming out of him.

And, last of all, Madison Blackberry went into her underwear drawer and took out the matchbox she had hidden
there. Do you know what was in that matchbox? The thing that Miss Selene missed but had forgotten because it was too painful to remember.

Madison Blackberry brought back all of the doll clothes from the rose-covered hatbox and put them into the wardrobe
and the drawers. Then she dusted off Guy and B. Friend and put them in the dollhouse where they belonged.

Wildflower brushed her arm up against Guy's arm. Her whole body tingled as if she were made of flesh and not celluloid, or at least that was what she imagined flesh tingled like. It did not matter that he was a much newer doll than she was, a younger soul with darker skin and army fatigues.

“What was war like?” Wildflower asked.

And Guy whispered, “War is being blinded and locked in a box, unable to see, hear, or touch you, my wildflower. War is being reminded that you are
completely at the mercy of death at every moment, without the illusion that you are not. Without the distractions that make life worth living.”

Rockstar dressed B. Friend's wounds with tiny cotton balls dipped in water and tiny cut-up Band-Aid strips that Madison Blackberry had given her. Then Rockstar read to him from the books she had discovered.

He said, “You have changed.”

And she said, “I wanted to change. It's all I could do.”

“I've changed, too,” said B. Friend. “I can't touch the hollow of your back when we dance. I can't be of much help in the kitchen. If I lie next to you in
the canopy bed, I can't touch your arm with my arm because it isn't there.”

 

 

 

 

 

“You can rest beside me, though,” Rockstar said. And when Madison Blackberry put them into the canopy bed that night, side by side, staring up at the dark ceiling, that's exactly what they did.

As for Miss Selene: Madison Blackberry put Miss Selene's long-lost baby gently back into her arms, rather than in the cradle beside the wrought-iron bed, because Madison Blackberry
had always wished she could have slept like that with her mother, and Miss Selene and her baby lay together every night, wearing the matching lace nightgowns Grandmother had made for them.

That night, as if she knew, as if she had heard the secret voices of dolls, or the unspoken wish of her daughter, Madison Blackberry's mother came into Madison's room. She was not dressed for a party but wore blue jeans and a cotton T-shirt and there was no makeup on her face.

“I decided to stay home with you and Dallas George and your father tonight,” she said. “Would you like me
to read to you?”

Madison Blackberry nodded and then her mother sat on her bed with her arm around Madison and read to her from a little, worn, red-and-white book called
The Doll's House
, a book that had belonged to Madison's mother when she was a girl.

Madison's father was not away on a business trip that night. He had been home watching the news. He came into the room as Madison was falling asleep. He stood in the doorway, a tall shadow surrounded by light from the hall. Madison and her mother looked up at him. Then Madison's father spoke. His voice was soft with tears, almost
unrecognizable.

“The war is over, my loves,” he said.

Madison saw him through her half-closed eyes. She knew he was right; it was.