The Very Little Princess: Rose's Story (2 page)

Apparently Hazel didn't know what to say to that. She just stood staring at the tiny pink and white doll in Rose's hand.

“Where did it come from?” Rose asked. And then she asked the even larger question that had been burning in the exact center of her chest since she had plucked the china figure from the trunk. “Why was it hidden away?”

Hazel lifted her gaze to Rose's face. “I put her away to keep her safe,” she said finally.

“Safe?” Rose asked. “Who were you keeping her safe from?” But she knew. Of course she knew.

“I didn't want her to get broken,” Hazel said.

“You were afraid I would break her?” Rose spoke softly.

For a long moment, Hazel closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she said, “Yes.
I was afraid you would break her.” Her tone was honest, resigned, a bit weary.

In that wait for an answer, as much as from the answer itself, Rose understood what she hadn't before. This doll was important. Too important for her.

Rose was a thousand things I've not yet had a chance to tell you. She was intelligent and imaginative and loads of fun. She was reckless and irrepressible and could swing from high joy to fury in an instant … before dropping into silent despair.

And she might have been one of the most careless girls who ever walked the earth.

She knew that about herself. Dishes seemed to leap from her hands to break. Pencils snapped. Homework was completed and then left on the school playground to blow in the wind.

She'd lost her brother's goldfish down the
toilet once. She never could explain quite how that had happened.

All of which meant that she knew a tiny doll made out of china could never be safe in her hands. She knew that to be true, but she didn't want it to be true. Which was, of course, precisely why she had to have the doll.

So instead of giving her up as Hazel's steady gaze demanded, Rose curled her fingers around the tiny thing. Or she started to.

Even as Rose's hand began to close, Hazel reached for the doll.

What followed wasn't Rose's fault. Not really. Their hands just bumped. Right there at the top of the stairs, her mother's hand and hers knocked into one another.

The doll flipped out of Rose's palm. She turned a somersault in the air. She flew over the banister.

Then she dropped like a pebble to the floor below.

There!
Rose said to herself.
Now Mom doesn't have to be afraid anymore. It's done. I've broken it
.

Still … she dashed down the stairs to see what had happened.

When Rose reached the floor below, where the doll had landed, she knelt on the rug. How lucky that there was a rug! She picked up the tiny doll. She smoothed the gauzy pink gown and the golden hair.

She ran her fingers along the doll's arms and legs. She touched the delicate china face.

Incredibly, nothing was broken. Not yet, anyway.

Rose looked up at Hazel, leaning over the banister. Her mother's face was stricken. Rose held the doll up to show that it was whole.

But then Rose cupped the doll in her hands and folded it tightly against her chest. “She's mine,” she said. “All mine. I'll take care of her!”

Show-and-Tell

Rose and her mother didn't speak of the doll for the rest of the day. Sometimes they had days like that, when silence filled all the space between them. Other days they chattered back and forth about everything from the silken weight of the spring air to whether to have chicken or spaghetti for dinner.

This time it was impossible to tell if the silence began with Hazel or with Rose. Perhaps it grew from both sides at once.

Rose, for her part, was full of questions she
didn't dare ask.
Where did the doll come from? Had it once belonged to Hazel? Had it ever had a name? Was it valuable? Would her mother have blamed her if the doll had broken?

So with all those questions bumbling around inside her head unspoken, Rose didn't ask if she could take the doll to school the next day.

Why ask? If she had waited for her mother to tell her anything, she wouldn't have known that the doll existed. And then she never could have had her tucked inside her desk at school on show-and-tell day.

Drag-and-brag was what her teacher, Mr. Simmons, called it. Rose had never taken part in show-and-tell before. She didn't like standing in front of the class and being stared at. But this doll was different from anything else Rose had ever owned. She wanted everyone to know she had something so fine.

Not only was the doll special, but having the doll made her special, too. Surely the other kids would see that!

When the time came for show-and-tell, Mr. Simmons called on Jacob Flesner first. He'd brought the Purple Heart his grandfather had been awarded as a soldier in Vietnam. Everybody was impressed … with the medal on its purple ribbon, with Jacob for having such a brave grandfather.

The kids passed the medal around solemnly. Jacob looked solemn, too. Even the medal looked solemn.

Stephanie Crane brought a photo of the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. Her family had visited the Corn Palace—and the Badlands and the Black Hills, too—during spring break.

Mr. Simmons asked Stephanie if she'd
enjoyed the trip. She said her butt was still sore from riding in the car for so long.

Everybody laughed when she said
butt
, and Stephanie blushed. She wasn't the kind of girl who said
butt …
not in front of the teacher.

Then it was Rose's turn.

Jacob's grandfather's Purple Heart and Stephanie's photo of the Corn Palace were still passing from desk to desk when Rose walked to the front of the room. She held the tiny doll close against her stomach. She turned to face the class.

They gazed back at her, all of them waiting.

And that was when one of the boys dropped Jacob's granddad's Purple Heart on the floor. It clanked loudly.

“Be careful!” Jacob cried.

In another part of the room someone grabbed Stephanie's photo from someone else.
The photo didn't tear, but Rose saw it bend.

Photos could be replaced. At least new photos could. And Stephanie's family probably had lots of pictures of the Corn Palace anyway. Maybe Purple Hearts could be replaced, too. Rose wasn't sure about that. But this one didn't seem to be breakable.

Suddenly Rose didn't want anyone to touch her doll.

She wasn't even sure she wanted anyone to see it!

So she turned abruptly and headed back to her desk.

“Rose?” Mr. Simmons asked. “Where are you going?”

“I changed my mind,” she said. “I don't want to do show-and-tell.” And she sat down.

A boy in the back of the room laughed … loudly. Two girls, right in front of her, rolled
their eyes at one another. (Their names were Dawn and Melanie, but Rose liked to think of them as Dumb and Meanie.) They did that a lot … acted as if she weren't there, as if she couldn't see them roll their eyes.

Rose knew what it all meant. She was being funny again. Not funny “ha-ha.” Funny odd. The kind of funny that made girls whisper and giggle behind their hands. The kind that made boys dance on the playground and spin their index fingers at their temples and call out names … 
nutcase … weirdo
.

Rose had never understood what she did to earn the whispers, the giggles, the names. She knew she couldn't talk in the same easy way other kids did. Her words either came out in a tumble, too many at once, or they didn't come out at all. And when it was time for gym class, she was all elbows and knees. She certainly couldn't hit a home run for her team or impress anyone by doing the most jumping jacks.

She was smart enough. She knew that. Sam had taught her to read before she'd even started school, and she could do math as well as
anybody. She could make up stories that even the kids who teased her liked to hear.

But she didn't care how odd they thought she was to change her mind. She wasn't going to turn her doll over to their dirty, careless hands!

“Rose!” Mr. Simmons said again.

He seemed to think that, like a dog, when she heard her name spoken very sharply she would obey.

She didn't answer, and a nervous titter ran through the class. The boy in the back of the room laughed loudly again.

“I think you should come up here,” Mr. Simmons said. “We want to see what's in your hand.”

By this time, Rose had slipped the doll inside her desk. She laid it down gently on top of her math book.

“I haven't got anything in my hand, Mr. Simmons.” She held both hands up, splayed and empty.

Mr. Simmons had been sitting behind his desk, and now he stood. He was tall and thin and angular, rather like Ichabod Crane. Ichabod Crane was a character in a story Rose had read. She liked the story better than she liked Mr. Simmons.

“Then you should come up here,” he said, “and tell us about what you just put inside your desk.” He took a step toward Rose.

Perhaps it's worth noting that all the bullies in school aren't on the playground … or sitting in the students' desks. But you, no doubt, already know this.

Rose, however, wasn't going to be bullied. She had never been much for letting people tell her what to do. “I changed my mind,” she said again.

“Then change it back,” Mr. Simmons snapped. He had come to stand beside Rose's desk. “You don't participate enough in class.”

Why it mattered so much to him, I don't know. Maybe because Rose, sitting there silently day after day, made him feel like a failure. It's never good to make a teacher feel like a failure.

It was, in any case, the kind of situation adults sometimes get caught in. Once he'd started, Mr. Simmons couldn't back down. If he did, the whole class might quit listening to him.

And we all know what a wretched thing school would be if no one listened to the teacher. More boring even than the most boring work sheet.

Mr. Simmons laid a hand on Rose's shoulder. He pressed down just a bit too hard.

“Leave me alone!” Rose cried. She stood up so suddenly that Mr. Simmons's hand fell away.
And to her own dismay, tears sprang to her eyes. It was as if a faucet she wasn't in charge of had been turned on.

No one was more amazed at the tears than Rose. She rarely cried. Not in front of teachers. Not in front of other kids, either.

She slapped at the annoying drops pouring down her face. Ignoring the look on Mr. Simmons's face, she reached into her desk, grabbed the doll in her damp hand, and headed for the door.

As she moved up the aisle, though, something strange happened.

The doll moved in her hand.

Now, Rose knew better, of course. Dolls don't move … unless they come with a battery or a windup key. And this one had neither. But it didn't matter what Rose knew. The doll moved anyway.