The Friendship Doll (10 page)

It is not painful, as it was before. In fact, the sensation puts me in mind of a taiko drummer, striking the drumheads with the bachi sticks in a peaceful rhythm. Yes, if I think of it as a drumbeat, the feeling is not so bad. Not so bad at all.

C
URTAIN
B
ROTHERS
A
UCTIONS
K
ANSAS
C
ITY
, M
ISSOURI

Date
: September 6, 1937

Sold to
: Mrs. Arthur Weldon Clearbrook, Kentucky

Total Due:
$250.00

PAID IN FULL

After a long slumber, I feel daylight on my face again. When I was removed from my trunk, I sought out Brigitte. But the Bleuette doll was nowhere to be found. After a moment of gathering my bearings, I realized I didn’t sense any other dolls around me.

Instead, I was surrounded by what looked to be the debris left after a high tide: piles of shells in assorted sizes, from no
bigger than a child’s fingernail to those that could barely be contained in a grown man’s two hands; mottled beach stones, some as rough as a stormy sea and some as smooth as the glass in a Japanese fisherman’s float. There were shelves filled with things I had no names for. And in every slice of space not occupied by any of these items, there were books. And books and books! An endless number of them, stacked and shelved and stacked some more.

I surmise that someone will be returning to this room; I do hope it’s someone interesting. Otherwise, my time here will be deadly dull. Because, though I am skilled in many ways, I cannot read. No doll can. Well, Miss Japan once told the story of a doll who, when fully awakened, found she could read. But Miss Japan was one to chatter like the wagtail perched in a cherry tree in spring. Such a story surely falls in the category of those about flying dragons and empresses whose kites carry them over palace walls.

So here I am with nothing but beach flotsam and paper bricks for company. Compared to these, the Madame Alexander dolls were charming social companions. I cannot understand how I will resume my duties as an ambassador in this place. But any samurai knows that life is a balance between understanding and mystery.

Until the way is revealed to me, I will be patient and steadfast.

For as long as is needed.

“No sense sticking your nose out the front door every five minutes. Miz Junkins ain’t coming.” Ma switched baby Franklin to the other breast, burping him quick in between, before he started caterwauling loud as the wind outside. “Not in weather like this. Raining pigs and chickens the way it is.”

“Come help me with the wash,” Marvel said to Willie Mae. “You could scrub awhile.”

Willie Mae’s conscience tugged her away from the door. Marvel was getting over the grippe, her face still as white as the paste Miz Junkins used to patch up the worn-out books she brought. And Ma was surely right. November had slipped in all icy-like, and the trail down Cut Shin Creek was steep as a mule’s face. Miz Junkins’ horse,
Maisie, was as sure-footed as they come, but it wouldn’t be sensible to take chances. If she got hurt, she’d lose her government WPA job, and then who would take care of those three little ones of hers? Not Mr. Junkins. He’d left a note on the kitchen table that he was headed to California for work but had sent no word—nor money—these past six months.

Willie Mae took her big sister’s place at the basin. The lye soap stung her chapped hands as she pushed Franklin’s diapers down and up, down and up, over the crenulated surface of the tin washboard. All she could think as she scrubbed was that babies were work, pure and simple, and that was why she planned never to birth any.

“Suits me fine anyways. Her not coming,” Ma said. She had finished nursing Franklin. Her pats on his back produced a prodigious burp. “Every two weeks that library woman shows up and then I gotta spend the next fourteen days prying that speckled nose of yours out of some foolish book.” Ma rocked Franklin all herky-jerky in the hickory rocker. “You be a good boy, Franklin, and fall right to sleep. I got piecing to do.”

“Here, Ma. I’ll cozy him.” Marvel took the baby as well as Ma’s place on the rocker seat. Ma situated herself closer to the kerosene lamp, where her quilt lay wrapped in a frayed white sheet to keep it clean. Since Mr. Pritchard over to Wisdom told her he’d pay twelve dollars for any quilt she made, Ma had turned into a whirling dervish of a quilter.

That white sheet put Willie Mae to mind of Mary
Rose. Ma had worn a groove in the floor, rocking
that
child when she was a baby, all the while singing hymns and such in that cherry-sweet voice of hers. That was before the mine accident where Pap’s back got all stove-in and his insides were hurt so bad. It wasn’t two weeks after Pap’s funeral that Mary Rose got the fever and passed over herself. Ma didn’t sing anymore, not even the smallest lullaby to baby Franklin.

“You need something to read, Willie Mae, you could read Theodore’s letter again.” Marvel’s mind wasn’t as quick as some her age, but her heart was bigger than the entire state of Kentucky. She knew how much Willie Mae loved to read, loved words, and encouraged her every which way. Ma frowned but didn’t say anything on account of it being Marvel doing the suggesting. “It’s still there, in the sugar bowl.”

This was a safe spot for Theodore’s letters, now that sugar was on the list of the many groceries the family couldn’t buy. It was a good thing Theo sent them stamps from time to time or they’d never be able to write him back.

Willie Mae wrung out the last diaper and pegged it to the line strung across the room. What with the steam from the wash water and the damp from the diapers and the cold wriggling its way around the rags stuffed in the broken windowpanes, the room felt clammy as a grave. Willie Mae dried her hands and tugged her sweater tighter. Three years ago, when she was a chubby eight-year-old, she could barely button it around her. After the
last few years of slim pickins at the table, the sweater hung on her like she was wearing one of Theodore’s. She fetched the letter and began to read it aloud: “My dearest family—”

“That’s about my favorite part,” Marvel interrupted. “We are dear to Theo, ain’t we?” Shivering, she wrapped a corner of the quilt Ma was piecing around her bony shoulders.

Ma looked up from the squares of blue shirting. “If that boy says something, it is so,” she said. She sighed before bending over her work once more. “He’s as honest as the day is long.”

“My dearest family,” Willie Mae read again. It was a comfort to her, too, to see those words on the page, and to taste them in her mouth. Reading them twice was as sweet as getting a whole peppermint stick all to herself.

Marvel laughed. “Think of it—our Theo a movie star.”

Ma harrumphed and bit off a length of thread. She handed the needle to Marvel, who quickly threaded it. Ma’s eyes had weakened so, she couldn’t see to do that herself anymore.

Willie Mae was thankful for Theo’s CCC job. The Civilian Conservation Corps—even the name sounded important. She did wish President Roosevelt hadn’t sent him so far off. Seemed to her there were trails could be built and trees planted in Kentucky, same as in Oregon. Theo said his six months away would slip by, but to Willie Mae even one day without her big brother was too long. She couldn’t wait until his time was up and he’d come home.

The twenty-five-dollar allotment check that had come with the letter was already spent. Thanks to it, there was a ham shank simmering in the pot with the soup beans.

“I bet Theo sings circles round those other boys,” said Marvel.

“I bet he does,” agreed Willie Mae.

Ma didn’t say anything and Willie Mae couldn’t read her face. For a long time now, Ma had been a mystery, not giving one clue as to what was going on in her thoughts.

Willie Mae folded up the letter and put it back in the sugar bowl. The house grew so quiet, the only thing she could hear was the baby snuffling in his sleep and the hiss of the kerosene lamp. “Shall I start some corn bread?”

“That’d be a help.” Ma didn’t look up from her stitching. “The wood box need filling?”

Willie Mae peeked at the box beside the stove. Marvel had taken over the job of keeping it filled since Theo had gone away, but seeing as she was still puny from the grippe, Willie Mae would take a turn. She pulled a shabby coat from a peg by the front door. “Back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

Ma nodded absently. Marvel’s head bobbed as she rocked the baby, asleep now herself, by the looks of it.

Willie Mae jumped over the puddle at the bottom of the steps and allowed herself one longing look down the road. She wished so hard to see Miz Junkins and Maisie coming along that she conjured up their images. Then she looked again—this was no daydream. It was real.

“Miz Junkins!” Willie Mae waved her arm till it like to fall off.

When horse and rider drew near enough for conversation, Miz Junkins said, “I couldn’t disappoint my best customer.” She slid off Maisie’s back, threw her reins over the front porch rail, and undid her saddlebags.

Dripping, Willie Mae clomped back up the steps and pulled open the front door. “Ma! Look who’s here!”

Ma’s brow wrinkled, but she set her quilt aside. “Marvel, you get on up and let Miz Junkins have a seat. Willie Mae, see if there’s coffee left in that pot.”

“Don’t stop stitching on my account, Laralee.” Miz Junkins set down her saddlebags to take the cup of hot coffee from Willie Mae and swallow a grateful sip. “And, Marvel, you stay put.”