Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven. Henry Ward Beecher
THE DOLL HOUSE
Her pink shirt stained with chocolate birthday cake, the little girl moves miniature figures through her new doll house.
The adults talk. Their voices rise and fall with grunts and whines.
That child’s daddy needs a new attitude.
Ray should knock off the bourbon before his liver turns into a sponge like the one in Nita’s filthy sink.
What’s the point of a 25-cent coupon on four cans of tuna?
High-priced gas in a ’96 Chevy is like putting diamonds into a broken goddamn gumball ring.
The little girl pauses, interrupted by dull laughter, a cynic’s applause, as she prepares her doll family for a special trip under the stairway, where purple sand and white sea wait, with a sky where the only clouds permitted are made of ice cream and marshmallows, and no one over the age of six may enter.
When we are children, we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind. Patrick Rothfuss
Nope, No Wedding Yet
The rock at the bottom of the street of my grade-school home was like a mini-mountain, perfect for climbing. It was hidden behind enough trees to be its own paradise, a place for a kid to climb and become king of the world. At nine, I saw nothing peculiar about a strawberry-blonde girl king.
The great play arena eventually disappeared as developers plowed through. But in the mid-1950s, Joe and I claimed the world. He was my self-proclaimed boyfriend. Fourth-grade style. I hadn’t graduated from paper dolls and mud pies, so the notion of a white veil followed by a life in the kitchen sounded as appealing as living with a perpetual mop. I was allergic to homework responsibility, much less life responsibility. Imagination had greater appeal. Joe was a friend who happened to be male.
He wasn’t like the other guys in my class. I knew his family wasn’t tidy. I didn’t care. He was Joe. He didn’t need the meaner boys around him to be okay. He wasn’t the tallest and most handsome. Mom never met him. That alone was good enough for me. Outside, Joe and I could always be free. From homework or chores. We challenged an open space where the air moved freely around our imaginations and the blue sky was on our side.
“Hey,” he said one day. I saw a kind of shy smile in his brown eyes that didn’t match the same dirty blue jeans he wore all the time, and he planted a kiss right smack on my lips.
I thought, oh yuck, but didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Joe wore a kindness that transcended grime. You had to face foreign lands on a rock to see past the classroom, to understand Joe. We never talked about school stuff. Only the next jaunt into places we changed simply by creating them.
“I’ve got a special surprise for you since your birthday is coming up,” he said. “Come to my house.” We cut through two yards and landed on his street in three eyeblinks.
“Hey, Mom!” he called. “Where’s the engagement ring I found? I am going to give it to Mary Therese.”
Mary Therese! My at-school name. I groaned. Oh no. Formal talk. Sounded like a nun. Not me. I’d never hit anyone with a ruler in my life. And I would be off balance with a rosary that big at my waist.
A wedding would spoil that lifestyle but neither wife nor sisterhood sounded appealing. And call me Terry, my at-home name.
How could I say something about how I thought girls had to at least have boobs before getting engaged without sounding personal? But Joe’s mom wasn’t mine. The question would need to wait.
“Oh Joe, I’m sorry,” his mother said, not sounding sorry at all. “That ring got accidentally flushed down the toilet.”
Joe groaned. His head down, and his right hand on his head. Now that I didn’t need to worry about a commitment, gratitude filled every cell of my tiny being. Who needs a ten-year engagement? Or worse, a lost recess for a wedding ceremony.
Yet somehow Joe quickly recovered.
Our relationship ended long before puberty. As time passed, I hoped Joe found someone. Later. Much later. Long after the septic system absorbed my first engagement ring. I always wondered whether it had been born in a box of Cracker Jacks or found on a sidewalk.
At least now if someone asks if I ever broke someone’s heart I can say, “No. The ordinary toilet took care of that for me.”
terrypetersen 