THE DOLLHOUSE
Fiction
by
Lily MacKenzie
by
Lily MacKenzie
On Gloria’s tenth birthday, her mother led her into their garage after school and planted the girl in front of a huge box—at least four feet tall and just as wide. She said, “UPS delivered it this morning, but it wouldn’t fit through the front door.” Kitchen knife in hand, she slashed the cardboard. It fell away, exposing a miniature Victorian house. The outside was painted a deep forest green with pale yellow trim. The inside had high ceilings; tall, skinny windows; floral papered walls; and polished oak floors.
"Your grandpa's been working on this house since you were born, dear. He wanted to recreate his childhood world in Prince Edward Island and pass it on to you because we live so far away."
Gloria stood there, her mouth hanging open: "Wow! That's awesome. My own Anne of Green Gables house." Gloria had read Anne of Green Gables many times since her grandparents had given her the book for Christmas one year. She identified with Anne, a plucky, imaginative girl with a big heart who became a teacher. That was Gloria's dream, to one day be a teacher herself. Like her own mother.
“I’m off to make dinner and your birthday cake, honey. Don’t stay out here too long!”
Gloria blew her mom an air-kiss and opened the Victorian’s front door. On her hands and knees, she poked her head inside the dollhouse, amazed at how complete it was. Each room was furnished with sofas and beds and chests the size of Gloria's hands. There were four bedrooms upstairs. Downstairs had a living room, a large formal dining room, a kitchen, and a maid's quarters.
In the living room, a replica of Gloria’s grandpa was sitting in a big overstuffed chair by the fireplace, puffing on a pipe. Her grandmother sat across from him knitting, a tiny pink garment taking shape on her needles.
Gloria was sure she smelled food cooking in the kitchen—roast chicken, her favorite, stuffed with savory bread dressing. Fat sizzled and sputtered in the roasting pan. She even thought she heard music, the churchy kind her grandparents listened to on Sunday afternoons.
The house also had its own electricity, each room with overhead lights and floor or table lamps that really worked. Gloria was about to remove her head from inside the entryway when she heard someone snoring. It wasn't particularly loud, just a soft exhaling of breath that periodically sounded rougher.
She withdrew from the house and stared into each of the upstairs windows. One room had a baby playing in a crib. Another was a guest room. The top cover on the bed was pulled back, waiting for its occupant. The third was Gloria’s grandparents' bedroom. A cat was sleeping on their bed atop a quilt her grandmother had made, its tail twitching now and then.
Again she heard a shuddering breath.
In the fourth bedroom, Gloria could make out a shape on the bed, under the covers. She reached inside the room and flicked on the overhead light. A young woman with long red hair was sleeping there on her back, one arm flung over her head.
Gloria gasped. The girl appeared older—a teenager. Maybe sixteen years old. And she resembled Anne from the Green Gables' story. The girl rolled over onto her stomach and groaned, burrowing her face into the soft down pillow.
For the second time that day, Gloria could only say "Wow"!
Now she had a secret, or she and her grandpa did. Surely, he knew about this miniature girl that he'd shipped with the house, about the cooking smells and music. Gloria didn't doubt for a minute that he knew. He was a magician, a wizard, conjuring up things out of nothing.
Every day after school Gloria raced home to play with her dollhouse. Her best friend Eva, who lived down the block and was used to spending her spare time with Gloria, couldn’t understand the change in her friend. When Eva said, "Are you coming to my house today to play," Gloria just smiled mysteriously and shook her head. "Can't. Got things to do at home."
Gloria's mother felt concerned about her daughter spending so much time alone inside the garage, playing with the dollhouse. She didn't realize Gloria wasn't alone—she had a whole family there that needed her.
It was Gloria who turned the dollhouse lights on in the morning and turned them off at night. It was Gloria who washed and dried the tiny dishes that regularly turned up in the porcelain sink. It was Gloria who did laundry in the little wringer washing machine and hung it out to dry.
Gloria, the girl whose room always looked like there had been a catfight in it, couldn’t get enough of tidying up the dollhouse. Of course, Gloria did all these things because she wanted to be there when the redheaded girl woke up.
*
Three weeks after Gloria's birthday, the sun aroused her earlier than usual. If she had been on the farm where her grandparents still lived, a rooster would have awakened her at dawn. But here in California, the sun prodded her awake, its rays slipping around the drawn blinds and pressing on her eyelids.
Gloria jumped out of bed and threw on some clothes, wanting to visit the dollhouse before school started. Her mother wasn’t up yet, so Gloria crept down the stairs, holding her shoes in her hand, not wanting to wake her.
Today was the day. She could feel it in her bones.
The lights were already on in the miniature house. Gloria, crouched on hands and knees, looked in all the windows. She saw her grandfather sitting in the breakfast nook, sipping a cup of coffee, bacon frying in a pan on the stove. She could smell the coffee brewing and bacon cooking. Her grandmother appeared, hands covered in flour, and wiped at some strands of hair that had slipped out of the bun she wore on top of her head. The flour smudged her cheeks and dusted her already graying hair.
From upstairs, the baby started wailing, startling Gloria. She hadn’t heard her before. She assumed the child was a girl since her room was painted pink, and there were miniature dolls lined up on a bookshelf. The infant cried so loud she could awaken the dead, as her grandpa was fond of saying about Gloria when she was that young.
Instead of the dead, the cries awakened the red-haired girl. Light from the hallway outside the girl's bedroom entered her room, pushing back the darkness until the whole space was illuminated.
Gloria stood so she could get a better view through the girl's bedroom window. She sat up suddenly in bed, the covers falling from her pale, freckled shoulders, and looked directly at Gloria. "Don't you know it's rude to just stare at people?"
Gloria blinked, shocked into silence.
The girl continued: "Can't you do something? That baby's crying her heart out and you just stand there."
She jumped out of bed and grabbed a pastel green bathrobe from a chair, wrapping herself in it and heading for the door, talking all the time: "….the poor wee thing, lying there, needing attention."
The girl reached the baby's room and flung open the door. "It's okay, sweetheart, Anne is here. I'll take care of you. Let me check your diaper. Just as I thought. Soaking wet." Anne glared at Gloria. "You should be ashamed of yourself, letting this child lie here in this mess." Gloria had followed the girl to the other room and was watching, still too shocked to say or do anything.
"Can't you see I need help here?" Anne said. "Bring me some nice warm washcloths. No harsh soap. It'll just burn the poor thing's bottom. Look at how red and blistered she is. Pure neglect. While you're at it, warm the bottle. Do you know how to check it against your wrist? No? Well, I'll do it then. It has to be just so, like her mother's milk, not too hot, not too cold. Lukewarm."
In no time, Anne had stripped the dripping diaper off the baby, holding the child to her breast, patting her back and pacing the room, cooing and singing softly in her ear. "Hush little baby, don't you cry. Mama's going to sing you a lullaby...."
The child, rigid at first, screaming and tensing fists and body, relaxed, soothed by Anne's singing and the rhythmic pacing. She let out shuddering sobs, resting her head on Anne's shoulder, tiny fingers tangled in her long, thick hair, the color of tangerines.
Gloria suddenly found herself inside the house, no longer the excluded giant. She looked around, amazed at how different everything looked now that she was a miniature herself. The place gave off a feeling of warmth and love.
Gloria burst into the kitchen and grabbed a baby bottle from the fridge, filled with formula, ready to be heated. Her grandparents glanced at her and continued with their morning rituals, not at all surprised to find her there.
"Oh, hello, dear," her grandmother said. "Want some breakfast?"
Bacon and sausages sizzled on the stove, their smell almost keeping Gloria from her mission. "Later, Grandma. I've got to feed the baby first," and she set the bottle in warm water in a saucepan on the stove, turning up the heat.
"Okay, dear."
Later Gloria climbed the steps two at a time, trying to hurry but also curious to view everything from this new perspective. There were places in the house she couldn’t see as an outsider. Black and white family pictures hung on the wall above the stairs. Gloria wanted to know more about these people, women wearing long old-fashioned dresses with bustles, men dressed in dark suits and ties, children like little adults, imitations of their parents. Who were they?
First things first. She reached the upstairs hallway. More pictures lined the walls there, but the baby was crying again. Gloria headed towards the sound, cautiously opening the door, nervous about seeing Anne face to face.
The girl was pacing, the baby cradled in her arms, singing again. "'Rock-a-by baby, in the tree top, when the wind blows, the cradle will rock...' Oh, there you are. I thought you'd gone to the moon for that bottle. This poor little thing's starving to death. Here, you hold her while I test the milk."
Anne handed the baby to Gloria, took the bottle, and set it on a nearby table. Gloria had never held an infant before, surprised at how heavy she was. There was something eerily familiar about the child.
"Put her over your shoulder, like this." Anne arranged the baby in Gloria's arms, the child's feet digging into Gloria's stomach. "That's right. Just a minute, darling, Anne has your bottle. It's all right. Nothing will harm you."
Then Anne picked up the bottle and squirted some milk onto her wrist. "Just right! Here, why don't you sit in the rocker and feed her." She pointed at a large rocker sitting in front of the fireplace. "I'll build a fire while you do that. It's getting cool in here."
Gloria felt dazed by this girl's words, her competence, and the new responsibility. She sat down and gingerly took the infant from Anne, cradling her in the crook of her left arm, slipping the bottle’s nipple into the child’s mouth before she started shrieking again. She sucked and gurgled contentedly, eyelids drooping, eyelashes fanning her cheeks. Gloria recognized that face. Something about the nose, the shape of the jaw.
Suddenly the baby's eyes opened, as if she had seen something strange, and she looked startled. Gloria's mother's voice had awakened her.
"Glor-i-a! You'll be late for school. Where are you?"
The baby started to cry again. Anne took the child from Gloria and quieted her crying, pacing up and down. "Shh, luv, it's all right. Go back to sleep. Anne will watch over you."
"Glor-i-a. I'll give you one minute to show your face."
"You'd better go. She sounds serious."
Gloria reluctantly stood up and waved goodbye to Anne, who was crooning a lullaby to the baby. Rushing out the front door of Green Gables, she ran right into her mother, almost knocking her down.
"Gloria! Where have you been? I've been shouting my lungs out at you. Every time I turn around you're daydreaming instead of acting like a normal girl. The dollhouse is off limits for two weeks. Look, you don't even have time to eat breakfast. Drink this." She handed Gloria a glass of orange juice and waved goodbye, off to work.
Gloria ignored her mother's angry words, tuning them out. Her head was too full of the dollhouse, Anne, and the baby. She felt cradled in the warmth of her grandparents’ home and physically close to them.
*
That day, when Gloria returned from school, she went dutifully to her room to work on homework. "And remember, no dollhouse for two weeks," her mother called after Gloria, who was climbing the stairs, school bag slung over one arm.
She stepped into her room and closed the door, throwing herself onto the bed, the covers creating hills and valleys that Gloria's rat explored. Gloria pretended her mother's words were a magical staircase, glistening as a spider's web does in the light, inviting Gloria to climb them. Soon, her schoolwork forgotten, she was back with Anne in the dollhouse. Anne felt like an older sister, the one Gloria never had. And the baby?
Gloria rose from the bed and opened the top drawer of her chest where her baby book was kept. She took it out and opened it at random. There she was at three months in her grandfather's arms, bundled up in a fleecy blanket. The writing under the photo said "Baby Gloria visiting Prince Edward Island for the first time."
Studying the tiny face, Gloria flushed with recognition. The baby in the dollhouse was no stranger. It was herself she had been holding at a much younger age. And it was Anne who had come to the rescue, recognizing that the baby needed attention. She required the kind of care her grandmother, grandfather, and Anne could give her. A single parent who had never married, Gloria’s mother had provided a good home, but Gloria had missed having a real family. No wonder something in Gloria responded to this place and to being cared for in this way. It was as if a baby that had been wailing inside her all these years now was being fed and felt content.
*
When the two weeks were over, Gloria timidly tiptoed into the garage to visit the dollhouse, certain she must have imagined everything. But a stew simmered on the stove, muffins were baking in the oven, and the baby slept peacefully. Anne was playing the piano and singing, entertaining Gloria's grandparents. Nothing had changed, except the baby wasn't wailing any longer.
"Your grandpa's been working on this house since you were born, dear. He wanted to recreate his childhood world in Prince Edward Island and pass it on to you because we live so far away."
Gloria stood there, her mouth hanging open: "Wow! That's awesome. My own Anne of Green Gables house." Gloria had read Anne of Green Gables many times since her grandparents had given her the book for Christmas one year. She identified with Anne, a plucky, imaginative girl with a big heart who became a teacher. That was Gloria's dream, to one day be a teacher herself. Like her own mother.
“I’m off to make dinner and your birthday cake, honey. Don’t stay out here too long!”
Gloria blew her mom an air-kiss and opened the Victorian’s front door. On her hands and knees, she poked her head inside the dollhouse, amazed at how complete it was. Each room was furnished with sofas and beds and chests the size of Gloria's hands. There were four bedrooms upstairs. Downstairs had a living room, a large formal dining room, a kitchen, and a maid's quarters.
In the living room, a replica of Gloria’s grandpa was sitting in a big overstuffed chair by the fireplace, puffing on a pipe. Her grandmother sat across from him knitting, a tiny pink garment taking shape on her needles.
Gloria was sure she smelled food cooking in the kitchen—roast chicken, her favorite, stuffed with savory bread dressing. Fat sizzled and sputtered in the roasting pan. She even thought she heard music, the churchy kind her grandparents listened to on Sunday afternoons.
The house also had its own electricity, each room with overhead lights and floor or table lamps that really worked. Gloria was about to remove her head from inside the entryway when she heard someone snoring. It wasn't particularly loud, just a soft exhaling of breath that periodically sounded rougher.
She withdrew from the house and stared into each of the upstairs windows. One room had a baby playing in a crib. Another was a guest room. The top cover on the bed was pulled back, waiting for its occupant. The third was Gloria’s grandparents' bedroom. A cat was sleeping on their bed atop a quilt her grandmother had made, its tail twitching now and then.
Again she heard a shuddering breath.
In the fourth bedroom, Gloria could make out a shape on the bed, under the covers. She reached inside the room and flicked on the overhead light. A young woman with long red hair was sleeping there on her back, one arm flung over her head.
Gloria gasped. The girl appeared older—a teenager. Maybe sixteen years old. And she resembled Anne from the Green Gables' story. The girl rolled over onto her stomach and groaned, burrowing her face into the soft down pillow.
For the second time that day, Gloria could only say "Wow"!
Now she had a secret, or she and her grandpa did. Surely, he knew about this miniature girl that he'd shipped with the house, about the cooking smells and music. Gloria didn't doubt for a minute that he knew. He was a magician, a wizard, conjuring up things out of nothing.
Every day after school Gloria raced home to play with her dollhouse. Her best friend Eva, who lived down the block and was used to spending her spare time with Gloria, couldn’t understand the change in her friend. When Eva said, "Are you coming to my house today to play," Gloria just smiled mysteriously and shook her head. "Can't. Got things to do at home."
Gloria's mother felt concerned about her daughter spending so much time alone inside the garage, playing with the dollhouse. She didn't realize Gloria wasn't alone—she had a whole family there that needed her.
It was Gloria who turned the dollhouse lights on in the morning and turned them off at night. It was Gloria who washed and dried the tiny dishes that regularly turned up in the porcelain sink. It was Gloria who did laundry in the little wringer washing machine and hung it out to dry.
Gloria, the girl whose room always looked like there had been a catfight in it, couldn’t get enough of tidying up the dollhouse. Of course, Gloria did all these things because she wanted to be there when the redheaded girl woke up.
*
Three weeks after Gloria's birthday, the sun aroused her earlier than usual. If she had been on the farm where her grandparents still lived, a rooster would have awakened her at dawn. But here in California, the sun prodded her awake, its rays slipping around the drawn blinds and pressing on her eyelids.
Gloria jumped out of bed and threw on some clothes, wanting to visit the dollhouse before school started. Her mother wasn’t up yet, so Gloria crept down the stairs, holding her shoes in her hand, not wanting to wake her.
Today was the day. She could feel it in her bones.
The lights were already on in the miniature house. Gloria, crouched on hands and knees, looked in all the windows. She saw her grandfather sitting in the breakfast nook, sipping a cup of coffee, bacon frying in a pan on the stove. She could smell the coffee brewing and bacon cooking. Her grandmother appeared, hands covered in flour, and wiped at some strands of hair that had slipped out of the bun she wore on top of her head. The flour smudged her cheeks and dusted her already graying hair.
From upstairs, the baby started wailing, startling Gloria. She hadn’t heard her before. She assumed the child was a girl since her room was painted pink, and there were miniature dolls lined up on a bookshelf. The infant cried so loud she could awaken the dead, as her grandpa was fond of saying about Gloria when she was that young.
Instead of the dead, the cries awakened the red-haired girl. Light from the hallway outside the girl's bedroom entered her room, pushing back the darkness until the whole space was illuminated.
Gloria stood so she could get a better view through the girl's bedroom window. She sat up suddenly in bed, the covers falling from her pale, freckled shoulders, and looked directly at Gloria. "Don't you know it's rude to just stare at people?"
Gloria blinked, shocked into silence.
The girl continued: "Can't you do something? That baby's crying her heart out and you just stand there."
She jumped out of bed and grabbed a pastel green bathrobe from a chair, wrapping herself in it and heading for the door, talking all the time: "….the poor wee thing, lying there, needing attention."
The girl reached the baby's room and flung open the door. "It's okay, sweetheart, Anne is here. I'll take care of you. Let me check your diaper. Just as I thought. Soaking wet." Anne glared at Gloria. "You should be ashamed of yourself, letting this child lie here in this mess." Gloria had followed the girl to the other room and was watching, still too shocked to say or do anything.
"Can't you see I need help here?" Anne said. "Bring me some nice warm washcloths. No harsh soap. It'll just burn the poor thing's bottom. Look at how red and blistered she is. Pure neglect. While you're at it, warm the bottle. Do you know how to check it against your wrist? No? Well, I'll do it then. It has to be just so, like her mother's milk, not too hot, not too cold. Lukewarm."
In no time, Anne had stripped the dripping diaper off the baby, holding the child to her breast, patting her back and pacing the room, cooing and singing softly in her ear. "Hush little baby, don't you cry. Mama's going to sing you a lullaby...."
The child, rigid at first, screaming and tensing fists and body, relaxed, soothed by Anne's singing and the rhythmic pacing. She let out shuddering sobs, resting her head on Anne's shoulder, tiny fingers tangled in her long, thick hair, the color of tangerines.
Gloria suddenly found herself inside the house, no longer the excluded giant. She looked around, amazed at how different everything looked now that she was a miniature herself. The place gave off a feeling of warmth and love.
Gloria burst into the kitchen and grabbed a baby bottle from the fridge, filled with formula, ready to be heated. Her grandparents glanced at her and continued with their morning rituals, not at all surprised to find her there.
"Oh, hello, dear," her grandmother said. "Want some breakfast?"
Bacon and sausages sizzled on the stove, their smell almost keeping Gloria from her mission. "Later, Grandma. I've got to feed the baby first," and she set the bottle in warm water in a saucepan on the stove, turning up the heat.
"Okay, dear."
Later Gloria climbed the steps two at a time, trying to hurry but also curious to view everything from this new perspective. There were places in the house she couldn’t see as an outsider. Black and white family pictures hung on the wall above the stairs. Gloria wanted to know more about these people, women wearing long old-fashioned dresses with bustles, men dressed in dark suits and ties, children like little adults, imitations of their parents. Who were they?
First things first. She reached the upstairs hallway. More pictures lined the walls there, but the baby was crying again. Gloria headed towards the sound, cautiously opening the door, nervous about seeing Anne face to face.
The girl was pacing, the baby cradled in her arms, singing again. "'Rock-a-by baby, in the tree top, when the wind blows, the cradle will rock...' Oh, there you are. I thought you'd gone to the moon for that bottle. This poor little thing's starving to death. Here, you hold her while I test the milk."
Anne handed the baby to Gloria, took the bottle, and set it on a nearby table. Gloria had never held an infant before, surprised at how heavy she was. There was something eerily familiar about the child.
"Put her over your shoulder, like this." Anne arranged the baby in Gloria's arms, the child's feet digging into Gloria's stomach. "That's right. Just a minute, darling, Anne has your bottle. It's all right. Nothing will harm you."
Then Anne picked up the bottle and squirted some milk onto her wrist. "Just right! Here, why don't you sit in the rocker and feed her." She pointed at a large rocker sitting in front of the fireplace. "I'll build a fire while you do that. It's getting cool in here."
Gloria felt dazed by this girl's words, her competence, and the new responsibility. She sat down and gingerly took the infant from Anne, cradling her in the crook of her left arm, slipping the bottle’s nipple into the child’s mouth before she started shrieking again. She sucked and gurgled contentedly, eyelids drooping, eyelashes fanning her cheeks. Gloria recognized that face. Something about the nose, the shape of the jaw.
Suddenly the baby's eyes opened, as if she had seen something strange, and she looked startled. Gloria's mother's voice had awakened her.
"Glor-i-a! You'll be late for school. Where are you?"
The baby started to cry again. Anne took the child from Gloria and quieted her crying, pacing up and down. "Shh, luv, it's all right. Go back to sleep. Anne will watch over you."
"Glor-i-a. I'll give you one minute to show your face."
"You'd better go. She sounds serious."
Gloria reluctantly stood up and waved goodbye to Anne, who was crooning a lullaby to the baby. Rushing out the front door of Green Gables, she ran right into her mother, almost knocking her down.
"Gloria! Where have you been? I've been shouting my lungs out at you. Every time I turn around you're daydreaming instead of acting like a normal girl. The dollhouse is off limits for two weeks. Look, you don't even have time to eat breakfast. Drink this." She handed Gloria a glass of orange juice and waved goodbye, off to work.
Gloria ignored her mother's angry words, tuning them out. Her head was too full of the dollhouse, Anne, and the baby. She felt cradled in the warmth of her grandparents’ home and physically close to them.
*
That day, when Gloria returned from school, she went dutifully to her room to work on homework. "And remember, no dollhouse for two weeks," her mother called after Gloria, who was climbing the stairs, school bag slung over one arm.
She stepped into her room and closed the door, throwing herself onto the bed, the covers creating hills and valleys that Gloria's rat explored. Gloria pretended her mother's words were a magical staircase, glistening as a spider's web does in the light, inviting Gloria to climb them. Soon, her schoolwork forgotten, she was back with Anne in the dollhouse. Anne felt like an older sister, the one Gloria never had. And the baby?
Gloria rose from the bed and opened the top drawer of her chest where her baby book was kept. She took it out and opened it at random. There she was at three months in her grandfather's arms, bundled up in a fleecy blanket. The writing under the photo said "Baby Gloria visiting Prince Edward Island for the first time."
Studying the tiny face, Gloria flushed with recognition. The baby in the dollhouse was no stranger. It was herself she had been holding at a much younger age. And it was Anne who had come to the rescue, recognizing that the baby needed attention. She required the kind of care her grandmother, grandfather, and Anne could give her. A single parent who had never married, Gloria’s mother had provided a good home, but Gloria had missed having a real family. No wonder something in Gloria responded to this place and to being cared for in this way. It was as if a baby that had been wailing inside her all these years now was being fed and felt content.
*
When the two weeks were over, Gloria timidly tiptoed into the garage to visit the dollhouse, certain she must have imagined everything. But a stew simmered on the stove, muffins were baking in the oven, and the baby slept peacefully. Anne was playing the piano and singing, entertaining Gloria's grandparents. Nothing had changed, except the baby wasn't wailing any longer.
Lily Iona MacKenzie has published reviews, interviews, short fiction, poetry, travel pieces, essays, and memoir in over 155 American and Canadian venues. Fling!, one of her novels, was published in July 2015 by Pen-L Publishing. Curva Peligrosa, another novel, was published in September 2017, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy was released on 1/1/19. Her poetry collection All This was published in 2011. She currently teaches creative writing at USF's Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning. Visit her blog at: http://lilyionamackenzie.com.