When Violet came to stay, Elsie was instructed to share her newest playmate with her older cousin. And when she refused, Violet snatched the doll from Elsie’s hands, hurling the thing against the bedroom wall. Elsie did not cry. She did not scream. She did not tug at her cousin’s long hair, or scratch at her eyes with her fingernails, or throw herself down on the rug, thumping her fists and kicking her feet. Instead, Elsie watched with mild curiosity as chunks of her beloved doll’s head fell to the floor.
They stuck her little face back together with glue, but the cracks never disappeared, and she was never quite the same after that. Elsie didn’t like to look at her. Something had broken inside of the girl, too, and although the cracks were never visible, they were there nonetheless. When Elsie turned twelve, Violet came to stay for the weekend. Elsie crept into her cousin’s room in the middle of the night, and sliced her face with a kitchen knife. Even now, many years later, when she closes her eyes, Elsie can hear the screams, see the red seeping through the bed sheets, smell the fear in the stale air. And when that happens, she pictures the cracked, distorted face of her lovely china doll, broken on the carpet, and something inside her feels whole once more.
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