The Box of Dolls

A box of delicate porcelain dolls is carelessly thrown to the corner of an attic and forgotten, but then found.

Once there was a house. It was an old house. No one had lived in it for a long time. It was not in bad shape. The paint was fading, and a couple of shutters had come off the hinges, but it still looked really nice.

There were three floors, plus an attic. The attic is where we’re going.

To get to the attic, you have to go in the front door, down the hall to the kitchen, all the way to the back wall, into the pantry, and through a hidden sliding door in the darkest corner of the pantry.

Then you have to go down a hallway and up a narrow staircase that winds to the left and then to the right and then a quick left and another right.

Then there’s another sliding door that opens to the attic.

It’s not the only way up to the attic, but it’s the fun way. The other way is through a regular sized door at the end of the hall on the third floor.

Anyway, whoever had lived in this house last, seemed to have left in a hurry, because they had left the attic full of boxes and trunks. There was dust everywhere, and white sheets covered old couches and armoires and chairs.

In the farthest wall from the regular sized door, there were shelves, and on one of the bottom shelves, pushed way over to the side, there was a box. This box was filled with beautiful porcelain figurines of ladies and gentlemen, dressed in formal clothes, and posed as if they were dancing.

The dresses were full and flowing as if they were in mid turn, and the gentlemen were straight and dapper and looked like they were all very good leads.

Every night, one of the gentlemen climbed out of the box, and up onto the vitrola, wound the crank and dropped the needle onto the record.

The dolls would have a ball right in the box, and dance until the record was finished, and then start the record again.

Their dancing was beautiful. They were all so elegant and harmonious and handsome.

One day, a man barged into the attic and began rifling through boxes and trunks and turning over boxes and uncovering furniture. He was not being careful at all.

He slid the box with the dolls off the shelf with a bang and a crash. He grabbed a few of the dolls, inspected them and threw them back into the box. He was not interested in the box of dolls. He tossed the box to the corner of the attic with another crash. Then he left.

The man had not been careful with these delicate porcelain dolls. There was not one doll that was left unbroken or unchipped.

A few of them had a leg broken off, an ear missing here and a finger there. Some had both arms smashed beyond repair. Many feet were crushed to powder, and there were even a couple of heads that had cracked or come clean off.

That night, the dolls cleaned up the box. They put the broken off arms and legs and feet in one corner, and inspected every doll to see what damage had been done.

A few of the dolls that were just chipped or cracked became disgusted with the dolls that were missing arms and legs. They decided that they would rather be outside of the box than inside with all the broken dolls. They didn’t want to be reminded of what had happened. It was too hard.

They left the box.

The few dolls that were left in the box tried to make the best of things. They were made to dance, and nothing would stop them.

The vitrola had been knocked over, so the dolls had to remember the songs and sing the music. It wasn’t the same, but it was nice.

The ones without legs would hold on to the ones without arms. The ones with broken feet would hang on to the cracks and holes of the ones with missing hands. They danced and enjoyed their dancing even more than before.

Every night they would dance, and every night, they would get better at dancing because they learned how to use each other’s cracks and holes and missing legs and feet and arms and imperfections as best they could.

It was beautiful. Sure, they were reminded every day of the damage that was done, but every day, that became less important.

Sure, they were reminded every day of the fact that the dolls that had left had taken with them an important part of the collection of dancing dolls. Hopefully they were dancing wherever they were.

One day, a little girl came curiously and gently into the attic. Somehow, the little girl didn’t see anything in the attic except for the crumpled box in the corner, as if that’s exactly what she was looking for.

Her soft fingers carefully lifted the damaged dolls out of the box and touched every crack and every break and every hole and every scratch on every doll, as if she was acknowledging every pain and every hurt. She cried about the damage that was done to them, and kissed every one of them.

She was so careful and so sweet to every doll in the box. She took one by one, wrapped them in her dress and took them down to her room, where she had a space cleared off just for them.

She played music for them every day with the vitrola that had been fixed. She even bought new records for them and played those new songs for them also.

As far as the little girl thought, the dolls were perfect. She didn’t see the holes and scratches and cracks and missing arms and legs and feet, and neither did they.

The End