Momma's basement was filled with cardboard boxes. When she moved into this house after retiring 15 years ago, she had packed away her whole life into these flimsy boxes, each one labeled in her font-like handwriting.
Bathroom
Kitchen
Movies
She had only unpacked about half her stuff in 15 years. Now that she was going senile, I found myself clearing out her basement so that I could move in. I spent hours opening boxes and rifling through memories. Momma wasn't a hoarder per se, but she kept a lot of my old things. Report cards, school pictures, a bad love poem I wrote for Valentine's Day in the third grade. I found an entire box of my dress-up clothes and Halloween costumes. Each item contained a memory, which I sat with for a moment before sorting it into one of three piles: Keep, Toss, or Donate. Like the items, some memories were worth keeping. Others were not.
An essay about the American Revolution, C-. Toss.
A Michael Jackson album cover. Keep. Possibly even sell.
A newspaper clipping about the blond neighbor kid going missing. Keep, for posterity's sake.
Behind boxes of old stuffed animals and moldy candles, there was a box that was bigger but lighter than the others. As I moved it off the pile, the contents inside shifted with a hollow thump. I opened it eagerly, expecting some heirloom or a treasure from my childhood. What had Momma kept in a big box all by itself?
Towers of memories blocked the light from this dark corner. I shone my flashlight into the box.
Dominic, my favorite doll from forty years ago, winked up at me. Momma had made him by hand; he was a fine representative of her skills with wax and paint. I had wanted a doll that looked like a toddler, not a baby, and when she couldn't find one in the stores, she made her own. What a special Christmas that was! I felt so generous, I gave all my other toys to my brother Derek and named my doll in honor of the missing kid.
I raised him out of the box. Even after all these years, Dominic still looked and felt so real. We had dressed him in Derek's old clothes and painted makeup on his face to give him life-like color. I ran my finger over his waxy cheek, recalling the Great Rift of '74 when I refused to let my sister Diana play with Dominic. In revenge, she cut my hair while I slept. I laughed at the absurdity of my youth. All that suffering over a simple doll.
When I flipped him over, I noticed that the seam running down his back had pulled apart over time. His little yellow sweatshirt was covering most of the crack, but when I pointed the flashlight, I could see inside. The opening went all the way up his head, where something fuzzy and hair-like stuck out.
I jammed my fingers into the crack and pulled it even wider. The more I saw, the more I stretched the crack. My heart raced. I dropped the flashlight. Sweat poured over my face as I pulled and pulled and pulled. Something was inside.
With a loud snap, the wax shell of Dominic broke in half. I let each piece fall to the floor and screamed, but not because my beloved playmate was beyond repair. No, I screamed because my arms now cradled a small skeleton. Wisps of blond hair still adorned the skull.
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