Doll House

IV. Seeing

There is commotion outside the room. Through the window, light glistens. If Tara could, this would be the moment where she would draw in a sharp breath and wait impatiently for the moments to come. But she doesn't. Instead, she stands as she always does, motionless, the sharp metal prongs pushing her dress up, making it look like she's running to greet the incoming children.

But the truth is she isn't and when the children come in the door, they don't pay any attention to her. A few pairs of errant eyes dart towards her spot on the mantelpiece, only for a second. They don't notice the shining whites of her eyes or the desperate, pleading look locked in behind them.

Silently, Tara begs, but the children refuse to hear. She hasn't been long inside her cold stand, but she can already feel her body once again becoming small, falling in on itself, as if that might prevent the prongs from hurting, from leaving those horrible dents.

In the stream of children, she recognizes no friendly faces, though she knows them all. Sees young Tom shuffle in after the older children, alone as always. Today, like any day, he will try to weasel his way into their big-children games and today, like any day, he will fail. They will laugh at him and Tom will make as if he is laughing too, as if this is the funniest joke in the world, even when it's not much of a joke at all. She looks at him, sees him clearly for the first time, takes in his spiky black hair, ruffled with sleep, his thin arms, almost bordering on bony. The absence of a smile.

The doll calls to him as well, but everyone knows that dolls are for girls, even though the boy has no other toy and no one plays with the doll. It doesn't matter. None of it matters. Tom looks away and the moment is ended just as quickly as it began and Tara feels the darkness overwhelming her. This, she thinks, is a different kind of not seeing. Or more exactly, of not being seen.

For the first time in her long life, Tara feels inappropriate with her long patched cotton dress and her prim, white stockings. She has elegant undergarments beneath her large dress, for she was once an expensive doll. But these children don't notice – nobody wears such things anymore. She is old, she realizes, and a bit of soap and water on the end of a stick won't do her much good at all.

How silly of her, to think the children would want to play with her simply because she can see them now, when all this while, the children didn't even know she couldn't see at all. They didn't care, just like now, they don't care about her clear blue eyes. They don't notice them, because nobody truly looks at Tara. Nobody has seen her in a good ten years, except perhaps for Vicky.

And speaking of Vicky, here she is now, after all the other kids have come in and settled in their corners. She looks around with wise, cat-like eyes – despite the toys, mistakes it not for a playroom, but sees it for what it truly is, a battlefield. There is a very precise and careful order inside the room, with very precise and careful rules. The bunches of children are already well-established and even though there are occasional variations, they're largely unimportant.

She will not sit with the other children, because it's not her place to do so. Instead,she will sit alone and Miss Francine, who should be here in a minute or two, will look on in ice-cold glee at the lonely little children scattered around the corners of the room.

But Miss Francine is not here now and Vicky does not go to an unoccupied corner. Not yet. She breaks the rules and for a moment, everyone's eyes are upon her. She lets herself be noticed, blatantly ignores the older children's sharp-like-dagger stares and reaches up her fingertips and grabs Tara's long, blue skirt.

The room is noiseless, the children all fallen dead-quiet, watching as Vicky – with the old doll clutched to her chest – walks to her corner proudly, not quite staring them down, but not looking away either. And for Vicky, that's something.