Anna pulled down the attic ladder with rusty creak. She carefully made her way up and, once she was there, immediately began to sweat. With the back of her hand, she wiped the droplets off of her forehead, pushing her brown bangs out of the way in the process. She took a cursory look around the attic and realized that it had not changed at all since the last time she had been up here years ago. The brown boxes were still perfectly stacked in the far right corner and the midday sunlight still streamed through the window on the slanted roof.
Her parents told her that it was her job to separate the stuff to keep and the trash into piles before they moved to the city. With that task in mind, she took her pocketknife and began to cut open the cardboard boxes. The top one had ancient books with molded, yellow pages that her mother had refused to sell. With great care, she moved the box out of the way, to the right side of the attic to keep.
Again, she had to wipe off her sweat and she tied her hair up to cool herself off. She sat down on the wood floor and opened the second box. When she was able to pull the box down a little to see what was inside, her breath caught in her throat.
It was her old dollhouse.
A two foot tall plastic house with multiple pastel colored pieces put together to create the most picturesque dream home a four-year-old could imagine. Barbie and Ken were upstairs, laying side by side in bed, gazing lovingly into each others faces, The children sat at the kitchen table with eternal smiles painted on their smooth faces. In front of them on table, I had placed miniature plates of hard chicken and mashed potatoes. The family dog, Roscoe, was strewn across the couch, asleep, while the television played the same show that had been on for a consecutive eight years. The bathroom remained untouched. There was neither a single hair in the bathtub nor a scratch in the mirror.
With a reminiscent gaze, she thought of she and her sister playing with the dolls, making them do those family things that she assumed the real ones did. Then, once their day was over, this had always been the default position.
She slowly brought her hand close to the house, preparing herself to touch it. When she was a few inches away, she began to feel her face getting warmer, but not from the sweat. When she was only about an inch away, her hand began to shake and she was tempted to pull her hand back, but she closed her eyes tightly and placed her hand on the mint green roof with ridges that made shingle-shaped dents. When she reopened her eyes, she felt water fill up her eyes.
The first tear fell. She pushed the roof off behind the house and it landed upside down, leaning against the side of the cardboard box. Anna recalled the feeling of a gust of the wind as the tornado flew right over their house. They had all pushed into the safe house underground next to the tree on the front lawn. Right as we were about to close the trap door, she heard Benny, their dog, bark in fear. She tried to get back out, but her mother pushed her back down repeating, “We’re okay, we’re okay,” even though not all of us were okay. When they went out to assess the damage, all the windows were shattered, the fireplace chute was gone, leaving a hole in the ceiling, and Benny’s paw print was left in the mud.
The second tear fell. Anna separated the top floor from the bottom floor, letting Barbie and Ken fall to the bottom of the box. In her head, she envisioned herself walking into her parents’ room to find their wedding ring and band still on the bedside table. One day she came home from school and did not find her father out in the yard working on his truck as usual. Actually, he never came home. He remained the shadow of a memory in Anna’s mind; a man who should have been more.
The third tear fell. The first floor was all that remained and she just dumped it’s contents out, letting all the pieces fall into the box. Anna could not remember the day it happened, but one morning, her mother put plates of breakfast on the kitchen table. Instead of toast with butter like always, they just had plain toast. They had plain toast from that day on.
The tears now fell too fast to be counted. They made a wet circle on her skirt and she did not care enough to get a tissue. She wiped off as many as possible with the back of her hand, mixing the sweat with her teardrops.
From down the ladder Anna heard her mom, “Hurry up, the loading truck is here.”
Anna weakly responded, “Coming.”
She stood up and dragged the cardboard box to the other side of the attic in the trash pile. Anna looked back down and the first floor of the dollhouse laid on top of the pile. With a sudden decision, she picked it up and tore off the front door of the house and put it in her pocket before wiping her face once more and going downstairs.
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