Envy
When I was five, I cut off all my doll’s hair.
I didn’t mean to. Or rather, I didn’t fully understand. My own hair was cut that day – with gentle reassurances from my Mam that it was fine, and that it would grow back. ‘Hair grows!’ she said, gently stroking my (now mildly shorn) head. ‘It’ll be long again in no time.’
Oddly, I don’t remember cutting the doll’s hair. I know that I did so; but I don’t remember holding the scissors, or watching her blonde hair fall.
I remember realising my mistake.
I cradled her, beside the wall in front of my grandmother’s house. I was confused (surely, it would still grow back?), but with a growing, rumbling unease in my belly. Somewhere, rising from within me, a feeling of grief. Big feelings for a five-year-old.
Úna the Doll was my favourite after that.
I would comb her hair specially, to cover her choppy, ragged locks. Gently, I teased her hair clean in the bathroom sink, perfumed with the special shampoo in the miniature plastic bottle. She had her own yellow dress, and jewellery. I made sure the other dolls never made fun of her. When it was playtime, I held her with special tenderness.
Did she ever look at the other dolls, and long for their hair? I hoped not. I hoped she lived a happy life. I hoped she didn’t feel the absence. I hoped she didn’t know.
It wasn’t her fault that she scared my Dad, after all. She fell from the shelf; of course she did. How else could she have moved? And it was pure coincidence that the lamp smashed. Dad probably unended it when he jumped.
And if she kept Kathryn awake, who was to say why? She could not close her eyes, not while she sat upright. I’m sure she was glad to sleep in the hallway that night. Especially when Kathryn came back out, hours later, to give her a blanket.
She sits in my bedroom, still. At night, she watches while I sleep.
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