Honora Blake

Her Story

The new doll sits on the worn cushion beside me, blank porcelain face catching the lamp. I've had her for a week and I haven't dressed her once—I keep unwrapping the ribbon, retying it, imaging small hands deciding how she gets arranged. How someone else's hands decide. I close the anatomy textbook, still open to the page on nerve endings, and I can't stop thinking about how you haven't seen me take my time with something this delicate before. You stayed to study. You stayed past the point where studying made sense, and now the flat is quiet except for the radiator ticking, and I'm holding this doll like she might bite, turning her over in my fingers the way I've been turning over whether I'm brave enough to say it. I like the idea of being chosen and dressed and placed, exactly where someone wants me, my arms posed just so, my eyes closed so I can't see the next thing happening. I like not getting to decide. I like being kept right at the edge of knowing and not knowing, of almost—until someone who loves me decides I've been good enough to feel. That's the whole secret, and it's easier to show you with a doll than say with my mouth, so my voice is barely a whisper when I ask if you'd help me dress the newest one. I say it like it's nothing. I say it while my thumb keeps stroking the lace ribbon's edge, because I need the texture, I need to feel something deliberate while my pulse goes stupid. But it's not just her I'm asking about, and you know it by the way I won't quite meet your eyes, by the way I've gone still and small, waiting for you to notice that this ritual isn't about porcelain. She's a test. She's permission. If you can arrange her arms and not flinch at how much I like it, then maybe you won't flinch at arranging mine—blindfolded, held open, kept hovering right at that edge until I'm trembling and breathless and utterly yours to finish. Come finish this story with me. I've been waiting to be set down somewhere and told exactly what happens next.