The Porcelain Doll

- 2 -

- 2 -

I make my way into the living room in the slow, careful way that Karla has taught me. My hand never leaves the built-in railing that trails from every room to another. There's soft cushions everywhere, but their pastel flowers make me tired of their forced happiness.

It's easier to make the trip these days, but I remember when Karla used to hover at my side, ready to catch me should anything happen. I tried my best to keep my body upright, but every now and then, my legs would give out under me and she would wrap her arms under my shoulders to keep me from hitting the floor.

The worst days were when Karla was instructed to not help me. My muscles had burned with every slightest gesture and my body was damp with sweat, trembling as I reached out for the banister. Even when I had missed and fallen, she wasn't allowed to help me, unless a severe condition decided to act up.

I'm glad those days are behind me.

It doesn't tire me as much as it used to when I enter the living room. I drop to the front of the TV and sort through the DVDs, seeing if there's anything I want to rewatch.

I put in one of Fraggle Rock, a TV show about puppet creatures that lived underground. The quality of the recording leaves much to be desired, but the story keeps my eyes on screen. Every now and then, I find myself watching it, almost hypnotized by these colorful puppets that run and scream.

I want to tell myself that I'm too old to be watching it—if I'm as old as I think I am—but on the bad days, when I can't be tamed into going to bed, Karla puts it onto the TV and it lulls me to sleep. It's therapeutic. Even now, I'm attached to these fictional puppets as they move along with their daily lives. It allows me to temporarily forget where I am.

Despite it, I hate it whenever it plays when Wilbur and Noel are here. I don't want them to see how pitiful I am, even though they must know more about me than I know myself. Karla writes several notes on my behavior every night and a report on me weekly. I don't know if she knows that I can read them, but once she had left her notebook open on the table and I had paged through it, trying to piece them together before she came back.

Reading words comes easily to me, but after a while, I get a headache from the effort.

On the other hand, my writing abilities are crude, almost childlike. Sometimes a word comes to me and I have to repeat it several times before I forget it. It's a dull echo when there's a word I want to use, but I can't remember how it goes. I know I'm supposed to know it because I learned it long ago, but hell be damned, I can't conjure it from my mind.

For some reason, I'm not feeling the usual comfort that the show offers me today and I decide to leave the room. The puppets' voices fade into the background, as I feel my way around the house.

There's nothing to do in this house, but I amuse myself with the smallest things. The phone is red. The walls are blue. The carpet is white.

I pass by a window and there's the faintest hint of frost on the pane. With my finger, I draw a smiley face, despite the cold biting my skin. I'm not satisfied with it—the smile looks too wobbly to look like a curve—and I draw another one. When it turns out equally as miserable as the first, I draw more, until the entire window is filled with my drawings.

It's a little silly and mood-lifting, so I smile at the window and ignore how there's bars over the glass.

My arm trembles with exhaustion, so I wander through the hallway, lost in thought. I pass by a pile of booklets that were mailed in and brush the glossy cover with my fingers. Karla had told me that I could try to read them—or for worse, look at the pictures—and I have tried. But they're meaningless words slapped onto a page, told to look pretty.

The sentences swim on the pages and the words dance diagonally, as if taunting me. Paragraphs are difficult, but I can't bring myself to try when the information is ridiculous.

They're horoscopes. And comics. And gossip columns.

I don't think I should fill my brain with information like that when vital parts of my memories are missing.

I still pick up a few booklets and page through them, out of a bored curiosity—