The Mare

Ginger

I knew about the box of half-rotted dolls and toys for years before my sister died; she had shown them to me the last time I’d seen her. She was nearly forty then and making one of her failed attempts to get sober, and she was wondering if maybe I wanted my dolls back. The visit hadn’t been going very well and when she held up the moldy and bald (I’d torn her hair out) Glinda, I lost my temper and said I thought it was crazy to keep these things, that she ought to just throw them out. And my biker-chick sister put her face in her hands and left the room, crying. I sat there for a moment, stunned. Then I got up and went to her. She’d stopped crying by then and when I said, “Sorry,” she said, “No, you’re right.” And I helped her take the falling-apart box out to the Dumpster just before I left for the airport.

She must’ve brought it right back in after I was gone; the box was just about disintegrated when I came across it. I pawed through everything in it — Barbies, old-style talking dolls, troll dolls, Beatle dolls, plastic horses — to find Glinda.