Public domain image from https://www.loc.gov/item/2017799379 retrieved by Kathryn Kulpa
Like a lover’s voice on a mountainside.
Like the wild-eyed alcoholic men in my family who pop up every second generation, predictable as a game of Trouble, drowning depression in barrel-aged bourbon, because better crazy drunk than just plain crazy.
Like the dolls hung on the wall of a child’s bedroom, feet bound, in a Depression-era photograph our class studies. The walls are papered with flattened-out cereal boxes, the children’s feet and faces are dirty, but the dolls hang above them, immaculate in white dresses.
I ask why the dolls might be there, and my students speculate: so they won’t get dirty, to keep them away from dogs, because the parents can’t afford a toy chest, because they’re for decoration, not play.
Maybe they’re to get kids used to the idea of lynching, says the tall boy in the last row, and I can feel everyone’s words dry up, can almost see the oxygen in that room fly out the small transom window.
KATHRYN KULPA is a writer, editor, and librarian with stories in BULL, Centaur, Flash Frog, and Moon City Review. She is the author of A MAP OF LOST PLACES (Gold Line Press) and FOR EVERY TOWER, A PRINCESS (Porkbelly Press).
