The Bernice L. McFadden Collection. Bernice L. McFadden
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began their new lives.
Days later, when August was presented with a framed copy of the newspaper article, he took it into the drawing room where the light was brightest. There, August stood for many minutes gazing wondrously at the grainy picture. He thought they all looked like wax figures—well, all except Doll, who had the faintest wisp of a smile resting on her lips.
August was too modest a man to hang the framed article on the wall for every visitor to see, so stored it away on a bookshelf. Every once in a while, when he was home alone, he would remove the framed treasure and ogle the picture.
Over the years, the clipping yellowed and curled behind its protective glass, and the photo began to distort and fade. Sometimes when August peered at it, Doll seemed to be sneering; other times, she bared her teeth like a badger. August blamed the changes in the picture on figments of his imagination, poor light, and aging eyes; he had a bagful of explanations to explain it away. The final straw, however, came when he looked at the picture one day and saw that Doll’s middle and index fingers on both hands were crossed; August could not for the life of him decide if the gesture had been made in hope of good luck or for exclusion from a promise.
He tossed the memento in the river, but it was too late—his fate was already sealed.
Doll was the love of August’s life, but she was also a thief.
Back in Tulsa, she had closed her arms around the shoulders of an elderly parishioner and expertly procured a shiny, dark plume from the woman’s brand-new Easter hat.
She was a bandit—stealing her daughter’s prized silk hair ribbons and all of her son’s blue marbles. When she saw the children crying over the loss, it filled her with giddy pleasure.
Before the children came, Doll had even stolen her husband from his first wife. It wasn’t her fault—the spirit of a dead whore had taken root in Doll’s body on the very day she was born.
Doll’s mother, Coraline, was six months pregnant with her second child when Doll, who was five at the time, looked up from the bowl of shelled peas and asked, “Mama, how was I when I was a baby?”
Coraline was slicing carrots for stew. She stopped, raised the back of her hand to her sweaty forehead, and swiped at a damp braid of hair. The question unearthed a memory and a smile.
“You come into this world screaming holy murder, and didn’t stop until you were a month old. Like to drive me outta my mind. It was your daddy—God rest his soul—who stopped me from throwing you down the well.” Coraline laughed and swiped at the braid a second time.
Doll raised her hand and stroked the taut skin beneath her chin. “Maybe you the one shoulda gone down the well,” she said.
The knife slipped from Coraline’s hand and clattered to the table and her mouth dropped open in surprise.
The statement was horrible—yes—but the voice behind the statement was terrifying. Esther Gold, Esther the whore—dead and buried for half a decade, and now come back in her daughter, in her Doll? Coraline blinked with disbelief.
Esther the whore had been a fixture in Tulsa, and could be spotted, day in and day out, wrapped around light poles, beckoning men with a wiggle of her finger, hissing like a snake: “Pssst, come here, I got something that’ll make it all better.”
She had been a beauty once, bright-skinned and thick-legged, with a curtain of hair that stretched all the way down to her waist.
Esther.
Too pretty for any woman to want as a friend. So beautiful, men didn’t think about loving her; they only fantasized about melting away between her creamy thighs.
Poor Esther.
The men she welcomed into her heart and into her bed should have worshipped the ground she walked on—and they did for a while—but eventually her beauty felt like a hot spotlight and their confidence faded away beneath the luminous beam. They questioned her loyalty and themselves.
Why she want me?
The answers always fell short of what they needed, which was a scaffold of assuredness sturdy enough to bear their egos. Esther replied, “I love you, ain’t that enough?”
They said it was, but it wasn’t and they didn’t know why. So the men beat her for loving them.
They beat the goodness and the sweetness out of her. They beat her into the streets, into back alleys, down into the dirt, into the gutter, onto her knees, her back, and then they climbed on top and emptied their miseries inside her.
Esther.
The voice was unmistakable, but Coraline had to be sure, so she said, “What you say, gal?” And Doll repeated herself in the same whiskey-and-cigarette scarred voice.
Coraline rounded the table, caught Doll by the collar of her dress, and dragged her out the house and down the road to the old woman called Sadie, who had herbs and potions that would deal with a tramp soul like Esther.
“Uh-hmmm,” Sadie grunted as she used her thumb and forefinger to stretch Doll’s eyelids open. After peering in the right eye and then the left, Sadie rocked back on her heels and nodded with confidence.
“Yeah, she in there all right.” Sadie shook her head pitifully. “Sorry for this, but it make sense now, all that hollering she done when she come into this world.”
Coraline nodded her head in agreement and then folded her arms around her swollen belly and began to sway.
“Sit down, Coraline, before you fall over,” Sadie warned. “You remember how she die?”
“Who?”
“That old whore.”
Coraline eased herself into a nearby chair, dropped her head into her hands, and forced her mind to look back. “I think she was stabbed to death.”
“So she died by the blade? You sure? You gotta be sure now.”
Coraline pounded her fists against her temples. “Yeah, someone cut her throat.” Her eyes swung to her daughter’s complacent expression and back to Sadie’s well-lined face. “You gonna be able to pull that whore outta my child?”
Sadie chewed on her ragged bottom lip. “Every tramp soul is different. Some stronger than others.” She glanced at Doll who was looking up at the ceiling, her eyes intent on something. Sadie slowly followed her line of vision, but there was nothing to see but wooden planks and cobwebs. She brought her palms together in a resounding clap.
Both Doll and Coraline jumped at the sound.
“Look at me, child,” Sadie gently demanded. She leaned over and brought her nose within millimeters of Doll’s, caught her roughly by the chin, and said, “Esther, Esther, we gonna get you outta this child and send you straight to hell where you belong!”
Doll held the old woman’s gaze, skinned back her lips, and spat, “And I’ma take you with me, witch!”
Coraline shrieked and Sadie lurched back.
“Ooh, Esther,” Sadie sneered as she walked a wide circle around Doll. “When I’m through with you, you gonna be sorry you were ever born!” And then to Coraline, “You go along home now let me do what I need to do.”
The old woman moved to the door and pulled it open. A sheath of daylight sliced across the floor and the multicolored glass canisters and jugs shelved along the back wall.
“Come back for her in the morning.”
Coraline scrambled out the door.
When Coraline returned the next day, Sadie handed her a sealed jar filled with murky water.
“Esther in here?” Coraline asked, holding