I didn’t think I knew how to.
I avoided the elevator and headed for the back staircase. I climbed each step as fast as I could until I was at Dolly’s floor. Seeing her door was shut, I burst through and slammed it behind me. I ran to the corner of the room and slumped down the wall, keeping out of sight. I tried to catch my breath.
But I couldn’t catch my breath.
Everything felt wrong.
“Rabbit?” Dolly’s sleepy voice came from the direction of her bed. I didn’t look over at where she would be. Instead I stared at my hand . . . stared at the blood coming from my palm. I slowly opened my fingers and saw that my pocket watch was still in my hand. The glass had cut my skin.
“Rabbit?” Dolly’s voice was closer this time. But I felt myself rocking. Watched the hands on my watch as they traveled around the clock face.
“Tick tock,” I whispered, swaying back and forth, back and forth. “Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock . . .” I tried to block it all out.
“Rabbit? Wh-what’s wrong?” I felt Dolly drop down beside me. I smelled the roses from the perfume she always wore. She gasped. “You’re bleeding.” She ran for the bathroom. When she came back, she took the watch from my hand and covered my palm in a towel. “Are you hurt?” she asked. I finally let myself look up. She was dressed in a long white nightgown, but the black headband she always wore was still in place. And in her hand she held her doll.
She said there were bad people in the world. Some that were close by. She told me Alice would keep me safe . . .
Dolly’s words from two years ago circled my head. It was what her mama had told her before she died.
Bad people.
She wanted Dolly protected from bad people.
Bad people close by.
Her papa . . . her uncles . . .
“Where have you been?” she asked. I looked into her blue eyes as she spoke. They were sad again. I had no words to say. “I’ve missed you so much. Mrs. Jenkins told me you have been busy with my papa and uncles.” She stuck out her bottom lip. “Too busy to visit me. To play and to read to me.” Her lip began to shake. “I’ve been so lonely without you. And now you look sad,” she said, her shoulders slumping. “I don’t want you to be sad.” Her voice was now a whisper.
When I still didn’t say anything, she drew back and tried to smile. “I think I know what will make you feel better.” Dolly got to her feet and rushed to her mama’s old pink boombox on her desk. She switched it on and began to dance.
And I watched her. I never took my eyes away from her as she swayed and mouthed the words to the song. She smiled as she danced . . . then another memory came into my head. Words she’d once told me as we lay out on her picnic blanket one summer’s afternoon.
I always dance for my papa and my uncles. They love to watch me dance. I do it a lot . . . they love it . . . they always ask me . . .
“Stop,” I said under my breath, but Dolly didn’t hear me. She closed her eyes and raised her hands up in the air as she kept dancing. “Stop!” I said louder, but she still didn’t hear. “Fucking stop!” I eventually screamed, loud enough that my voice cut through the music and my anger filled the air.
Dolly stopped dead and stared at me with huge blue eyes. “Rabbit?” she whispered, and her bottom lip trembled again.
“Turn off the fucking music!” I snapped. Dolly did as I commanded, with her head dropped and her face all sad. She turned, shy and nervous, and I eventually managed to hold out my hand. She clutched her doll to her chest like a shield, but she came forward anyway. When she was within reaching distance, I grabbed her hand and pulled her down to sit next to me. “No more dancing.”
“Why?” She blinked her long lashes. “I love to dance.”
“No more dancing for your papa and uncles,” I said more firmly, and Dolly shook her head. “Promise me.”
Dolly paused. “Can . . . can I still dance for you?”
I felt that strange feeling in my chest again. The one I had only ever felt around her. The one where my heart squeezed and my throat got really tight. “You can dance for me. But only for me.”
“Okay.” She played nervously with her hands in her lap.
I glanced down at my watch on the floor. “I want to protect you,” I said, and Dolly looked up. I picked the watch up in my bloodied hand. “I want to keep you safe.”