"It was so dark, Cathy, and the room felt so big
and scary. You know I don't like night and darkness
with no lamp burning, with nobody there but me. I
even wanted Sissy back, she seemed better than
nobody. Something in the shadows moved and I was terrified, and though we're not supposed to I turned on a lamp. I wanted to take all my little dolls to bed with me so I'd have company. I was gonna be so careful not
to toss and turn and break off their heads.
"I always put Mr. and Mrs. Parkins left and
right with baby Clara in the middle in the bottom
drawer of my dresser. I picked up the cotton wadding
that was in the middle first and felt something hard.
But when I looked, Cathy, when I looked there was no
baby, only a little stick! I unwrapped Mr. and Mrs.
Parkins, and they were only sticks too--bigger ones!
It hurt so bad not to find them I began to cry. All my
little dolls gone, all turned to wood, so I knew God
was never gonna let me grow tall when he would
make my pretty dolls into only sticks.
"Something funny happened to me then, like I
turned into wood too. I felt stiff and couldn't see too
good. I went and crouched in a corner and waited for
something bad to happen. The grandmother said
something terrible would happen if I broke a doll,
didn't she?" Not another word would she say, but I
learned from others what happened after that. In the dark, long after midnight, the twelve little
rich girls Miss Dewhurst had denied liberty all stole
furtively into Carrie's room. It was Lacy St. John who had the integrity to tell me, but only when Miss
Dewhurst was out of hearing.
Twe
lve girls, all wearing long white cotton
nightgowns, the official sleeping garments of the