Ship of Dolls

by Shirley Parenteau

  Still, getting caught wouldn’t be fun. She glanced down the stairs at a rain-​streaked window, feeling as rain-​blurred as the glass while she gathered courage to open Miss Tompkins’s door.

  “Go on in,” Jack demanded. “Or forget the doll!”

  I have to do it, Lexie told herself again. I have to.

  She smelled simmering beef and onions and knew Jack’s mother was making stew for the boarders’ supper. Miss Tompkins’s room was right above the kitchen. Anyone walking around up here might be heard downstairs. Could she walk softly enough that Mrs. Harmon wouldn’t hear her from the kitchen?

  Someone in a nearby room turned on a radio, making her jump.

  Jack rocked on the balls of his feet. “What are you waiting for?”

  “If Miss Tompkins catches us . . .”

  “She won’t.”

  “Maybe the door’s locked.”

  “Nobody locks doors here. I don’t think there are even keys.”

  Lexie looked at the doorknob, remembering how Grandma was always watching for some sign of Mama to root out of her. Sneaking into Miss Tompkins’s room was sure to be one of those signs.

  “Why do you need the doll?” Jack added, sounding impatient. “She’s not going to write the letter for you.”

  “I’ve only ever held my cloth doll, Annie, that my grandma made me for Christmas when I was little. I don’t know what a store-​bought doll would write in a letter. Annie’s so soft and sweet and loving, she’d just say, ‘Give me a hug!’ A pretty store-​bought doll like Emily Grace would say more. I know she would. I just don’t know what!”

  “Then don’t be a baby!” Jack grabbed her hand and shoved it onto the knob.

  Lexie snatched her hand away. “Miss Tompkins might be in there!”

  “She went out. But she’ll likely come back if you don’t get a move on.” He glanced down the stairs. “Better not let Ma catch us sneaking into a renter’s room.”

  If she does, Lexie warned herself, I’ll never know what to say in the letter. I’ll never get to Mama. She grabbed the knob. This time, she turned it.

  Somehow she was inside the room without remembering taking the last forbidden step. Jack slipped in behind her and eased the door shut. For a moment, the entire room seemed to blur. Slowly, Lexie sorted everything out: a window over there, a neatly made bed to her right, a desk with a fringe-​shaded lamp beside a large box. Her gaze stopped on the box. She knew that box.

  She darted across the room and raised the lid. There was Emily Grace, with her friendly blue eyes and painted smile. “Just look at her,” Lexie breathed. The ladies in the school parents’ club had made the blue satin dress and gray wool traveling cape. They were perfect for her. Lexie set the lid aside and reached for the doll.

  “You said you wouldn’t touch anything,” Jack said, adding quickly, “Are your hands clean?”

  “Of course.” But she checked them for dirt from the tree. Maybe she should just look at Emily Grace. No. That wouldn’t be enough. She had to hold her.

  She rubbed her hands on her pinafore to be sure, then gently lifted the doll from the box. Emily Grace had real hair in blond curls, not at all like Lexie’s growing-​out brown bob. And the doll’s arms and legs and head were made of a hard material, not like Annie, who was soft all over.

  Lexie rocked her backward. The eyes closed and Emily Grace said, “Mama.”

  “Oh,” Lexie said. “Did you ever see a prettier doll?”

  “She’s just a doll.”

  “Just a doll! She’s . . . she’s an ambassador, like Miss Tompkins said. She’s going to Japan! Didn’t you look at the map pulled down over the blackboard?”

  “I looked. She’s got a long way to travel.”

  Gold stars gleamed over three cities on the map they’d studied. Miss Tompkins had pasted one over Portland, Oregon, and another over San Francisco, California. She put the last star far across the Pacific Ocean, over the port city of Yokohama, in the island country of Japan. A steamship would carry the dolls all that way.

  “It sounds crazy to me,” Jack added. “Twelve thousand dolls . . . How can they bring peace?”

  Lexie wasn’t sure. When Grandpa had read his newspaper that morning, she’d heard him worry aloud about the Japanese military. Grandma had reminded him that the Japanese had helped the Allies during the big war that ended in 1918. But Grandpa still frowned.

  “Grandpa says the Japanese are looking to spread into China, where the British have interests,” Lexie said, remembering. “He says if the Japanese try to push the British out of Hong Kong and Singapore, they’ll be stirring up a hornets’ nest.”

  Grandma had simply winked and said, “Your grandpa has a bad case of the doubts today. Pay him no mind.” But Lexie couldn’t help wondering. “What if we’re sending Emily Grace straight into a war?”

  “That’s why the dolls are going, isn’t it?” Jack asked. “They’re supposed to make friends so there won’t be a war.” He moved closer to the door, listening. “Hurry up,” he added in a whisper.

  Lexie held Emily Grace close and looked into her blue eyes. Softly, she asked, “What should your letter say, Emily Grace? What do you want to tell those girls in Japan?”

  Jack’s hand hovered over the doorknob. “Are you through?”

  Lexie studied the doll’s face, almost believing that if she listened hard enough, she would hear Emily Grace’s doll thoughts. “In a minute.”

  “Cripes!” Jack said. “That’s the front door. I’ll bet it’s . . . It is! It’s Miss Tompkins. She just greeted Ma. She’s coming up the stairs!”

  He darted to Lexie, grabbed her arm, and hauled her toward the window. “The fire escape! Come on!”

  He threw open the window and pushed her through. She clambered down the rust-​roughened ladder, one hand skimming the rail while her feet flew from one step to another. Jack followed so fast, she was afraid he might knock her to the ground.

  Then her feet hit wet grass. She wrenched away from the ladder and looked up through light rainfall at the window, glad to see that Jack had thought to close it.

  “Cripes! Lexie! Why’d you bring her?”

  “What?” She looked at Jack, then down. And felt as if he’d slammed the window again, this time right on top of her. She still cradled Emily Grace in one arm.

  The window flew open with a scraping sound that shot straight into Lexie. She hadn’t felt so sick inside since Toby, the saxophone player Mama married, said he didn’t want a kid around. Crying hadn’t helped then and it wouldn’t help now.

  Biting her lip, she flattened against the wall, hoping to make herself invisible. She clutched her coat around Emily Grace to shield her from the rain. In her arms, the doll felt almost like a real child.

  “Jack Harmon,” Miss Tompkins shouted, “what are you doing down there?”

  Jack shouted right back. “Ma told me to wash the windows.”

  Silently, Lexie cheered. Fast thinking.

  Miss Tompkins’s voice rose higher. “In the rain?”

  He took off running. The teacher shouted after him, “You were peeping in my window, young man. I intend to speak to your mother!”

  Miss Tompkins hasn’t seen me in the late shadows, Lexie told herself. I can creep along the house and get away. But Jack had tried to help. She stepped out from the wall.

  Her heart pounded even harder than it had in the schoolroom, but she found her voice and talked fast before she could change her mind. “It wasn’t Jack, Miss Tompkins. It was me. I went into your room for Emily Grace. I just wanted to hold her. And I forgot and brought her down with me.”

  “Electra Lewis?” Miss Tompkins leaned out farther. “Is that the Friendship Doll? In this rain? Bring her inside at once!”

  Lexie winced when the window slammed down.

  She wanted to walk slowly, hoping the ground would open beneath her before she reached the porch, but she knew she needed to rush Emily Grace inside out of the rain. She wouldn’t be in any less
trouble for involving Jack. She would try to leave him out of it.

  The ground did not open. She reached the porch and stepped reluctantly through the front door. Miss Tompkins waited in the upper hall. “Come up here at once!” She returned to her room, leaving the door open.

  Lexie’s steps dragged. She had to go up there, but how could she? Hesitating, she slid her fingers through the day’s mail left for renters on a hall table. Another letter from Mama would make all the awfulness better . . . .

  Make sense, she told herself. A letter for her would be next door, not here. And mama’s letter today had been the only one in the whole three months she’d been here. Lexie glanced up the stairs. Her feet would not carry her one step closer. She trailed her fingers through strands of beads on a nearby lamp shade. She could leave the doll on the table and run back to Grandma’s.

  Then she remembered that the friendship letter could take her to Mama. She looked hungrily into Emily Grace’s blue eyes. If only she could spend more time with the doll.

  Silence from upstairs sounded worse than if the teacher had begun to yell. The stairs looked twice as high as before with that dangerous open door at the top. The longer she waited, the more trouble she was probably going to be in when she got upstairs.

  Holding Emily Grace tightly to her, Lexie began to climb. She drew on every bit of courage she could find to push her feet up the last carpeted step and into the hallway.

  Lexie hovered in the doorway while Miss Tompkins carried the doll to the light near the window of her room. “I’m disappointed in you, Electra,” the teacher said. “Please come inside.”

  Had she hurt the doll? The fear made her queasy. With her gaze fixed on Emily Grace, Lexie forced herself to cross the room. “I didn’t mean to get her wet.”

  Miss Tompkins turned Emily Grace over, taking painful minutes to inspect her. “Fortunately, her cape protected her gown.” She used a handkerchief to blot rain from Emily Grace’s golden curls, still springy beneath her hood.

  Lexie swallowed hard. Was she going to be told never to come to school again? What would she say to her grandparents?

  Grandma didn’t think too much of the doll project to begin with. It had a hint of show business about it, she said with her dislike of Mama in her voice. All that collecting money and holding bake sales and cakewalks didn’t sit right with Grandma. It had taken a lot of convincing, even with Grandpa’s help, to get her to agree that Lexie could take part.

  Grandpa learned a lot and had stories to tell from his work as a teller in a bank. But he didn’t like arguments and usually stepped back when Grandma got upset. If Miss Tompkins told them about Lexie’s sneaking into her room to hold the doll, Lexie couldn’t hope for sympathy from either of her grandparents.

  The teacher’s voice broke into her worried thoughts. “I do not believe you have one whit of interest in the meaning of the Friendship Dolls.”

  “I do!” Lexie protested.

  “Then tell me why children in this country are sending more than twelve thousand dolls to Japan.”

  Lexie knew why. Of course she did. A man who had taught in Japan for many years had returned to America worried about growing tension between the two countries. The old emperor was unwell, and like Grandpa, the man feared war might be coming. He knew that Japanese families celebrated a special dolls’ day in March, and he thought that if the children in the two countries shared dolls, they would become friends. Then when they grew up, they wouldn’t want to make war.

  Words tumbled about in Lexie’s head, but none made it past her tongue. She stared miserably at Emily Grace. How could she hope to write the letter when she couldn’t even answer Miss Tompkins’s question?

  “Electra?”

  Words burst out. “Mama and her new husband sleep in the daytime because they work at night. And he said he doesn’t want a kid around, and Mama said I’d be better off with Grandma so I could go to the same school all the time, so please don’t say I can’t go to class anymore! Please!”

  Tears slid down her face, even when she blinked hard and tried to stop them.

  She couldn’t see Miss Tompkins clearly through the tears, but she thought some of the angry red color faded from the teacher’s face. Miss Tompkins placed the doll on the desk, then offered Lexie the rain-​dampened handkerchief.

  Lexie wiped her nose and fought back the tears. “I didn’t mean to hurt her. I just wanted to know her better. I heard there’s going to be a contest. If I write the best letter, I can go to San Francisco with the doll. And my mama will be there, singing in the good-​bye program.”

  Sympathy flared briefly in the teacher’s face. Her voice sounded warmer, but her words remained schoolroom firm. “I believe you know you were very wrong to take the doll from my room. You should not have come in here without permission.”

  Lexie twisted the handkerchief in her fingers and stared in misery at Emily Grace. She knew she should not have taken the doll, even by accident. The doll’s eyes were closed as she lay on the desk, as if even Emily Grace could not look at her.

  Miss Tompkins drew a deep breath. For a long moment, she gazed through her window. Finally, she said without turning, “You do understand that you must be punished?”

  “Yes.” The word came out so softly, Lexie could hardly hear it.

  “Come to school ten minutes early tomorrow,” the teacher said. “We will discuss the matter then.”

  Discuss the matter? That was a teacher’s way of saying, I will tell you then what dreadful thing I have decided to do to you.

  Lexie tried to think of something to say that would make the punishment easier, but again words wouldn’t come. She could only twist the handkerchief some more, then place it carefully on the table.

  “You may go now,” the teacher said. “You will present yourself in class ten minutes early tomorrow, Electra. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Lexie breathed. “Yes, Miss Tompkins.” She threw a last agonized look at Emily Grace, then turned to the door. There she paused to cry out, “I’m sorry!” before she ran down the stairs and out of the house.

  As she fled across the lawn, Jack caught up with her. “What did she say?”

  “I didn’t tell her you helped.” Lexie gasped for breath. “I said it was just me.” She sensed his relief, but that was no comfort. She still had to face Grandma. In her mind, she repeated Miss Tompkins’s scary promise that they would discuss the matter tomorrow.

  Miss Tompkins might make you sit on the bench in front of the principal’s office, where everyone can walk by and snicker,” Jack said the next morning. Lexie wondered why he’d bothered walking to school with her so early. She couldn’t tell if he was sorry she faced punishment or was looking forward to it.

  Jack reached over and tugged her pink knitted scarf away from her face. “Did your grandma ask why you were leaving early?”

  Lexie pulled the scarf back. “I said I had to be at school before class for a special project.” That was true. She just didn’t know yet what the special project would be. The thought made the oatmeal she had eaten for breakfast weigh like a rock in her stomach.

  “She’ll wonder when she sees you walking funny from the walloping the teacher gives you.”

  Lexie turned around and glared. “You’re not helping, Jack.”

  “Relax. She’ll probably just make you write a hundred times that you won’t do it again.”

  “Who sneaked me into her room?”

  Jack slanted his cap brim against the rain, smile fading. “Who carried the doll down the ladder?”

  The thought of that sent a shiver through Lexie. She’d been too scared to think when Jack had shoved her at the window and rushed her down the fire escape. She should have put the doll in its box. She’d meant to, but everything had happened too fast.

  The fear that had haunted her all night couldn’t be held back any longer. “I don’t care what the teacher says. As long as she doesn’t tell me I can’t go to school anymore. Mama’s counting
on me. So are Grandma and Grandpa.”

  Jack was silent. Maybe he was thinking it would be a good thing to have to stay home from school. It wouldn’t be, though, not for her.

  From down the street, a girl called, “Jack!”

  Louise Wilkins ran to join them. She always looked like she’d stepped from one of Mama’s fashion magazines. Today, she wore a side-​belted coat with a matching cloche over her perfect bob. She smiled at Jack, then glanced at the space where Lexie walked beside him and, as usual, saw no one there.

  “Hey, Louise,” Jack said with enthusiasm that made Lexie wrinkle her nose in disgust.

  “Papa helped me with the math homework.” Louise sparkled up at Jack. “You can borrow it if you like.”

  “Why?” Lexie asked. “Don’t you think he’s smart enough to do it himself?”

  Louise kept her smile aimed at Jack. “I think Jack can do anything he wants. And so can I! Look, I talked Papa into giving the class fifty cents for our doll. That is half the cost of her steamship ticket!”

  Jack whistled softly.

  Lexie pushed away resentment to say, “Louise, do you know if it’s true about the letter contest winner getting to go to San Francisco?”

  “I might know, but I won’t tell!”

  Lexie looked at the smug smile on Louise’s face. If Louise thought she was going to beg for an answer, Louise was wrong.

  In the same moment, a girl in the school yard called, “Louise!”

  “See you later, Jack.” Louise took a step away, then turned and for the first time looked directly at Lexie. “What do you care about the rumor? You’re wasting your time. I’m writing the best letter. Mama said so!” She ran to join her friend.

  Lexie thought of several things to say about Louise and swallowed them all. Grandma said the Wilkinses acted as if their money gave them special privileges. Maybe it did. And Mr. Wilkins was on the school board. Could that mean the judges would choose Louise’s letter even if it wasn’t the best?