She raced outside the second she got home, out the front door and onto the porch, scanning frantically for the familiar brown cardboard with the “Prime” logo stretched in proud blue ink across every side. There it was, logo smiling as she raced it through the front door and onto the table to be dissected with impatience and desire as sharp as the blade she used to cut it open. She left the shreds of cardboard in a complete mess – something that would surely cause her trouble later – so that the process of setting it up could begin.
The dollhouse was perfect. Well…almost perfect. But she wouldn’t admit that to anyone, even to herself, although that thought was there – crouching – in the back of her mind, waiting for its opportunity to tower over her as she slept and sink its fangs into her tender throat. But it was all she could afford after counting every bill and coin in her makeshift piggy bank, and she was excited! It came with two dolls – not enough to make her family, but enough to craft a cute little scene with all the miniature household items she had been collecting for the last few allowances. A cereal box, a chair, a gumball machine with tiny rainbow spheres made of who-knows-what material. She had enough objects to put at least something into each of the rooms, and even though it didn’t grant her the fullest use of her director skills, it succeeded in giving her the high she craved from acquiring yet another multi-piece toy.
Daddy had tried to convince her not to buy it, to save her money instead. (They always tried to convince her not to buy toys with multiple pieces because they didn’t like cleaning them up.) But what good would it do, just sitting there in her plastic bank day after day? There was so much fun to be had! He threw out words like “compounding,” “interest rates,” and “finding something you like better,” but she didn’t see the point. Her allowances kept coming, and as long as she wrote down what she wanted and waited the required seven days, her parents couldn’t say no. They had made the rules, and they didn’t like to go back on their word.
She played with her new prize all afternoon, until Mommy called her three times to the dinner table and she got in trouble both for not listening and for the brown paper shreds strewn across the floor. SInce dinner was so late that day (typical, with her parents’ work schedules), she wasn’t permitted to return to it, despite their pre-dinner promises to imagine alongside her. Instead, she was sent to the shower, where she examined the bar of soap and the shampoo and conditioner bottles to make sure the ones she would inevitably purchase one day for the dollhouse would be realistic. She became more and more lost in thought as she bathed on autopilot, scrubbing her lanky body down as she dreamed and washed out her long hair twice. Daddy had scolded her for this habit, claiming it was wasteful (of the money, surely, since he never recycled like they did at school). But that’s what the bottle said to do – “wash, rinse, repeat” – and the people who wrote it must have known what they were talking about or they wouldn’t be in the shampoo business. She was just a kid but she wasn’t a dummy.
The dollhouse still carried its magic into the next day, and even the day after that, but by the end of the week, she had written down a new object of desire on her wish list, and by the end of the month, Mommy finally came into her room ready to act a few scenes out with her, only to find the dollhouse askew under a pile of school uniforms and dirty underwear, appearing as though some terrible natural disaster had struck its foundation.
The following weekend, when the babysitter was in the restroom, she tiptoed with her new baby doll – complete with a diaper to be changed and tears to be wiped away – to the top of the stairs to eavesdrop on the adults’ conversation drifting up the stairs from the dinner party below. She heard Mommy’s voice saying something about needing more space for when the baby came and how this house had always been intended to be a starter home. Her heart skipped a beat. What?! She knew about the baby – they had broken the news to her a few days ago – but she didn’t know they’d be leaving this house. She loved their home, the old floors and low ceilings, and her mind had already set up a spot next to her bed for her new sibling. To her, the house was perfect, why would her parents move her? What was the point of more space? A tear started to form with the knowledge that her opinion on the matter would be drowned out when she heard the babysitter emerge and off she went for bedtime books.
She twitched ever so slightly when Daddy came in hours later to return her blanket to its original position and distractedly kiss her forehead. His mind kept replaying the image of the Range Rover with the temporary license tag his colleague had driven up the driveway. Didn’t that guy just buy a Beamer last year? His mind raced as he mentally reviewed who had received bonuses last Christmas and whether his colleague had been on the list. He had used his own bonus to buy a stylish SUV that would accommodate two car seats more comfortably, but it didn’t seem so exciting anymore. He started to undress as his wife came in, chattering tipsily about so-and-so’s new cook and how someone else had upgraded her diamond and how maybe for their next anniversary she could do that too. Ugh… How would he manage a new car with all that?
He stepped in the shower and he was barely able to squirt out enough shampoo to wash his thinning hair. They had just replaced the shampoo bottle – how was it so empty? He was going to have to have a talk with his daughter and explain that she didn’t need to be using so much shampoo. Her constant double washing and failure to listen to them was driving him crazy. He finished the bottle and tossed it into the trash can, just as the suds slipped onto the floor, exposing the text the little girl took so seriously: Wash, rinse, repeat.
Hopefully he wouldn’t slip on those suds in the morning. A medical bill could kill all of the plans he was dreaming up for his next bonus.