The Dolly
Her big gray eyes were filled with tears, her long hair hung in wet curtains on the side of her face, and her nose was running. Her name was Sue; she was five years old and very scared. Her mother was off talking to Caroline. Her brother received a bad burn on his arm that morning, and you could hear his cries throughout the house. Each cry of her brother made her shake.
The day had started with a rainstorm, which was still going on. The rain came down in great sheets. After we got Prim off to school, I had to face the fact that I couldn't do much that day. There was no sunlight for painting, no hunting, and no spying. We didn't even have a planned dinner to get ready for—nothing. So Caroline and I ended up doing a lot of small talk around the kitchen table with more and more coffee. Katniss just slumped in the chair wearing her hunting gear and stared out the window. I might have had little to do, but she had nothing and was terribly bored.
They came with a wail, and then a rapid pounding on the front door. When I opened the door the three of them looked like drowned rats. The wild-eyed woman carried her little daughter wrapped tightly in her arms, and the larger boy was right next to her, clutching her hand with a death grip and shrieking in pain.
I yelled for Caroline, towels, and blankets, and helped the family in. Caroline came running, grabbed the boy, and even before the mother could say a thing she noticed the large red burn on the boy's arm and started rushing him off to the little den next to the living room she used to see her patients in. That left me to run off and get the towels and blankets.
The girl was very young—four, maybe five—and the boy was only ten years old. As I dried them I learned that the boy's name was John, the girl Sue, and the mother who looked so skinny and old was Mary Law. The mother as so many had come to the only medical help the poor of the district could depend on. A close look at the mother's desperate gray eyes and dark hair told the usual story of a poor woman who married poor and young, and now was looking twice her real age.
We gave the family our coffees to warm them; they had never had real coffee and didn't know what to make of it, but they drank it anyway. I ran to get this and that, medicines, bandages, and finally went to put more water on. I started to feel ill. I knew the feeling: it was the sickness I got from making Katniss visible, which was strange because she had disappeared. When I went to the kitchen I opened the door and almost gasped.
The little girl was in middle of the kitchen—the frightened little girl was holding out a little cloth doll. The doll was a very simple thing made of rags and small pieces of worn-out odds and ends; it had a face drawn on a piece of cloth, and its hair was of shredded cloth, but it was the only thing the girl could call her own, and she held it out to a kneeling Katniss, right in the middle of the kitchen. Katniss' eyes were all watery.
I was stunned and didn't know what to do for what seemed like forever. Several times I thought someone had seen her, but this! First I worried that we might be walked in on, but the cries of her brother told me that wasn't likely.
"I see you have found my friend," I said. I was doing my best to not show surprise or worry.
The little girl looked for a second at me, but then she whispered something in Katniss' ear.
Katniss said in a low almost-whisper, "He's Peeta. He is a very nice boy, and you can trust him. Okay?" The girl whispered more in Katniss' ear. "She likes you, Peeta, but her mother told her not to talk to strange men." Katniss wiped a tear as she said, "She just found me and wanted to show me her dolly Alice, and I told her of my old dolly Nancy."
It was amazing. Not only was she able to see Katniss, but she could talk to her. No one but me had ever been able to do that. Watching them talking on the floor of my kitchen, I thought I started to understand. I knew if the girl's mother came in all she would see was a girl playing make-believe on the floor. Katniss was real; she had to be. She had told and taught me so much. She couldn't be in my mind, but her image, her body—that was me. I chose what clothes she wore, I chose when she appeared; she even looked like my favorite version of her, as I knew her just before the Games. Somehow I could influence the senses of myself and others. They put something in me; they changed me, but what, and why? Somehow I was going to have to figure it out, because it was changing me, changing me into . . . what?
I decided to see how far we could push it. I tried to image how it would feel, how the little girl's hand in Katniss' would feel, and signed Katniss to hold the girl's hand. Katniss looked scared; I knew she didn't want to risk losing the only other person for her in months. She slowly put out her hand in an offer to the little girl, who readily grabbed it.
At the girl's touch, Katniss said a surprised "Oh!" as a big smile reached across her face and tears dripped down her cheeks. It was well worth the vomit I choked back. I could feel the illness and fear rise up in me, but it was my gift to Katniss, and I wasn't going to back off. They played on my kitchen floor, and for a while Katniss could feel normal and the little girl could forget about the terrible day and what her brother and mother were going through.
They played their doll games with little whispers, though Katniss was careful to speak loud enough for me to hear; she wanted to include me, at least some.
When the family departed later that day, it left me thinking wild thoughts. How can I get the girl and Katniss together again? How far can I push this? What is happening to me? Where and when will this end?
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