She gave me a severe look. I pretended not to notice and said, “I’m going back to sleep. Wake me up when we get there.”

“When we get there?” Elizaveta seemed amused. “Look behind you, Jack. We are already here.”

8

I wasn’t sure what I was seeing at first. My brain didn’t register the dolls. There were too many; the sheer number overwhelmed me. But then I was seeing them, registering them, because there they were, everywhere, an entire midget army clinging to trees and dangling from branches. There must have been hundreds of them—and these were only the ones lining the bank. “Holy shit,” I said.

“I know,” Elizaveta said.

The gondola started moving, the boatman pushing us forward with that long pole of his through the overgrown wetland flora. Pita retook her seat and began talking with Elizaveta. I kept my attention fixed on the island.

The dolls were every shape and size and color. They were clothed, naked, broken, weatherworn, grungy. And opposed to the beatific dolls that had lined every shelf in my sister’s bedroom up until she was eight or so, the decrepit state of these made them appear to be demonic. Like they’d been to hell and back and couldn’t wait to return.

I was still trying to get my head around the uncanny spectacle when the gondola bumped against a short pier with a jolt. Then everyone was getting to their feet, gathering their stuff, preparing to disembark.

1952

1

María woke to her mother shouting at her from the kitchen: “María, get up! You don’t want to be late for your first day of school.”

María buried her face in her pillow.

“María! Get up now!”

Reluctantly she poked her head out of the covers. The blinds were open. It wasn’t dark, but it wasn’t light either.

“María!”

María forced herself out of bed. She took off her pajamas and dumped them in the laundry basket. Then she pulled on the clothes her mother had laid out for her: a beige dress, white underwear, and white socks. She scooped up Angela, who had been sleeping with her, and went down the hall to the bathroom. She peed, then brushed her teeth. She’d had a bath the night before in her mother’s bathwater, so she didn’t have to have another one this morning.

“I don’t want to go to school,” María confided in Angela, speaking around the toothbrush in her mouth. She listened to Angela’s reply, then said, “I don’t want to leave my mom. And I don’t want to meet my teacher.” She listened again. “Of course you can come. You’re my best friend.” She spit, rinsed, then went to the kitchen.