style="font-size:15px;"> The reverend’s eyes swung wildly between Coraline and her sobbing daughter.
“Sister Coraline, I can’t—”
Coraline backed away. “Nah, nah, Reverend, you gotta take her or I’ma kill her for sure,” she warned as she raised her right palm to the sky. “I swear to God, I will kill this child and then the blood ain’t gonna just be on my hands, your hands gonna be red too.”
August Hilson gently took hold of Doll’s arm and she flinched in pain. That’s when he noticed the black and blue bruises.
“My Lord,” he whispered in horror, “did you beat this child?”
Coraline was already walking away. She turned her head slightly and slung, “No, Reverend. I didn’t beat Doll; I beat the whore inside of her.”
August led Doll into the house and guided her to the sofa. “Sit here,” he said, and then disappeared into the kitchen.
His wife Ann was standing over the sink, stuffing seasoned rice into the belly of a raw chicken. “Who was that at the door?” she queried without turning around to look at him.
“Ann.”
The seriousness in her husband’s voice was heartstopping. Ann slowly turned to face him. August was gray.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
In the living room, Doll could hear August’s hushed explanation, which was followed by Ann’s shrill “She did what?”
In a moment, Ann was at Doll’s side, cradling her against her bosom.
“My sweet, sweet Jesus,” she murmured. “What kind of mother would do this to her own flesh and blood?”
August shook his head in dismay. “Caroline is hot now. Maybe in a day or two—”
Ann’s head snapped up. “In a day or two what? Don’t tell me you’re thinking about sending this poor child back to that woman?”
August was thinking exactly that.
“Oh, I won’t have it, August. Next time might be the last time for this little girl. Doll is staying right here with us.”
August and Ann had a child of their own named Vesta. A six-year-old with a lisp and tender ways. At the dinner table that night, Vesta shoveled forkfuls of steamed rice and baked chicken into her mouth, all the while keeping her eyes glued to Doll.
After dinner, Ann dressed Doll in one of her halfslips. “You’ll wear this until I can find you a decent nightgown,” Ann said, before tucking the girl into bed alongside Vesta.
She read them a story, and planted soft kisses on each of their foreheads. The “I love you” Ann shared before closing the bedroom door was big enough for both girls.
In the darkness Vesta whispered, “I been praying for a sister.”
Doll’s hand moved across the empty space between them, found Vesta’s hand, and squeezed it. “Me too,” she said.
Doll slipped into the Hilson family as easily as a lost puzzle piece they didn’t know was missing.
“See, I told you,” Ann commented to August one day as she sat darning socks, “that Coraline was the crazy one. Doll’s been nothing but a joy.” She smiled to herself, knotted the stitch, and then used her teeth to sever the thread. “She’s just the sweetest thing.”
August, who was seated across the room sucking on his pipe and reading the newspaper, nodded in agreement.
A few years later, Ann’s words—She’s just the sweetest thing—would float back to August as he slid inside of Doll and exploded into a million points of light.
When Doll turned fifteen years old, Ann baked a three-layer lemon cake to celebrate the occasion. The family sang happy birthday, then Doll blew out the candles and received as a gift her first pair of nylons. Three days later, Ann and August celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary. At the church, an excited Ann joined her husband at the pulpit with a folded square of paper clutched in her hand. The words on the paper were filled with love and exaltations— words that any husband would have been proud to hear his wife recite.
August was taken off guard.
“A speech?” he squawked in surprise. Ann nudged him gently aside and positioned herself squarely behind the podium.
Her eyes sailed over the black and brown faces that looked back at her before settling on the encouraging smiles of Doll and Vesta who were seated in the front pew with their hands folded daintily in their laps.
Ann cleared her throat, unfolded the paper, and began: “My husband and I have been married for ten wonderful years … When I was a child, I prayed that the Lord would send me a God-fearing man, a gentle and kind man, who would make a good husband and a good father …”
Ann stalled. She’d come across a word that she couldn’t quite make out and so apologized for the interruption and raised the paper eye-level to try to figure out what she’d written. The paper slipped from her hand and floated down to the floor. Ann giggled with embarrassment and both she and August stooped to retrieve it—that’s when Doll coughed.
It was a loud and boisterous cough that drew the attention of not only her surrogate parents, but quite a few church members as well. The husband and wife turned their heads in the girl’s direction and Ann saw the thing she was not supposed to see.
Her eyes bulged and her smile stretched into a hard line. When she turned to August, his lips were forming the words: Ann, please, please.
Ann shot straight up.
The congregation shifted uncomfortably in their pews. Something had happened—was happening—but they didn’t know what. Ann backed away from August and his pleading eyes. When he reached for her, she looked down at his hand with such horror and disdain that one would have thought it belonged to the devil himself.
“No!” Ann screamed as she viciously slashed the air with the slip of paper.
Fear and confusion rippled through the church, people jumped to their feet, and in a moment, twenty concerned congregants, including Vesta, surrounded Ann.
“No, no, no!” Ann continued to bellow.
Doll remained in her pew, calmly watching Ann unravel.
Gloria Hardy was a beefy woman who had raised seven boys alone. She had been mother and father, protector and punisher, to those children. Her rise through the church ranks to become a deaconess was an accomplishment she was especially proud of.
It was Gloria who smashed through the circle of parishioners and grabbed Ann by the shoulders. Her intention was to force Ann down into a pew, before she tripped over her own feet and seriously hurt herself. But Ann, out of her mind with what she had seen, sunk her teeth into Gloria’s
