A Dollhouse for Lizzie

Part 1 of a fantasy short story

Photo by Merja Partanen from Pixabay.com

When Zarina inherits a dollhouse from her great-aunt that had been passed down through the generations from their enslaved ancestors, she befriends the little girl who lives inside it.

After she passed away, my Great-Aunt Abilene left me a dollhouse that had been in the family for generations. She was ninety-three and childless and had no other way to keep it in the family.

Why she picked me for this great honor, I had no idea. I'd never seen the dollhouse before, and what I remembered of my great-aunt could fill the space of a candy bar's nutritional facts. I only knew her as an old woman with caramel-colored skin, snowy white hair, cataract eyes, and breath that smelled like horehounds. She was a relic shrouded in lace, tea doilies, and old secrets.

Trent thought I might be getting some money too, but I wasn't holding my breath. She never married and had worked for thirty years at the city library. I'd be surprised if she saved up any money besides her meager pension. "If she could afford to draw up a will, then she's got something stashed away," he insisted, which was true. I guess.

When I went to her apartment to collect my inheritance, the executor, a short, dimple-cheeked woman in a lavender business suit, greeted me at the door and showed me inside. Her apartment was small, overstuffed with furniture that had price tags attached to them, ready to be sold and shipped, and reeked of cabbage. The dollhouse took up space on the dining room table and was massive––twenty-nine by forty-five inches––and impressive. I was expecting a dinky child's toy, pink, plastic, and boring, but this dollhouse was made for a rich man's child. It was modeled in a Georgian architectural style with a mansard roof, imitation brick facade, tall windows with real glass panes, a verandah, and Doric columns. The interiors were equally impressive, with each room delicately and thoughtfully furnished. The front foyer had a checkerboard parquet and a white spiral staircase beside which a brass chandelier hung. A tiny, oak archway led into a parlor that was furnished in Victorian style––red wallpaper, artwork, overstuffed furniture, potted plants, and a piano. Another door led into a library. There, a large desk also carved out of oak took centerpiece, surrounded by a hooked rug on the floor and bookshelves crammed with tiny book spines, each hand-painted with barely legible titles. The dining room was in the west wing where a long table, delicately carved oak chairs, another chandelier, and a china cabinet propped against the far wall furnished the decor. A circular mirror hung above a fireplace.

The second floor featured rooms furnished with canopied beds, dresser drawers, vanities, throw pillows, rugs, and folding screens. Rocking chairs and tiny stuffed dolls identified the children's rooms; a tiny fan lay on the bed in the master bedroom, splayed open to reveal white roses painted painstakingly on blue paper.  Even the brass knockers on each dresser drawer looked authentic.

I gasped in amazement, then shook my head. It was beautiful, but where in the world was I going to put it in my place? The executor seemed less interested in my problem than in trying to get the dollhouse off her hands.

How on earth did my great-aunt, who was the youngest sister of my great-grandfather, afford such an extravagant piece, I wondered aloud. "It was passed down through your family, of course," the executor laughingly explained, which was news to me. But, considering that, until recently, I wasn't close to any relatives on my grandfather's side (he and my grandmother divorced when my mom was twelve), I shouldn't have been surprised. 

The dollhouse was a gift to the daughter of a slaveholder by the name of Colonel Montgomery Ewell, whose own home, the Whitby plantation, just outside of Richmond, Virginia, served as a model.

"Hold on a minute," I said, wrinkling my brow. "You're telling me this dollhouse is based on a plantation?"

The executor nodded somberly. A carpenter who was enslaved on the plantation constructed it. "Nobody knows who he was," she said, "but, as you can see, he had talent."

I moved the piano in the front parlor. Its texture was rough-hewn, real wood carved with the tiniest of tools. I was a tomboy growing up, more interested in climbing trees and playing softball, but the little girl that used to scoff at girlish things was drawn into this tiny, delicate world.

The Union Army's march toward Richmond sent the owners fleeing with their lives, the executor continued. After they liberated the plantation, one of my ancestors, Hiram Gillis, took the dollhouse with him. How or why he managed that, nobody knew, but somehow he was able to take it with him from Virginia to Ohio. There he met his wife, Bethany, and had twelve children. Since then, each generation passed down the dollhouse from one to the next until it landed in my great-aunt's hands.

I looked up at the executor again, still thunderstruck by the dollhouse's history. Its artistry belied the hate and ugliness that gave birth to it. I slapped my hands to my head and breathed out an astonished sigh. It was much too much.

"I understand," the executor said, "but Miss Gillis did insist you have it. She kept saying over and over only you would understand."

"Understand what?"

She shrugged again. "According to her, she wouldn't trust nobody else."

"I barely even knew her," I said with an astonished laugh.

"She wasn't referring to herself," the executor corrected. "She was talking about somebody else. 'She wouldn't trust nobody but you." Interesting, though I wasn't sure what to make of it. When I asked if she knew to whom Aunt Abilene was referring, she shook her head apologetically and replied that that was all she could get out of her. "Poor thing. She wasn't making much sense toward the end."

I stared at the house again, now more confused than ever.

With the help of the executor's son, we covered my inheritance in bubble wrap and carried it out to my car. After I got home, I asked a neighbor to help me carry it into my apartment and place it on a table in the living room. Once alone, I turned on the standing lamp next to it, tore away the bubble wrap, and examined it once more. Though its history still disturbed me (what the carpenter who had built it must have gone through), I was fascinated and charmed by its tiny world. I inspected the furniture and marveled over their minute details before I returned them to their rightful places.

"All that's missing is a little girl to play with it," I said to myself, then frowned as I remembered that this was the toy of a slaveholder's daughter.

That night I texted Trent. The TV was on, but the volume was low. As I curled up on the sofa in my pajamas, I confided my apprehension to him. It seemed strange that my great-aunt or family, for that matter, would keep such a problematic piece. Every time they looked at it, they'd be reminded of that awful history.

Surprised you only got a dollhouse, Trent texted back.

I rolled my eyes. It was like him to be preoccupied with equity (and in all the wrong places as well), but, in truth, the thought did vaguely crawl inside my head. It's an antique from the Antebellum, I typed. Handcrafted. Must be worth something.

Get it appraised!!! he texted back. Got 2 b big bucks in it if that old. I frowned disapprovingly at the screen of my cell. I didn't tell him about the mysterious "she" the executor referred to or that I was, despite myself, kind of falling in toxic love with the thing.

Before I went to bed, I played with the house. I rearranged the furniture, opened and closed the little doors and windows, and examined the realistic-looking books. Whomever the carpenter was, he had a level of artistry, detail, patience, and concentration that was quite extraordinary. He was an artist, and yet his name was unknown. He wasn't even a footnote.

"Not even a footnote," I whispered aloud.

Later that night, the sound of laughter coming from the living room roused me out of deep sleep. I sat up in bed, frowning, blinking, then heard it again. Tinny, soft, like a child's laugh. Must've left the TV on, I thought with a groan. Climbing out of bed, I padded to the living room to turn it off, but the flat screen was dark. The locks and chains on the front door were bolted and traffic muffled outside my window were the only sounds penetrating that silence, yet I had the uncanny feeling I wasn't alone. I padded barefoot into the living room when I heard it again, this time clear as day. Soft laughter, giggles, a child.

My heart started to pound.

A flicker of movement from the dollhouse caught my eye. I wheeled toward it, then dropped my jaw.

On the first floor of the dollhouse appeared a tiny child. A little girl twirled round and round as if playing a game. She dropped dizzily to the floor in a fit of giggles.

I crept closer to get a better view of her, convinced I had to be dreaming.

The girl's back was turned to me, but she looked about nine years old and was wearing a simple brown cotton dress that reached her ankles. Her hair, braided into two plaits, was fastened with white strips of cloth. Her feet were bare. She was still giggling as she fell flat across the floor. She bent her head back and opened her eyes.

"Oh," she gasped and jumped to her feet. Her face, round and dirty, was stricken in fear. Her almond-shaped eyes fixed onto mine in shock. She cried a soft "No," and then ran to the foyer.

"Wait," I cried. "Please, don't go." She stopped at the door, wrenching its brass knob with her hands and trembling. "Don't be afraid. I won't hurt you."

When she turned her head towards me, eyes still wide, lips trembling, I gasped. This had to be a dream, but the mud on her face, the slightly crooked mouth, the flattened features, and the dark brown skin were all too distinct and life-like to be something manufactured by my subconscious.

I lowered myself onto a nearby chair. For a long time, we stared at each other, not knowing what to do or say. At first, I thought she was as stunned by me as I was by her, but as I studied her face I realized she was watching me with equal measures of curiosity and familiarity as if somehow she knew who I was or had been expecting me. I recalled what the executor told me earlier that day: She will trust you. Was this child the "she" Aunt Abilene referred to? If so, I suspected something a little less fantastic than this.

"Who are you?" I said at last. The girl turned her left foot inward and tilted her head, her gaze still curiously fixed on mine. "Do you have a name?" When she didn't respond, I tried again. "My name's Zarina. What's yours?"

"Lizzie," she said. Her voice was small and faint, but I could hear her.

"Lizzie," I repeated. I said her name again in my head. "That's a pretty name. Do you live here? Is this…your house?"

"No'm," she answered after a long pause. "This massa's house."

My heart caught in my throat. Colonel Montgomery Ewell. And Lizzie––one of his slaves? Struck insensate again, I leaned back in the chair. This had got to be a dream. I scrambled for something else to say. "But you stay here on the plantation."

"I sleep in Miss Cecily's room, up there." She pointed toward the ceiling. "I sleeps on the floor in her room. But this ain't my house. I's just a slave, miss." She furrowed her brow again. "Is you a slave too?"

I sighed, then rubbed my hand across my forehead. I didn't know what to say.

"Is you friends with Miss Abby?"

"She was a relative. Is," I quickly corrected myself, then recorrected myself inwardly. I was so confused even time didn't make sense anymore.

"Miss Abby look after me," she said, drawing her hands behind her back. "She gives me things."

"Oh," I said, pushing the chair closer, "like what?"

She rolled her eyes to the top of her sockets and pressed a finger to her lips. "Like ribbons and buttons and cakes and all sorta nice things."

I searched around the apartment until my eyes landed on the glass shelf where the tiny figurine of a horse guarded a row of books. I went over to it, then brought it back to the dollhouse. When I placed it in the foyer, Lizzie's mouth fell open. The figurine was as big as her. She reached out to touch it, but then drew back her hand. "It's okay," I said encouragingly. She stroked the porcelain horse's neck with a sweet, guileless expression, an innocent despite the horror that must be her life.

"Miss Cecily got a pony for her birthday. Sometimes, when Miss Cecily be tryin on new dresses, I go down to the stables, and Uncle Claude let me brush her hair."

"That must be nice."

"Sometimes," she replied distantly, then wiped her nose with her arm.

I started to ask if Uncle Claude was her real uncle but realized that it was probably a designator of respect.

I asked about the dollhouse. "You mean Whitby?" When I said yes, she nodded and told me it was another birthday present to Miss Cecily. "It's in her room." She gave me a conspiratorial look, then said, "I gotta secret. Promise you won't tell." She fixed me with a very serious expression. I promised her I won't say a word, though I wasn't sure who I would have told. Who would believe me? I wasn't entirely sure if I believed it myself. The seriousness faded from her face as she tried to stifle a laugh. "When Miss Cecily be away, sometimes I come up to her room and play with the house. I ain't s'posed to. Miss Cecily said the dollhouse was only for her to play with. Sometimes, she let me play with it too, but only if she be there too. She tell me if I ever catch you playin with my things––and Miss Cecily got a whole room of things––she says she gonna have me whupped real good. But––" she giggled, "she don't know I sometimes be playing with her things when she ain't here."

Even though I was speaking to a child who was likely over two hundred years old, the immediacy of her rebellious streak and the danger it posed sent a chill through my veins. I started to warn her to stay away from Miss Cecily's things, but even that felt wrong, so I told her to be careful instead.

"Oh, I be real careful. Miss Cecily never notice a thing." I fell silent as she petted the horse, when suddenly, she looked up alarmed. I asked what was wrong. "My mistress comin'. I gotta go." She raced to the door and threw it open. "I be back, though, real soon. Will you be here agin, miss?"

"Of course," I replied, my head spinning.

She smiled warmly and waved goodbye before she stepped through the door and disappeared.

I jumped out of the chair and leaned over the dollhouse to look at the other side, expecting to see her there, racing across the top of the table. Silly, I know, but the entire night had been like an episode of the Twilight Zone. Anything was possible now.

The next morning, I woke up with the sunlight in my eyes. Morning traffic pressed against my bedroom window and the drone of a helicopter grew loud and then faded in the distance. I got out of bed and went to the living room, walking barefoot across the wooden floor to the dollhouse. It was empty, except for the horse figurine where I had left it the night before. I picked it up, then stared distantly toward the kitchen.

At work, I sat distractedly through a staff meeting, more preoccupied with thoughts about Lizzie and who she was than about quarterly sales projections. But it did come to me, as I sat around that long oak table, realizing for the umpteenth time that I was one of two black faces there, that whomever Lizzie was, she and I were located at two opposites, different and yet still oddly the same.

Before I went home, I stopped off at a local Target and searched the children's section. I wasn't sure what among the rows of modern toys that a child from the Antebellum might enjoy, but I took my chances with a few Lego figurines and brought them home with me.

An hour after I had drifted off to sleep, I snapped awake to the sound of somebody calling my name. My heart racing again, I climbed out of bed and ran to the living room. Lizzie was in the parlor of the dollhouse, giggling and waving hello. I had never been so relieved.

"You came back," I muttered.

We spent the better part of an hour talking. She was delighted by the gifts I gave her, though puzzled by them. When I gave her the Lego figurines something strange and mystical occurred. As I passed them one by one to Lizzie, they morphed in size, becoming small enough to fit her hands. I wasn't sure what or how it happened, but then all of it was fantastic. Lizzie shouldn't exist, and yet, there she was, in the children's room of an opulent dollhouse, a child of the nineteenth century playing with Lego figures. As she played with her toys, it occurred to me that they might get her in trouble. Her mistress might find out and accuse her of stealing, so I asked if it was all right if I gave her the gifts. She smiled plaintively. "She ain't gonna find out, Miss." She leaned forward with a conspiratorial look, and added: "I got a secret place." It was a little plot of earth under a large hickory tree behind the kitchen. There she buried an old cigar box that kept her possessions, little things she found here and there on the grounds: buttons that had fallen off of skirts, the feather of a mourning dove, a peg doll, a hat pin, a rusted key, broken comb, and other found objects. She swore she didn't steal any of them––"I ain't no thief"––but only found them and kept them for herself in her little box of possessions. Nobody knew about her hiding spot, not even Auntie Ro, who ran the whole kitchen. And Auntie Ro, she said, knew just about everything. When Mrs. Ewell, the mistress of the house, was having one of her headaches again; when the massa came home drunk after spending a night with his mistress; when someone was going to be auctioned; when an escape was being planned––Auntie Ro knew it all, but she knew nothing about Lizzie's box of possessions. She smiled proudly as if she had gotten away with an impossible thing, though this child was full of impossibilities.

During our time together, I tried to learn as much as I could from Lizzie. I wanted to know how she was able to get into the dollhouse and who she was and why she and Aunt Abilene seemed to connect, but all night poor Lizzie looked nervous and fidgety. She often turned her head abruptly to the side as if she had heard something just out of sight or jumped when I made unexpected moves. She knew the risks she was taking just by being here, and I felt guilty that I was possibly endangering her life. When I told her that maybe she ought to return to her world, Lizzie smiled faintly and said it was all right. "Miss Cecily sleep like a log," she said, thus insinuating that her mistress was only feet away, lying in the same bed that had been replicated for the dollhouse and that Lizzie was now sitting on, playing with her new toys.

While she played, she told me a little bit about herself. She was born on the Whitby plantation, though she didn't know when and had no idea how old she was. Nor, sadly, did she know her mother very well. She saw her only once when she was small. Auntie Ro took her one day out to the fields and pointed her out to her. Her mother was a small woman among the rows of tobacco leaves, but when she saw Lizzie, her face brightened and she quickly waved to her daughter. "She looked so pretty," she said. It was the only memory she had of her mother before she was sold to another plantation further south. She pressed that memory between the folds of her little mind, like one of the objects she kept in her box.

She spent most of her days being a playmate to Miss Cecily. The two girls played on the estate, racing after the butterflies in the rose garden or making daisy chains on the back porch of the house, giggling and trading secrets like two normal friends. Miss Cecily was a good playmate, Lizzie assured me, though it was obvious from their interactions that there was a clear line between the two girls that Lizzie was never to cross. Miss Cecily would often find cruel ways to remind Lizzie of their differences. One day, while the girls were playing with Miss Cecily's dolls, her mistress pointed to one with white skin, blue eyes, and yellow curls, and asked Lizzie if she thought it was pretty. "Oh, yes, miss," Lizzie replied, then Miss Cecily said, "Do you think I'm pretty, Lizzie?" And Lizzie replied that yes, she thought Miss Cecily was very pretty. Then Miss Cecily asked, "Do you think you're pretty, Lizzie?" Lizzie blinked, unsure how to answer, knowing even at her young age the trap Miss Cecily set for her, but Miss Cecily laughed instead, her ugly point made, and continued to play with her doll. Lizzie recounted this story in a flat, matter-of-fact tone that enraged me. I wanted to break whatever boundary existed between my world and hers and give Miss Cecily a shaking of her life. But I knew that was impossible in far more ways than one, so, instead, I did what I thought was better. "I think you are very pretty, Miss Lizzie," I said. Lizzie looked up at me, eyes round as saucers, mouth slightly parted, before a little smile faded the look of incredulity from her face. She played with her toys, consequently gazing up at me with the same secretive smile.

I wanted to know more about Lizzie, but after she let out a huge yawn I thought it was best she returned to her world and get some sleep. She yawned again, stretched her arms, and, with her new possessions hidden in her skirt, went downstairs to the foyer. As she stood by the door, she turned to face me again with a tired smile and said, "Thank you, Miss."

"You're welcome," I whispered as she slowly closed the door.

For weeks I met with Lizzie at the same hour. Her visits were erratic, given how little she could steal whatever time alone she had with the dollhouse to be with me. Days would go by without my seeing her, and then, like an unexpected bolt of lightning, I'd hear her tiny voice calling through the dark.  

I brought her more gifts, little things I bought at a local crafts store––pearl buttons, bits of lace ribbon, a barrette, anything that would make her smile and feel she deserved pretty things. After a while, I began to worry whether I was giving her too many things. I didn't want her to risk getting caught each time she dug up her box of possessions behind the hickory tree. But she seemed so happy whenever I brought her gifts that it made me happy too. After I learned she had a sweet tooth, I brought her food gifts, instead, mini cupcakes, cookies, and candy, but then I worried that giving a nine-year-old child too much sugar wasn't a good thing either, so I gave her fresh veggies and meat from my fridge, a few carrot sticks, celery, broccoli, and deli meats on toasted bread. She accepted each of my offerings with the same eagerness and glee. I could tell she was starving by the way she'd gobble down the food in one gulp. I had to tell her to take her time and chew slowly. "There's plenty more where that came from," I said, and she'd give me a look that was as skeptical as it was grateful. Her thin, spindly frame and hollowed-out cheeks were enough evidence that she wasn't eating healthily as a growing child should. I learned that Mrs. Ewell, who ran the entire estate, apportioned the food out to the slaves, supplying their meager pantries with a few cuts of meat, some vegetables, and grain, but never enough to last the entire week. Mrs. Ewell was also known to dock the portions if the slaves didn't perform as well in the fields or displeased her in some way. She was a stingy and cold woman, but she managed the estate, which she had inherited from her father, with an iron will, and made it quite successful. Slaves were worked from sunrise to sunset, in the hottest of the Virginia summers to the coldest of autumns before harvest, some dropping down in the tobacco fields from exhaustion before the overseer whipped them for insolence. It was a hard, cruel life, and though I had read about and studied it in school, I was still unprepared for the normalization of that cruelty in Lizzie's flat, emotionless voice.

Despite Miss Cecily's occasional reminders of her lot, Lizzie lived a relatively semi-charmed life, though I knew that that would change as soon as she grew up. Either she would be prepared to work in the house, playing servant to Miss Cecily's needs, sent to the fields, or, worse, sold to another plantation and bred like a broodmare. She seemed resigned to this fate as well, and it killed me to hear her be so acquiescent. I asked her once if she ever thought she'd be free one day, and the puzzled frown she gave me shook me to my core.

My life outside of my visits with Lizzie had become mundane in comparison. I woke up in the morning, got dressed, and went to work, struggled to concentrate on monthly sales figures, then came home bearing gifts, hoping Lizzie would return. When she did not, I called or texted Trent and we'd make plans to meet up, but our get-togethers were always tinged with distractions. Whenever Lizzie failed to show up, I worried that something terrible might have happened. I worried for her health, her happiness, for her safety. I had become a caretaker to this centuries-old child, but I began to fear that it would never be enough. She was as locked in her world with all its cruelty, as I was in mine.

Trent started noticing that my mind and heart were not into him. One night, while we were lying in bed after sex, he complained, "What was that? It's like you were a million miles away." I eased onto my side of the bed and let out a long sigh. "You never complained before," I said distantly. "I never had to, till now," he replied. "You used to be good. You used to love it. Now…" He shook his head. After a few minutes of tense silence, he said, "You got a side piece or something?" I frowned at him, "Don't make me laugh." Do you honestly think I'd have the time to, with work, you, and Lizzie in my life?––was what I didn't say out loud. When I wasn't working, I was tracking down antique stores that sold vintage dollhouses and accessories, hoping to find some little gift I thought Lizzie might like. Despite my denials, Trent was convinced. "Who is it?" he insisted. "Please, just don't tell me it's Josh." I looked at him like he was crazy. Josh Perkins? Of all people? Josh was on our sales team. Tall and handsome in a sort of bland way, Josh and I had a mild flirtation that never went beyond a few laughs in the break room. If I ever entertained the idea of fucking him, it buried itself so deep in my subconscious I forgot it. The fact that Trent was jealous was funny too, and I laughed a little, but this only pissed him off. He bolted out of bed. "Oh, come on," I yelled after him as he walked naked into the bathroom. I heard the faucet running. "For Christ's sake, Trent, do you honestly think I'd be into Josh?" When he returned with a glass of water, he barely looked me in the eye, his face sullen with disbelief.

Trent and I had been together for seven months, but were never serious. Sex, a few laughs, nothing more. "Just a thing," we usually said. Now he was getting jealous. My attention was undivided, and he hated that. Trent was selfish, childish, and competitive. We both worked in the sales department at a company that manufactured medical equipment, and he was legendary for his sales figures. We were the only two black folks on the sales team, and we did the usual "150% more" than our white coworkers just to prove we belonged there. Trent was better at it than me (but he never had to deal with clients who'd start thinking certain ways as soon as they heard a woman's voice on the other line). Since he sat next to my cubicle, phone set propped on his head, a mug of coffee in hand, I was privy to his sales genius, to the silver-tongued wonder he wove in his best "non-Negroid voice" to make those company-pleasing sales. He exuded sexy confidence. From the surface, he looked like he didn't give a damn what anyone thought, but he had buried his insecurities deep enough so that even I only saw them from time to time. I used to be the same. Determined, despite the odds. A hustler. But ever since Lizzie entered my life, I started to slack. I wasn't making as many sales as I used to, and my average monthly figures started to decline. My boss called me to his office one afternoon to ask what was wrong. I wasn't doing my usual best, he said, raising an eyebrow and staring at me from behind his huge desk, a condescending look plastered on his ruddied face. I offered him some excuses––family issues back home––and he suggested I take some (unpaid) time off to get my head straight. I stared into his eyes. Somewhere, under those blue irises, was a well-deployed trap. "I'm fine," I said and promised I'd get back in gear. The skepticism in his eyes nearly gutted me.

Now, whenever Trent and I got together, he gave me that same skeptical look.

There were times when I wanted to tell him about Lizzie. I thought he'd appreciate knowing her. Once, when he dropped by my place to pick me up for dinner, he lingered at the dollhouse in the living room while I finished getting ready. I walked in on him examining the detailed artwork, and he straightened his back and said to me with a shake of his head, "Damn. You never said it was like this." After I told him about the unnamed carpenter and how the dollhouse fell into my family's hands, he whistled, impressed, then shoved his hands into his pants pockets. For a second, I wanted to tell him and desperately share this experience with him. But then he said, "With a history like that, I imagine this house would go for a couple of hundred grand. Maybe more," and I kept my mouth shut. Throughout dinner, he kept suggesting I should have the dollhouse appraised. I was sitting on an heirloom. But when I showed a complete lack of interest, he hardened his gaze and said, "Since when did you get all sentimental?" I was reminded of how Lizzie wouldn't trust anyone but me and was glad I didn't tell Trent about her.

As the weeks wore on, my visits with Lizzie became even more sporadic. The Ewells' older daughter had recently announced her engagement. A big wedding was in the offing, and the Colonel and Mrs. Ewell planned to put out all the stops. The Ewells were known for their extravagant soirees. Over the holidays, they threw a ball and invited all the families in the county. Mrs. Ewell would set out an entire menu that the cooks spent days preparing. Lizzie helped in the kitchen plucking chickens, stirring batter, or frosting cakes. Sometimes, Auntie Ro would let her lick the spoon. Auntie Ro wanted to teach Lizzie how to manage a kitchen so that when Miss Cecily married, she'd take Lizzie with her to help run the household. A privileged position like that, no doubt, offered its form of security, but I'd read too much about the lives of household slaves to know it was no guarantee. Lizzie enjoyed being in the kitchen too much for it to ever feel like work, especially when there was so much excitement in the air meant the days weren't full of hardships. She loved Christmas. It was her favorite time of year. The slaves were given the day off to throw their own feast. The men would dig a pit outside the slave quarters and fill it with wood fire and start a barbecue that would last hours. The women boiled okra, mustard greens, and yams over cookfires and Auntie Ro contributed a few pies. During the evening, they sang, danced, and feasted until the late hours. It was a good time, but they didn't last very long. New Year's meant auction blocks, anxiety, and more uncertainty over who was next.

The nuptials were to take place in two months in December (a Christmas wedding), so there was a lot of planning to do. Miss Cecily told her that a dress was being ordered from France. Lizzie was going to help Auntie Ro in the kitchen. The thought of it dazzled her. The wedding cake was going to be seven tiers, she said.

While she was away, I did more research on her and the Whitby plantation. I specifically wanted to know if she was a distant relative. I went over to mom's place for lunch and asked if I could look at the ancestral tree inserted in the family bible she inherited from her paternal grandmother. After she got the bible from her bedroom closet and handed it to me, she asked what this was all about, but I was too focused on the many branches of our tree to answer. I couldn't find a single Lizzie or Elizabeth, but there were plenty of Bethanys. That was a no-brainer. Every other woman in my family was named Bethany. My middle name was Bethany. All of us were named after one of the earliest recorded members of our family, Bethany who escaped slavery just before the war and settled in Ohio. The Bethany whose husband, Hiram Gillis, broke apart and carried the pieces of the dollhouse to Ohio after the war ended.

I stared at the name inserted at the top of the tree, then asked mom what she knew of her. "Only what everybody knows," she answered. "She ran away just before the war, settled in Ohio, married Hiram Gillis, etc. Why do you want to know? Does it have to do with the dollhouse?" She smiled wistfully, then started telling me how much she loved playing with Aunt Abilene's dollhouse whenever she visited her. "That house was a girl's dream," she said as she cleared away the dishes. "Of course, there was all that history, you know, but I didn't think about all that when I was little. You don't think about stuff like that when you're a kid, do you?" I thought about Lizzie and how attracted she was to the house despite its circumstances. Mom turned to me at the sink and then, with a furrowed brow, said, "What's this really about?" When I told her I just wanted to learn more about the dollhouse and its history, she told me that if I wanted to learn more, I should talk to my great-aunt Bethany, one of the many women in my family named after our ancestor. "She was your granddaddy and Aunt Abilene's little sister, so if anybody knows anything it would be her."

Aunt Bethany was only two of my grandfather's siblings who graduated from grade school and got a college degree (Aunt Abilene was the other). She taught for forty-three years in the Contra Costa school district before she retired thirteen years ago. She was a brilliant woman and had become a repository for family history. Mama was right; if anyone had answers, it would be her. However, Aunt Bethany's health had been flagging in the last few years. She was now living in an assisted living community in Walnut Creek. It was a long shot, I knew, but I was willing to take the chance. With my mom's encouragement, I contacted my second cousin Iona, Aunt Bethany's granddaughter, and arranged a meeting with her. After a brief email exchange, Iona and I drove out to see her.     

We met her in a small garden surrounded by white stucco apartment buildings with orange corrugated roofs. Birds sang noisily in oak trees, and a sprinkler jetted arcs of water droplets across a recently mown and mint-scented lawn. Aunt Bethany was in a wheelchair with a wool blanket covering her lap, her gray hair pulled back into a loose bun, revealing sharp features and even sharper, intelligent eyes. Iona wheeled her out where she could get some sun rays. "It's so nice to sit in the sun when the weather's just right," she said. I sat down next to her in an outdoor chair and began asking about Aunt Abilene, the dollhouse, and Lizzie.

"I grew up with that dollhouse," Aunt Bethany said with a distant but fond look on her face. "My grandmama kept it before my sister did. Nobody was allowed to touch it, not even Abbie, me, or our other siblings. 'This Lizzie's dollhouse,' she'd warn us, 'so you keep your grubby hands off.'" She chuckled inwardly at her distant childhood memory, but I sat astonished. So I wasn't the only one. I began to suspect Lizzie appeared to everyone who possessed the dollhouse. I asked what her grandmother meant by "this Lizzie's house," and Aunt Bethany, training her fading eyes on me, smiled faintly, and said, "Well, of course, the girl in the dollhouse."

I barely contained my surprise, but I wanted to scream. Iona stole a glance toward me, and I suspected that this was a sign for her that her grandmother, in her old age, had become senile. I asked her if Aunt Bethany and I had a few moments alone and, with a nod and glancing kiss on her grandmother's cheek, she went back into the rec center. Once alone, I began probing her about "the girl in the dollhouse."

"Oh, I ain't seen her myself," she said, folding her thin, brown hands over her blanket, "and I didn't know of her when the house belonged to grandmama, but I found out about her from Abbie. When she told me about Lizzie, I thought she plum lost her mind." She let out a dry laugh. "Abby always was a bit fanciful, always lost in her head. Used to drive our mama crazy. Instead of helping with chores, she was off somewhere sitting under a tree, daydreaming. But," she said, drawing in a deep sigh, "when she started telling me the things Lizzie supposedly told her, well, it just seemed too…specific…too detailed." She looked sadly at me, then added, "I'm sorry I couldn't have made it to the funeral. I sure do miss her. But I'll be with her in the by-and-by. Oh, yes, soon, very soon." She nodded slowly, then drifted her gaze into uncharted territories. Determined to keep her here with me, I took her hand, and gave it a gentle squeeze. She looked at me and smiled.

"Did Aunt Abilene ever tell you who Lizzie was?" I asked.

"You got the dollhouse now, don't you? Abby left it to you. She told me she would."

"She told you she was leaving the house to me?"

"She knew it had to be you. She didn't have no kids, you know. She never wanted children. She wasn't the motherly type."

"I barely knew her," I said, drawing her back to the subject.

"She said she knew. When you came to visit her––you was just a baby then––but you seemed drawn to that house. Like it was calling you, she said."

I blinked. I had no recollection of that at all. I was desperate to know more. "Do you know if Lizzie is a relative? A distant ancestor?"

"What is that now?" Aunt Bethany asked, her silver eyebrow arcing.

"Lizzie," I repeated. "Do you know if she's an––"

"Oh, I don't know," she said, then, fanning her face with her hand, added: "It's hot out. I'm feeling hot. I don't like it when it gets hot like this."

She ran her hand across her brow and closed her eyes. She was quiet for a long time, the steel barriers of her fading mind falling all around her.

Iona returned with a nurse, who announced it was time for Aunt Bethany to take her meds. The nurse was wheeling her away when Aunt Bethany asked for me once more. I went to her side and leaned down so she could whisper in my ear. "She gonna need your help soon," she said. I frowned at her. "Lizzie? You're saying Lizzie needs my help," I wanted to know, but the bright, lucid sunlight of her eyes clouded over again, and she was back in the safe confines of her entrapped mind.

"Who are these people?" she said, confusion etched on her face as she looked at me and Iona. "Why is it so hot?"

"I'll get you back to your room, Miss Bethany," the nurse said cheerily as she wheeled her away. "It'll be nice and cool inside. And later I'll take you down for dinner. I hear they're making your favorite tonight: chicken pot pie."

During the drive home, I tried to pry some information out of Iona, hoping she might know some things about the dollhouse, but she only shrugged and said that her grandmother, like Aunt Abilene, was old and senile and wasn't making much sense anymore. "You don't believe that stuff about the girl in the dollhouse, do you?" she asked. I leaned back against the car seat and stared out the window.

To be continued…