Free The Friendship Doll by Kirby Larson Page B

Not so bad at all.

September 1937
    C URTAIN B ROTHERS A UCTIONS
K ANSAS C ITY , M ISSOURI
INVOICE
    Date : September 6, 1937
    Sold to : Mrs. Arthur Weldon Clearbrook, Kentucky
    Items sold:
    One fossil (megalodon tooth)
    Specimen-quality shell, junonia, orig. Sanibel Island, Florida
    Maury’s Manual of Geography
, by M. F. Maury, LL.D, published 1870, (University Publishing Company)
    Japanese-style doll (Yoshitoku Doll Company)
    Total Due: $250.00
    PAID IN FULL

MISS KANAGAWA
    After a long slumber, I feel daylight on my face again. When I was removed from my trunk, I sought out Brigitte. But the Bleuette doll was nowhere to be found. After a moment of gathering my bearings, I realized I didn’t sense any other dolls around me.
    Instead, I was surrounded by what looked to be the debris left after a high tide: piles of shells in assorted sizes, from nobigger than a child’s fingernail to those that could barely be contained in a grown man’s two hands; mottled beach stones, some as rough as a stormy sea and some as smooth as the glass in a Japanese fisherman’s float. There were shelves filled with things I had no names for. And in every slice of space not occupied by any of these items, there were books. And books and books! An endless number of them, stacked and shelved and stacked some more.
    I surmise that someone will be returning to this room; I do hope it’s someone interesting. Otherwise, my time here will be deadly dull. Because, though I am skilled in many ways, I cannot read. No doll can. Well, Miss Japan once told the story of a doll who, when fully awakened, found she could read. But Miss Japan was one to chatter like the wagtail perched in a cherry tree in spring. Such a story surely falls in the category of those about flying dragons and empresses whose kites carry them over palace walls.
    So here I am with nothing but beach flotsam and paper bricks for company. Compared to these, the Madame Alexander dolls were charming social companions. I cannot understand how I will resume my duties as an ambassador in this place. But any samurai knows that life is a balance between understanding and mystery.
    Until the way is revealed to me, I will be patient and steadfast.
    For as long as is needed.

M IRACLE , K ENTUCKY —1937
Willie Mae Marcum
    “No sense sticking your nose out the front door every five minutes. Miz Junkins ain’t coming.” Ma switched baby Franklin to the other breast, burping him quick in between, before he started caterwauling loud as the wind outside. “Not in weather like this. Raining pigs and chickens the way it is.”
    “Come help me with the wash,” Marvel said to Willie Mae. “You could scrub awhile.”
    Willie Mae’s conscience tugged her away from the door. Marvel was getting over the grippe, her face still as white as the paste Miz Junkins used to patch up the worn-out books she brought. And Ma was surely right. November had slipped in all icy-like, and the trail down Cut Shin Creek was steep as a mule’s face. Miz Junkins’ horse,Maisie, was as sure-footed as they come, but it wouldn’t be sensible to take chances. If she got hurt, she’d lose her government WPA job, and then who would take care of those three little ones of hers? Not Mr. Junkins. He’d left a note on the kitchen table that he was headed to California for work but had sent no word—nor money—these past six months.
    Willie Mae took her big sister’s place at the basin. The lye soap stung her chapped hands as she pushed Franklin’s diapers down and up, down and up, over the crenulated surface of the tin washboard. All she could think as she scrubbed was that babies were work, pure and simple, and that was why she planned never to birth any.
    “Suits me fine anyways. Her not coming,” Ma said. She had finished nursing Franklin. Her pats on his back produced a prodigious burp. “Every two weeks that library woman shows up and then I gotta spend the next fourteen days prying that speckled nose of yours