Free House of Dolls by Francesca Lia Block Page A

things were out of her control.

    Madison Blackberry’s grandmother had crocheted the runner that went all the way up the polished wood staircase that led to the nursery with the empty cradle, and she had sewed all the silk and lace curtains at the windows. The dresses she made for the dolls were ornate concoctions,interpretations of styles from every era. There were dresses that made the dolls feel like ice-cream sundaes, flowers, seashells, cocoons, butterflies, angels, goddesses, rock stars, heavenly stars, and moons. In their spellbinding dresses the dolls spent their evenings talking, singing, dancing, and baking tiny play-dough cakes with Guy and B. Friend.
    The dolls also delighted in small things like putting the china teacups with blue roses away in the wooden sideboard, pouring water out of the real glass pitcher with gold filigree into the matching glasses, arranging papers and pencils in the rolltop desk,sniffing the lingering fragrance in the real perfume bottles with dove-shaped stoppers on the glass-topped dressing table, folding their sweaters into the pink-rose paper-lined drawers, and hanging up their dresses on the miniature wooden hangers in the wooden wardrobe.
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    Sometimes Madison Blackberry’s grandmother gave them real lemonade in the glass pitcher, and, instead of a play-dough cake, she gave them one of the real chocolates from her birthday or Valentine’s Day box. The coating crumbled a little when they put the birthday candle in, and they could see the mystery of the secret filling—cream or caramel or more chocolate inside. And for many weeks after, they could smell the chocolate on the brown crinkly wrapper.
    Life was small but good.
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    But then, one day, as things always do—even for dolls—everything changed.

 

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    Madison Blackberry was bored. Her grandmother said that no one should ever be bored, life was too rich, too full; there was always something more to do.
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    But Madison Blackberry was bored in her fancy all-white-and-gray apartment that rose so high above the city that the world below looked less real than her dollhouse. She was bored with her fancy toys, bored without any friends to play with. For the dolls, Madison Blackberry’s boredom was a terrible thing to behold.

    And not only was Madison Blackberry bored, Madison Blackberry was jealous.She was jealous of her little brother, Dallas George, who was the baby and got all the attention and was never punished for scaring her with his toy soldiers. She was jealous of her mother, who sailed out the door on puffy, sweet clouds of chiffon and perfume to fund-raisers and galas, and who never had time to play with or read to her. She was jealous of her father, who, it seemed, didn’t have to do what anyone else in the world said. Who could travel all over the world and stay away as long as he chose and buy whatever he wanted.
    Madison Blackberry was especially jealous of the dolls.
    For many years Wildflower had been kept in a box in Madison Blackberry’s mother’s closet. Madison Blackberry was only allowed to touch her with one finger on special occasions because she was “valuable” and a “family heirloom.” This had caused an early resentment toward Wildflower.
    Even after Madison Blackberry’s grandmother convinced her mother to let Wildflower come out and live in the dollhouse, Madison Blackberry still felt her fingers stiffen when she touched Wildflower. She knew that if anything ever happened to the doll she would have to witness her mother’s anger, and, although it rarely presenteditself, it was not something anyone in the house wanted to behold.
    Madison Blackberry resented Rockstar because she knew, with a young, female doll owner’s intuition, that Rockstar was smarter than she was.
    Madison Blackberry resented Miss Selene because of her golden curls, her pointed ears, her lavender eyes, and especially