My China Doll
Mama says he’ll come back. I know he won’t come back. If he were going to come back, Mama wouldn’t cry. Would she? I wish you could see. No. I wish I couldn’t see. Now, you be Mama. So what if your hair is brown. Look, Mama was sitting like this. Pull your feet up. Put your hands on your forehead. But you can’t. Her shoulders were shaking, like this. The newspaper was in front of her, on the floor. I can’t cry like Mama. Daddy surely could. Uncle Nasser can too, if he wants to. That’s why grownups are grownups; they can say, “Don’t cry, Maryam.” Or, I don’t know, they can say, “Why did you take the matches, girl?”
OK, so I took them. I don’t want to light any fires. Do I? Daddy is good; he never says “Don’t!” But then why did he say, “Don’t let me see my Maryam cry”? I want to, but I know I can’t. That is, if I could cry like Mama cries, for Daddy, I would. But I can’t. Do dolls cry too? I know you can’t; not like Mama, like Grandmother, like Uncle Nasser. If you can, then why didn’t you cry when that brat Mehri broke my doll? I mean my china doll.