The Very Little Princess: Rose's Story

Contents

“I'll Take Care of Her!”

Once upon a time …

That's the way stories begin, isn't it?
Once upon a time
. At least that's the way
this
story begins.

Once upon a time, there was a girl and a doll.

Actually, there was one doll and several different girls, because dolls always stay the same, while girls have a way of growing up and not being girls any longer.

This story is, however, about one moment in time and one particular girl. Her name was Rose.

Rose found the doll in the attic. She had gone there looking for dress-up clothes, something fit for the princess she was pretending to be. What she found, tucked away in a dark corner at the very bottom of a trunk, was the doll.

The doll was tiny. (Rose measured her later with the ruler she kept in her desk at school. She was exactly three and one-quarter inches tall.)

She was made of fine china. Her face was very white and very smooth. Her cheeks were touched with pink.

She wore a flouncy pink gown and lacy pantaloons, and she had a teeny pink bow in her hair. Her eyes were blue. Her hair was spun gold. Rose had never seen spun gold. But if
anybody had managed to spin gold, she was sure the doll's hair was exactly the color it would be.

In other words, the doll was perfect.

The truth is that before that moment, Rose hadn't liked dolls all that much. They have a way of sitting around staring at you that she had never cared for. But
this
doll seemed different.

It was her eyes, for one thing. They looked down and away, as if she might be hiding something. Rose wanted to know, instantly, what a doll could have to hide.

Then there was her expression. It wasn't the usual “aren't I cute?” doll look. Instead, it seemed to say, “Who do you think you are, putting your hands all over me?”

Some girls might find such a look off-putting, especially on a very small doll. But
Rose felt a pang of sympathy. That was the way
she
felt sometimes, too. A snuggle in her dad's strong arms or her mom's pillowy ones felt as right as rain. But once when that old lady at church had spat on a tissue and wiped something off Rose's cheek, Rose had spat back.

Her parents had scolded her all the way home over that one.

But back to the doll.

She was perfect and … well, let's admit it, easy to tuck away into a pocket. So Rose did. She thrust the tiny doll into her pocket and climbed back down the attic steps.

Now, Rose wasn't hiding the doll, exactly. At least, she had no plans for keeping it secret. But she wasn't thinking about showing her mother what she had found, either.

After all, why had the doll been tucked away in the bottom of a trunk? Did Hazel, Rose's
mother, sneak up to the attic to play with her after everyone else had gone to bed? Was the tiny thing a surprise being kept for Sam, Rose's big brother?

Rose smiled at the thought. (Sam was the star player on the high school football team. He would never play with dolls!)

So when Hazel appeared on the second-floor landing carrying a laundry basket at the same moment Rose stepped down into the hallway, Rose didn't think of herself as caught. She hadn't, after all, been doing anything wrong. But she couldn't help laying her hand over the small bulge in her pocket.

Hazel's face was flushed from climbing the stairs. Her blue eyes searched Rose's face, then her hand. “What do you have there?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Rose replied, too brightly, perhaps, to be believed.

“Nothing?” Her mother's eyebrows rose.

“Nothing,” Rose repeated. As if to prove her point, she let her hand fall away from the pocket.

“What's that, then?” Hazel asked. She set the basket down and nodded toward the place where Rose's hand had been.

Rose looked down. The doll was so small, she barely made a bump. What showed was
the flouncy pink gown. A bit of it poked out at the top of her pocket.

“Oh, that,” Rose said. And instantly, her imagination took flight. Rose's imagination was good at flying.

“It's a handkerchief I found,” she said. “A pretty one. But it's full of snot now. My nose has been awfully snotty lately. Has your nose been snotty, too?”

Before Hazel could answer, Rose tumbled on. “I've got some other stuff in there.” She tugged at the top of her pocket and peered in. “There's broccoli. Kind of squished. You gave me too much broccoli last night at dinner. And … and, oh …” She patted her pocket. “There's a dog turd, too. I found it in Mrs. Ratchet's yard, and I thought she'd be happy if I picked it up. It's only a small one, of course, because Mrs. Ratchet's dog is kind of—”

“Rose!” Hazel interrupted. And she held out a hand for whatever might be in that pocket. Considering the list she'd just been given, it was a brave thing to do.

Rose hesitated. She wasn't a girl who gave in easily. Still, with her mother's hand waiting like that, there wasn't much else she could do. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the tiny doll. She didn't give it over, though. She just held it flat on her palm for her mother to see.

“Oh!” Hazel's hands flew to her round cheeks. “Oh!” she said again. Then she added, with what seemed great certainty, “You don't want
that
!”

“I do,” Rose answered. Her certainty was every bit as great.

“But you don't
like
dolls,” Hazel argued. She couldn't seem, herself, to take her eyes off this one.

“I like
this
doll,” Rose told her, still holding it out. “I like it a lot.”