Hilda hated her dolls. She wasn't sure why---they hadn't done anything wrong. It was the way they looked
at her. Scary. Not something she wanted to tell her mom or dad, particularly---they would just think it was dumb. It was something
she locked up inside, the way she locked up the dolls in her toy chest. She filled it to overflowing, pushed them down until they
were as tight as a jack-in-the-box, and then got her little sister to hand her books as Hilda sat on the trunk. Eventually the books
kept the lid down. Now the dolls couldn't get out.
Without her dolls, there wasn't much left to occupy
the long stretch between breakfast and lunch, lunch and dinner, and dinner and bedtime. Hilda, at six, didn't like TV anymore (Barney
and Sesame Street had become so...stupid these days) and it was Sunday; nothing on but noisy men shouting at funny, crying people,
and big boy cartoons. She didn't care much for her three-year-old sister Lizbeth either (she was so immature). Not to mention the
fact that her friends were, as her mother said, "wasting a perfectly good Sunday by doing that Jesus stuff." On Sundays, Hilda's mom
liked to close her eyes, cross her legs all the way to her hips, and make weird noises in front of fat, little bald-man statues.
Hilda glanced at her toy shelves filled with "educational" stuff her aunts and uncles always gave her. They bored her stupid (one
of her favorite Dad sayings)—as if she weren't educated enough, thank you very much! She loved her books, but they were keeping the
dolls in. Hilda brought her eyebrows as low as they could go, flattened her lips the way her mother did and scanned the room for an
alternative.
That's when she saw it.
At first she wasn't sure what she was seeing;
it looked like a long white snake with scanty red scales and a large red nose as it wriggled out from under her bed and slithered
its way through the maze of toys and clothes on the floor. She sat frozen watching it in terrified fascination. It moved quickly in
front of her bedroom door, cutting off her retreat and Hilda backed against the wall as thousands of sharp prickles crawled up her
back, down her arms, and into her face. The white cloth glided around her bed and stopped in front of the toy chest, no more than
a foot from her outstretched legs. She tucked them under herself so quickly the carpet burned her plump little calves.
Hilda knew what it was, but she was having problems grappling with the possibility. It was one of her white knee high socks, one that
had been lost months before. Mom had thumb tacked its pair on the bulletin board above the washer just in case it showed up; Hilda
thought it always looked weird hanging from the board like some tortured ghost. The socks had been Hilda's favorites, with strawberries
embroidered on the sides and bright red toes. When this one rose up in front of her now and began to fill with an invisible arm, Hilda's
little hands began to shake and hot tears fell down her cheeks. She was so scared it was really hard to breathe.
The sock puppet looked twisted and wrong, its upper red lip spotted with dust bunnies and those strange red strawberries dotting the
now dirty gray sides that had once been white. There were no eyes, which made it even more hideous as it looked blindly at Hilda and
formed the red and gray lips into a smile.
"Hello, Hilda." The puppet's voice sounded old, like Grandpa's,
and strained like Daddy's when he had laryngitis. The sock smelled funny, but not stinky like when she would wear it for weeks at
a time. It smelled like the barbeque before daddy lit it and meat that Mom had left in the refrigerator too long.
Hilda covered her nose and began her "I want it!" cry, but this time she wasn't faking. "Who are you?" Her small voice sounded faint
even to her.
"I'm Charlie, Hilda. I want you to come with me so we can play at my house." The sock puppet
smiled at her, but it looked like one of those creepy movies she wasn't supposed to watch, even though her brother let her sometimes
just to scare her.
"I don't want to go with you," she whispered.
"You have to, Hilda.
We have to leave now." Charlie grew longer in front of her and almost reached the top of the toy chest. That smile got bigger and
scarier. Hilda began to sob.
Just at that moment, Hilda's door flew open and Mom stepped in with a load of
dirty laundry in her arms. She spotted Hilda sitting terrified on the floor, the mound of books on top of her toy chest, and the mess
in her room. Sweeping in with the grace of a dancer, she set the laundry on the bed and put her hands on her hips.
"Why on earth would you put all your books up there? They go on the shelves." Without waiting for a reply, Mom gathered the books
and pulled them off the trunk. As soon as she did, the lid popped open with an audible bang and an avalanche of dolls came cascading
down on Charlie, burying him under a pile of rubber hands, arms, torsos, and heads. All that could be seen of the sock was an inch
of red toe. Hilda thought she heard a groan, but Mom seemed oblivious to it as she stared wide-eyed at the pile of dolls.
"What in the name of...." Mom said and then whirled on Hilda. "Honey, you could have been hurt like that. Don't put so many toys in
the box, okay?" She tucked the books onto their shelves as smoothly as a ninja and then brushed her hands against her pants.
Hilda
blinked a few times and felt herself nodding. Her hands were shaking like the horsey ride at Safeway.
Mom
glanced down at the pile and spotted the bit of red. "What's that?"
As she reached for it, Hilda gasped and
jumped up. "No! He'll hurt you!"
Mom plucked the sock from under the pile and threw it on top of the other
laundry where it landed limply. "Don't be silly, Hilda. A sock can't hurt you." She gathered the laundry back into her arms and stared
at the sock on top. "Hey, this is the one we've been looking for." Mom smiled back at Hilda. "Nice job." With that she sauntered back
to the door and looked over her shoulder. "No dinner until this mess is cleaned up, young lady. Get to it."
"Yes, Mom." Hilda scanned her room as if it were a lion's cage.
From then on, Hilda always jumped into
bed from about four feet away so nothing could grab her feet, kept her books in the bookcase, and found a new way to stuff the toy
box without Mom knowing the trap had been set. At Hilda's insistence, a little light was now required every night before she would
go to sleep. The next day when the now matched pair of socks appeared neatly at the top of her drawer, she picked them up with Daddy's
barbeque tongs and stuffed them into one of her purses. She snuck them to the neighbor's empty yard, and buried them as far down as
she could dig, placing a fat, little bald-man statue on top that she had "borrowed" from Mom.
Hilda never
wore knee highs after that. When she grew up, she wouldn't let her daughter wear them either.