HOMEWhen Someone Saw What You Were Hiding and Showed Up Anyway6 min read

The Doll With the Scar

Her six-year-old came home from her dad’s with a doll. A woman had given it to her, the girl said. Her ex lived alone. The doll had a small scar on its chin — the same scar she had gotten at fourteen. The scar exists in no photograph.

“Every girl who gets this doll has something special that isn’t always visible,” the woman had told her daughter.

She made a doll with my scar on its face and gave it to my daughter. I think that was meant for me as much as for her.

She asked her ex about the woman. He went quiet in a way that told her he knew more than he’d say. His aunt, he finally said — one she’d never met, who lived two streets over, who he’d apparently talked to more during the hard years than she’d realized. She doesn’t know what he told her. She doesn’t know what the woman understood from it. She just knows someone made that doll with her face in mind.

Guilt or Respect or Something Harder to Name

A colleague took credit for her work. They’d both been professional about it for eighteen months — civil, careful, unremarkable. Then the colleague recommended her for a major project to the same people, describing what she’d taken as evidence of her capability. Didn’t tell her. She found out from someone else.

Whether it’s guilt or respect or something in between, she’s decided it doesn’t matter. She has the project. They’re civil. What she notices is that she’s stopped waiting for an apology.

She’s not entirely sure if that’s growth or just fatigue. She’s not ready to find out which.