The Fifth Doll
Charlie N. Holmberg
Chapter 1
The chest was one of the finer things Matrona’s mother owned. Its sides were sanded and smooth, edges rounded, lid inlaid with an embroidered satin pillow trimmed with yellowing lace. Though the chest had sat, unmoved, at the foot of her parents’ bed all her life, Matrona could almost pretend it was a rescued treasure from a foreign land, owned by a lady who wore pearls, left behind when some great storybook monster kidnapped her from her balcony.
Matrona blinked the fancy away and ran her hand along the lace before opening the lid, selecting the chest’s cherished contents one by one, determining which of them she would make her own.
It was not her mother who knelt beside her on the rag-quilted rug, but her dear friend Roksana, who taught the nursery school near the center of the village. Matrona’s mother had not wanted to be in the room for the opening of the chest. “Too many memories,” she had said, shaking her head and retiring to the front room to sit in the splintering wicker chair.
“What’s that?” Roksana asked, pushing up onto her knees for a better view of the chest’s contents. Her round belly pressed into the corner of the chest, full with a child that would arrive any day now.
Matrona lifted the stretch of white satin from atop the treasures. “Just extra fabric.” She folded it and laid it beside her. Beneath the satin rested the kokoshnik from her mother’s wedding: a crown of stiff fabric with a bronze sheen, dozens of small silver beads stitched into the tall, looping coils. Folds of red satin fell from behind it, trimmed with tiny brown tassels.
Matrona held the kokoshnik in both hands. It was heavier than it looked. She tried to picture her mother young, her hair as dark as Matrona’s and elaborately braided, her cheeks pinched red, and this headdress pressed over her hairline. The image quickly warped to Matrona herself.
I’m getting married, she thought, tucking the ends of her hair behind each ear—the short bits that did not fit into her braid. Marriage was the one thing that would finally mark her as an adult to her parents, as age never had. The ceremony couldn’t come soon enough. Her own father would perform it. There was no priest in the village, but her father was well versed in the Good Book, and under the eyes of God, that was authority enough.
“Oh, try it on!” Roksana urged, and when Matrona hesitated, her friend snatched the kokoshnik from her hands and pushed the headpiece over Matrona’s forehead, arranging it to her liking before sitting back and examining her work.
“Well?” Matrona asked. It fit well, at least.
“The colors are perfect for you.” Roksana’s smile turned sly as she added, “Feodor will think so, too.”
Matrona chuckled and pulled off the kokoshnik, setting it carefully beside her. “I’m sure Feodor doesn’t care what color my headdress is.” Her engagement to the butcher had been settled last week, and her parents couldn’t be more thrilled. Matrona wasn’t sure if the thrill came from Feodor’s family esteem or from the fact that, at twenty-six, Matrona was well past marrying age, as her mother often reminded her. Needless to say, it would be a short engagement.
Roksana’s slender fingers danced along the edge of the chest. “What else?”
Matrona pulled free a twine-wrapped package and carefully loosed its knots, opening the thick paper to reveal her mother’s wedding dress. It was a long, traditional gown of off-white, with bronze stitching trailing from collar to hem to match the headdress. The dress, too, was heavier than expected. Matrona stood and held the gown up to her shoulders, relieved to see it would fit, though she had always pictured herself marrying in a gown trimmed with black and red.
Roksana stood as well. “Oh, it’s so pretty. I wish my mama had kept hers.”
“She didn’t?”
Roksana shrugged. “Even she doesn’t know what became of it. Try on the gown!”
“Not right now. I’ve chores yet to do.” Matrona smoothed out the fabric of the skirt.
Roksana rolled her eyes and took the dress from her, folding it.
Kneeling at the chest, Matrona picked through more items—a pair of shoes that would certainly be too small for her, a christening dress, a silver crucifix on a chain, a small wooden rattle. Near the bottom of the chest, she found a carefully sewn rag doll the length of her forearm, one that matched the style of the doll she had so often played with as a child, though this one had lighter hair and oval eyes instead of round, with a simple brown dress instead of blue.
Matrona lifted the doll and ran her thumb over the embroidered face, identifying it at once as the reason her mother had chosen to stay in the front room.
“Esfir’s.” She combed her nails through the doll’s yarn hair.
Roksana set the folded wedding gown on the bed and sat on the floor. “Your sister?”
Matrona nodded, turning the doll over once, twice, in her hands. The doll had been made for her younger sister. Mother must have finished it just before her sister disappeared, a mystery no one in the village had ever solved. A newborn babe, only three days old, cannot merely walk away or become lost in the wood, and no wrongdoers had stolen her, unless someone had found a way to hide a growing child in their small village, undiscovered for twenty years. Esfir had simply vanished, or so Matrona had been told. She had been six years old at the time.
Matrona studied the doll. Her mother would have put it into the chest when it became clear Esfir wasn’t coming home. The carefully sewn toy had never been used, yet it still showed signs of age—fading in the dress, stiffness to the thread that held the patterned pieces of its body together. Matrona blinked at the sadness of it, this doll that had lived her entire existence inside a wooden box, never to be played with, forced to be content with what destiny her maker had given her.
Lifting her head, Matrona glanced at the wooden walls of her parents’ bedroom, a sluggish thought transforming it. The room itself became a giant chest at the end of a giant bed, the floorboards beneath the rag rug morphed into fingers that held her just as she held this doll.
Your foolish imagination is playing tricks on you again, she thought to herself. It was exactly what her mother would have said to her. She returned the doll to the box.
“I’ve never seen knit socks so small.” Roksana reached into the nearly empty chest to retrieve a pair. Her other hand went to her belly. “Did you wear these?”
Matrona shrugged. “I couldn’t possibly remember if I did.” She gathered her finds, restored the piece of satin to cover the doll and the other remaining contents, and returned the lid to the chest. “I’ll have to be very careful pressing the wrinkles from this dress.”
“I’ll help you when the time comes.” Roksana stood and brushed off the skirt of her sarafan. “But don’t even think of handling it after muddying up with those cows.”
Matrona laughed. “You sound like my mother.”
Roksana sobered. “Not funny.”
Picking up the pile of wedding items, Matrona gestured to the bedroom door with a tilt of her chin, and Roksana hurried ahead to open it for her. Voices ahead drew her attention, though they were too quiet for her to make out. Curiosity beckoned her toward them.
The wooden walls of the modest front room were decorated with a few pieces of framed embroidery and a simple weaving of the Virgin Mary. Her father’s writing table was pushed into the corner, her mother’s old wicker chair near it. The brick stove sat cool in the opposite corner, touched by a glint of late-morning sunlight from the window—sunlight interrupted by the shoulder of their visitor, Feodor Popov.