Thylias Moss

I loved discarded  dolls  with  broken  limbs, handicapped, imperfect, certainly not new. I, an overly ambitious nine-year-old, even planned to rescue broken dolls, though hardly prepared to rescue anything, girl who picked dandelions fully tasseled, from aging white field of grandmother heads. 

I had a plan that never happened, even website that also never happened as it was part of plan. Leave a previously discarded  doll from a thrift store on city bus, with instructions for  finder to post a photo of doll on website and story of the find, and their sense of being rescuer, someone heroic.

What I liked about her is that she could only repeat what was said to her,  I really wanted her to generate speech. When I asked her if she had a soul, she said, “Do I have a soul?”  I could not answer that. Worked best to say what I wanted to hear: “I will not zip my lips and make  transparent Saran Wrap book too clingy,  tell-all book of magic markered words refusing to stay on single  page, echo even in seeing, double vision.”.

Little  Miss Echo never told a lie unless I did. I preferred her over talking birds, which sang wrong words.  I did.  Perfect child unable to speak for self, so I spoke for her. Not sure when I broke her leg to deform her into dependence.

Tape recorder in her chest where a heart should be. Heart beat-box.