There are three things I hate more than anything in the world. Three things that I find terrifying, horrifying and down-right creepy:
- Porcelain Dolls,
- Clowns, and
- Puppets.
When I was ten, a family friend returned from a trip to Germany with a gift. I quietly hoped for a dozen Kinder Eggs or a ballerina music box. You can imagine my horror when I opened the delicate package to find my worst nightmare in my hands: a porcelain clown puppet.
The marionette, clad in the finest blue and green silk, looked up at me with a murderous teardrop beneath each eye. I lifted it from the box. At nearly a foot and a half long, it swung back and forth on its handcrafted wooden swing set, mocking me.
I smiled and said thank you because I wasn’t raised by wolves. When the time came for me to carry the haunting harlequin to my room, I did the only thing I could. I hid it.
I pushed past the overalls and Spice Girls shirts and nestled the thing in the farthest corner. I laid it next to my Furby, fully expecting them to band together and plot my demise — avenging every Tamagotchi I didn’t keep alive.
I didn’t go to my parents with it.
My mom was sick so I had developed a habit of trying to solve my fears for myself. I knew she’d always want to intervene but, with cancer, I never wanted to add to what she already carried.
Meanwhile, my dad was far away. After my parents divorced, my mother moved my sisters and I closer to the hospital where she was getting treatment, thousands of miles away from where my dad worked. I always imagined him as a knight in shining armor, but he felt too far away to rescue me from any towers.
Whatever prompted the divorce, the cost to us all was time. I saw him twice over the span of four years. It was the summer my mom tried an experimental radiation treatment. My parents teamed up to protect our childhood, prepared to hide whatever happened.
With time, I forgot about the maniacal mime. We moved. Elementary school became…
