Hazel
Written by Alison Aldrich
Installation by Linda Scholly
Dark and windowless, the closet still felt comforting, tucked away on the third floor, so well obscured that Hazel had barely found it herself. Not a soul could find her here, and the thick plaster walls and heavy woodwork that had made her feel imprisoned in their new home now blessedly muffled the wrath of this mad storm.
I'm too old for this, Hazel thought to herself as she cradled one of her beloved dolls. She had very recently moved to this grand estate, no longer the young girl who often escaped her grim reality through her imagination, but tonight she needed the comfort of the only thing that felt like home, her collection of dolls. She needed to feel like that young girl again and the hope she once knew.
The storm had beseeched her to awaken, and at first she forgot where she was, as one sometimes does in an unfamiliar place. It must be the monster in the basement, she thought sleepily, but the unfamiliar roar persisted, growling louder and bidding her to flee the comfort of her canopy bed. Still in the haze of sleep, recognition only caught her as she opened the heavy oak door to her bedroom. The long train ride... the winding drive through the never-ending estate…the house so enormous that it looked like a castle, and finally, Uncle Silas... Hazel seethed at the thought of him, for he did not deserve the title. He had used most of her inheritance to buy this grand mansion, forcing her to leave behind all she had ever known. The horror of it propelled her out the door and up the never-ending stairs to the hiding spot she had sought upon their arrival.
Hazel opened the door to the small closet and entered, careful to use her slipper to keep the door slightly ajar because she had noticed that the doorknob was loose. As soon as she stepped inside, each of the dolls took turns greeting her. Even in the darkness so complete that she could barely see their silhouettes, she knew each one, holding them, feeling the comfort of their worn garments and remembering the stories they shared. They knew her, too, and seemed to gather closer, sensing her sadness. The one she cradled, Elizabeth, always came to her first. Hazel had named her after her Grandmother Elizabeth who had raised her and given her most of the dolls. Anyone else might have feared this dilapidated doll, but Hazel only felt its strength, something she needed more than ever now.
Silas had forbidden her from taking her dolls, and until she came of age, her selfish “uncle” made the rules. Hazel surprised herself by pleading with him, a weakness she tried never to show, but he laughed, mocking her, saying, “They are only dolls!” To Hazel, the dolls loved her like she loved them, like a family. Each one held fiercely to her precious memories, keeping them safe. She reveled in the details of their stories as one would a beloved sister or mother.
Hazel finally relaxed a bit on the floor of the closet, leaning back and letting those stories envelop her. She could hear her Grandmother's voice, calling her “Poppet,” her endearing nickname for Hazel and for the dolls. A gifted storyteller, and an eccentric to be sure, Elizabeth sat with Hazel for hours, “learning the stories of the dolls,” as her Grandmother always insisted that Hazel understand. Like the dolls, the stories survived for generations. How she longed to see the glow in her Grandmother's eyes as she described a particularly delicious part of a story. Those eyes, more cat-like than Hazel’s, still reflected her precise color. Hazel recalled with a shiver that the stories sometimes frightened her as a child, like the one about her great, great grandmother who was accused of being a witch, but each contained a lesson to help Hazel build her own story.
Hazel’s story seemed written now, and not by her own hand, but by that of a man not even related to her by blood. After Grandmother Elizabeth died, Hazel passed like a hand me down to Silas, a stranger. She knew only that her Grandmother loathed Silas, accusing him of marrying Hazel’s sickly Aunt only to access the family money, but perhaps in desperation, Hazel hoped her Grandmother had been wrong. In fact, her Grandmother had held back describing the despicable nature of this narcissistic ne’er-do-well. His narcissism meant he ignored her, a blessed respite, and left her in the care of Nanny, but they both had to watch helplessly as he spent her future and her family’s legacy. As a minor, Hazel was powerless, and Silas knew it.
In the darkness, Hazel tried to manage her even darker feelings with the satisfaction of having defied him, hiding her dolls here where nobody would ever think to look, let alone find them. Who would look anyway, she mused. Only nanny and Silas lived here, rarely even passing one another in the winding corridors. Silas didn't seem to have any friends. He had probably swindled them into enemies.
Hazel’s eyes grew heavy, but she couldn’t allow it to take her into that blissful unknowing. Nanny would be looking for her come morning, and she did not want to expose her hiding place to anyone, not even her. She remembered then that they were leaving in the morning. A great aunt had asked that Hazel visit her in Boston, something she should be looking forward to but could not muster the optimism. Perhaps if she brought along a few dolls, packed in her suitcase, that would help. Hazel opened the door and faced the wrath of the storm again. She had been deliberately careful not to close the closet all the way. The handle was loose and might have come off altogether, locking her in her hideaway.
Hazel descended the dark stairs to her room with its enormous windows, shaking still. The lightning intermittently lit her room, ever so dark in between as it overlooked the great lake. She jumped in bed and drew the down tick over her head. Hazel wanted to scream, but nooone would hear her. Finally, fitfully she slept, and when consciousness came again, the light told her of the morning.
The light of day did not lessen the storm as much as she expected. Hazel peered out her window and saw that the waves still lashed at the beach, just as she imagined the panicked carriage driver’s whip in My Antonia, as the wolves chased them and caught them, one by one. Daily since her arrival, Hazel gazed out this window and tried to imagine a boat taking her away, so she noticed now when something seemed out of place. She couldn’t tell what it was, only that it hadn't been there before. Fighting the depression that had descended on her like the weight of a ship's anchor, keeping her at this window, she ran down the stairs in her flowing white dressing gown, through the maze of rooms and out the back door.
She recognized it fairly quickly: a poppet! She did not know how it had arrived on this lonely shore, and she did notice the open trunk on the water, bobbing about like a tiny coffin. Instead she began to dig the half-buried baby doll out of the sand, feeling an intense need to rescue it. She wrapped it in the bottom of her long gown, but the lake water dripped down anyway.
Hazel took her sodden treasure back inside the house, careful to avoid Nanny, and practically flew like a ghost up to her hiding place. She could hear Nanny shout that the car would arrive soon, so she had to hurry. Outside the closet in the world of light, Hazel could see that this doll had been beautiful, with hair and eyes similar to her own. One of its eyes was stuck open from the sand and water, but she could fix that when she had more time. Quickly, she introduced this new beloved to the others, naming her Hazel, after herself. Then Hazel asked the dolls to care for this newcomer while she was away. Finally, she asked a few of them to join her on her journey and gratefully accepted the volunteers, running once again down the stairs to hide them in her suitcase.
Hazel didn’t want to linger any longer than necessary, so she dressed quickly and met Nanny in the kitchen. Nanny had packed them brunch so that they would not be late for the train. The car to take them there was already waiting. Somehow, Hazel thought that Silas would tell them goodbye, if only because he must have felt happy to have his victory to himself. He didn't show his face, and Nanny and Hazel opened the huge arched doorway to meet the driver.
The postman had braved the storm to deliver the mail, but the storm silenced them until they were safely in the car. Through the window, he asked Nanny if he should look in on the house. “No,” she replied. “Mr. Warren told me not to allow anyone to bother him.” With that, they drove down the long winding road through the estate’s 50 acres.
Unbeknownst to them, Silas watched from his window, to be sure they were gone. With the girl out of the way, he could enjoy his estate and plot how to keep it all once she came of age. Irritated, he noticed her wet footprints everywhere and decided to follow them, certain she had hidden something from him, perhaps jewelry to add to his cache. A lazy man by nature, he almost stopped following the trail of sand and water when it took him so far upstairs, but curiosity coaxed him upward. The trail ended in what appeared to be nothing more than a hidden closet. Silas opened the door and tried to adjust his eyes to the dark. Perhaps the force of his irritation when opening the door and stepping in propelled it, or maybe the wind interfered, but whatever the reason, the door closed behind him, leaving Silas to stumble in the darkness. He wondered why this young woman would ever go to such a place as this, as he turned to open the door again for some light and shook the handle, only to feel its heavy knob fall into his hands.
“What's this?” he exclaimed, baffled by what had transpired. He who laid traps did not become trapped! He convinced himself that the knob once reinserted would work again, but it did not. So he pounded and kicked at the door, thinking his brute strength could even make a dent in the thick wood doors that had impressed him so. Panic grasped him then, and he slammed his full body into one wall and then another, and not even a bit of paint fell from the thick plaster wall and the great beams beneath them. He screamed and cursed and expected the door to heed his commands and falling to the floor to beg when it did not.
Then his eyes, somewhat acclimated to the darkness, caught a glimpse of other eyes and still more eyes, one set that looked like Hazel’s eyes, but that couldn't be.. and another that looked cat-like. Horrifiedat the realization of what Hazel had been hiding, he laughed long and hard, to release some of the terror, telling himself, “They are only dolls! They are only dolls!”