Hazeltina and Gareth went to the dump every Saturday afternoon. They referred to it as “shopping at the mall,” which meant perusing through discarded items on weathered shelves a step away from the dumpster bins. May-Linda had gone with them before but had been embarrassed by their childish glee over an unwanted vacuum cleaner, recipe cards, and a set of hot rollers with the dust of ages. They’d retrieved a radio, a fan, and a thickly warped volume II encyclopedia from other outings. They kept their finds in one of the eighteen “seaside” displays on the miniature golf course their family called home amidst the mountains.

May-Linda watched them from the end of the driveway with folded arms. They ran into the adjoined entryways and down the long dirt road to the highway. The two kicked up gravel as they leaped across the road and disappeared behind the booth at the dump’s entrance. She returned to the lighthouse to resume reading a book from her latest visit to the library. Before long, she heard her siblings huffing and puffing with Gareth barking orders to Hazeltina, “Go right – no – my right!” May-Linda peeked from the lighthouse’s minuscule observatory deck and saw them hefting a toy house like a three-tiered cake.

“Careful,” Gareth cautioned as they ascended the spiraled steps, scraping the sides with their find.

Within a minute, Hazeltina’s backside entered the small doorway, followed by Gareth. A dollhouse stricken with mildew wobbled in between them.

“Lay it down in three, two–,” Gareth said, but Hazeltina lowered the wooden structure a beat early. It landed in the middle of the floor with a light thud.

“This is the best shopping deal yet!” Hazeltina said to May-Linda, her cheeks flushed and shiny, resembling a fresh sunburn. She planted her hands on her hips. One side jutted out toward the new treasure. 

“It sure is!” May-Linda said, flipping her book over to inspect the house.

“It came with this,” Hazeltina said, taking a deep cigar box from the toy’s attic area, its contents rattling inside. She flipped the lid open to expose furniture and a bundle of cloth dolls. “There’s one for each of us: you, me, Gareth, Mommy, and Daddy.” She pointed to each of them, then toward the small office where tickets had been sold but where their parents slept while they built the “real” house farther back on the land.

“This will keep you busy,” Gareth said, placing a hand on his hip.

May-Linda eyed him, and her right eyebrow peaked upward. “When did you think you could tell us what’s up?” She stood, her head bent over to avoid hitting the ceiling inside the display. There was no arguing about who was taller or older.

“Not my thing,” he said, hands up ending the argument. “It’s hot up here. I’m heading out,” he said. Within two steps, May-Linda saw the backs of his soles kicking up dust from the pathways between the exhibits. She shook her head and crouched by her sister, marveling at what her siblings had found. Never mind that she was twelve and her sister was eight. Age wasn’t going to diminish the awe they held.

Hazeltina busied herself placing the furniture in the rooms. Extra objects, including a chest and seamstress dummy, were placed in the attic. Below it was three bedrooms and a boxy bathroom with a ceramic clawfoot tub. The first floor housed the living, dining, and kitchen.

“This could be the real house Daddy builds for us,” Hazeltina said, placing a bed with a thin mattress into the cloth-parent bedroom. She lifted a piece of fabric with small, puffy squares as if it were a worm to inspect. “Look! A quilt like the ones Mommy makes!” Then placed it on with a pat.

“Made,” May-Linda corrected. “She needs to get her sewing machine fixed.”

May-Linda examined the parts in the case. Although they were standard pieces of miniature furniture, there was a likeness to them. She held a creamy dresser with gold sprawling leaves up to the light shining through the small window. “It’s as if someone shrunk our things. This is a copy of my bureau.” The actual one was on the opposite end of a barn used for storage. “Guess you and me are sharing a bedroom again.”

“That’s okay with me,” Hazeltina said. The house was close to being furnished. 

“I have an idea,” May-Linda said. Together, they ran to the barn, searching for the Christmas box. In the sparse sun that seeped inside, they searched the cracked and bulging containers that had been packed and repacked countless times.

When she located the bins marked in thick black marker, she rummaged for a knot of white lights. Hazeltina gasped. May-Linda loved to wow her baby sister. It was like she was creating magic. Back at the lighthouse, the tiny bulbs were woven through the rooms as best as possible and held with layers of masking tape–her mother’s default way of keeping things organized. When May-Linda plugged the cord into the wall socket of the lighthouse, in the waning sunlight, it was otherworldly.

The family had moved to the miniature golf course at the tail-end of spring, with the impending winter as a deadline for a livable structure. It was possible for them to live on the foundation temporarily as they constructed the actual house. In the meantime, and being that it was July, the kids had the option to sleep in most of the exhibits.

The lighthouse, along with the pirate ship Gareth claimed, was one of the larger displays. May-Linda preferred it for its observatory window, but she and Hazeltina had tested the houseboat and the oversized sandcastle, too. The desert island was good for star-gazing, and the buoys on the dry waterway were home bases for games of tags or pretending they were swimming through invisible waters to the other side of the playing field. There was no question where they would spend the night.

At sunset, the stars appeared, and so did their parents to bid them goodnight. Their mother had cooked fake chicken nuggets by the fire pit, the first completed project since they had moved. She marveled at the house in the center of the room with May-Linda’s and Hazeltina’s deflated sleeping bags curled around it.

“This reminds me of the dollhouse I had when I was a little girl,” she kneeled on the floor to peer inside. “Everything is set perfectly.” Hazeltina had tacked up a mirror the size of a box of floss in the bedroom. Each doll was tucked under the square of a quilt in their respective rooms.

“Don’t they look like us, Mommy?” Hazeltina asked. 

Their mother laughed. “I guess they could resemble our family. This is my hairstyle?” she asked, holding up the parental doll with brown yarn hair in a stiff, curved ponytail, defying gravity.

Hazeltina shrugged. “It may be that long by the end of summer.”

She kissed them goodnight. “Is your brother still sleeping on the pirate ship?” The girls nodded, and she descended the stairs. Shortly thereafter, the sound of gravel and dry grass crunching reached their ears as she walked away.

They fell asleep in the heat among the ensemble of toads and crickets competing. As the beginning of night stretched out, the songs were fewer and farther in between. When a long stretch of quiet entered the room, a diminutive bump caused May-Linda’s eyes to pop open. She shut them again and listened, but realized there was nothing.

From the room’s corner, a faint radiance appeared. One of the Christmas lights in the bedroom with the two girl dolls glowed brighter, then dimmed. May-Linda sat up and yanked the string of bulbs out of the wall before lying back down in the dark.

Moments later, there was a small, indecipherable noise from the dollhouse–a swish–stomp, swish-stomp. She pulled the musty sleeping bag over her head until the sound became inaudible and drifted off to sleep.

Editor: Lucy Cafiero