My Tenth Birthday

I will never forget what my father said to me on my tenth birthday. Dinner was over and the table cleared. My two brothers were seated ... looking like they couldn't wait to make an escape. Mom came into the dining room from the kitchen wearing her yellow and black shirtwaist with the white polka dots, carrying the candle lit cake she had made for me. Three presents were settled on the slightly gravy stained tablecloth. Dad looking, bored and disinterested, waited anxiously to have a cigarette. I was wondering what treasures lay beneath the carefully wrapped gifts that mom had picked out. After the required birthday song, I focused on ravaging the first box with the smiling paper clowns grinning up at me. "I will destroy you," I thought .... remembering the dream I had had two previous nightmares ago. I lifted out a box with a clear cellophane window. In it peering up at me was the most beautiful porcelain doll I had ever seen. "Thank you so much, Mom! I love her!" "It's really a shame that she will never love you!" Dad exclaimed with a smirk on his face as the unlit cigarette held between his two fingers pulled him out the front door. Mom had a blank look on her face. The boys slithered off and headed to their room. I slid out the back door, feeling slightly ill, to check on the polliwogs in the creek bed behind our house, ... my refuge. I went to bed that night holding onto the doll with the beautiful eyes and the soft, cloth body. "I will take care of you" I whispered, drifting off to another night under the small dark, canvass circus tent. -This is a writing prompt from Salon Magazine.... "30 Days of Writing" The first sentence was the prompt and it has to include the words 'yellow' and 'treasure' My brain was kind of frozen just writing to nobody in particular so you have become the recipient. Wanna do it with me?