I don’t know why she hates the dollhouse I bought her. Well, I’m not sure that she hates it really, but she doesn’t play with it like she’s supposed to. I thought I had given her the right thing when she ripped the paper from the box with both hands, tearing one strip down the middle, and taking each side in one hand, flapping them like wings. She ran her hands over the box, flipped it so it tilted against her lap and touched her chest. She found the cardboard flap that fit into the pre-cut slit and pulled it open with two of her fingers, throwing the lid up and put her face inside.

It’s not together, she said. She waited with her face inside the box and shuffled it with her knees. The pieces stirred inside even though they were separated by plastic baggies.

I said, no we have to build it. You want to build it together?

Even though there are small people who came with the dollhouse — a maid, two children, a mother, a father, a grandpa — she never makes them interact. She placed the furniture inside just like it was on the picture in the instructions. She put the father in front of the house, driving the toy carriage with the plastic whip in his hand like a long eyelash. The maid pushes the teacart, stacked with button-like plates and dishes. The mother reads a book that doesn’t open on a green couch in the library. It’s just a blue plastic square that fits in her hand. The children sleep in their twin beds in the attic room. The blankets fit over them in light blue shells, and the grandpa sits in his chair in front of the fireplace reading a newspaper and wearing orange slippers that slide on and snap.

Their positions haven’t changed since the day she put them there four months ago. Sometimes I see her take the rugs from the floor and beat them with the little rug beater. She takes everything out and wipes the floors and walls with a tissue, and then puts them back in the exact same places.

I don’t know how she remembers exactly where they go. I took the directions out of the empty box we keep in the basement and compared her house with the picture one afternoon while she was playing in the sandbox. I looked out the window and saw her filling a toy shark’s mouth with sand and packing it down with a shovel.

I noticed that at night now, she only sleeps on her right side, away from the dollhouse. It could be because the door is in that direction, and she’s made it clear that she won’t sleep unless it is open, but it still bothers me because I used to find her in the morning facing the other side. Now she builds up her pillows against her back like a barricade. When I come in to wake her in the morning, she is facing the open door and hugging herself, because all her pillows are behind her, holding her in, and she kicks all her stuffed animals to the floor.

I wish I had never bought her the dollhouse. Sometimes at night I wonder if she’s afraid of it. If she thinks the little people are trapped inside. There was a story once about a girl who got trapped in her own dollhouse and turned into china glass.

Then I realize she has never heard that story, I never told her. I’m the one who knows that story.

When Jim takes her to school I tell her goodbye and give her a hug, but she never grips her little hands together around my neck like she does with her father. She stands there with her purple backpack and waits until I am finished and then turns out the door. When they leave I start cleaning and eventually end up in her room where I pick up her clothes from the day before and her stuffed animals from the floor. I try to organize them from smallest to largest against the pillows, or stack them on top of each other, or turn them so it looks like they are talking. I wonder if she notices that I do this. Maybe she thinks they crawl back up onto the bed themselves.

I don’t know, I’ve never asked her.

Eventually I leave her room because I’m done with my work, and really, I’m just idling. Sometimes I feel like one of the little faces of the father, the mother, the grandpa, or the children will be looking out one of the plastic windows at me. I check each of them in their separate rooms, but they are all busy and don’t pay attention. The only thing I can think is that maybe it’s the miniature picture, black and white, it sits on top of the fireplace in the grandfather’s study. It is a woman’s portrait, but it isn’t a doll’s face. It’s of a real woman and it’s the only thing the grandfather might be looking at besides his newspaper.

I would turn the tiny frame toward the wall and away from me, but if I came back the next day and it was turned forward again-

I turn over on my side and close my eyes in bed. It doesn’t matter how long I open them or rub my eyelids with my fingers. When I close them all I see is a china doll sitting with her legs bent out straight, a blue dress pooled out onto the wooden ledge of the sandbox, filling and filling her mouth with sand.