A Roomful Of Teddy Bears

real friends.

Well, I hadn’t got any friends until Lulu. Lulu first appeared the night she resisted her father for the first time.”

I noticed, with great interest, that Francine had switched, at least once, from first to third-person without batting an eyelash.

“Anyway, she broke free and scampered ‘tween her father’s legs and ran like the dickens all through the dark house. Boy, you never saw such as dark house as my daddy’s place on a winter night. So I run on until I come upon the shed, my nose stinging, the tip colder than a glass bottle of cola straight from the fridge, my flannel nightgown torn… I forced open the latched, tin door, slipped inside, and climbed way up into the rafters. I guess she was safe then. Daddy was too drunk to come looking for me way out amongst the rafters in the shed.

That’s when Lulu came. She just sorta stepped out of a ray of winter moonlight falling through the spaces in the wooden ceiling… first she wasn’t and then she was! I wasn’t scared or surprised – I’d sorta always been expecting her. She held me, wiped my tears, showed me how to wish upon a loose eyelash, and then stayed with me through the night and a good spell into the next day.

Her friend Lulu told her – told me – that she would always be there so long as I never told a single soul about her. That was fine by me. I didn’t want to share her with nobody and I knew Daddy would not have been too pleased were there suddenly another mouth to feed