The Girl in the Alley

There was once a girl who lived in a wooden box in an alley. She kept her box neat and cozy, stuffing makeshift pillows made of scrap fabric in one corner, and small toys she would make out of bottles and sticks in the other. She was queen of her little alley, jumping out to scare her neighbors in good sport and playing with the dogs in the backyards.

No one minded the little girl, and no one seemed to care too much about her either. The nameless girl was all too content being left alone to rule her kingdom.

She did not know where she came from. If she thought long and hard, she could remember a woman with long brown hair… And there was a song the woman sang… but it was all quite fuzzy to the little girl, and she didn’t much care to remember the fuzzy bits. She decided that it was entirely too much work to remember something that wanted to stay forgotten.

One day, a nice old man with a curly brown mustache walked down the alley, tipped his hat to her, and asked, “How do you do?” Curious, she asked him why.

“Why what?” asked the man.

“Why do men tip their hats like that?.”

"It's the polite thing for gentlemen to do," said the man behind the mustache.

"Oh," she thought for a moment. Polite seemed like an important word she ought to know. This new word scared her terribly, how many other words were waiting for her aquantance? The thought seemed rather silly to her.

"I love my alley, and I love my box." She said as a matter of fact. "I don't have to do polite things for anyone."

"Is that so?" The man asked amusedly, “Do you rule this part of town with an iron fist?”

"Yes," she said with a decisive "humph."

At that, the mustache said a polite "take care, little queen," and the girl stuck her tongue out at him. Much to her chagrin he chuckled and walked toward Miss Templeton’s carriage house, and she never saw him again.

The little girl carried on in her little heathen way, but she could not forget the man (or that word) no matter how hard she tried. She jumped in puddles on rainy days, an activity she normally found most diverting, but she still thought of the mustached man with the hat who insisted on being polite to her. Would he think this is a polite thing? She wondered as she stood in the puddle. She played with Baxter, the fluffy collie three carriage houses down from her tiny box and would tip an imaginary hat to him. He would wag his tail in response.

One day…

She ventured to the end of her alley…

She looked left, and she looked right. A great many people and carriages were on the street. Gentlemen walked in sharp suits and hats carrying canes and umbrellas. Women with parasols and long skirts sporting big floppy hats walked arm in arm with each other and smiled warmly to her if they spotted her. Some of the floppy hats had feathers! She might like to be a feather collector someday, she mused. She wondered if the birds who gave their feathers for hats were in cages at zoos or in the wild. Maybe someone goes exploring and finds feathers from rare birds. She would be good at picking out feathers for hats and finding rare birds, she thought.

She stood at the edge of the street and looked back into her alley. It was safe and the same, it was her kingdom and she felt large in it.

She looked outward onto the busy street, feeling rather small and insignificant…

With a heavy sigh, she stepped out of her alley and never returned.