The Ceramic Smile

I was eleven, living with my grandmother in the dusty outskirts of El Paso, when the dream came to me. It was a dry summer, the kind that turns the sky into a bleached bone and cracks the earth into a mosaic of thirst. My constant companion was a doll named Missy, a soft-bodied thing with a porcelain head and a painted grin that never faltered, no matter how many times I dragged her through the dirt or dunked her in the irrigation ditch. She was my shadow, my confidante, my charge.

In the dream, I stood on the rusted iron bridge that spanned the Rio Grande, the one that creaked under the weight of old pickups and whispered stories of the migrants who crossed before dawn. The water below was brown and churning, a violent current that ate everything it touched. I saw Missy floating face-up, her empty eyes staring at the sky, her arms outstretched as if begging for rescue. She was moving fast, carried by the surge, and I saw the distant drop where the river tumbled into the arroyo, a roaring cataract that swallowed all things.

I ran across the bridge, my sandals slapping the hot metal, and leaned over the rail on the other side. There she was again, closer now, her painted smile mocking my panic. Behind her, the water churned with other dolls—cheap plastic ones, their arms and legs torn—along with discarded soda cans and the bloated corpse of a dog. Missy hit the fall and vanished, and I woke with a scream lodged in my throat.

I didn’t tell my grandmother. She was a woman of hard silences and religious fervor, and she would have called it a premonition, a sign. Instead, I tucked Missy into her cradle by my bed and tried to forget. But the dream came again the next night, and the next. Each time, the bridge was older, the water darker, and Missy always met the same fate, tumbling over the edge into a white chaos.

On the fourth morning, I found Missy on the floor, her head cracked. A thin fissure ran from her temple to her chin, splitting her smile in two. My grandmother eyed the damage, her lips a tight line. ‘The devil’s work,’ she muttered, and took her outside to burn. I screamed, clawed at her arms, but she was resolute. Missy’s porcelain face melted in the flames, the paint blistering and running, until she was nothing but a blackened shard.

That night, the dream changed. I was on the bridge, but Missy was not in the water. She was standing beside me, her cracked face tilted up, her eyes now fully black. ‘You left me,’ she said, in a voice like the grinding of stones. ‘You let her take me.’ She pointed to the rushing water below. ‘Now you take my place.’

I woke to find my bed soaked, as if I’d been dragged through the river. My grandmother’s house was silent, but I felt eyes in the corners. I went to the window and saw the bridge outlined against the moonlight, and on it, a small figure—a doll, perhaps, or something else—waving at me. I didn’t sleep again that week.

When I finally forced myself to approach the bridge, armed with a cross and a kitchen knife, I found no doll. But as I peered over the rail, the water seemed to rise, and in its swirl I saw a shape like a child, reaching up, a smile painted on its face. It was not Missy’s smile; it was something older, hungrier. I stumbled back, and the bridge gave a low groan.

That night, my grandmother woke me, her face pale. She held a piece of paper, the charred edge of an envelope that had been left on the doorstep. Inside was a photograph: me, standing on the bridge, and beside me, Missy—but there was no crack in her face, and her eyes were alive. In the corner, scrawled in a child’s hand, were the words: ‘You forgot me. I’ve come home.’

I have not been back to that bridge. I have not slept with a light on. But every night, at the stroke of three, I hear a soft tapping at my window, and a voice that whispers my name through the glass. I never look. I only listen, and pray that the morning comes before I break.