My daughter has this rubber mannequin head. It’s the size of a real, actual human head. It has long, silky blond hair that she combs and practices her French braiding technique on. It has all the delicate features of a real person, with elaborately painted light green eyes and full red lips that she once applied makeup to. The makeup never came off, so the mannequin ended up looking like a drag queen. And it’s just a head, no body, just a sizable noggin with a lot of hair and a long, slender neck.

We sometimes play this game in our house. It doesn’t have a name. It’s just a game where we hide things. It doesn’t have a start or an end. It just begins. Someone randomly starts it up in the hopes of annoying another member of the family, and it usually isn’t planned. I think sometimes it happens by accident.

Like that time a rogue navy and white striped sock ended up in my husband’s clean laundry. He handed it to me and said, “This isn’t mine.”

“Well, it’s not mine,” I said, throwing it back at him.

Thus began our game of hiding the sock. We’d sneak it under pillows, underneath piles of underwear in drawers, or inside closets, just to playfully get under each other’s skin. That one lasted quite a long time. Maybe a couple of months.

A few years ago, we played this game with a fake, plastic pile of dog poop, stashing it in various spots to surprise the kids, like in their lunchboxes, on the floor in their rooms, or tucked into their shoes.

I’m not sure who started hiding the mannequin head, but suddenly that mess of blond hair was everywhere. She began to make her way all over the house, turning up in bizarre places like on a shelf in the pantry or inside the shower. While most of us got a kick out of it, the mannequin head really bothered my oldest son.

He wasn’t so into the game anymore. He claimed her face creeped him out. Her eyes were weird, her makeup nightmarish. Every time the mannequin head found its way into his room, he threatened to shave off all her hair, making his sister scream and cry.

Eventually, the game started to wear on my husband too. He complained that being startled by her staring back at him from the kitchen cabinet at five a.m., half-asleep and reaching for his coffee mug, was getting to be too much.

So one day, I moved the mannequin to a shelf in the laundry room and didn’t bother to tell anyone. A few days passed, and the game was over.

Eventually, my daughter asked me what happened to her mannequin.

“Your brother didn’t like it,” I said. “She weirded him out.”

“Why? But I like her,” she complained.

“Sorry,” I said. “I think the game’s over.”

“Okay.” She frowned.

I took her hands and squeezed them tight. “How about I try to braid your hair, instead?”

Open: Journal of Arts and Letters

O: JA&L