I often have dreams of a giant baby doll head toppled on its side in the desert. Her cheap plastic skull is dented, crusted, and tanned with a grainy mist of sand that darkens her deep cracks. Her dull brown eyes stare to the right. The sky is a murky rainbow and blends from black-blue to firebrick red as the approaching darkness overcomes the golden light of evening. Sometimes the head glows in a bloody radiance shared by an explosion of fat clouds, like entrails on the horizon.

I see myself from behind as I stand before it—a tiny dark shadow no taller than a blade of dry buffelgrass. My clothes billow in an acrid breeze. I wave my hands high above my head and scream into the vast plain, desperate to be seen. Maybe in the dream I’m hoping to catch the eye of the girl who once carried that doll down a dusty path behind lonely Uncle Scott’s crusty stucco house, the lumpy sides curdled like old milk.

Perhaps she’ll notice me if she doesn’t stare down at her jelly-sandaled feet as she watches the dust puff up like smoke. The sun squeezes her bare arms, her round cheeks, her forehead; and she’s tired. Ahead of me, the immense doll head flickers in and out of existence. She might see me and turn off the trail. Possibly, if I jump high enough, he won’t catch her alone and bathe her in dust as blood runs down her legs, dyeing her clear sandals as red as the horizon. When she returns home, her jaded mother will see the smudges on her ripped sundress and the dirt stuck to the blood on her legs.

She’ll ask the girl why she wanders off all the time. Where is her doll? Why can’t she hang onto anything? We’re staying with Uncle Scott for free, she’ll say, and beggars can’t be choosers.