Summary

Jesse finds a picture of a Thumeblina doll from the 1960s and recognizes it as the doll she used to own: Ethel. When Jesse, formally known as Sissy, went away to Harvard, she packed Ethel in her trunk with her other belongings, and she still has that trunk with her now that she is an older woman. She worries she is going to have an anxiety attack: something that is not new to her. The trunk smells like her mother’s perfume. Prince, Jesse’s pet cockatoo, steals the doll, but Ethel manages to get it back. Jesse wonders if Ethel’s conversations with her as a child were just her imagination. Jesse is a writer and public speaker.

Jesse remembers asking her father if she could change her name to Jesse, and he agreed. She chose an...