‘The Dog I Loved’ by MJ Malleck

Our one-bathroom backsplit was jam-packed with a strict mother, up to seven kids, a hairy and drooly lab–shepherd mutt, and, when the older kids moved out, a paying boarder too. If you were to enter through the front door, which you could only do if you were company and it was Christmas, you would find a room too precious to play in. A couch and two matching chairs that would never feel denim against their golden brocade. Heavy forest-green drapes flanking a plate-glass window, where I thought I’d win at hide-and-seek. Left alone too long in the forbidden room, I scratched at the tiny bits of glass sparkling my bare arms and gave myself a tattle-tale rash. 

The dog I loved was not the mutt, that slobbery, tail-thumping dog that invited petting even when he was eating kibble. The dog I loved was eight inches high and twelve inches long.
 
Once I was eight, it became my job on Saturdays to dust the front room. Before she graduated to hanging wet sheets on the line, my older sister trained me. She showed me how to lay a clean tea towel on the couch and to ‘very gently’ place upon it the Blue Mountain ashtray, the pinwheel crystal rosebud vase, the heavy purple glass grapes with silk leaves and tendrils, and the porcelain dog. My sister, spraying Windex for the last time onto the glass-covered coffee table, was immune to the dog. My sister was most concerned to teach me to (a) not break anything and (b) put everything back in its exact place.