Standing next to the cholla, my daughter blends in, her frizzy, blonde hair matching the pale hue of the plant. Both emit a peculiar glow in the afternoon light, an ethereal yellow that boldly contrasts red earth and blue sky.

She tugs at my sleeve, repeats her question and, because I’m a good parent, I tell her the truth. I believe young kids should always be told the truth. Lies are useful for when they’re older, when they’re more like us. Lies are, after all, stories we adults tell ourselves, tell each other. But this—this here—is what I tell my daughter. This is the story of Teddy Bear.

During the wet season when Joy was five, her mother caught the scarlet sickness and grew frail, slowing down the clan as they trailed a mammoth herd to higher elevations. Before her eyesight dimmed completely, she wove a poppet for Joy, wrapping maize husks over ponil fluff for the body and limbs, inserting dried devil’s claws for hands and feet, and attaching a cactus tuna face with black river pebbles for eyes. The girl carried the poppet everywhere. She slept with it, ate with it, even spoke to it, and, at times, the doll was of a mind to speak back.

Since they were together so much, the poppet saw what Joy saw, and the two of them watched as the family buried the mother in a cairn of rocks. As the stones piled up, their outline took on the shape of the mother, with two arms, two legs, a head, and a torso, and Joy found it fitting that her mother and the poppet should resemble each other. She hoped to look the same someday, too, perhaps when she was a little older and a little taller.

Joy’s clan halted their march when the mammoths reached fresh grass, but not before the girl and her poppet came to have matching blisters on their feet. Game in the prairie was plentiful but hard to bring down, so the men spent the evenings chiseling spear tips and practicing their throws. By day, her father and elder brothers hunted, relying on othermothers to tend to her needs. Though no bigger than a toddler herself, Joy was too mature to linger with the other babies for long, so she wandered about with her poppet, often for hours at a time. No one missed her. She’d reappear at camp, footsore and hungry, prompting one of the matriarchs to toss her scraps of food. It was enough. As long as she had her poppet, she felt joy in her bones.

What Joy lacked words for, she pantomimed. At dawn, she’d show the women how cruel her brothers and father were to her at night, but they averted their eyes from the bruising, didn’t want to see. She’d demonstrate with her poppet what they did to her after dark, but they just laughed and called it silly games. The plants and the animals listened to her, though, and Joy spent more time away, exploring the wilderness. The birds showed her which berries were good to eat, and the lizards sniffed out fresh water for her to drink. The sun kept her warm, and the wind kept her dry. The cottonwoods kept her safe, and the poppet kept her company. This was enough; joy flooded her heart.

One day, when the weather was too poor to hunt, the brothers found themselves marooned at home. Since Joy’s father had taken another woman into his tent, the children were put outside and left to fend for themselves in the rain and the cold. Bored, with nothing to do, the boys stole Joy’s poppet and ran off with it, pausing long enough to show her they could be cruel to the doll, too. One brother gouged out an eye, another ripped off a foot, and they threw it high over their heads, not caring if it hit the ground. The girl followed as quickly as her chubby legs allowed; she was slow but her stamina was good, and she tracked her siblings mile after mile, never stopping. Grasslands turned to open scrub, and, underfoot, sand replaced soil. Joy had never ranged this far before, certainly not on her own. She didn’t know where she was, but she was determined to save her poppet.

It was getting on dusk when the brothers grew hungry and listless. They were tired of Joy pursuing them but, more than that, they didn’t want her to tattle to their father, so they decided to play one last game. They hurled the poppet far and wide, deliberately landing it in a thicket of peculiar-looking cholla, then turned on their heels and fled. There was no way for Joy to rescue the doll other than to crawl through the branches, weaseling first her head and shoulders into the small clearing, then hips and legs. Each cactus possessed a central trunk, and, off this trunk radiated countless branches, each one branching out several times more. All of the stems, from very small to very big, were covered in dense rows of spines, downy-looking but quite sharp.

Joy had never seen this kind of plant before, didn’t know what it was called or how it grew, but she soon discovered how easily the spikes detach as little balls, how easily a ball punctures the human body, how doggedly each ball latches to hair, clothes, and skin. It took over an hour to reach her poppet and, by the time she did, she was covered head to toe in golden spines. Joy had her doll but not much else, as her coverings were sliced through and stiffened with blood. Beneath her, the desert floor withdrew its heat, and, above her, the moon and stars withdrew their light. The only answer to her calls came from the coyotes, who yipped and howled their songs of death. Still, there was joy to be found in her breast, for, nestled within the ring of cholla, she had her poppet and her poppet had her and, together, they fell asleep one last time.

“Did she die?” she asks, hands on hips, elbows pointed outward, her little arms posed as defiant triangles. I sigh inwardly. I’d forgotten how fascinated kids are with death. Can’t they sense we don’t want to talk about it?

“Well, it’s said that, if you look close enough at the center of a stand of teddy bear cholla, you might catch a glimpse of the girl with her poppet, still sleeping.”

“I don’t believe you,” she says, eyes darting back to the cactus.

“You know I’d never lie to you, right?”

“But there’s nothing there!”

“Are you sure you’re looking carefully?” I ask. “Really, really looking?” I’m doing the right thing, I tell myself, questioning her like this; it’s important she learn to study her surroundings, to be aware of what’s around her and what might be lurking.

Rather than answer, she darts past the first cholla into the ring, dodging spikes like they’re nothing more than rays of light. I close my eyes and wait for her voice to find me.

“Wait, I see something! I think it’s—oh, it is! Mom, mom, come look!” Of course I go look. I catch glimmers of her red and white dress through the branches. She’s dancing in a tight circle, clutching something pint-sized to her chest. It’s her favorite teddy bear, the one we gave her at age three, the one the dog snatched that one time and we had to restuff, the one we drove back to the movie theater for, the one that got lodged in a tree and her father had to fetch the ladder, the one we had to mend so many times because of that neighbor boy that I kept a stash of matching brown fleece, the one that always came out sparkling clean in the wash.

She lifts it high above her head with both hands so that it’s safe from the spines, asks me to hold it for her. I do. I hold it in my hands, feel how the woolen nubs have worn down from years of rough loving. The black button eyes are filmy, riddled with cataracts, the plastic having degraded a little. It smells like her, like my daughter, like datura blooms after a late afternoon monsoon. It smells like right now.

Her name was Joy.

It was said she asked the teacher for a story on the ride there and played cat’s cradle with the other girls. It was said they got there in time for the raptor demonstration and that it was a beautiful, sunny day. It was said she asked a docent if they could dig for dinosaur bones in the sand. It was said there was a beat-up blue sedan hovering near the school buses in the parking lot. It was said some older boys were teasing her for being short, which made her cry. It was said she bought an ice cream cone from one of the sidewalk vendors. It was said she asked a bearded man on the walking path if she could pet his golden retriever. It was said she sat under a cottonwood for a while, looking at longhorn beetles in the shade. It was said she was seen talking to a friendly-looking woman in the restroom. It was said her teddy bear was found over by the hummingbird exhibit. It was said her footprints led past the gates and into the desert. It was said she liked the cholla best of all.