http://www.barcelonareview.com/41/e_nr.htm
Chapter One. Beginnings.
I never fit in with my family, kind as they were. As a youth, I never really found friends. Acquaintances, perhaps, but no one I could consider my soul mate. I had a dark imagination; I came to a nihilistic outlook too early to express my thoughts properly. Or perhaps I should say an existential outlook, for although I was painfully aware of mortality, I did not reject the idea of truth altogether. I felt that there was a truth for myself that I dared not examine —the stakes of self-examination felt much too high for me at that age. So I crawled about with a black haze around me, speaking as little as possible, refusing to participate in any of the social customs that seemed to me then a desperately thin patina of etiquette in the face of our inevitably animal natures. While my sister made friends and started to attract males, scampering about coquettishly, I developed a battery of nervous tics and obsessive-compulsive rituals.

http://www.postroadmag.com/Issue_5/Fiction5/Reifler.htm
" What's in the box?" Mother asked. She was standing by the closet door. She held the door open with her hip. I looked down at her brown shoes with their spongy soles. I had not heard her come up the carpeted stairs. I had been caught. "It's her, isn't it," Mother said, "it's Sugar."

http://mrbellersneighborhood.com/story.php?storyid=1538
We found the doll right there on 16th Street in Brooklyn, outside the Baptist church (now, don’t get too excited, they’re boring white Baptists--no big hats or electric guitars anywhere in sight). The doll was wrapped in a black plastic garbage bag. Only its feet were showing, chubby little feet in high-button boots.