My sister Debbie loved playing with dolls, but she didn't have much love for black dolls. Now this was back in the early 1970's, when black dolls were usually white dolls painted to look black. They usually had too large lips that were too pink, Weird colored eyes that bugged out, and cheeks stamped with circles of rouge that looked like red polka dots. If they had hair, it was either molded to their heads, or weirdly textured so it couldn't be combed or styled.
In other words, they were ugly dolls. And my sister did not like ugly. She wanted a doll that looked like her.
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| My sister, around 1974. Wasn't she adorable? |
Most of the family accepted her preference. After all, she was just a little kid - about five years old - and everyone went out of their way to make sure we knew our history, our heritage, and that we were beautiful, so her preference wasn't a case of self hatred. She simply preferred white dolls.
There was one exception to the rule, however. Del, who was our mom's boyfriend, just could not deal with the fact that Debbie didn't like black baby dolls. He wanted her to have a black doll she would play with and love. No black doll in his eyes meant no black pride. He also, unfortunately, had horrible taste in toys.
Most of the dolls he picked were really ugly, so Debbie never played with them. She preferred her Cher doll, her Barbies, her Baby Alive...and she preferred them white, which frustrated Del to no end. So he'd buy more dolls, which she would reject. The cycle, it seemed, would never end. Until...that Christmas.
Another thing you should know about Debbie: She loved Christmas, and could not stand surprises. She made detailed, cross referenced Christmas lists (complete with pictures torn from catalogs and sales papers), knew exactly what she wanted and made sure you knew what she wanted, and would conduct detailed, tenacious interrogations in an attempt to find out what Santa had in store for her. She'd search the house high and low for her gifts, so you had to either wrap her presents then hide them, or you had to have an inpenetrable hiding place. She would not sleep on Christmas Eve because she was too excited about Christmas morning - and she wouldn't let you sleep either. She was the first one to the tree, the first one to open gifts, the first one to start playing with her toys.
So it should've seemed odd to us that, on that Christmas morning, Debbie slept in and we had to wake her up. It should've seemed odd that she took her time getting up, not making a mad dash for the living room, diving under the brightly lit tree, tearing into gifts and giggling with glee. It should've seemed odd that she simply sat down and waited for us to hand her a gift to open that morning. No one seemed to notice the morning of that Christmas. Not even Del, who eagerly handed her his beautifully wrapped gift.
"Here you go, big girl," he said with a big, proud smile, "I know you're going to love this one."
That Christmas morning looked perfect, almost like it had been ordered from central casting. The lights on the tree danced and sparkled magically. Sunlight was filtered through dense snow clouds, giving the street outside the living room window a graceful blue haze. Snow had started to fall, dusting the trees, the lawn, with a soft flocking that seemed to glow.
In that picture perfect moment of snow falling, gift wrap flying, Del's eyes dancing with anticipation, Debbie opened up a package that held...
yet another ugly baby doll. Still, Del was undeterred. As she pulled the doll out of its box, he let out a laugh of joy, and gave Debbie a big hug.
"So, big girl," he said proudly, "Whatcha think?"
Debbie looked up at Del, then back down at the doll given to her with love. Then, as the snow fell, and sun's rays filted through the clouds, and the lights danced, and a scene of Christmas joy reached its apex, Debbie, with a tear in her eye, opened her mouth....
And promptly threw up. All over the her nightgown. All over the floor. All over one of her unwrapped presents. All over the doll. Then, she dropped the doll, looked at Mom and softly said, "I don't feel good. Can I go back to bed?"
Mom took her to the bathroom to clean her up and get her back in bed. I cleaned up the mess around the tree, including the doll. Del sat in stunned silence, convinced the doll made her sick. Took us days to convince him otherwise.
Turns out Debbie had a slight fever and a virus. A couple of days later, she was back to herself again and gleefully opened the rest of her gifts. I don't remember what happened to the doll, but I do remember that was the Christmas I learned how to stifle laughter without letting it show. From that day forward, whenever Del got Debbie a gift, he bought her any and everything a little girl could ever wish for.
Except a doll.
Tomorrow's story: The year Barbie invaded Christmas, or how Cream Sherry makes everything better.
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