Significant Object: Doll ($5)

Kurt Andersen met Rob Walker, co-editor of Significant Objects, at Vintage Thrift in Manhattan to pick out three objects for our contest. The doll reminds Kurt of Tim Burton. “Kind of frightening,” agrees Rob. “It’s old enough that one of the eyes is sort of deteriorated. It’s hovering, in my opinion, right on the verge of being garbage. But it’s five bucks, so...” (Garbage is expensive in New York.)

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April 12, 2012 04:12:44 PM
:

Brooke

:

The doll sits and stares blankly at me from the shelf above my sewing machine. It was the sentinel for my grandmother in her sewing room in the dark, cavernous house she occupied before her health declined and eventual death. I don't know where she acquired that moppet or if she stitched its wardrobe. She taught me how to sew. She allowed me to use "sharp" scissors when I was only three. We created dresses and outfits for the doll she gave to me when mother was in the hospital giving birth to my sister. Where did that doll go and why do I have this strange conglomeration of trash?

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April 08, 2012 11:28:35 PM
:

Dave

:

So yes, it’s true: I went to a back-alley occultist. He said he could erase all the regret and longing and all that crap, remove all my memories of my ex, and he said the cost was just one finger. Well, that and $52.50. ### I should mention that I found the guy through Craigslist, and to be honest, he seemed like the sort of shoddy occultist that you find through Craigslist. He’d set himself up in this barred-window storefront off of East Carlson Ave., and what a store it was: Red light bulbs screwed into all the lamps, some second-rate Santeria bric-a-brac, he’d even set out a stuffed raven on the desk. I mean, he was really trying hard to make it seem creepy – going for a real Vieux Carre voodoo vibe – but the overall effect suggested nothing more than the sadly impotent faux-evil of some freshman Goth’s basement apartment. ### But then he took me through a beaded curtain into a room that was legitimately scary. Because it wasn’t trying to be. Because it was utilitarian, contained only what it needed: An iron and an ironing board. Covered in a tarp. A tarp on the floor. Bolt cutters, Karkov vodka and some generic Percocet… and this creepy little doll (and again, it was creepy because it wasn't obviously creepy; it had rainbow suspenders, even, and nice little stitched smile; but there was something secretly terrible about it). He said I just had to hold the doll while he said some words and cut off my… ### I left immediately. Of course. I mean yes, I was desperate, but not that desperate. I’d gone there as a lark more than anything, maybe a funny story to tell, right? But what really had me sweating on my car drive home was that I knew, just for a second, standing in that room, I was actually considering it. Going through with it. And the fact that I could take my own romantic troubles that seriously, be so myopic, let someone actually affect me that much? Ridiculous. ### But the thing is, that was my first real heartache. You know the one. You’re 18 and you imagine that you’ll never be the same, some part of that hurt will always be there, blah blah blah. And maybe those things are true – but it’s really not that big of a deal. You won't be the same and that's okay, right? It's life! But I didn’t know that then. ### And I was at a friend’s apartment this one night getting really drunk (I admit, I was getting drunk A LOT at the time), and the apartment happened to be close to the occultist’s place, and of course that was the night she happened to finally call me back. Saying she really wanted us to be able to be friends but we couldn’t ever be together etcetera etcetera. You know the drill – we’ve all had it said to us, hell, we've all said it to others. ### But again, I just didn’t know very much. I can’t even estimate how much I imbibed after I hung up on her. Found myself wandering around outside... ### It’s probably good that I was that drunk, actually, because at least I don’t remember the procedure. ### But when I woke up in the morning, I was almost as horrified by the doll as by the state of my hand. Horrified because there was, as I said, something so quietly creepy about the doll, and I had no idea my dollars and finger would actually have me own the damn thing. I didn't know I'd be taking it home. And also, I was horrified because written on the back of the doll's little tag were instructions telling me how I could replicate the spell myself: An endless written reminder of just how gullible and desperate I had been. ### It’s safe to say that night was the biggest mistake of my life. But not for the reasons you think. It wasn’t because the occultist was a quack, wasn’t because the procedure didn’t work – no. It was mistake because the procedure was a success. I never really thought much of my ex ever again after that evening, and when I did, it never hurt. The occultist was true to his word ### Here's the thing: Over time, getting older, I think most people learn to be a little more guarded, a little less overly-ardent; most importantly, I think people learn to take themselves (even in matters of love) just a little less seriously. Even when wronged, people survive by learning to be a little less maudlin, a little less solipsistic. A person is just a little more careful the next time, and the next time, and even if it all doesn’t work out, you can say, "Ah, to hell with it. Whatever." It’s part of actually being an adult, I think. ### But see, being able to numb yourself, being able to just make the pain go away with a simple sacrifice, it can be addicting. And the sad part is, in that way, you don’t really learn. You can get hurt wantonly, and hurt others wantonly, too, and what does it matter? It can all just go away. ### What I mean is this (and this is also why I have to get rid of this very, truly magic doll [spell included with purchase)… ### I had to type this manuscript with my toes.

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April 08, 2012 11:26:44 PM
:

Corona

:

Allow me to introduce myself.###The fly-est of the flys.###Simply the best.###More groundbreaking than language itself.###I’ve got five on it, and a penny too.###Luck? Fuck is that?###You’d never guess who built me,###more craft than Mr. Rogers.###Superstitious much?###Raised by wolves in North America.###The next line of X–men, I see the future and the past.###Smile now, never cry later.###You can never measure this treasure.###King Kong can’t even touch my swag.###A combination of Jagger and Jay–Z.###I don’t need hands to control this.###Back of the palm type shit.###Beyond words, beyond encyclopedias.###I’ve been around the globe.###I’ve hung with the Pope.###All weather, all sport.###More pop than corn kernels.###Crispier than KFC.###No beard required, game is too solid.###Rocking harder than Freddy Rubble.###I alter realities, I crush dreams.###More steam than Leo D.###Hotter than the sun.###So crispy, Icarus said “hi.”

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April 08, 2012 11:20:20 PM
:

Brian

:

Let me start off by saying, this all happened because she cut me off. I was just trying to make a right into the gas station when she flew around the right side of my car (yes, she was trying to pass me on the right, which I’m pretty sure is illegal). So she almost broadsided me because she just HAD to get to wherever she was going ten seconds sooner.
###
I was already in a bad mood that day, so I flipped her off. She saw me do it in her rearview, and as I pulled into the station, I saw her change course and peel out around the block so she could circle back to the station. Apparently, she wanted to have some words with me.
###
So I’m there filling up and she comes flying into the station, screeches to a stop diagonally across, like, three parking spaces, jumps out of the car, and starts marching towards me, scowling and pointing her finger.
###
“Look—”, I said, putting up both hands in surrender. I was going to apologize. Honestly. She was clearly wrong, but I wasn’t interested in fighting.
###
But “look” was all I got out. She went OFF. It sounded like she was ripping me a new one in Italian or something.
###
And then she abruptly stopped, turned away, and got in her car and left.
###
And that’s when things got weird.
###
I watched her pull out of the station, and then…I shrunk.
###
I seemed to be no more than a few inches tall. I could still see and hear, but I couldn’t speak. And I was completely immobile.
###
After about two days of being stuck at the gas station, frozen next to my now giant car, they came and towed the car away. I heard someone say something about it being “abandoned”, and then it was gone.
###
I stayed for another day or two, almost getting run over by cars more times than I could count, until some guy picked me up, stared at me for a few seconds, then threw me in his back seat.
###
Long story short, I ended up here—it appears to be some kind of thrift shop. I got a glance at myself in a mirror one day; it looks like I’ve been turned into a doll—a pretty ragged one.
###
So the moral of the story is…man, I don’t know. Don’t give the finger to someone because they might be a witch who’ll turn you into an ugly doll?
###
Eh, I guess there’s no moral. But I’d really like to not be a doll anymore, so if you know someone who can cast a reverse spell to undo this, that would be fantastic. Tell them to come see me—I’m on the display all the way in the back of the store, third shelf from the bottom. It’s the thrift shop that’s on the corner of…um…
###
DAMMIT.

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April 08, 2012 11:06:26 PM
:

Meral

:

We weren’t allowed to throw that doll away, and even if we pretended to leave it behind in the playground, it always found its way back to the top of our dresser. We must have spent hours tossing in bed, the fear keeping us up, the fear of opening our eyes in the dark and finding its beady eyes staring right back. Those uneven black spots drawn on that small, hard head. Unblinking, its face blank, a red line mouth like a bleeding cut. No wonder the three of us, now grown, still have faint violet circles under our eyes.###

That doll had been a gift from Cousin Marie, a thoughtful middle school student who took on an extra credit assignment when I, the oldest of the three “baby cousins,” was born. As Marie did her work, my mother was lying in hospital for days after my monstrously stubborn birth. Twenty-four hours of labor followed by days of recovery, but still the visitors came. Round after round of aunts and uncles, all of them clamoring to see the first baby in the family in a decade, would lie to the nurses and pretend to be the proud grandparents. “That baby didn’t want to come out! Must be comfortable up there!” they would joke as the nurses waved them into the ward.###

When Marie came to visit with her parents, she had to lie and say she was my mother’s kid sister to make it past the waiting room with all those exhausted, sweating familial clumps. Reaching the maternity ward she trailed in slowly after her parents, her eyes half-shut, a trick she had learned in last semester’s health class. If you had to see something disgraceful, better to see only a little of it. ###

Sneaking closer to the bed, she handed my mother a misshapen gift tied with a yarn bow. Those beady eyes met my mother’s the moment she opened the parcel. “Oh, a doll--” Cousin Marie, eager for praise, finished the thought. “A doll for the baby! I made it myself.” My mother’s weak smile gave out. She looked down again at the doll, her newborn daughter’s first, and the damned ugliest thing you’ve ever seen.

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April 08, 2012 10:35:47 PM
:

Jeannie

:

The Talisman

Anita pushed her cart over the checkered hospital floor with a rhythmic, labored gait. She limped slightly thanks to her left knee, and the cart she had tonight did too. "Nothing works perfectly," she used to tell her children. Tonight she whispered this to the hospital's children as the automatic door shut too quickly, catching the edge of her cart and piercing the tranquility of the NICU at night.

###"Shhh, back to sleep," she whispered to Zachariah, the closest infant, though he was motionless and deaf to the world in his isolette. "May the Almighty make you strong."

###From the pouch of her uniform, she took out the aged, white-faced doll, the one she would no longer enter this place without, and blessed him. She'd made the doll from scraps, many years ago for Sonia, the kitten-sized infant who had been pale and wheezing desperately into the tubes that smothered her pinched face. Sweet Sonia, who could've been a child of the old country. Anita gave the talisman a ghostly-white face, to drain the death from this child. She'd touched it to Sonia's forehead each night.

###The doll seemed to work. As the nights ticked away, Sonia's breaths grew slower and calmer and her color no longer matched the white of the doll. One night the cart was empty, save a few crumpled white blankets still warm from the embrace of young life.

###Since then Anita used the doll to bless every infant as she scrubbed her way through the NICU, unless of course parents or nurses were nearby. The nurses were suspicious of dirty things. The parents seemed like blessing enough, most of the time.

###The weakest of all the infants right now was Chelsea, whose young parents had been weeping at her side nearly every night. Anita clutched the doll in her apron each time she rolled past with the cart, hoping some of the good luck might catch on from afar. Tonight her mother lay slumped in a chair, relieved from tortured consciousness. Anita left her cart many steps away, cursing the pain in her knee and the noise of her imperfect body. Chelsea's forehead was open for blessings. Anita had the doll firm in her grasp, readied for its curing powers, when heavy footsteps shook the floor. She backed away just as a team of doctors charged through.
###

"Her heart rate's dropping," one of them bellowed.
###
"There's not much we can do." Another threw up his hands.

###The young mother stirred and sobbed.###

Anita held the doll up behind them, but none seemed to notice her. The doctor held a piece of paper up for the mother, who wouldn't look at it but only buried her face in her hands, knowing that a piece of paper couldn't help.

###"I help, I help," Anita heard her own voice say, coming so much slower than her thoughts. She'd never quite mastered the language. She held the doll to the child's face and was just beginning to say a special prayer when the doctor smacked it away.

###"Get out of here!" The doctors shouted, and Anita was escorted through the heavy, imperfect door for the very last time.

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April 08, 2012 10:25:20 PM
:

Jill

:

Last year, when Cancer broke into our house, crept into our bedroom, and held a knife to your throat, I froze. You, so much braver, staved off the inevitable for nearly a year, letting cancer skulk about in your liver, then root for plunder in your bones. Meanwhile, you padded around our house in pjs and slippers, teaching me how to tuck sheets like envelopes around the mattresses and how to clean mirrors with a soft T-shirt, yours. The dog and I followed behind you, nodding our heads, silent, always looking over our shoulders, fearing more intruders. “Chuck,” you called me, because my old white bathrobe belted tight around my waist looked exactly like a karate costume. “Chuck, you’ll have a black belt in survival when we’re finished here.” You meant: when you were finished.

###Did you wonder why I didn’t kick-chop our intruder’s head?

###Month two, we notarized our will—assigning money and cars to our children, two daughters and an only son. That night, I left the door unlocked, and the flu wandered in. It climbed into our bed, with you, me, Cancer. It curled up beside the dog. It shuttered my lungs, and I swear to you, I willed myself to die. Before you. I slept without blankets; stood outside in the rain; took cold, brutal showers.

###Meanwhile, you continued our lessons. You taught me to flip utensils onto their feet in the dishwasher so their food-crusted heads peeped over the basket and got a thorough scrub, and to add a little vinegar to the laundry to brighten whites, especially my bathrobe, which I was wearing most of the day by then. You showed me coupons and the grocery store because you’d always done the shopping.

###Month four, Cancer swam like so many piranhas into your bloodstream. Our beloved children visited on the weekends—with tape dispensers and pads of paper—sticking their initials to chairs, lamps, candles, clocks, our belongings they wanted. I welcomed a stroke then, went limp in one leg, blind in one eye. The dog started sleeping under the bed, afraid of all of us.

###You stayed calm, persevered, taught me Campbell’s soup, frozen dinners, mac and cheese. “Chuck,” you said, “don’t forget to eat after I’m gone.”

###Sometime in month five, while the rest of us were sleeping, you grew attracted to the knife at your throat, and because Cancer promised to make it quick and clean, you packed your bags and ran away with him. After the burial, our kids came and took some of their property; I didn’t need two chairs, two lamps, two of anything, they said. I lurched round the yard, down the hall, about the kitchen, angling my good eye always toward the dog so I didn’t run him over. I washed my robe nightly so it smelled like you every morning.

###Honestly, the house was so empty, I would have welcomed the company of more thieves.

###In month eleven, our kids scolded me when I wore my robe to the grocery store, where I couldn’t remember if I needed peanut butter, glass cleaner, vinegar. Did I buy them last week? In the mirrors, cloudy without you, I saw a man I didn’t recognize—some guy named Chuck, his white costume moth-eaten, his arms stick-thin, his skull round and naked as a ping-pong ball, and his face a junk heap with one working eye and one beater.

###The dog didn’t know him either. He bared his teeth, snarled.

###Soon, our kids will come for the rest of their belongings. They will laugh out loud at the cupboards stocked with 15 bottles of Windex, 21 jars of Jiff, 12 jugs of vinegar, and 30 boxes of mac, a plunder of groceries. They’ll curse the year’s worth of daily papers crowding the guest room, the hall, the bath. They’ll play tug-of-war with our sofas and tables and linens.

###The dog, all gonzo, will clamp his jowls around my arm, my leg, and thrash hard. My stuffing will strew across the floor. My pong-head will dangle from my neck. Afterward, our son will trip over what’s left of me; he’ll snatch me up by a foot, wet with slobber, and, with little thought, he'll toss me out like so much garbage.

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April 08, 2012 10:20:30 PM
:

Linh

:

Nothingness
"###"
When I was young, I used to see my grandmother carry a small, black bag. It was strange how protective she was toward this little bag. But once in a while, she allowed her grandchildren to glimpse the marvels that lay inside. She would pull out a handful of black and white photos, an ivory rosary, and some beautiful gold leaves. The items were mesmerizing but more so, were the amazing stories that accompanied them.
"###"
One night, I noticed something strange peeking from the bag. I could barely make out a small figure-like object. When I questioned her, she claimed I was imagining things and convinced me there was nothing else in her bag. Though I believed her, every time I saw the bag I noticed a faint impression of the nothingness.
"###"
As I got older I forgot about the bag. Not until my uncle became deathly ill, did it reappear. As he recovered in the hospital, my mom stripped, cleaned and prepared the family home for his return. During the process, the black bag was found. Everything that once was so dear to my grandmother was gone – the photos, the ivory rosary, the gold leaves; everything except the small nothingness. It was a strange little thing. I don’t know why she was so secretive and protective of it. Hoping to find answers, I contacted my great aunt #6. She was my grandmother’s youngest and last surviving sibling.
"###"
The story goes… my grandmother had thirteen children. After the birth of my mom, the next six children died mysteriously and the eighth and ninth became deathly ill. Fearful of bringing death to her entire family, my grandmother went in search for something to break this curse. People from her village told her about a doll that would prevent the owner’s family from becoming separated. No one knew if she found the doll, but the deaths stopped.
"###"
Strangely, after the death of my grandmother the string of deaths began again. My aunt, child #8 and my uncle, child #9, passed away. Then my uncle, child #10, came close to death. Now my great aunt believes my grandmother did possess the doll. When I questioned her why, she told me more about the doll’s magic. Depending on the type of love projected onto the doll by the owner, the doll’s power could exist on two planes—the living and the non-living.

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April 08, 2012 10:15:57 PM
:

Sonia

:

It was the spring after Nana had died when my son came home full of curiosity. “Why don’t we get to pass over?” He asked. I looked up from the electric bill to meet with the inquisitiveness of his 9 year old eyes. “Alfi says that Jewish people are supposed to celebrate the end of slavery.”
###
I didn’t know how to respond. We weren’t really Jewish. Or at least I hadn’t been raised Jewish. I’d been raised Catholic like my parents before me. Nana had been our only Jewish connection, but she’d left all that behind when she emigrated from Romania to Argentina then later to America. Or had she?
###
“Maybe we can do something special that day.” I said dumbly.
###
“It’s not just one day, Mom,” he rolled his eyes. “It’s a whole week.”
###
“I know, I know,” I said. “Let me talk to your dad first.”
###
Satisfied he went out to pet Pinky, our dog. My first instinct was to call Nana, but as I reached for the phone tears filled my eyes. I dialed my parents’ house instead.
###
“Your father’s napping,” my mother said to me. “He’s the only one who can know.”
###
It was true—the only part of Nana I had left was my father. I closed my eyes and prayed that he could share what he knew, but two years earlier he’d suffered a stroke that had taken his speech and much of his memory.
###
In the morning I drove to my parents’ home. It was a quiet Saturday morning, the trees and flowers at the cusp of bloom. Mom worked in the garden while Dad sat with me for coffee. It had been a long time since Dad and I had spent time together just the two of us.
###
“Her grandfather was Syrian and her mother was Romanian,” I said about Nana. “They followed the Sephardic traditions,” I continued but Dad could only offer a nod of agreement.
###
Disappointed, I inclined my head. Dad sighed but then his eyes gleamed and I followed him to the basement. In a cedar box I found a few articles I had never seen: Nana’s passport stamped 1941, a colorful kerchief, a small diary with faded ink and the dried petals of a rose between its pages.
###
“I can’t believe this it?” I quivered. “Nana’s gone forever.” Dad opened his arms and I sobbed into his shoulder. In some sense, I had lost him too. I asked him to try writing what he could remember. He smiled that he would and I drove home with the cedar box on my lap. I pulled over at the local library. As I was leaving with a stack of books about Jewish traditions, a colorful ribbon from the yard sale across the street caught my eye. It looked faintly familiar. I remembered the doll that Nana had helped me make when I was a girl, it sat slanted at the edge of a folding table with a tag that read $5. I dropped the books and ran toward it. A car honked at me but I didn’t stop.
###
The following week I presented my son with the doll that I had made when I was about his age. In exchange for the kit Nana had traded some S & H green stamps she had collected, and we had embellished it with a blue, yellow, and red ribbon she had once worn in her hair.
###
“It looks like Pinky chewed it up,” he winced.
###
“What matters is the story behind it,” I said and while grinding carp and pike for the first time I told him the stories I had heard from Nana as a kid. As I watched her prepare gefilte for Good Friday and kishke for Pascua she told me of her childhood in Romania. My son and I fried potato meatballs and poured lentils into egg-drop soup for Holy Thursday like she had. And instead of confetti we hid a concoction of dried apricots and dates wrapped in wax paper inside painted eggshells just like Nana had done for us grandchildren to hunt on Easter Sunday.
###
A few days later my son came home filled with delight. “Alfi says he wants to come to our house the next time we pass over.”

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April 08, 2012 08:51:20 PM
:

Gail

:

This doll, with one disfigured eye, speaks to me. We are related. I rescue deformed or abused animals, dolls and teddy bears. ### He was an understudy puppet in the movie “Lili” starring Leslie Caron and Mel Ferrer (1953) for both Carrot Top and Golo, the Giant. Leslie Caron contemplates suicide at the carnival by climbing a tall ladder. Mel Ferrer, who is handicapped with a leg injury, sees what she is about to do, gets her to come down the ladder by talking to her through his puppets. She then works for him interacting with the puppets as though they are alive. In one scene Leslie Caron forces Mel Ferrer to interact with her by grabbing his hands and forcing him to see he is hiding living by living only through the puppets. ### When the carnival closes, this puppet/doll is abandoned. A child finds him and takes him home. The puppet no longer has strings attached to him; he is now a full-time doll. ### The doll strikes a chord in my heart. It may look frightening to others, to me he seems lonely and in need of love. And like a puppet or a doll, I too lived like Mel Ferrer’s character in “Lili” behind a scrim growing up and was very lonely. ### My brother Stuart was born when I was 17 months old. He had long eyelashes and lovely olive skin. My father became enraged with him as a young child and would beat him. I witnessed one such occasion. ### Rena was born when I was 8 years old with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. Our mother realized she was not a normal baby immediately and took to bed for two weeks. Rena was blind, severely mentally and physically retarded. She also was a happy baby. Finally she was two years old; our parents put her in Willowbrook State Institution in Staten Island. ### Stuart decapitated my favorite doll. She had blue eyes that blinked and a porcelain head. For days I walked around clutching her until my parents took her away. I keep looking at flea markets and antique stores for a replacement. ### This discarded doll with only one good eye reminds me of Rena. I could not help her or Stuart (who committed suicide in 1975), but I can give this doll a good loving home. ### I once rescued a teddy bear at the bottom of the heap in a toy store at Fells Point, Maryland. I named her “Hyacinth” because she is pink and that is my middle name. She has a 3” “scar” down her back and one broken leg. I took Hyacinth to the Doll Hospital on 62nd Street and Lexington Avenue (no longer in business). “How much to fix her back,” I asked the owner. “$25.00.” “I’ll keep her as she is.” She sits on the chair in my studio apartment with the others. ### I rescued a little stuffed chipmunk who was sitting on the floor near a fireplace in a gift store at Port Jefferson, New York for $1.00. He is sitting on my night table and when I get very upset I rub his back for good luck. ###This doll, my other doll (similar but not the same as the porcelain doll) and the stuffed animals including a Raggedy Ann all represent my “family.” I am now facing life where films and TV stories are make believe and I can make contact and let people get close to me. ### If I win this doll and he belongs to me, I will name him “Stuart.”

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April 08, 2012 07:49:56 PM
:

jane

:

I sent the wrong version earlier today. This is the correct one.###

When they found Miriam Roth slumped over her kitchen table on Christmas morning in 1986, she was clutching a tiny doll in her right hand and a handmade Christmas card from her 6 year old son in her left. ###
A detective tried to pry the doll loose from her hand, but rigor had set in and he knew he would have to wait for the coroner to work her magic before he could examine it. A patrolman laughed at the doll and wondered out loud if it had something to do with voodoo; it certainly looked strange enough. Though in truth, he had to admit he hadn’t found anything in the apartment to give any indication that she was a practitioner. In fact, beyond the furniture and her clothes, there were no personal items to be found anywhere.####
…Miriam held Noah’s last Christmas card to her in her left hand as she examined the doll. No more than 4 inches tall by 2 inches wide – it was a grotesque thing with a bald head, spooky eyes and dressed more like something from The Outer Limits than the Mexican freedom fighter he was supposed to be. Miriam had made it from pipe cleaners, Styrofoam, ric rac and some old felt she had used in other projects. To top it off, she attached a few strands of Noah’s hair. ###
Noah, directing her every move, had sat next to her as she cut and glued her way to Jacob in the early days of his chemotherapy. Afterwards, Noah was never without it. He told Jacob things he couldn’t tell her: like how scared he was that he wasn’t going to get better and how he would miss everyone and how he wondered what God would be like and would he like him. There had been mixed messages in Church; he wasn’t at all sure about God. Sometimes he was an avenger and punisher and sometimes the God of love. Noah wondered which one he would meet.####
He had been holding Jacob as he drifted into a coma that Christmas Eve a year ago and Miriam had crawled into Noah’s hospital bed to hold them both. ####
She felt guilty leaving Jacob behind to an unknown fate, but there was nothing to be done about it.####
Clutching him now as she drifted into her own uncertain darkness, Jacob’s face lit the way.####

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April 08, 2012 06:36:17 PM
:

Vish

:

MELODRAMA IN ONE ACT
###
###
You are as shabby and strange as I am;
###
You pathetic piece of worthless junk.
###
###
I look at you and I look at myself in the mirror:
###
Lonely and charmless and defeated.
###
###
At least you have no feelings that can be hurt;
###
No heart that can be trampled upon.
###
###
Why would anyone desire you?
###
You pathetic piece of worthless junk.
###
###
You were worth nothing until I had the heart to possess you;
###
And care for you and write about you!
###
###
Our lives are one in this space-time intersection.
###
But only one of us is the pathetic piece of worthless junk.

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April 08, 2012 06:34:37 PM
:

John

:

The Wart of Woe, by John Michael Estes

###From whence it comes no one is sure, nor can they ascertain exactly what it is. It appears at times when needed most by the most distressed of souls. It has been called many things and has taken on many forms. It seems to be an ethereal idea rather than a hard material object; an idea that pushes itself through into matter and takes on a shape, like a planet or the Sun. It has been called by many names, but in this current manifestation it is called the Wart of Woe.
###It is the object that manifests to those solemn, brooding beings that are weighed down by worry and despair. It appears at the very moment they feel they can stay above the surface no longer, when they are exhausted of their last energy, and feel certain they are doomed to a dark, drowning death. It appears to them, perhaps sitting upon their doorstep, or upon a fallen tree across their path through the wood. It looks up at them with this stupid grin, its wart-head, and it’s broken neck.
###The Wart of Woe appears and the unwary intended hand grasps it out of curiosity. It is lifted from the Earth for a closer look and the circle of the rite is completed and sealed. He is now its new owner for life, and only death or destruction can do them part. An attempt is made to throw it, to cast it away, from the owner’s hand and success seems to be obtained. However, the new owner turns only to see the Wart of Woe peering up at him with the same mocking expression of perpetual unconcern.
###The new owner grasps it in a fit of disgust and throws it again and again, always with the same result. Finally, in a fire of exasperation, he squeezes the thing with all of his might and shouts at it, pouring malevolence upon the mocking object. But as suddenly as it was conjured, the ill will evaporates, not satiated at all, but rather just – gone. The owner raises his brows in surprise at the unburdening of his scorn and casts yet more upon this figure from his haughty reserve of animosity. The Wart of Woe accepts it kindly with a witless expression of indifference.
###So to the owner’s bewilderment it is revealed that this odd thing is not a cursed doll at all, but rather a blessed talisman. It is a literal godsend that is the energizing agent which enters a struggling life at the very crux of change. The new owner grins a wryly grin, not the former one lined with weariness and darkness, but one of newfound sophistry and enlightenment. He then chuckles victoriously to himself as he marches forward to face life on his terms.

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April 08, 2012 04:06:37 PM
:

Elsie

:

Man resale shops always got me in deep trouble and here I am again lugging home the ugliest little doll, why did I buy this , I wonder.##
Sitting it on my kitchen table I went down on the couch for an afternoon nap,

So sooner than I closed my eyes I heard an weird voice asking me for a drink of water###
Jumping straight up I sat shaking, what on earth was that, most likely dreaming was what popped into my mind easing my mind with this thought I curled up and fell sound asleep##
Started to dream that I heard drum beats wide awake again, that's it, jumping up I grabbed the whacko doll and off I went to return it to the store but, there was no store there was I loosing my mind?##
I set the doll down on the grass and ran for home, walked into my kitchen and guess what was sitting on the table? I ran out the door screaming

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April 08, 2012 04:04:51 PM
:

Elsie

:

Man resale shops always got me in deep trouble and here I am again lugging home the ugliest little doll, why did I buy this , I wonder.##
Sitting it on my kitchen table I went down on the couch for an afternoon nap,

So sooner than I closed my eyes I heard an weird voice asking me for a drink of water###
Jumping straight up I sat shaking, what on earth was that, most likely dreaming was what popped into my mind easing my mind with this thought I curled up and fell sound asleep##
Started to dream that I heard drum beats wide awake again, that's it, jumping up I grabbed the whacko doll and off I went to return it to the store but, there was no store there was I loosing my mind?##
I set the doll down on the grass and ran for home, walked into my kitchen and guess what was sitting on the table? I ran out the door screaming

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April 08, 2012 03:22:48 PM
:

Maria

:

She had never wanted Danny back.

###“Poor fellow,” Gabriel laughs, “he’s falling apart just like I am.”

###Passing the shop on Second and Blanchard just below Roza’s apartment in downtown Seattle, they catch sight of the doll on a regular basis. It cuts a comical figure, this handmade oddity propped up amid other detritus on display in the window of the Millionaire’s Club Thrift Store. One day, Gabes pulls out a comically clichéd bit of his Irish heritage and serenades the silent figure. “Oh, Danny Boy,” he sings, bestowing a name and an identity upon the stuffed fabric toy.

###For Roza, the doll’s symbolism is evident: from the small, upturned smile set in its round face to the tuft of hair that echoes Gabes’ club-scene hairdo. Its thread-eyes are unraveling, but it retains a cheeriness in the face of catastrophe. All the while, it remains impeccably dressed, donning a crisp linen tunic trimmed with colorful rickrack. Its wooden feet are painted to a tidy black sheen.

###Although there is a toughness about Gabes—nose crooked from a former break and a bent towards self-destruction from a hardscrabble life—this is undercut by the boyish vulnerability he projects with his mild blue eyes and serene Paul Belmondo lips, his wit, his gentleness, and his motley collection of teddy bears.

###Gabriel’s health spirals downward. Danny grows dustier. It is painful to see him this way. One day, returning home after accompanying Gabes to another demoralizing exam that revealed a plummeting T-cell count and a new respiratory infection, Roza wonders how such a slight body can be the locus of so much suffering. That day, Danny and the other misshapen objects—a chipped enamel bowl and a stained floral smock—are missing from the display. Roza strains to see through the window, but the dark shop is closed for the night. Taking the back entry to her apartment, her breath catches at the sight of the tiny upturned smile. From the edge of a battered green dumpster, Danny’s body hangs lifelessly.

###She cups him in her hands and is seized by a visceral sensation that other hands have touched Danny—hands that created and played with him. Someone else invested Danny with a personality, someone who is grown, perhaps elderly, perhaps no longer alive. This discarded object anchors Roza to another existence in another era. She can feel the precise measure of a lifespan.

###Gabes and Roza wield a dark sense of humor as their main weapon against the brutality of their predicament. As they listen to a news story about passengers who survived a plane crash in the Indian Ocean, they let out an incredulous guffaw at the fate of these survivors: they were eaten by sharks. How could life be so savage? It was as if some diabolical persona was scripting it.

###Their other weapon is trips taken together, of the chemical variety. But to Roza, an art student testing the boundaries of life, these are experiences to be had infrequently, with much reflection in between. It takes something out of her, staying up all night, exploring the edges of creativity, seeing the world from a disconcerting new perspective. Coming down fills her with remorse for taxing her physical being, and with guilt about what her parents might think of their straight-A student.

###She knows that she doesn’t share Gabriel’s propensity for addiction. Still, she thinks that if she can adopt the same lifestyle, lose weight at the same rate, and survive the same bodily assault, so can he.

###In the final bender, a mutual friend proffers white powder in a narrow restroom stall, saying: “That’s okay, honey, you don’t have to take *all* of it!” She thinks she will be up until the fourth of July. That is the last time.

###Walking in the spring sunlight, life emerging, cells dividing, air redolent with the fragrance of blossoms, she starts to grasp that she shall continue her stay on the planet. Gabriel, though, is so slight now, as if fading into the air. He often stares out as if he can see something in the great beyond that is completely inaccessible to her. She understands that this youthful exuberance, already on the wane, will be arrested before he reaches twenty-five.

###In a monochromatic room in Harborview Hospital, he lays, closed eyelids fluttering lightly. She tries not to wake him, but he stirs.

###“Hi-iye.” He manages a stab at an upbeat welcome.

###“I didn’t mean to wake you.”

###“No, no…I wasn’t sleeping,” he says breathily.

###“I’ve brought a visitor,” she says, dipping into her handbag.

###“Danny! What took you so long!”

###They laugh.

###“Looking sharp!” He winks.

###“Hey, will you help me with this?”

###He struggles to remove his oxygen mask to sneak a cigarette.

###“Don’t let the nurses see.”

###He takes a couple drags, shakily.

###“I just need a little rest.” In seconds, his chest is heaving and falling. Roza tucks Danny beneath his arm and tiptoes toward the door. She lingers, drawing in one last look. He’s like a sleeping child clasping his favorite toy.

###The memorial service rips her insides out. She stores Danny away and struggles to get through the pain. At some distant point, she reaches emotional equilibrium, and that chapter of her life falls back with the others in her youth. Gabes wouldn’t have wanted it otherwise.

###Decades later, living with a husband and a child in a different city, having seen the world and left that young woman behind, all the time between her and Gabes collapses the moment she opens the shoebox and touches the doll’s unfortunate form.

###She tucks Danny in once more, preparing him for an extended sleep, wrapping the frayed-cotton cloth around his barely attached limbs, and folding the memory of Gabriel back into her heart. Gently, she closes the box.

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April 08, 2012 03:01:22 PM
:

Gabriella

:

When I first saw him, his plastic head was cocked sideways as if saying “Will you be the one to take me home? Will you be the one to love me?” I passed by him without a second thought. I was looking for something to give to my little sister for her birthday. He did not fit the profile of a good gift for a six year old. He seemed more likely to give her nightmares then to protect her from them. I scanned the shelves and walked from aisle to aisle paying close attention to all the toys. I checked my real leather wallet my dad had given me for my birthday to see how much money I had. I was surprised to find one crisp five dollar bill, which seemed like a fortune. I ran to the life-sized fluffy pink bunny resting in a wooden rocking chair. I thought for sure I had enough money to buy it, but when I checked the price tag my heart sank. Who would pay $25 for this? Every teddy bear and plastic doll seemed to be more than $5. I hung my head as I headed towards the door. Then I saw him again. This time his plastic head was cocked sideways as if saying “Why are you leaving? Please take me home with you.” His painted on smile was inviting, as if he knew I needed a gift for my sister and was showing he would be the perfect choice. I could tell there was something special about him. I didn’t know exactly what, but there was something. As I reached for the white price tag to see if maybe I had enough money, I swear his smile grew and his eyes and mine shined when it said five dollars. I picked him up and held him like a mother holds her new child; cautious yet firm. I walked to the register and tentatively handed him over. The old lady looked at him intently and then back at me. She nodded at him before asking whether I wanted him in a bag or if I would like to carry him home. “Carry him, please.” I said a little louder than I had hoped. She ginned as she gave him to me. I carefully placed him in the front basket of my red sting ray bicycle. I was peddling slower than usually to make sure he didn’t fall out, but fast enough to get home before my sister came back from her dance lesson. Before I cut into the road I hit a bump. He tumbled to the ground, and as I stopped to pick him up a car zoomed through the stop sign right where I would have been. His face was cracked, but his smile was still big. His plastic head was cocked sideways as if saying “Are you ok? I know I am.”

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April 08, 2012 02:30:52 PM
:

Nadia

:

Her Mom gave her a package and as she opened it, Sasha looked quizzically at the box and its contents, the doll. Her Mom told stories of the old country and the wars. This was all that she had of the memories of the lost grand parents, great grand parents and the magic.
The magic is what her Mom called the rituals that they did in the past before moving to America.
The doll was part of the ritual. You would gathered scraps to build up the image in your mind of what you wanted, then you dressed the doll and spoke to it. The magic took care of the rest. The doll has had many incarnations and is now in Sasha's possession. Her Mom asks her what will be her ritual, Sasha just stares at the doll in silence.

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April 08, 2012 11:51:19 AM
:

Aimee

:

My brother Michael made the doll as part of a last minute science project. My mother was no# help. Since my father died, she acted more like a friend than a parent, letting us have popcorn# for dinner and allowing us to stay up for the late show. She took on extra night shifts at the# hospital as a nurses' aid, and had no idea what was going on with us.####
Michael had just started high school, where he went from being a popular kid to a nameless# nobody. He did his best to shield me from whatever stress he underwent, but I could see that# things had changed. He walked home by himself and didn't stick around after school to play# soccer with friends like he had in middle school.####
The topic of the project was the human body. I suggested that he could use one of my two# Barbie dolls, but he politely refused. Instead, he created the body from old pillowcase, and the# head was a plastic rubber ball covered by a mismatched sock. He let me draw the eyes. I was so# nervous, I made one eye tiny and the other a huge black dot like the blown pupil of a dead# person. (I knew about these things from my mom, who often gave us a rundown of the crazy# stuff she'd seen on her shift. A blown pupil meant that the person was a goner. “Lights are on,# but nobody is home,” she explained). We stuck the little man on the poster board with arrows# pointing at the various parts of his body—the lungs, brain, heart.####
When I went to bed after staying up past midnight to put the finishing touches on the poster# title, The Human Body, and Its Mysteries: Why? I had the idea that we'd made this amazing# poster and a cool figure to go with it, but in the morning, the poster just looked bad; the writing# was crooked and the little man looked like exactly what it was, a form thrown together out# of desperation. My brother saw it too, but what was there to do? Our mother, who had returned# at some point in the night, lay fast asleep on the living room sofa.####
We didn't go to Science Fair night, even though it was mandatory. Instead, Michael and I sat on# the sofa and watched a black and white cop show where the bad guys confessed their crimes at# the end.####
As soon as he was old enough, he left for good. I thought he would come back for me, but he# never did.####
I still have dreams about the doll. In them, I'm searching for him. I know he is somewhere close# by. I check under beds and behind dressers. In my best dreams, I find him, but mostly, he stays# lost and out of reach.####

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April 08, 2012 10:26:41 AM
:

Robert

:

I can’t believe, after all I’ve been through, that the best I can fetch is a miserable five bucks. It makes me crazy just thinking about it. Why, the puffy shirt alone has to be worth a ten spot for chrissakes.###
Well, at least, when all is said and done, I should find a loving home out of all this commotion, and be in the care of someone who, at least, had the courage to write my story—one that started day one on the factory shop floor. ###
It was a dismal birth, even by manufacturing standards. Before I knew it, I was cruelly separated from my identical twins and shipped out in a cramped little box. I say twins because I had plenty, probably a couple of thousand. I’m not kidding. ###
If the truth be told, you might say we were born on the wrong side of the assembly line. I mean, look at me. There’s no Barbie or Ken in my gene pool. A pathetic lot we were for sure. And from what I’ve been able to piece together over the past few years, most all my sibs were either recalled or destroyed, which you’d think might have made me a little more prized in collectable circles. ###
But no! Five dollars! Man that gets under my rubber skin! It really does! ###
Anyway, I was the property of this kid, who, let’s just say, had some issues. I have a feeling he had a rough go of it on the old school bus—most likely bullied, the sort of thing that could dement a lost soul. And who do you think became the target of his misplaced anger? That’s right. Me! That’s who. ###
Oh, let me count the ways. ###
I’ve been decapitated precisely a hundred and forty seven times. Been boiled like a baby bottle fourteen. For a while there, he liked to poke at my left eye with his Boy Scout knife. That’s when he got the bright idea of this puffy shirt and a patch over my mutilated orbital socket. ###
Ah yes, the pirate phase. He called me “Matey” and always wanted to “shiver me timbers”, whatever the hell that meant, which I’d find out soon enough. ###
I suppose the “shiver” part was when he undressed me, like he usually did before a good boiling. But the “timbers” began when he pulled my arms and legs from their sockets and cut the rubber bands—in doll physiology, our musculature—essentially paralyzing me. Appendages rendered useless, he dressed me up, and threw me in the corner, where I lay for months like a sack of you-know-what, pardon my French, until the family dog snatched me up from my most lowly of states like a rotted ham bone. ###
Soon I was resting peacefully in a shallow grave hidden in the back yard garden, albeit a bit gnawed. God it was quiet. Even the grubs left me alone. If my calculations are right, I lay there a good thirty years, as far as I could tell. What happened after that is sketchy at best. I remember a pitchfork, a kind soul, and a gentle act of God. ###
Before I knew it, I was in the operating room of some doll doctor, who surgically attached new rubber bands and fitted me with little, plastic, beady eye. He even cleaned me up and gave me this new puffy shirt for all my troubles. Things were certainly looking up, so to speak. The operation was a great success, and the makeover gave me an edginess not often carried by my species. Sort of like a doll that had been around the block a few times. ###
Having said all that, I could do without the gay pride suspenders though. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a hundred percent down with the whole cause. Some of my best doll friends are gay. Good folks by any measure. But it’s just … well … it’s just that the suspenders put a damper on that “most interesting doll in the world” image I’ve been shooting for. ###
Eh, who cares really? It’s all small potatoes in the scheme of things. The point is that, finally, things were going my way. Or so I thought. ###
Then, the final straw. ###
The operation, the bath, the new clothes, all of it was simply an effort to jack up the price I’d be asked to fetch. I was up for goddam sale! I mean come on! I was like sixty years old for crying out loud. I was supposed to be entering my sunset years. You know, a glass-encased, what-not cabinet, life style. And now I was up for sale? God, was there no end to the heavy weight I carried? ###
For a measly five dollars no less! Bastards! All of them! ###
So I sat there like a slug on the discount shelf in the back, stuffed between a one-armed Betty Boop and legless G.I. Joe for five freakin’ years. That is, until I was recently rescued by the kind folks at NPR. ###
And the best part is, finally, my story will be told. ###
I look forward to meeting my new owner. I hope he’s the sort of fella a doll, such as myself, will be able to sit with, while he tells me ribald stories of adventures past over pints of Dos Equis—the only beer I’d drink, if my mouth could only open. ###
Yeah, that is gonna be so sweet, which is why I’m able to smile, as crooked as it is, and say, thank you, NPR. Thank you from the bottom of my heartless innards. ###

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