Mirror, Mirror, in the Doll...
by Brenda Sutton

E...s...m...e. Miss Tessa wrote the name on a tiny paper tag looped with a length of cotton string. "This gal reminds me of Esme McGillicudy, a flirt I went to school with back in '34. Red pigtails. Saucy temper. Took special delight in pulling the wings off little boy's egos, too. Yep, this one is Esme." The old woman dangled the name tag from the doll's wrist like a bracelet.

At first glance, the wares found in The Old Doll House were just pretty playthings. Miss Tessa kept a limited stock of commercial merchandise; the bulk of her trade came from recreating and repairing Victorian lady dolls and baby dolls. The ceramic arms and legs were simple, but the porcelain heads required long weeks of work, applying layer after layer of translucent skin color tints, miniscule lashes and brows, and delicate Cupid's bow lips painted with the aid of an intense magnifying glass. Each head went in and out of the kiln so many times, many of them cracking to dross. Survivors earned glass eyeballs with weighted lids, wigs, and hand-sewn gowns of cotton, satin and lace.

For all their fluffy finery, I found the porcelain princesses cold and stiff, never a toy that any little girl might be allowed to grace with pretend tea and invisible cookies. Those creations would likely live out their sterile existences imprisoned on high shelves or from behind glass cases.

Miss Tessa's soft-sculptured dolls were the exact opposite of the porcelains; warm and squeezy, delightfully odd and lumpy. They started their quirky little lives as a leg of flesh-colored support hose stuffed with wool batting, the head portion about the size of a small tennis ball. Miss Tessa stabbed a needle with transparent nylon thread through the back of the head, out the face and back again, tightening the stitches to sculpt nose and eyes and mouth, dimples and chins. Tresses made of multiple colors of floss covered all the messy work on the back of the head. The body she fashioned from the rest of the length of stocking, also batting-stuffed, but given a stable wire skeleton.

There was something about those dolls. They started out as bits of nothing. By the time Miss Tessa had finished with them, though, they'd embodied genuine personalities. The porcelain doll's eyes appeared real but looked at nothing; the soft-sculptured doll's eyes were embroidered stitches, but they looked at you. In you.

Miss Tessa never gave those dolls people names. Nosy Postman, Lonely Librarian, Sour-tempered Lawyer, Dreaming Housewife, Determined Writer, Bored Teacher.

In the twenty-some years that I knew Miss Tessa, I must have seen her create hundreds of those dolls, but I'll never forget the first birth I witnessed. It was a hot day for late spring in '86, and I was putting the finishing touches on the putty on a replacement pane of glass for her parlor window. Miss T was sitting on the front porch swing. A small table held cloth and beads and threads and scissors. She was shoving white cotton batting up inside the stocking, packing it tight.

"Whatcha making?" I asked.

"Just a doll," she replied.

I put my ladder and putty knife away, only to haul out long baskets of caladiums, begonias, Hens and Chickens, and coleus for the flower beds under Miss T's front porch. We kept each other company while Miss T's hands worked her will. She rarely looked up from her task. Slowly the doll took shape. It was too long to be a baby doll. No, this was definitely a male doll. Lanky body, over-long torso, lean but with well-muscled arms and legs. She gave him a narrow head, blond hair with a bit of a ducktail in the back, side burns, and a small curl over the forehead. His eyes lay cool green, almost lizard-like under heavy, drooping lids. His face held an expression of cocky confidence in a closed-mouthed half smile. One hand's fingers she clenched up tight, and the other she splayed the fingers out wide.

A few hours later when she'd finished with the body, Miss Tessa tied a cord under the arms and dangled him, butt naked, from a plant hook in the ceiling. There he'd hung over doll furniture counter, close to his Maker perched on her stool near the cash register. The doll twisted and swung in the breeze from the electric fan, while below his Goddess continued fashioning the modern equivalent of fig leaves. Denim jeans with peg legs and V-stitched back pockets. High-topped sneakers made from latex on canvas with laces of blue string tied in over-long loops. Then she sewed him a white, round-necked t-shirt and topped it with a blue and white sports jersey, the colors of the nearby North Georgia Technical College. Miss Tessa put a lot of detail into Player #3, and finished him off by fitting an inch-wide basketball scuffed from countless practices snugly into the splayed hand.

When complete, Miss Tessa chuckled once, patted the top of his head, and placed him on a wire stand in the glass case by the front door.

"He's an unusual resident here amongst all the baby dolls and Barbies," I said as she locked the case.

The old woman shuffled back to her perch on the stool by the cash register. "Enjoy him while you can, dear," said Miss Tessa with a wink. "He won't be here long."

"You have a steady following of college Power Forwards who play with dolls?"

"I don't know what a power forward is" Miss Tessa chirped." I do know that each of those dolls has one special owner, and they're never very long in the claiming. I always know when they arrive,the folks who have to buy these particular dolls."

"What...they smell like cash?"

"No. They pace."

"Pace?"

"Like starving animals. They stand out there staring at the sign on the mailbox, then at my door, and back at the sign, and again at my door. They're never good at nonchalance, those seekers. Sometimes they wander away and dawdle around the town square. Sometimes it takes hours or days, but they always come back. I've seen them, time after time, hesitating out there at my gate only to open the latch to set their feet down my path."

"But that describes everyone who comes to this store," I said.

"No, not so. The folks who come after these dolls have an anxious, worried look on their faces. They're summoned here like yellow jackets to fermented figs. The caricatures are 'uncanny', they say. Where did you ever get the idea to make this, they ask. I say that my hands just know the correct features, fashions, and foibles, and I'll never make another one that looks like it again. One of a kind."

"You dabblin' in voodoo, Miss Tessa?" I joked.

Her face got very stern, but she didn't answer right off. "I'll bet you the price of a picture show and popcorn that Player #3 will disappear from here in a week." She climbed back onto her tall stool and started putting her tools away. "Maybe less."

I shouldn't have taken that bet. Never wager when your opponent has the vinegar to set unreasonable deadlines.

Sure enough, five days after Player #3 went into the glass case, a couple of giggling college girls stood out by the front gate. I spied them first from the front porch where I was shelling peas. One of them pointed at the sign. The other one started to shake her long dark locks and walk away, but the Sign-Pointer said something I couldn't hear which brought the Head-Shaker up short. She looked from the sign, to the door, to the sign. Her brow furrowed. She sighed, then Head-Shaker tromped down Miss Tessa's path and up onto the porch, Sign-Pointer sauntering along behind.

"Afternoon," Head-Shaker said to me. "Y'all open?"

"Sure thing. Go on in," I replied. "Got customers, Miss Tessa," I hollered through the screen door. I stood to follow the girls inside, but they bottlenecked in the foyer, stopped silent in front of the glass case holding Player #3.

"See there, Jesse," said Sign-Pointer. "What'd I tell you?"

"Well I'll be da..."

"I wasn't kidding, girl. It's the spitting image of him, right down to the jersey. Look, look there! He's even got a wad tucked between his gum and cheek. See! A tiny tin of smokeless in his itty bitty pocket."

I squeezed inside the store behind the girls. Tittering like titmice, they didn't notice Miss Tessa nod her head and wink at me as she climbed down from the stool.

"Can I help you, ladies?" she asked. "Would you like to see one of the dolls up close?" Miss Tessa already had the key to the glass case in her hand before the girls blushed and pointed out the object of their attention. The old lady moved between them, unlocked the case door, and gently lifted Player #3 from his stand with delicate reverence.

"Can I... can I hold him, please?" asked the owner-to-be, and she reached out for the doll like a mommy for her infant.

Miss Tessa pulled the doll away.

"Pardon me, young misses," she frowned, "but may I first see your hands? Player #3 is one-of-a-kind, you know, and I'm very protective of my creations."

The girls looked a bit abashed, but still they held out their hands for inspection. When judged free of MacDonald's grease and grime, Miss T placed the little fellow in the gentle embrace of one who had obviously held a much larger version. A wicked smile crept over the young woman's face as she turned Player #3 over and over, investigating every seam and button.

"Is he...? You know..." asked Jesse.

"What?" asked Miss Tessa.

"Anatomically correct?" whispered the other.

Before the voice of experience could look, Miss Tessa spoke up. "He isn't now — but he could be, if the owner wanted me to complete him. I'd almost be willing to throw that part in for free, just for the joy of making it. Of course, I'd need an accurate description, my memory not being what it once was." The girls laughed.

"Jesse, you're the only one qualified to make that call," teased the cohort. The wicked smile on Jesse's face changed to a thin, pinched line.

"Hardly, Shawna" said Jesse. Color rose on the young woman's cheeks. "Son of a bitch has done half the women in two counties."

"Don't swear, dear. It makes your face go all squinchy."

"Sorry, ma'am."

"Who is this he?" asked Miss Tessa.

"Bo Jeffers. The creep you modeled this doll after," said Shawna. "Did you do the whole team?"

"Team? No, darlin', there's just the one. One of a kind. And I'll never make another like it."

"Does Bo know you made a doll that looks like him?" asked Jesse.

Miss Tessa feigned confusion. "I don't know who you mean, dearie. I don't even watch basketball on the television, and at my age I'm certainly not going to drive all the way to Dahlonega for some silly sport."

The girls stared at her and then at each other.

Jesse cleared her throat. "You mean to tell me that you've never met Bo Jeffers? Not seen a picture of him in the newspaper or anything like that?"

Miss Tessa held her ground convincingly with the girls. Rule Number One: Never Lie. No, she didn't read the sports section. No, she doesn't follow basketball, and no, she'd never been formally introduced to any Mr. Jeffers. All true, true, true.

However, Miss Tessa didn't tell the girls of the night she'd found the original, stinking drunk on the sidewalk of her house, peeing on her pickett fence at two in the morning. She smiled and refrained from revealing the strings of disgusting curses he'd shouted at her when she'd turned the garden hose on him to chase him away. She also didn't mention the parlor window that shattered when somebody slung a chunk of granite through it later that same night, or the screech of tires as someone's car sped away following the deed. Miss Tessa dared not call the police to report any of the incidents. That might have led to an investigation of the grounds and the house, and explanations she wasn't willing to make.

But she was willing to make a doll.

And she was willing to sell it to Jesse.

And she was willing to perform a simple alteration on the torso, an adjustment that completed Player #3's physical anatomy with astonishing detail.

Ordinarily, one might assume that a very tall man such as a basketball player would be endowed with all appendages in proportion to his large stature. Such was not the case with the additional part Miss Tessa created to Jesse's specifications.

At the end of their transaction, nearly everyone involved got what they wanted, but everyone definitely got what they deserved.

Listen to May Queen
by Three Weird Sisters (96K)

Brenda Sutton is the publisher of Mythic Passages, Operations Director, Corporate Secretary, and Office Administrator for Mythic Imagination Institute. She is an award-winning singer/songwriter with the internationally reknown band Three Weird Sisters. She works in a support and consultant capacity for the non-profit music organization Interfilk, and maintains their website. She is freelance writer whose work has appeared in newspapers and magazines. She is also the mother of five, grandmother of two.

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