The real shame is that after all the trouble and anguish, I had to stop trying. There was nothing left to do but to wait and see what happens next. And it's the thing that I am doing now.
The first day that we threw the stupid doll to the garbage, was followed by a night of tormented dreaming. It was a tall, ugly, girlish doll, about a metre high, with breasts even bigger than mine and an awful smile of content on her face. We found her in the apartement when we moved in, about a year from now. It was a kind of heritage from my husband's great grand aunt, that came along with the house and the rest of rubbish furniture. When the aunt died, thank god I didn't have to meet her, she was childless so the house was left to him. And then, I married him, and we had no place to stay and a baby coming fast on the way, and we moved in. I loved him so much, we were both out of work and it seemed to be a best solution. I still regret it every single day, let alone the nights.
To get back to the doll though, I didn't mind her presense, at least not from the begining. I didn't think of her at all, as I had greater and more practical worries on my mind. But after the birth of my baby girl things started to change dramatically. The inanimate creature was constantly on my way, an obstacle to everything I tried to do. We used to get up early and hungry from a short night's sleep, my baby and I, and I could see her in the corner of our small bedroom, checking me as I was breastfeeding. And then again, when we came home after a long walk in the park, she was in our living room, to probe us for a couple of hours absense. If we decided to spend the evening in the balcony, you know, just casually viewing the cars that drove by, she would bent her huge figure to balance her weight on the window, and not to lose sight of me and my baby. And my poor darling used to cry her heart out, each time something like that happened.
She was so unattractive, too. I pitied her for her ugliness, so big and fat, with a tasteless canary yellow dress, not a single feminine feature and dreadfully large chicks. Her light flesh colour soon dissappeared, as I never dusted her. I couldn't bear the thought of touching her or taking her in my arms, so cleaning was out of the question. I only stumbled on her every now and then as she was in the constant habbit of presenting herself wherever possible, and she nearly killed me once in that way. I almost broke my arm and I was furious. She just looked back at me in her provocative content. So I kicked her in my husband's study room, hoping to never see her face, at least for a comparatively long time. But, guess what, next morning's painful attempt to feed my baby with an arm aching was, as usual, attented by the hateful creature. For a moment I thought that her dirty face and extended, as in a gesture of embrassing, arms were skillfully choking me to death. So the doll had to go.
I was not the person to do the job. My husband dumped her, with the rest of the garbage. And that is how the nightmares started. The first night she came to my dreams. She came riding a huge roller coaster, huge enough to fit her enomous size that was now even bigger, monumentally bigger. I could see myself, strolling with my baby along the funfair, and there she was, coming with all her might,on her moving rollercoaster. She stroke us down. She was huge, there was nothing I could do.
Then, the next day, she came to my husband's dreams. This time, as he told me, she came peacefully. The great grand aunt was holding her by the hand. The great grand aunt did all the talking for her. She, the disgusting little wreck, didn't utter a word. And my love woke up in the middle of the night, all sweating and cursing and feeling exhausted and numb. Oh, to have dead persons coming into your dreams! I hated them both for troubling our lives with their insignificant, not to say decaying, presense. We had to do something, and it was nothing less than to find the doll again. My baby's dreams were next in the row.
This was not an easy thing to do. First of all, the two days' before garbage had already been taken away. And then it was the repulsive thought of the torn doll that made my head spin and tormented me to sickness. Still it had to be done. By me. So I took my little girl in her stroller and we started looking around trash cans. Not just ours, but the whole neighbourhood's trashcans. I really cannot tell what were my hopes to find, so long away from home that we were wandering, among other people's dirty waste. It was past noon time that I realised how futile the thing was getting and I decided to return back home. My baby was screaming at the top of her voice from hunger and fatigue, we were both covered in dirt and feeling devastated from our failure.
It was then that I saw somewhere in the distance the small gypsy girl. She was almost naked and she was walking in the middle of the street, between rushing cars, begging whenever possible. Although the crying of my child was starting to fade, I couldn't resist thinking how different would our lives be in the case of the little girl. Practically, she must have been raised in the streets, in the noise and dirt and deprivation. Yet, she was so carefree and happy , capable of dealing with the hardship of life. She couldn't be more than seven years old. Then, I noticed a familiar yellow canary. A bit darker though, from all the dust of the street. It was true, she was holding the doll, dragging her along, among the cars. My heart rejoiced, I had found her again! If only I could run faster, and how difficult this stroller was getting as I was trying to make my way between people and cars, closer to the little girl.
Finally, panting from the run, I managed to reach her and grabbed her fiercefully by the arm. She got so scared that I thought she would die on the spot, so I tried to calm her down and explain about the doll. We were still in the street blocking the cars and I thought wise to politely pull her along the side of the pavement. But instead of following me to a safer place, she kept on making a hell of noise, screaming me names and yelling for help. I was bewildered, I couldn't believe what was happening. People came out of their cars and of the nearby shops and stared at me in reprobation. What was I doing? I was trying to steal something from a defenseless girl, an old and broken toy. I was in the middle of the chaos that I had created, still clenching tight the small girl's arm and trying to get hold of a piece of the doll. And then I let her go.
I felt so relieved. When I regained my consciousness, the girl was nowhere to be seen. It was the horns of the cars and my baby's constant crying that pulled me back to reality. And we hurried home. Now she is asleep and I sit silently beside her cradle and wait. But I cannot say that I wholeheartily regret what happened. After all, that doll made my life sick.
Maria Akrivopoulou
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