My Doll



My Doll sits in a little wooden chair in a nook in the wall. She has blond curls of real hair set in perfect spirals against her round porcelain face. Her eyes are two round pools of light blue framed by long black lace edgings. Her dress was new, ,ade of soft fabric in blue with little pink flowers. It was made in San Jose, in a small musty shop nestled in the hills where the ocean meets the rocky coast. She has five fingers on each hand and ten toes. She is fully jointed in her legs and her dress skims her ankles with lace. She is the size and weight of a small baby, and smiles sweetly when you hug her. She was made for me.

In 1906 San Francisco was a bustling town. Only half a century of statehood and yet the city was grand for the time period, built up from the Pacific and unlike the dust of the Southern portion of the state, San Francisco was quite lovely. The Victorian architecture supported the tiny, narrow row houses with filigrees and curves that matched and paralleled the winding roads on the drooping hills. The houses were taller than me, but everything was. They were detailed and small, scaled to appear larger and fixed with curls like a gingerbread house. The hills curved like a child's drawing, up steep and round and then steeply down again. In my picture perfect world it seemed that everything would be right always.

In 1906, I had a lot of dolls. Small rag dolls and large porcelain ones. I had paper dolls in the newest fashions, with shirt waist blouses and long pleated skirts with bustles like my sister's. My older sister, Martha, would play with my dolls and I. We had tea parties with my mother's china and talked to each other and I would rock my dolls to sleep. I would place them on the large oriental rug with the burgundy and gold crests, as I watched their eyes shut, the ones who had real lids. Martha would throw her shall over them, a large wool blanket.

I was ten in 1906. That was when my name was still Behrens. Sophie Behrens. My family was from Germany originally and our last name was changed from Von Behrens to Behrens to seem more American. I had long brown hair that fell in waves at my waist, now it's graying and tied in a bun and my sister used to say that my eyes were blue gray like the fog that settles over San Francisco and the Pacific. Martha was good with words like that.

I remember still, "Sophie smelled like she had been dipped in vanilla, probably from lurking around the stove where Mama baked cookies." Martha said that. If I were to describe Martha in a way she might like I would say, Martha was recognizable by the smell of salt and rain that clung to the air around her. My sister was elegance defined. Tall and dark, her face was round, full like a doll's, with rose tinted cheeks. Her lips were faintly red and her smile was wide and open. On her lapel Martha pinned a silver brooch and a sprig of bright blue flowers, forget-me-nots. I always wondered who could forget my sister.

One day I cannot forget Martha was sitting by the window and I was on the floor on the burgundy rug. She smiled and I played with Miss Anna, my big baby doll with lidded eyes. "Lay down Miss Anna." Her eyes closed as I plopped her onto her back. "Sit up Miss Anna." And they flew open. I looked over to Martha, who was fiddling with the drapes of the window as she watched people stroll by in the warm light of the late afternoon. "Lay down Miss Anna." Her eyes shut close. "Sit up Miss Anna," I said firmly. I was an insistent child. They flew open. "Lay down Miss Anna." They closed. Martha smiled and I pointed at Miss Anna. "Sit up." They opened. Martha grinned. "Lay down." They closed. Then came the strangest thing. As I reached down for Miss Anna, her eyelids fluttered. Her eyes flew open, then closed, then opened, close, open and Martha started to tip as her eyes flew open and I heard the ground open close open and I heard the growling and Miss Anna batting her eyes as Martha pulled me around the waist to the door and I shut my eyes tightly then blinked open. I held tight to Martha while the walls shook and bits of ceiling fell into my hair and stuck in the curls. Things crashed and I heard shattering glass in the dust where the kitchen was.

The foundation of the tiny gray and green row house that I lived in was ripped away, cracked, rumbled and then was silent. The shaking ground was followed by a great fire which decimated the city. The sparks and ash filled the air, the smell took away the salt of the ocean. The black clouds hung over the city in a thick mass. The blue sky disappeared and all that could be seen was the edge of red fire in the smoke. The city smoldered and fell, burnt to ash. I could barely breathe as the dirty air burned my throat and lungs and I saw Martha cough and gasp as we walked with nothing but each other's hands towards Golden Gate Park, where the tent city was set up. Golden Gate Park became a temporary home for the San Franciscan families. I had nothing left, Miss Anna was left in our crumbling house as Martha and I left the doorway. The smell of burnt homes and old wood hung over the park, clung to the cloth shelters, and filled the nose. My family lived in the overcrowded dirty park while the city rebuilt. Martha and I had no dolls or china to play tea with, we had no tea.

I bit my lip to keep it from trembling as I shivered by the fire, trying not to cry. Iwould be such a baby to cry at ten. Martha stared at me from the other side of the fire pit, I could see her dark eyes through the flames silently smiling, trying to cheer me up.

"We could play princesses," Martha whispered. "You're Cinderella shut out by stepmother, and I'm the fairy godmother." She smiled slightly, glancing away from my mother who was staring woodenly at my father who was stroking her hair.

"I'm not Cinderella, I want Miss Anna."

"She's gone, don't worry you don't need her to be Cinderella," Martha insisted. I refused and went to bed on the blanket the tent city people passed out.

We moved to the little town of Los Gatos within the month. Los Gatos, The Cats, is a small town within an hour of San Francisco. We moved into a new home, a small yellow row house with less curls on a winding mountain road. Without dolls I spent the hours after school watching deer walk past the window. Martha had found a job at the grocer's and had been working long hours, which left me playing Cinderella with my deer fairy godmother. I tried to convince myself that one day the deer might join in.

Martha received her first paycheck two weeks later. I had noticed her clothing had become ragged, most was tinged gray with soot permanently, and I wondered what new fashion she might buy with her money. Maybe a smart white shirt waist and a blue wool skirt. Maybe a brown skirt to match her eyes. I waited for her to come home from work late into the evening. I waited by the window. My sister was an hour late and the oil lamps were lit as afternoon grew into evening. She arrived skipping to the door slowly in her long ashy skirt with her hands behind her back. Martha was smiling in a way that concealed an obvious secret. I ran towards her and began to try and see what was behind her back. Martha produced a small doll, baby size, with blond curls that fell in soft tendrils and a pretty blue dress to match her blue eyes.

"For you," whispered Martha. Martha held the lovely doll out to me with a large smile, the secret out, and I touched it lightly and pulled it into a hug. I grasped Martha in a tight clench. Martha sat near the window and watched while I held my doll.

"You are so pretty, your name is Mary, today is your birthday. Do you want tea?" I questioned and prattled on to Mary, my new doll. Martha laughed slightly from her seat. I looked at Martha's grayish skirt. Martha smiled at me. "Come have tea, Martha." My sister stood and came to curl on the floor beside me. I hugged her again smelling the rainy salt of my sister's cheek and shoulder. Her first paycheck had been well spent.

I grew over the years and loved my doll. I loved Martha when she grew, married, and her dark hair grayed. I miss her still. I married a nice man and had sweet dark children. My doll, Mary, sat in my parlor. My children married, had children and I became Grandma Sophie. My doll sits in her nook, a princess on a throne, I hug her when I see her, and my grandchildren brush her hair occasionally. My doll is eighty two years old. She is Martha's sweet gift to me when I had nothing but her. Someday she will be my children's. She will outlive us all.



This story came after I wrote a short description of my home. I soon felt compelled to write a story about my family's long history in California. The original short description is called "Landscape," and here it is if you're at all curious.
Landscape