Mom's dolls and things

Garth was sitting at the Thanksgiving table. Mom had dressed him for the occasion. He wore a 1920s drop-waist peach colored dress, a strand of faux pearls, a floppy sun hat, and big round sunglasses. But it was the addition of a black and white feather boa that drew the biggest coos from me and my sisters. “Oh, he looks so great,” we beamed as we primped and propped him up. Garth was always the most beautiful attendee at house events. I loved his dress. Mom and I found it at the Mellon Park flea market in the summer. I wanted to wear it. But I was not six feet tall and slender like Garth. I was square, and not even 5 feet. At thirteen I was still waiting for another 8 inches of growth and my first bra. I had to admit it looked better on Garth.

Garth was the third man in our house dominated by women. Mom, me, and my three sisters outnumbered Garth, dad, and my only brother. But all of us were outnumbered by Mom’s dolls and things. There was Garth, the six-foot stuffed rag doll whom Mom dressed, nearly always in drag, and placed at the dinner table, on the front porch, or in the giant round couch that consumed our living room. She featured Garth at Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, and New Year’s, but there were others. There was a life-sized knight in full suit of armor that would startle me every time I walked down the stairs; the puppet made in my Mom’s likeness down to its tiny cigarette; the set of flasher dolls, with furry doll genitals, which would make an unexpected appearance in my father’s TV interview; the kitchen witches over the sink; and the pigs, oh so many pigs, the most prized among them bearing the face of Richard Nixon. This is, in fact, the only item listed in my mother’s living will. The Nixon pig will not go to her daughters or son, but to Shirley. We will merely get every other stuffed, carved, and tin-banged thing. Nearly every corner, every flat service, and every inch of shelf space in our half-duplex was packed with human, animal, or alien form. Thousands of eyes peering out as we stuffed the turkey, frosted the chocolate cake, baked the pumpkin and cranberry breads, tossed the salad, and dropped a plate of sausages down the stairs.

And then, years later, there was Inel.

Inel was not just one of my mom’s things. She was my Mom. A small, plastic faced doll with my mother’s pre-cigarette, pre-five children, pre-divorce baby face on it. It really looks like my mom did when she was young. She will tell you, “ask Zadie. this is how I looked.” And my Zadie will confirm it. “This is how she looked.” It looks like Mom. It is Mom.

“Inel” is my mother’s self given name, “Leni”, spelled backwards. And it was my mother that named her. Inel, the plastic faced, toothy grinned, soft bodied pocket-sized doll. What every Jewish Mom needs for guilt and torment. Well, maybe only our Mom.

I was not there for Inel’s birth, a traumatic night for my siblings that I can never quite put together, but it involved Mexican skeletons, things nailed to door knobs, and Cameron Diaz swallowing Tom Cruise’s cum (see earlier posts). Or maybe that is just how Inel was reborn on this blog. In any case, she was likely born in some Chinese factory and then sold across a Walgreen’s countertop. The point is once Inel was born she became mom’s avatar and her children’s little gnome.

I was sent pictures of Inel drinking Portland coffee, resting in the hands of a Chinese man in Prague, grinning in front of movie posters, and being spanked by a Pee-Wee Herman doll. Naughty doll. I was also sent with Inel to take pictures, in the hands of my relatives at a reunion, or at a dinner, or suckling from my breast. Naughty me.

Yes, at moments Inel was amusing. But mostly I was annoyed with Inel, as I would often get annoyed with Mom. Really, I’m not sure if Inel is ridiculous, tender, or sad. However, I am fairly sure she is my mother’s expression of love, of both giving it and asking for it. Here, she is saying, here is a piece of me. Now deal with it.

Inel was one of the best props for my mother to express her true talent: injecting herself and her love, at a distance. She demands to come along with you, somehow, anyhow. This, I suppose, is what mothers do. But still, with Mom, you never know if it is a true desire, a guilt trip, a command, or a rouse. I remember her helping me get ready to attend my first Bar Mitzvah. It was going to be held at the Le Mont, Pittsburgh’s most fancy restaurant. “Bring me back something,” she asked? Joked? Demanded? After the last dance with Alex Berman, I walked quietly back to the buffet table and shoved a croissant into my Jordache purse.

So yes, we do deal with it. We carried Inel, primped her up like Garth getting ready for a Thanksgiving feast and startled at her like a knight in rusty armor. Yes, we deal. With things. With dolls and things. With Mom and her love. However unwanting or wanting, we carry grinny dolls, shove croissants in our tiny purses, deliver embarrassing sick notes to our teachers, stick rebbe trading cards to our fridges, wear goodwill bin finds and take other prompts or props from mom that always result in both, forwards and backwards, joy and annoyance. Yes we do.