This story is part of my published book "Short Stories: The Story of a Refugee. I'm preparing a second edition
THE DOLL
BUCHAREST, ROMANIA 1950’S
Ever since I remember, I loved dolls.
I remember playing dolls and house with my friend Louisa in the back yard of our house in Bucharest. My friend Louisa and her family rented a small building toward the back of our house. Not the father one; that one was rented by the Madame Sandulescu and her husband and they always acted as if the back yard belonged in exclusivity to them. There was a lilac bush in the back yard, which bloomed beautiful in spring time, and a vine spread over a wooden frame, like a roof, making a perfect place to have lunch or dinner evenings. And the Sandulescu family enjoyed the back yard and often had grilled fish over an open fire and ate beneath the vine, evenings and Sundays at lunchtime.
Every time, we, the children went in the back yard to play it was as if we were intruding. And it was our property, after all. But during the weekdays, when Sandulescu was working in the neighborhood shoe repair shop, and his wife was helping him, my friend Louisa and I, and sometimes her sister Simona played “house”. I would drag an old suitcase from the house and arrange the interior of it like a regular house.
We had doll furniture and doll stove and doll pans, and we were making dresses for our dolls, playing house, cleaning up the house, and cooking for the dolls, as regular mothers would do for their children. I would carry my doll around in the carriage and Louisa would do the same. I do not remember my sister ever participating. I was mainly me and Louisa.
Later Louisa’s mother, Margareta, died unexpectedly, and her family moved back to Timisoara, where her father’s family came from. I lost my friend and never payed house again.
I remember seeing a doll in Tincutza’s house, in Ploiesti, which I had my heart set on. This doll was the first doll I have seen that closed her eyes and could say “Mama”. She was the size of a small child, all dressed up in a long purple gown with beige laces. We, children were not allowed to play with it, just look at it.
One summer we were coming back from a summer vacation with our parents. I do not remember exactly how old I was at the time. I remember that for some reason, my parents promised me that when we got back from vacation, we would stop first in Ploiesti, to see my Uncle Gorg, and they would give me Tincutza’s doll.
We were traveling by train, and when we arrived at the train station and I recognized the train station as Bucharest and not Ploiesti, I refused to go on the Tram (“Tramway”) and go home. I remained on the train platform, crouched down, and started crying and yelling. A big crowd formed immediately around me, and my parents could do nothing. I was very frustrated about the doll, but more upset because my parents would lie to and deceive me. Usually, I was a quit child, who liked more to observe that to act, and in any other circumstances, I would have been mortified by such behavior. But at the time I was enraged beyond comprehension.
I never got Tincutza’s doll, but when I was about fourteen years old, In Bucharest, there was the first pot-war German Exhibit and my father promised me he would buy me a doll that closed her eyes. He probably remembered my heart break over Tincutza’s doll. I was a big girl, going to high Scholl now, but I remember being so excited about the prospect of father buying me a doll, that I talked myself into not being so excited. I thought if I wished for something so much, I might not get it. Something would go wrong, and I would not get the doll. But father kept his promise and took me to the German Exhibit and bought me a doll with curly blond hair and blue eyes that closed as I moved the doll. I cherished that doll, and made cloths for her and set her up on my bed and looked at her. Later, when I left Romania, my mother sent me the doll. I took it with me in the airplane from Greece to the USA. I thought if I keep it outside in my handbag, would not be damaged. On the contrary. Keeping it there unprotected, the doll was damaged going through customs and changing the airplanes at the Kennedy Airport in New-York to Jacksonville.
I still have a doll from Romania. It is a ”tarancutza”, a country dressed doll in traditional Romanian country clothing, which I have had since childhood, and it’s now on a self in my bedroom, in Jacksonville.
As I heard later from her sister, Louisa married when she was seventeen years old and got her children to take care of. I, on the other hand, did not get married, and did not have any children.
As a boy, I never had any interest in dolls. But I do recall my sister having dolls and playing house. It's a right of passage for girls. And you certainly had your ups and downs when it came to play in your childhood.
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