To those of us that came from the small towns of south Texas in the 1950s, San Antonio was our New York City, and Joske’s Department Store was our Macy’s. Shopping at Joske’s was a rare treat and I got to go once a year, combined with my visit for lung x-rays.
First grade’s required tb test revealed that I had tb and so began the yearly visits to the big city for lung x-rays. I was six when I made the first trip and it was just a few weeks before Christmas.
My mother wanted me to pick out my own doll for Christmas, and there was no better place for that than Joske’s. The store spanned an entire city block, and the excitement grew as we walked past the inviting displays filled with product behind thick plate glass windows.
Joske’s was 5 stories tall if you counted the bargain basement, which was often more crowded than any other floor in the store, and that’s where we headed on that day.
When we got to the toy department, my mother told me to pick out the baby doll that I wanted for Christmas while she went to shop for other things, and she left for a while.
The baby doll aisle was a long, deep aisle and people were clamoring and grabbing from every direction. The boxes were in disarray and some of the shelves lay bare. At each corner there were the gimmicky dolls that I’d already grown wise to. The ones that ‘talked’ but only repeated the same thing over and over when you pulled the string. The tiny one that they claimed could pee, could cry real tears. It didn’t work like they said it would at all. What a scam. I wouldn’t be fooled again, so I passed right by the gimmicky dolls and headed on down the aisle in search of the real deal.
The rows and rows of stepford babies didn’t grab my heartstrings either, so I moved along past the dozens of blonde haired babies with blue eyes, brown haired babies with brown eyes, red haired babies with green eyes. Nothing was calling to me when suddenly I saw a solitary box all alone on a lower shelf, shoved back into the shadows and tipped to its side. I bent down, reached in to turn it around and couldn’t believe who was staring back at me. A black baby doll. All alone in the darkness.
My heart stopped as our eyes met and I thought to myself, “Oh no. No one is going to want this baby doll and now she’s going to be all alone for Christmas.” I knew in that moment that I could not let that happen. I had to save her, so I grabbed the box with the baby doll and waited until my mother returned.
Already at that age, with few words to tell me, I knew that black people had been dealt a bad hand in life. First of all, they weren’t allowed in Joske’s or in any other store or restaurant, school, skating rink, theater, park or public school in San Antonio or in my small town. I would not be cognizant of this until my teen years, but I’d seen enough, at a very young age, to know for sure that being black did not put you in a fortunate position in life.
When my mother returned, she was alarmed at my choice. She tried to persuade me to choose other dolls, picking up box after box, offering other selections. I stood my ground and declined every offer, clutching the box to my chest, lips sealed. I knew better than try and explain to her my reasons. I knew she would just try to argue.
I don’t remember what happened after that, and don’t know how she did it, because I never saw her purchase it, but that black baby doll was sure enough under the tree on Christmas morning.
Fast forward a few weeks later when the black baby doll went the way of all my baby dolls, in a box or maybe laying on the floor. I was a tree climber not a toy player. I played with real things, climbing trees, building things with real stuff, sticks and rocks, not garbage plastic. A real do it yourself girl. I didn’t like anything fake or ready made. So the baby doll was quickly forgotten.
Now, Lottie was our black caretaker, undoubtedly the great granddaughter of slaves and she came to our house from sun up until sun down for five days a week for 8 years of my childhood.
When she first became our nanny, I would run and jump up into her arms and plunge my skinny arm down between her soft, warm breasts because there was no more comfortable place in the world to be. Poor Lottie would scream and have to wrestle me and practically throw me off of her until I finally learned not to do that.
I must have been even younger when I had the only fight with Lottie that I ever had, because no words were ever exchanged in the struggle. I was struggling in Lottie’s lap as she had me by my wrists while I twisted and fought and kicked to get free. We had both worked ourselves up into a frenzy of rage when our eyes met, and I saw a trembling deep in her eyes that stopped me cold. It was a look of fear so deep, a fear that I knew no one should ever feel, that it stopped me in my tracks. I wanted to protect her from that fear forever in that moment, so I never battled her again. Something in my tiny brain knew back then, and never forgot, that no human being should have the kind of fear that I saw in Lottie’s eyes that day.
Now, just a few weeks after I’d gotten and forgotten my little black baby doll, Lottie was dusting in the living room and I was playing in a corner of the room, at the other end, when I suddenly noticed that Lottie was paying a great deal of attention to me, glancing at me every now and then with a scowl on her face, slowly inching her way in my direction as she worked.
Dusting and frowning, dusting and frowning, she moved closer and closer toward me until we were side by side when suddenly, she said to me, in a harsh, scolding whisper, “What do you want with that old black baby doll?”
I gasped in horror. What was she saying? How could she not like her own kind? How can that be? I was about to protest, searching for words when she continued to scold, “You don’t need that old black baby doll!”
I dropped my head, cheeks burning with an inexplicable sense of shame. Just as the darkest of clouds was descending upon my little brain, I heard Lottie say something that brought out the sunshine and cleared up the sky.
“I know a little girl who would love that black baby doll of yours.” said Lottie.
The problem was solved. Lottie walked out that door that evening, black baby doll peaking out of her bag.
Oikos 