The Doll

by Bernice Holtzman

On Saturday morning I slowly awoke from the dream I was having and sat up smiling in my bed. I felt just like the princess that I became every night after I fell asleep. But I didn’t have to dream anymore. Today was my birthday. I could be pretty.

I got up out of my bed and walked over to the mirror. I looked at myself carefully from the rear and front, profile and full face. Yes, there was definitely a difference. I wasn’t plain anymore. I wasn’t ugly or stupid or “pleasingly plump”—a phrase used by kindhearted people who didn’t want to hurt my feelings. Well, now they didn’t have to worry, because I wasn’t any of those things. I was going to be pretty from now on.

I left my room and walked into the hallway. As I stood at the top of the stairs, I heard my mother laugh. She always laughed. She laughed at herself, at her friends, and at me. She was my loving mother.

I went down the steps and heard her talking to Willie. Willie was the delivery boy with the crooked smile and the straight black hair. He was very tall, and I was in love with him, or had a “crush,” as my mother would say.

I walked into the kitchen where the two of them sat and greeted them. My mother smiled and said, “Happy birthday, Ann.” I thanked her and turned to Willie, who asked how old I was.

“Eleven.”

“You’re getting to be a glamorous girl,” Willie said, and I beamed.

Mother laughed for the second time that morning. “Glamorous?” she said, “Why, she’s as glamorous as you are, Willie!”

I looked at Willie. He was laughing with my mother now, and he wasn’t the least bit glamorous.

I excused myself and went upstairs. I ran to my mirror and stood before it. I was the same plain, ugly, stupid girl I had been before this morning. Whom had I been kidding? I would never be anything else.

I fell face down on my bed, tears pouring from my eyes. I hugged my pillow and with each teardrop I fell more deeply into sleep.

# # #

Today I got a doll. She has thick, velvet-like blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and a peaches-and-cream complexion. What a pretty doll! She looks just like me.

by Bernice Holtzman

She lay under his weight after making love, holding him to her and feeling his warmth. “I love you,” she said. He nuzzled his head on her shoulder, not answering. He didn’t have to. She knew how he felt. She understood him so well, was so in tune to him, that she sometimes had an almost eerie sense of being under the same skin with him, he thinking and she instantly reading the thought, he feeling and she instinctively knowing what he felt.

She felt with him excited and at the same time comfortable and familiar. When they met it was as though a door had opened and let her into a room where electricity flowed through them, awakening and amplifying her senses, the current bonding them together. It felt so right being close to him in this way, as though it would have been unnatural to feel any other way.

She caressed his back and lightly kissed his head, inhaling the sweetness of his hair. How often they had been together in this bed and in others, making love, at first gently and then intensely and passionately until they lay quietly embracing. They didn’t speak because it wasn’t necessary.

It was in these moments that she experienced all over again everything between them that had led them to this point—the instant friendship, the laughter that came so easily to them, the private jokes and serious talks, the acceptance of and sensitivity to each other.

She remembered when, not long ago, her sensitivity to his moods made her aware that something was wrong between them, that something on his mind was making him preoccupied and keeping him distant from her. She almost worried about losing him then but knew that was foolish. Without having to be asked, she stepped back, giving him room to get over his confusion and disbelief at having been left by that girl he had known before her, the one he had loved so much. It was just a matter of time. She had shown him kindness and patience then, knowing that he would realize how wrong that girl was for him and how right she would always be, knowing that when his wounds were healed, he would come to her and want her and love her . . .

Now she held him, and he was hers. He would never leave, and she could hold him forever.

The ring of the telephone startled her. She answered it before the second ring was complete. She recognized her friend’s voice.

“How do you feel, honey?”

“I’m better. I’ll be okay.”

“Listen, if he could just stop being your friend like that, he certainly didn’t deserve anything more.”

“I know.”

“Thank God you never slept with him. Imagine how much worse you’d feel now. Why don’t you come over tonight? Joe won’t mind, and we can talk.”

“Thanks. Maybe I will.”

She replaced the receiver and held the pillow she had embraced a moment ago, then replaced that, too, on the empty bed.

© 1982 Bernice Holtzman

Bernice Holtzman is an author of poems, short fiction, autobiographical pieces, two (so far) children’s stories, and all manner of clever commentary. Her work has appeared in The National Poetry Magazine of the Lower East Side. That was 30 years ago, and she’s still talking about it.