Glenna and Guyna Stearman, 1959
The Language of Dolls. Early one Christmas morning, my youngest sister Guyna and I slipped downstairs to the Christmas tree to see what Santa left for us. We saw a beautiful blonde, blue-eyed, Cinderella doll next to a black-haired, brown-eyed, Little Red Riding Hood. We both reached for Cinderella just when Mom came in and told us that Guyna got Cinderella and Red Riding Hood was mine. Eventually, Guyna let me borrow Cinderella’s dress and her Godmother’s basket for Red Riding Hood. Following the exchange, I thought my doll was rather pretty, and Guyna liked the red cape and basket that the dark-haired doll had.
When I read The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, I noticed that the author said the little black girl received a blue-eyed, blonde doll, like Cinderella, as a gift. The little black girl was complimented on her beautiful doll by all the family. They repeatedly admired her blonde curly hair and crystal blue eyes that could open and close. Soon the little girl had ripped off the blonde curly hair, yanked off the movable arms, and poked the doll’s eyes into the compressed wood head. Toni Morrison got the message. The girl’s family was horrified and clueless.
Later Christmas Lessons
Another Christmas morning brought two new dolls: one was an infant with rubber head and limbs but a full cloth body, the other a large baby boy doll. Guyna got the baby, and I got the boy. While Guyna snuggled with her baby, I looked sideways at my boy doll and finally realized the he, too, needed love. Guyna’s baby was soft because of her cloth body and was easy to rock to sleep. She named the sleepy baby Snoozy. My boy doll was almost too big to be a huggable baby, but I recognized it was not his fault and I needed to adapt. I named him Squeeger.
Soon, we girls noticed that Snoozy had a constant grimace on her rubber face, and Guyna decided that she was urgently in need of an operation! Quietly, we took our dolls and sneaked upstairs to a giant well-lit store room. There we prepared a bed, a towel on top of a cardboard box. Guyna brought in Snoozy, and I had my grandmother’s fabric scissors, a needle and thread. Guyna made a two inch snip in Snoozy’s body, allowing me to remove some cotton stuffing. Guyna selected a proper-sized rock from her pocket and placed it inside, and I packed some of the cotton back inside around the rock. Then, I threaded the needle and sewed Snoozy’s wound shut with small careful stitches. Guyna stayed with her doll and rocked her to sleep as we discussed other emergencies.
A few days later, we returned to the surgery center and had to replace cotton stuffing Snoozy’s cloth upper arm. The procedure went silently as we each knew our jobs. A much smaller pebble was packed and sewed into the arm. The thrill of our newly acquired skills enabled us to recognize many more body aches that needed surgery and kept us busy for the early part of the summer.
Suddenly we were discovered when Mom caught Guyna with Snoozy full of scars. Guyna included me as a co-conspirator, and we endured the usual adult scolding and promise of consequences. Snoozy was allowed a while to recover, but then we realized that she had another emergency in her back. With stealth, we returned to the surgery and managed to sew another rock in place.
By the end of summer, not much worry returned over Snoozy. Our cousins came to visit and when all the parents pushed us outside so they could have coffee and conversation, Guyna and I turned our large front porch into an emergency room. A yellow brick railing with white stone caps gave us numerous gurneys. Several patients died, and we pushed them off and into the bushes, after which they returned in need of urgent care. Some of us girls decided to stuff a throw pillow from the living room under our dresses and shirts and came in about to deliver. We howled and moaned, and the parents yelled at us to “Keep it down, out there!” We suffered greatly, trying not to scream, and eventually patients and pillows died. We brushed the dirt and leaves off, and sneaked the pillows back to the living room, closing another door on medical training.
Years later when we each had our own families, I went to Guyna’s horse farm, where we discovered a serious gash on her horse Ginger’s front left leg. Ginger had tangled with barbed wire that someone had thrown over the fence as trash. By then, Guyna had grown up to become an emergency room nurse. She grabbed my hand and said we were going to do surgery.
As an art major, I was not confident but Guyna was. She ordered me to lean into Ginger and a big telephone pole, as hard as I could, while I hugged and talked softly to the horse. I was also to hold the hose with water washing out the giant gash. Guyna’s medical bag had antibiotic salve, needles and thread to suture ghastly wounds. She was totally professional and you could tell that she and her horse completely trusted each other. The wound healed well enough to make a plastic surgeon proud, and we knew our early training was solid!
