Saucy!’s Neighborhood

Doreen Olberding was everything that Mimi’s mother was not.  She wasn’t pretty like mother, but she was taller and she looked healthy and fit as though she spent her afternoons playing tennis, or more likely, working in her yard --- not napping.   Her limbs were tan and shapely, always glistening with a faint sheen of perspiration.  Her clothes were  clean and crisp --- sleeveless, starched, cotton blouses with Peter Pan collars tucked into belted Bermuda shorts that had sharp pleats in front and back pockets not stuffed with Kleenex, cigs or someone’s pacifier, but neatly, securely buttoned --- shut.

     The Olberdings’ front yard was a severe arrangement of short-cropped grass punctuated by juniper bushes shorn into unnatural shapes and surrounded by rings of tidy marigolds and petunias.  Neither dandelions nor rotting apples defiled that lawn.  The house itself was a little pastel box with aluminum awnings, and a poured concrete driveway. A not very tall chain link fence separated it from the rest of the houses on Bobolink Avenue.

     Doreen and her husband had two young children, Bobby and Roberta.  They always obeyed their parents and stuck close to home.  They did not gallop wildly through the neighborhood with the rest of the herd or play softball in the weedy, forbidden field adjacent to the apartment buildings down the street.  And they certainly didn’t play doctor in the Schneiders’ basement on rainy afternoons.  Roberta was the same age as Mimi so Mrs. Olberding tried to encourage a friendship between the two plump seven year olds by occasionally inviting Mimi into their home.  The house was modest, but clean and quiet --- like a church. Roberta’s room was a pristine treasure box --- the walls painted a calming mint green, twin beds carefully made up with floral bedspreads that matched each other and the curtains.  Charming little pillows, round and square that picked up the colors of the flowery print and were trimmed with contrasting ruffles advanced the theme and appeared to have been casually strewn across the fluffier pillows at the heads of the beds.  An array of stuffed animals with their sleek, not matted, fur sat stiffly amongst the throw pillows looking as though they’d been taxidermed --- never cuddled.  The floor in Roberta’s room was carpeted and felt soft and safe beneath Mimi’s bare feet.  This room could never have been the scene of a bloody accident like one that occurred in “the girls’ room” at home.

     It was a Saturday morning so there was no need to get up and get going.   Mimi and Anna decided to play “queen & servant.”  Anna, the older sister, got first turn, as usual, at playing the queen.  She sat upright on her bed, wrapped in a thin blanket. The blanket's worn satin binding was detached in places and dangling by a few threads from the makeshift cloak it almost looked like ragged ermine tails.  Resting just above her shiny, crooked bangs was a faded and wrinkled construction paper crown salvaged from some kindergartener’s birthday celebration.  The girls hummed “Pomp & Circumstance” which they’d heard at an older cousin’s high school graduation and recognized as the theme from “Queen for a Day”.  Mimi, wearing nothing but her cotton underpants and shirt, its tiny pink rosette unraveling, knelt before the queen.  She had safety-pinned a musty bath towel under her chin and wore it like the Blessed Mother’s veil over her head.  Mimi played a humble servant, hoping to be treated with equal reverence when it was her turn to sit upon the throne of pillows.

     “I am the QUEEN,” intoned Anna.

     “Yes, your majesty.” Mimi sprang to her feet and curtsied.

     “You are my servant.” Anna added sternly.

     “Oh yes, YES your majesty.”  Mimi folded her hands and bowed her head as if in prayer.

     “MARCH!” commanded the monarch.

Obediently Mimi, a procession of one, paraded in tight circles round and round the small space between the two beds. She lifted her knees high and pounded the floor, which was cluttered with dirty clothes limp stuffed animals and other debris, with her bare, pink feet.  All the while saluting her sister and in a sort of robotic frenzy, stifling giggles, Mimi repeated “yes your majesty, yes, your majesty.”  Until the tender bottom of one little foot came down directly on the pointy end of a Monopoly piece shaped like an upright cannon. Never would a little girl receive the stigmata in such a way in Roberta’s room.

      Between Roberta’s twin beds stood a chest of drawers that measured up to Mimi’s nose.  Displayed upon the dresser top, like a diorama in the county museum was Doreen Olberding’s collection of Betsy McCall dolls.  There were three dolls, each eight inches tall, each dressed impeccably down to her white anklets and buckle shoes.  There was a blonde, a brunette and a redhead and they were having a tea party.  At a little round table draped with a perky, polka dotted cloth the three girls sat on carved wooden chairs, staring at each other and at a delectable miniature cake and sandwiches.  In the center of the table was a vase of Lilliputian tulips and daffodils that Mimi could almost smell.  Over to one side of the table, but also standing on the petit point rug was a fancy bird cage made of wire formed into delicate tracery hanging from a filigreed gold stand.  In the cage was a single, minuscule yellow bird poised to sing.  It looked just like mother’s canary.  Mimi felt as though she was peering into one of those fabulous spun sugar Easter eggs at a scene so delightful that it was like a glimpse of heaven.  How she wanted to reach up and touch one of the dolls, examine her lustrous, unmussed doll hair, the springy net crinoline beneath her party dress and her tiny white socks and panties.  Of course, she did not.  Roberta’s mother towered above the scene watching them look.  She supervised the viewing like a nun patrolling the classroom during a spelling test --- ready to slap any dirty little hand that might reach in to disturb the paradise she’d created.  The prim perfection of these dolls was not to be violated --- unspoken, but understood.

     Gazing, transfixed at the scene, Mimi recalled a day when she and Anna were smaller and mother let them play with two dolls that she’d preserved from her own childhood in the 1920s.  They were baby dolls with soft, floppy bodies and delicately hand-painted porcelain heads.  Their vacant eyes rolled open and shut behind thick, bristly eyelashes --- slowly at first wtih the girls' gentle rocking --- but eventually faster and faster as their game evolved from playing house into a winking contest.  Who could make her baby blink the fastest?  Of course when mother shoo’d them down into the basement to play one drizzly day Mimi and Anna took the dolls with them and the poor old dolls had not survived being dropped on their heads on the cold, hard concrete floor.  When they were a little older Mimi and Anna each received a “Mitzi” doll --- not “Barbie” --- for Christmas.  Mitzi was less expensive, she was prettier and made of softer plastic than Barbie who seemed frigid and forbidding --- like she didn’t really want to play with children.  Mitzi’s hair was red and abundant.  It wouldn’t matter if you cut some of it off --- she had plenty.  Mother seemed to understand about dolls and she was also good at providing real, live babies for Mimi and Anna to practice their maternal skills on --- though never in the basement!

     At Christmastime Mimi and Anna were invited into Roberta’s room to witness Betsy McCall’s holiday party.  The dolls were wearing wonderful dresses of taffeta and velvet in deep jewel-like colors with satin sashes that matched the bows in their hair.  Two of them wore dark tights and red shoes while the other had lacey anklets and black patent leather “MaryJanes.”  There was a glosssy make-believe turkey on the table and adorable miniature dishes of mashed potatoes, carrots and peas.  At that size, even vegetables looked delicious.  A plate of tiny cookies had no doubt been left out for a plump but petite Santa Claus.  Opposite the gilded birdcage, its occupant still waiting to sing, stood a Christmas tree festooned with colored balls and a glittering star at the top.  Neatly arranged beneath the tree was an array of darling little gifts --- each neatly wrapped in patterned paper and tied with a bow or a fluffy bunch of scissors-curled ribbon.

     Mimi swallowed hard.  A warm sensation of shameful longing rose from her bottom all the way up her back and across her tightening scalp.  She coveted those dolls, Roberta’s matching bedspreads and curtains, the safe, soothing carpet beneath her feet, the mother who stayed awake and paid attention all day --- but mostly she yearned for the mysterious little gifts --- not realizing that under their festive wrapping was nothing but Styrofoam and blocks of wood.