by Lisa Piorczynski. Submitted as Tess Prior
I don’t know how many black people live in Timmins, Ontario. Not many, I imagine. Even fewer, I imagine, lived there 45 years ago when my mother was a child, shivering through those marathon winters in hand-me-down clothing. Which is why I’ve always wondered about Peggy Sue. But my mother doesn’t remember who gave her the black doll; doesn’t remember why the black doll was her favorite; and doesn’t remember how the black doll got that name in the first place. I always thought the name must have had something to do with the Buddy Holly song. Mom loves Buddy Holly. She snaps her fingers and puckers her lips when one of his songs crackles through our station wagon’s radio. “Buddy Holly would have been bigger than Elvis if he hadn’t died so young,” she says to my father who nods his head in agreement. Then she looks over her shoulder at whichever of her four kids is in the back seat and asks, “Honey, do you know that 70’s song ‘American Pie?’ Did you know that they’re singing about Buddy Holly? That the widowed bride in that song is his wife?” “Yes, Mom,” the child in the back answers, “You’ve told us that before.” Then Mom goes back to her snapping. When I tell her my theory—that the Buddy Holly song must be the reason she gave Peggy Sue her name—she shakes her head. “I was so young when I got Peggy Sue, I just don’t remember.” But she remembers taking Peggy Sue with her to the hospital. She remembers wondering what tonsils looked like. And she remembers one of her roommates in the women’s ward—an immovably hefty Italian (maybe Greek?) woman with thick brows and long aging hair. “Let me see your nice doll there,” the woman said, grinning through teeth that were too large by most standards but still too small for her face. Pretending not to hear her roommate’s request, my mother sank further beneath the hospital sheets, Peggy Sue clasped firmly to her chest. The woman kept right on asking—“I wanna see that nice doll of yours. Let me see her!”— but my mother kept right on ignoring. At night the woman slept with her head at the foot of the bed, wild hair fanning out in all directions on her pillow. The bed, which was directly opposite my mother’s, and its decapitated Medusa sat on the horizon of her field of view. Mom didn’t sleep well that night. Besides, she wasn’t used to having her own bed. She was used to being squashed in the top bunk with her little sister Cindy who, despite her small size, had a talent for taking up more space than her body was physically capable of occupying. My mother spent the rest of the night squeezing her doll and hoping a pretty nurse would come to check on her. This is all that Mom remembers about Peggy Sue. I remember that when I was five, I tried to give Peggy Sue a haircut. I had gotten a hold of my mother’s pinking sheers and couldn’t wait to see the results they’d produce when coupled with a crimping iron. Just as I started to prune Peggy Sue’s already short curls, my mother noticed what I was doing and yelled at me in a way she never had before. It wasn’t like my mother to yell, and it wasn’t like my mother to discourage me from giving a doll a haircut. In fact, she was always thrilled when my sister and I would stage productions of “Little Women” with our Barbies. We’d resolutely hack off the hair of the Barbie designated to play Jo March and give her 25 dollars in Monopoly money to take home to her family. Mom loved the hair cutting part. I think that’s why I still can hear the scolding she gave me when I tried to do the same to Peggy Sue. “Peggy Sue is not just like another one of your Barbies. She’s special. We can’t just go to the store and get another Peggy Sue. Do you understand?” I nodded through tears as my mother scooped the doll and me up in her arms, reassuring us both of her unflinching loyalty. When I was in second grade, we learned about slavery. I told my teacher Mrs. McBurney that one of my Loyalist ancestors married a black woman who had escaped to Canada via the Underground Railroad. Mrs. McBurney looked at me somewhat suspiciously and said, “That’s quite unusual. There weren’t many inter-racial marriages back then.” “I know,” I beamed back through blue eyes and blond curls, “My family is special.” I have no clue how or when I became convinced of the idea that I was the descendant of a Loyalist and an escaped slave. However, I was so determined to prove my ancestry that the minute I got home I started searching through old family albums for a photo that would verify my story. My mother, who noticed me sitting on the living room floor with Peggy Sue and a heap of albums on my lap, asked me what I was looking for. “Pictures of our ancestors,” I explained, “I want to show Mrs. McBurney a photo of our black relative—the one who came to Canada through the Underground Railroad.” My mother stared at me blankly, “We don’t have any black relatives, honey.” “We don’t?” I replied, wide-eyed. “We don’t,” she said apologetically. Even after Mom told me otherwise, I kept looking for the picture I was convinced existed somewhere in those yellowing pages. I looked through those albums five times before admitting defeat and taking Peggy Sue back up to my room. A few years later when I was a teenager, I learned that my mother wanted to adopt two foreign children. I knew instantly that she wanted black babies. And I knew that she wouldn’t get her black babies because of my father. Dad came from a family that could not, no matter how much you encouraged them otherwise, stop themselves from saying “colored.” I’d prepare myself for the inevitable whenever I’d talk about my friends with him. “Which one is Jane again? Is she that nice colored girl?” Dad would ask, glancing up briefly from his newspaper. “Yes, Dad. She’s that nice black girl,” I’d say, red-cheeked. “Mmm… That’s right,” he’d nod, smoothing the paper’s crease, “she’s a sweetie, that colored girl. Sent us a nice thank you letter after the Christmas party we had here.” Mom eventually stopped talking about adoption. She put Peggy Sue in her favorite china cabinet and went back to work when the last of her kids went to high school. I didn’t think about Peggy Sue for a long time. In fact, I didn’t think about Peggy Sue again until Kiri Davis, a New York City high school student, set out to recreate Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s “doll test” from the 50s. I watched the segment on CNN—footage of black children who, when presented with two dolls identical in every way except skin color, chose the white doll after they were asked, “Which doll is the good doll?” I watched them identify the black doll as “the bad doll,” and I watched them reluctantly reach for that same black doll when the interviewer said, “Which doll looks like you?” After the segment ended, I picked up the telephone. “Mom?” “Yes, honey,” her voice reassured. “Can I have Peggy Sue when you die?” “What?” “Peggy Sue,” I repeated, “Your black doll. Can I have her?” “I guess so,” my mother said. Then she paused, “None of your other siblings have asked for her.” We talked for another hour or so. I didn’t tell her about the doll test. I didn’t tell her that as I watched it, I could see her as a five-year-old choosing the black doll as “the good doll,” proving all those scientists wrong and making them wonder what the Timmins public schools were doing that so many others weren’t. I just told her about my job, about my boyfriend and about the weather. That night, I listened to Buddy Holly’s Greatest Hits as I lay in bed, hoping a snow storm would come to make the world seem a little more like the one my mother lived in as a child. Lisa Piorczynski lives in a tiny (albeit charming) studio in Manhattan. She currently teaches English and ESL at Pace University and, consequently, knows how to say “hello” in 15 different languages. When she isn’t in class being entertained by her students’ antics (“I couldn’t do my homework yesterday because it was too sunny outside.”) and their best nonsensical sentences (“In 1766 most 16 year olds would have prayed for a car. But not Antonio Salieri. He prayed for talent.”), she spends her time reading, theater-going, searching out the best new patisseries on the Upper West Side and enjoying the company of family and friends. Lisa is particularly grateful to her parents whose encouragement and faith prompted her to enter this (her first!) contest. HOME |