Okay, I started this “Naked Ned” doll, supposedly as an experiment, but really and truly because he’s going to be my alfonsito doll. I think it’s important to make an Alfonsito doll because I can forgive the little boy. I can let go of resentments, once I take a look at his life. The grown man is a lot harder.
This really also fits with how my dad cherished the “school days” foto of himself. He started telling the story about when he visited the seminary, and he saw how everyone was clean and warm and had a bed and food. And they asked if anyone wanted to stay there. And inside, his hand went up right away. But then he realized that he would have to give up his mama and his brothers and he just couldn’t do it.
Sometimes he tells this story like the angel and the devil are on his shoulders telling him what to do. The Angel says raise your hand! Be a priest! Be holy and comfortable and good. And the Devil says no, you don’t want to give up your family. You can’t live by their rules.
And so sometimes he looks at that little boy and says he’s “almost a saint” (a narrative I particularly liked to disrupt, saying, he doesn’t look saintly: he looks like a little boy who will prob’ly get into trouble soon) and that if he had made different choices then, none of us would even exist. If the angel had won out.
Anyway, right now he has feet and chonies and a torso but no arms or head yet.
I hope I finish him soon, instead of having his headless torso standing there looking at me…
I’ve been obsessively reading project notes for all the nelly/ned dolls. It’s interesting to me that other people feel afraid too, when they’re making dolls. I mean, they put it down to advanced craft anxiety—do I know enough/have enough practice to do this.
They don’t necessarily have my witch/poupee anxiety.
But I think it’s important, hear? I think I need to confront this fear and that making Alfonsito is part of my healing.
I can see already that I didn’t make him skinny enough. He doesn’t look like the New Mexico farm boy, whose bones stand out too much. He looks plump and happy. Good to remember for future projects.
So maybe I’ll work on him today and maybe I’ll work on the Xiomara doll and she might turn into Altagracia or Grace, who knows. minime. I mean, not really: I never looked that clean and stylish in my life! But more like Gracie and Shirley and Eleanor, in contrast to Lucia and
Alice. More like the sly girl in the jumper but instead in dungarees. That’s why I think Shirley, you know?
Making this naked ned doll with chonies seemed pretty important to me, though I couldn’t figure out why. The directions say the underwear is only necessary for the girl doll (presumably because she will be wearing a dress and so her undies might show, while he’ll be wearing trousers so his never will).
But it fits with my dollmaking magic: the doll is not a boy doll or a girl doll to start off with. You can give the doll short hair and call them a boy. Or you can give that short haired doll some bright colored clothing and call them a girl. Or they can be a trans mermaid.
And really, for a while I was stuck on the transmermaid, because they have to have the fish tail, so you’re deciding from the first stitch what they’re going to be, but then I’ve discovered the “removable mermaid tail” pattern, which is just a brilliant idea. So Alfonsito can be a merman if I want.
Oh, another reason I’ve really been thinking about making an Alfonsito doll: originally I was just thinking of making im like in the photo: big hair, hand-me down shirt and jeans (belted tight) and maybe boots. But the last night I was thinking about the story Maria Littlebear. And how Elisa tries to remember ever having a toy, and she can’t. She remembers mothering her baby siblings, but never having a baby doll. And that’s like Alfonsito. So making Alfonsito a pirate, for example, that’s something that he could never have done and so also important for him to do. He did the schoolboy. He did (at least in his mind) the acolyte, the altar boy, the almost-saint. He did the shoe-shine boy, the travieso, the hustler, the con-man. Cowboy wasn’t play: it was staying with the cows all day.
Quote from Jo Carrillo’s short story “Maria Littlebear:
That was the year that Elisa Antonia Alvarado was born in Mountain View, New Mexico. She was the oldest out of twelve and the only girl too. Can you imagine that? Well, all she could remember was feeding and changing, yelling and crying, you know, all those things that mothers usually do alone. She would try to remember dolls or some other kinds of toys too, so it wasn’t like she was faking it. Right up until a few years ago, she’d sit right there in that chair that you’re in now, she’d wrinkle her face up—sort of like a baby will do one second before she starts wailing—and you could tell that she was really trying hard. Still, no toys. The fact was that she had too many responsibilities to be wasting time like a normal kid would do if its papa was rich. (Jo Carrillo, “Maria Littebear,” 1981)
But he didn’t get to do the pirate, the world explorer, the indigenous boy secure in his own culture, the lion tamer, raggedy andy. All the things that Chip gets to be, Alfonsito never got to be. So yeah, there was some resentment there. With Steven and Chip, he had enough of a say that he was able to influence them, make them want to be cowboys or to learn that a grandpa won’t carry you but a grandpa will hold your hand and walk alongside you. But they faced limitations themselves about what they could and couldn’t be.
Expressed some opinions: Stevie wouldnt’ wear the crop top until his mom showed him that Winnie the Pooh is wearing a cropped top, and so he called it his Pooh shirt and happily wore it.
Cisco would not put on his suit for Christine’s wedding—categorically refused, until Grandpo put his matching suit on and then Cisco was okay with matching Grandpo.
But Chip ran—ran as far as you could see. Had no fear, even though me and Christine would be having a heart attack that he wouldn’t stop when he reached the curb and would be hit by a car. He was never afraid. he was fearless. And now he’s headed to the Peace Corps, to Columbia this summer!
I'm really glad I made him with chonies on.
For some reason I decided to go with gray instead of white. White is too new and crisp and clean. And also, in the little house Farmer Boy book, there’s a whole thing about his mom weaving all the fabric for all their clothes. and I think that the underwear is undyed or maybe even gray. The gray she made by mixing the natural wool with the natural black wool. But that might have only been for school uniforms.
I watched Star Wars: Rogue One, Moana last night (loved it) and am watching Frozen today.
Fathers in the fairy tales always put their hope for their children first.
Fathers in real life never do. They don’t have grand logic behind what they do and they don’t notice who they hurt.
Fantasy gave me the benign father figures: sober, safe, sexless, absolutely safe. Wise and sensible both.
As I’ve mentioned before, an important metaphor comes to me from Octavia Butler’s Patternmaster series. We are “Doro’s People.” The chosen ones. Bred to be tasty prey for the soul-killing vampire who has made himself our God. We are drawn to our own people, even while living with them is unhealthy for us. We can’t raise our own children. We don’t know how to parent. We don’t know how to do anything but react to the chaos our brains absorb from the noise around us.
In the world of Doro’s people, fathers are never trustworthy. Not girl children. Not to anyone.
