Paper Dolls don't last forever!

Though I was four and she, eight, we were always close as small children. We spent hours playing with my baby dolls. She taught me how to do their hair in pretty ponytails. When we weren’t playing with the dolls, she was using me as one. I loved to lie across the bed watching television while she would brush and comb my hair into beautiful styles that my own mother could never do.  My mother never made the rubber bands tight enough and my hair would swell into small puffy humps with short stubby braids dangling off of the end. Her Indian and White heritage had given her “good” hair. But we had our father’s hair and she just didn’t know what to do with it. But my sister did. All of the little girls at school would compliment me on the days that she did it.

                When we weren’t doing hair, we were playing house. My sister would tear thin strips of newspaper into varying lengths and curl the ends by pulling it across a pencil tip. These were our paper dolls. She would create such drama and mayhem that I never saw newsprint; I saw sassy teen age girls with big attitude. Occasionally, my mother would relinquish her Sears catalog, and then we were in heaven. We cut out furniture from the furniture section, children from the kids section, husbands from the men’s section and Mothers from the women section. Initially we cut out tons of clothes for them, but we soon recognized that the same models appeared throughout the catalog.  So we would cut them out in everything from business suits to nightgowns and no longer had to worry about the clothing falling off. Our imaginations were limitless in all that we did. She was truly my best friend in all the world… until she turned 12.

                I was in third grade and she was in the sixth. One fall day, I came home from school, dropped my books, and ran to her room as I always did. Just as I turned the corner -- BAM!  She had heard me coming and quickly jumped up and slammed her bedroom in my face. I could her scream through the door, “Go away, I don’t play with baby dolls!” I began banging on the door as tears slowly ran down my cheeks. My parents tried to get her to open it, but she refused and continued stabbing me in heart with those words, “Go away! Leave me alone! I don’t play with little kids!”

                She eventually opened the door, but the door to our close relationship had closed forever.