Flowers in the Attic

When I was six months old, my father was transferred to serve in the Royal Military Police over in England, so we moved to Bulford Camp, on the Salisbury plain. Behind our house was the Buford Kiwi, a giant kiwi carved into the chalk on the side of Beacon Hill. Stonehenge was only a few minutes away by car, and my parents tell me you could see it on the horizon from the top of the kiwi hill, up to which they would walk me every day. We moved back to the states when I was three, so I take their word for it.

While we were there, my young parents with their first (and only) child, a little girl with blonde curly hair and big blue eyes, my mom bought me a dollhouse. This was before my Dad got a hold of me, and stole away her little southern belle in training, teaching me how to swing a bat, which snakes were okay to pick up and which to stay away from, and how to make a piercing whistle using an acorn shell.

Me, in England, on my 2nd birthday.

A few years later.

So my dollhouse was handmade, wooden, three stories, and fashioned like an old english cottage with a thatched roof, that could be lifted off to reveal the attic. Looked something like a three story version of this.

I was too young for dollhouses then, only a toddler, so she saved it for me. Problem was, by the time I WAS old enough to be into dolls, they were more of the action figure type (see above).

I did have some barbies though, that my babysitter had given me, and even at the age of four or five, I could tell how disappointed my mother was when I paid little attention to the beautiful dollhouse in my bedroom, and how happy it made her when I played with it. Unfortunately, handmade dollhouses bought in England aren't proportioned for Barbie and Pals. Much too tall. As I mentioned above, however, the roof did come off, and in the attic, Barbie, Skipper, and Ken (less their noses, which I bit off, and flattened, flipper-like feet that I gnawed on) could move gimp around with ease. So there they dwelled, a happy, vapid, deformed family of three.

But this was not an entirely satisfactory solution. They could not fit down the wooden staircase to the rest of the house. They didn't know the roof was gone. Trapped! Unable to leave the attic, how would they eat? They would starve up there, and the next residents would find their bones. My dollhouse would be haunted. That would make Mom even more sad, and simply would not do.

So, I recruited a couple G.I. Joes and a Transformer or two. They could walk around in the house just fine. Up and down the stairs with ease. I pulled them from their current mission assisting He-Man in his battle against Skeletor, and reassigned them to Domino's Pizza, where they could deliver pizza to the Noseless Gimpy Blondes in the attic. They were full and happy, and I made sure to include a Flintstones vitamin on occasion. Mom said eating pepperoni pizza every night wasn't healthy. (She was right, I tried this for a while as an adult.)

So Barbie, Ken, and Skipper continued to live in the attic for years, never leaving. I'm not sure what they survived on when my G.I. Joes and Transformers and Masters of the Universe disappeared after the epic Battle In The Slime. Which took place in the living room. Apparently the green goo doesn't come out of carpet easily.

Years later (but not enough, reading far above my level introduced me to some concepts a little early), I read V.C. Andrews' book. I was mortified. Had the G.I. Joes been poisoning the pizza? Were Barbie, Skipper, and Ken engaging in vague taboo adult acts? What had I done?!

The barbies, action figures, everything else is long gone. My mom still has the dollhouse. It's beautiful. Someday I hope to find a little girl to give it to, with some dolls that fit, who will fill it full of furniture and play Loving Non-Dysfunctional Family in it. It would make my mother happy. Me too.