Polly and the Watch House

Polly and the Watch House


They were definitely Merry Janes--you know, little girl party shoes with straps that go across the top of the foot. And they were pink. The best part was even though they were really tiny, you could take them off Polly's feet. And to a 6 year old native Vermont girl who didn't even own a pair of party shoes, life just didn't get any better.

Polly lived in a little plastic round case attached to a wide bright pink watch band. I called it "Polly's watch house." I would look at her and smile as if I knew how to tell time. She had blonde shiny hair, a pink and white polka dotty sundress and a tiny pink hair band that matched those rubber take off/put back on shoes. Sometimes I would flip open the case and take her out for some fresh air, take off her shoes and put them back on...the way little kids do. Taking care. Showing concern. I'd talk to her, too, but inside my head so other kids wouldn't laugh at me. Polly Pocket was, after all, the first doll I ever had and I just loved her. I'd wear her on my left hand so she wouldn't get jostled as I ate dinner or wrote on papers at school. She was a happy clean little thing and she filled my young heart with joy.

Mother told us over and over, "Don't eat those little green apples! They are full of seeds and the seeds are full of arsenic. Arsenic is rat poison!" But did we listen? What did I do? What did we all do? We shimmied up the knotted, snake of an apple tree that looked like it started to grow toward the house, but must have heard MOTHER, and curved itself out and up away from the kitchen window to the garden.  It was a crab apple tree and crabs, even back then, had very bad reputations as if they had exoskeletons and creeped sideways, skittled away from you into a dark hole somewhere...So I didn't call them crab apples I called them "baby greens" and popped them into my mouth like gum drops. I would think, "These are not poison. Mother just doesn't want us to spoil our dinner."

Well, it was one of these times that I had shimmed up that snake of a tree like a lumber jack and was eating those apples, and dropping about every other one into Mother's cast off black leather purse when the dinner bell rang. "OH NO!" I cried out and started to position myself to slide down the back side of tree so as not to be noticed. The watch band got caught on the craggy bark and it and Polly fell to the ground. I threw the purse full of apples down and reverse climbed jumping the last feet into the grassy ground. I grabbed Polly, threw her in the purse and took off.

My sisters were in the nearby woods and I had to beat them to the house, but first I had to get rid of the apples or I would be in trouble. I had to think fast so I ran through the garden, into the woods then back down the dusty road, stopping just long enough to unload my hoard by the stone wall. I ran breathless to the house to wash up for dinner.

When I looked at--or for--Polly, my heart stopped beating. "Where is Polly?" I checked the purse I had dropped at my feet. No Polly. Not only was she gone, her watch house was gone too! I couldn't tell anyone so I just ate my dinner in silence waiting to be excused. When I was able to, I ran back up the road and jumped into the waving fiddle heads where I was certain to find Polly and the watch house. Those little greens were everywhere among the field stones, tree bark and sticks. A chipmunk scolded me from a maple tree branch just above my head. No Polly. I searched that evening and the next and many times but never found little Polly. Even after I learned in high school that it takes about a million years for plastic to break down in the environment? I would be walking up the road on one of my daily walks and glance down at that spot. A few times, I even searched around.

I still think about Polly sometimes and her little pink rubber shoes. And I know that she was just one of the many sacrifices of my childhood--not listening to Mother, going against the wishes of the omniscient one. I should have known even back then...nobody gets away with having anything to do with a snake-like tree and eating forbidden apples. I guess I wasn't given the nickname EVE for nothing.