This Little Black Doll
Below the first part of the text of performance piece Magdalena. When the house opens, I Gabri Christa, sit in the audience and talk while the lights are still on. In the space sits a doll on a suitcase. We all look at it, while talking the lights dim and we are all left watching the doll only in a spotlight, while we sit in the dark, an dI tell the story of this doll:
“ You see this doll? This little black doll was my mom’s doll. A few years ago, when she was in one of her cleaning organizing modes, she finally gave it to me.
This little doll now lives in my living room under a glass cylinder. The clothes it wears, are all handmade by my mom. I have a few other pieces of clothing as well, and sometimes I change the outfits. But mostly, the doll just sits there, under the cylinder in the living room, while we, my husband, daughter and I, read or watch television on the couch next to it.
I first met this doll at my grandmother’s house in Rotterdam, where my mom had left it, when she moved out. She was too worried it would break if she took it with her, because this doll is made from porcelain. I must have been around 5 years old at the time, because my grandmother was still living by herself, and we were visiting from Curaçao.
After my grandmother’s death, the doll came home to my Mom. I, had already moved out of my parent’s house.
This doll intrigued me, not just because it was the first porcelain and black doll I had ever seen, but because I couldn’t understand how my mom, a girl from a very modest background in the Netherlands, had gotten a black doll in a time there were no black dolls for sale and barely any black people living in Rotterdam! How did she get this doll? I never had a black doll growing up, nor did I ever see a black doll growing up. Not even in Curaçao. I’m not counting all the “black face” dolls of Black Pete’s nor the kind of caricature dolls that were sold to tourists, no I’m talking about “real” dolls that actually look like brown babies, like this one.
My mom said that the doll was given to her by Tante Leni, “Aunt Leni” her oldest sister, who was dating a married sailor at the time. The sailor brought the doll back from one of his travels, and my aunt in turn gave it to my mom. Tante Leni only had two sons, both from this sailor and it was a big deal to have kids out of wedlock for a very Catholic Family. So with two sons, and an married seaman there was no need for her to keep the doll I guess.
My Mom instantly fell in love with the doll and happily adopted it.
Around the time she was a teenager, my mom wanted to become a missionary, a nun to be exact. Her goal was to join the monastery as soon as she finished high-school. Although the Netherlands at the time still had many colonies and she could have opted for Suriname, the Caribbean, she had her mind set on Papua New Guinea, part of the Dutch East Indies at the Time and now part of Indonesia. My mom was intrigued by the people there and how “original” they still were, and how differently they looked from the people from Java or Jakarta, the other islands that made up the East Indies. People form Papua New Guinea had more in common with the Aboriginals from Australia, but their hair was much curlier.
My mom never made it to Papua New Guinea, instead, she moved with my dad, to the Dutch West Indies, Curaçao, where both my brother Ivo and I were born.
When I look at this doll. I can’t help but wonder, if this doll, this little black doll, made my mom fall in love with my dad, if it fueled her love for adventure and for travel”.
Excerpt of MAGDALENA part 1: the performance piece