Obsidian Shards: Afro-Horror Tales

The Ebony Dolls

Author's Note:

I present here a character with a very similar interest to my own. The key difference being that he is distressed by the imagery in question, whereas I am disgusted, though fascinated by it. I think we've all--in our times--encountered those who use fear of subjugation as an excuse to mistreat their own. I like to challenge this notion. Our stereotypes are weaponized realities of our people, made specifically to incite fear and hatred. Combating them does not mean denying them, but rather to challenge the very notion that these features make us worthy of hatred and fear in the first place. To hate niggas is to hate yourself. After reading this story, go out and find a nigga that you love, and tell them that you love them.

I hate them all.

You know what I'm talking about. I'm sure you've seen them at least once.

Minstrels.

Sambos.

Gollywogs. Jigaboos. Mammies. It doesn't matter what you call them, I can't stand them all.

But no, I don't mean that in the "Grandad is just from an older time" kind of way. I do not hate other Black people, no matter what anyone says. It's those 'caricatures' of us that I can't stand.  Those things are more than offensive, they make my stomach spin and bubble. I hate seeing minstrel drawings or costumes and I ESPECIALLY hate the dolls.

I don't know if I can say exactly when my fear started, but I can say the earliest memory I have of it. I was in preschool, and it was time for everyone to pick a toy from the big box at the end of the room to play with. I was too slow--missed my chance to grab a dinosaur or a Voltron, everything was gone except one toy, the same one I had avoided everyday before.

It had big, white eyes that weren't looking at anything at all. It's hair was a dirty mess of lint and fuzz, more like rat fur than anything else. It's skin was like the hot frying pans my parents had conditioned me to fear and avoid at all cost. And all of that I could have ignored were it not for that plump, crimson grin.

She told my dad that it was a Golliwog, a character from a book. She told him that I picked the doll myself. She said that no one else would play with it. I won't repeat what my dad said to her, but I will say that I never went back to that preschool. 

I did take the doll up myself, I won't lie about that. But understand that I did not want to play with it. I only took it because for weeks, the other kids had tortured me with it. They knew I didn't like it, they knew that I cried for them to put it away whenever they shoved it into my face. I knew that they left the doll there to force my hand. 

I didn't like them calling me a chicken and laughing at me every single day. I wanted to make it stop. So I forced myself to grab the doll out of the chest. I brought it over to my mat and I just held it, looking into it's empty, mesmerizing gaze until my dad arrived to pick me up.

I can't be the only person that's terrified of those things, but no one ever talks about being scared of them. I think I'm the only one that's cursed like this. But how can I be? People must see how horrific they are! The eyes, specifically, are just so...innocent. Too innocent. They don't have the empty gaze of naive children, they have a deranged wide-eyed innocence of soulless monsters. I can never see the red of their lips as anything other than bloodstains and the torn flesh of their victims. 

In my mind, a Golliwog was a man-eating, mindless, soulless beast that was always creeping behind me. In the shadows. Where I couldn't see. It would silently creep upon me and I would have no idea until it scraped my skin with its coarse hair.

That sounds crazy, but it's exactly how I would always encounter the doll, thanks to the other kids in my pre-school. They hid it in my cubby, dropped it on books I was reading, and did whatever they could to make me believe the beast was out to get me. And I believed them. I still believe them. I avoid the damn things all the time.