Mannequins Here, Mannequins There.......

  

  For the past couple of weekends when I go to yard sales I’ve been intrigued by the appearance of a ceramic baby with no clothes.

  The first time I saw it it was sitting up in a box.  I called it “Creepy Baby” because the doll looked so life-like.  It didn’t have a fake smile like so many dolls do.  It just…was.  It looked creepy.  So I called it Creepy Baby.

  The second time I saw Creepy Baby was laying down in a box at a junk sale down the road from the previous weekend’s sale.  I knew it was the same doll because the left shoulder socket was broken just like on the first.

  “Hey,” I said to The Lady of the House.  “It’s the second time I’ve seen it.  Must be a sign.  It’s just a buck.  We could bury it in the front yard…up to its chest and position its arms so they’re raised in the air.”

  The Lady of the House turned and looked at me with a look that told me there would be no Creepy Baby buried up to its chest in the front yard.

  Muriel* used to do stuff like that with mannequins.

  I hung around with Muriel in the 1990’s.

  Muriel fancied herself as an artist…broken mirrors were saved in boxes for a possible mosaic, our pickup truck was hand painted with frivolous art done by the students in the dance class she taught, dog hair was saved for potential weaving into a dog hair sweater, each wall in the house was painted a different color, skeletons were drawn on the walls in honor of her arthritis (don’t ask me, it’s just something she told me), and Muriel had a collection of mannequins and mannequin parts.

  A potted plant would have mannequin arms sticking out of the soil with hands raised.

  There was the garden with the mannequin heads placed in strategic points, peeking out from the tomatoes and peppers at passersby on our street in Roswell.

  Then there was “Ted.”

  Ted was the full-sized male mannequin that Muriel put in different outfits over the years to fit her moods.  She said she named him after a Santa Fe artist that she said knew.

  One year Muriel put Ted in jeans, t-shirt and sunglasses in our front porch swing in Roswell…his hand raised in a gesture of greeting.

  It was the next day that the young woman who lived across the street “met” Ted.  She was getting groceries out of her car when she saw Ted sitting on the front porch swing with his hand raised.

  “Hi,” she said waving at Ted.

  Ted didn’t move.

  So the young woman put down her groceries, walked to the edge of her drive, waved and again said, “Hi.”

  Ted just sat there with his hand in the air.

   Young neighbor crossed the street and said, “Can you not hear me?”

  Ted sat there with his mannequin grin, hand in the air.

  The woman came up on the porch and laughed at herself for not seeing Ted was a mannequin.  About then a stray cat shot out from under the swing and bumped into her leg.  She screamed because she thought the mannequin had kicked her.

  That’s when I came out of the house with all the commotion going on.

  The young woman saw me, stopped, came back across the street and told me about her encounter with Ted.

  Muriel and I lived in Amarillo for a while and when it came time to move her dad loaned us an old, beat-up school  bus to load our stuff into and haul to Arizona.

  Ted sat in a wooden chair strapped to a platform on the back of the bus.  There he was, his hand raised in a cheery highway “hello.”

  As we passed through Hereford, Clovis, Roswell, Ruidoso, Las Cruces, Tucson and on into Phoenix I got a kick out of watching people in cars and trucks waving at Ted.

  Once we got settled into Phoenix Ted took up residence sitting in a chair on the patio of the condo.  Some time later Ted was joined out on the patio with some kid mannequins.

  The mannequins of children were appropriate for Muriel’s place because she had a thing for attracting kids.  Our place was a hub of activity for the little crumbcrunchers in the condo complex.  When Muriel got off work in the afternoon the kids started showing up…they’d play with the dogs, they’d color, stuff like that.

  One day a new kid, probably about 4 years old, came to join the group.  The kid kept staring at Ted.

  “Who’s that,” the kid asked an older kid named Danny.

  “That’s Ted,” said Danny.  “Muriel caught him stealing cookies from her cookie jar so she killed him and stuffed him with beans.”

  The 4 year old opened his eyes wide and kept staring at Ted.

  “So,” Danny went on, “You don’t want to steal nothin’ around here.”

  One spring my mom came to visit me in Phoenix. 

   Early mornings Mom would take a cup of coffee and a book out to the patio, sit at the table there and read.

  One day while she was visiting I came home from work and she started laughing as she told me a story.

  “I was out on the patio reading,” said mom, chuckling, “When these two women came walking by.  They stopped in front of the patio and one says to the other, ‘This is the place with all the mannequins.’”

  One woman got closer and even leaned over the patio railing and got within inches of mom’s face.

  “And this one looks so real,” the woman said of my mom.

  Just then mom turned and looked at the woman leaning over the railing.

  “Oh!” said the woman, practically falling backwards, turning and quickly scurrying away with her friend.

  Mom laughed and laughed.

*Names changed.....