Rags to Riches

When she found the old doll as she was cleaning out her parent’s garage, she recognized it immediately—Poor Pitiful Pearl, the homely doll that came dressed in rags with a babushka over her hair, which you were supposed to “beautify” by styling her hair and putting her in the pink frilly dress and party shoes that came in the package—and that triggered a sudden rush of shame because her mother had scolded her after she received the doll as a gift and had been unable to pretend that she liked it

(she, her parents, and her little brother had all been sitting outside in the garden of the large and luxurious house with her relatives—an older couple her grandparents age who her parents referred to as “cousins”—when the woman handed her a large and beautifully wrapped box even though it wasn’t even her birthday, and she had been so excited and hoped, in fact, that it would be a doll, but when she opened the box and saw Poor Pitiful Pearl, she was so crushed that she was unable to muster even a smile—the doll was so ugly, she thought, with her big nose, her long face, and her sad eyes, and even when the cousin explained to her that she could make the doll pretty by changing her dress, she knew in her heart just changing her dress would not be enough to transform her, though it wasn’t until they were in the car on their way home that her mother let her have it for letting all her feelings of disappointed “show” on her face like that)

but now, with those relatives long gone and her parents both gone, too, she gazed at Poor Pitiful Pearl, almost pristine in her old box, and remembered what she had learned more recently about the relatives who had given her the doll—why, Pitiful Pearl must have represented their own rags to riches story—they were both Jews who had escaped the persecution, poverty, and pogroms of the Russian Empire by immigrating to New York, and who, after meeting each other and marrying, had moved to Los Angeles and become wealthy working in the Hollywood film industry—and she was filled with sadness thinking of those relatives—along with the rest of her family—and all the horrors they endured before they made the difficult journey out of Russia in the early twentieth century, and she considered keeping the doll in their honor, until she opened the box and read the booklet that came with the doll, which said the doll was created by artist William Steig, based on his cartoon character by that name—Steig himself, she knew, was Jewish and the child of immigrants, and come to think of it, that sad little face with the big nose along with the schmatta covering her hair did read as being Jewish—and the brochure went on to explain that all Pearl needed was a bath, a new hair style, a new dress and shoes, and a mirror to admire herself in to bring her to compete happiness—and then suddenly she’s appalled and furious—so what, Poor, Pitiful Pearl, a dirty little Jewish immigrant girl, wearing rags and living in a crowded tenement in New York, only needs a bath and a new dress?—what about some food and a good job for her father and a bigger apartment and, and—then she quickly closed the box and shoved it onto a shelf—to be dealt with later.


by Nina Zolotow

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