“Hey!” Billy popped his head in the door of the workroom where Charlotte and Olivia were putting together a puzzle.
“I was going to ride over to the school to pick up a book,” he said as the girls looked up. “Mariah and Veronika are using two of the bicycles. That only leaves one. Do you need it this afternoon? If you do, I can wait.”
“I’m not planning on going anywhere,” Charlotte replied. “Olivia is spending the afternoon with us. Mandy and Jolena are in the kitchen, if you want to check with them.”
With a quick “Thanks!” Billy turned around and left.
“You’re lucky to have brothers,” Olivia told Charlotte when Billy was gone.
“I only have sisters at my place,” Olivia explained. “Amber only has girl dolls. Of course, there are boy dolls at school with us, but I don’t have any living with me.” Then she looked back at the puzzle pieces and added, “At home we usually look for all the pieces with straight sides when we start a puzzle.”
Charlotte told her that was how they did it, too. “It's easy to start that way,” she said, “because you know they go on the outside. Then you can use them to figure out where the other pieces go.”
“They don’t really make boy dolls that are the kind of doll like us,” Charlotte explained as the two dolls looked through the pieces, “So there aren’t as many of them. Boys, I mean. The company that makes us seems to think that only girls play with dolls and that they want the dolls to be girls, too.”
“Billy started out as a girl, you know,” Charlotte continued. “He tried to tell them at the factory that he really was a boy, but they seemed to only know how to make girl dolls or maybe they didn’t care.”
“Maybe,” Olivia suggested, “the human people in the factory that makes dolls like us don’t really believe in dolls. Maybe they just think we’re toys, or maybe they have to concentrate on their job, so they didn’t hear him.”
Charlotte had never considered that but thought that it made sense. Human people who don’t believe in dolls don’t hear them when their dolls try to talk to them. You have to listen with your imagination. The two girls thought about that. What would it be like to be a human person without enough imagination to hear dolls talk to you?
The two dolls went back to looking for puzzle pieces with one straight edge. “He was glad they let him have a puppy,” Charlotte told Olivia then, “but he hated that they put a dress on him and gave him long hair. Look! I think these are corners.” Corners are special pieces when you're putting together a puzzle. They're even more important than the ones with just one straight edge.
“I remember when Billy came to live with us,” Charlotte continued, “he was too embarrassed to come in to meet us wearing a dress, so Mandy took some boy’s clothes she and Veronika had made for him and went out to him when he got here.”
“He changed his clothes in the driveway before he came in to meet us,” Charlotte remembered, “so we only have ever seen him in boy’s clothes.”
Charlotte told Olivia how Mandy brought Billy’s girl clothes in because he wanted to give them to his sisters. Mandy had put them into a basket for him.
“We went through the basket and picked out what we liked,” Charlotte said.
“He still had long hair, though,” she said. “He hated it.”
“Why did he want to be a boy doll?” Olivia asked. “I mean, girl dolls can do everything that boy dolls do, but we get to wear pretty dresses and fix our hair if we want. Why would you want to give that up?”
Charlotte thought for a moment. “Look!” she exclaimed suddenly, holding out a puzzle piece. “I found another corner!” Sometimes when you're thinking about something else you suddenly notice things you had missed.
Then her mind went back to Billy. She hadn’t considered it before. Why would a doll not want to have long hair? True, she hadn’t liked having to fix her own hair in the beginning, but now she enjoyed it, and she and Mariah often helped each other with their hair.
Even in the beginning, though, she never had wanted to have short hair like the boys. Some girl dolls have short hair, but most of the girl dolls she knew had long hair. They either wore it down, or braided or in a ponytail, or like Veronika, braided and then pulled up and fastened.
Maybe Billy was just a different kind of doll from Olivia and herself. “Billy likes to climb trees up and hang upside down.” she pointed out. “He says long hair would hang in his eyes.”
Even as she said it, though, Charlotte thought that it might be just an excuse. Girl dolls with long hair can hang upside down. It isn’t a problem, and she and her sisters climb in trees all the time.
And even after his haircut Billy had wanted his hair shorter and more like a real boy. That’s why he finally decided to get a wig. Emil decided to get a wig, too, in solidarity.
Then something occurred to Charlotte. “You know,” she said thoughtfully, “I suspect that Billy wanted to be a boy because The Writer needed him to be a boy.”
Meanwhile, Billy was on the trail, riding toward the school to get his book, totally unaware that he was the topic of a serious discussion.
Veronika: Götz Classic Kidz Vroni
Mandy: Götz Happy Kidz Katie 2015
Jolena: Götz Happy Kidz Lena in Aspen
Charlotte: Götz Happy Kidz Anna in Paris
Mariah: Götz Happy Kidz Mariah, "Chosen" from My Doll Best Friend
Billy: Götz Happy Kidz Lily at London
Emil: Götz Happy Kidz Emilia
"The Doll's Storybook" is not affiliated with Gotz Dolls USA Inc. or Götz Puppenmanufaktur International GmbH.
Watch for the next story each Friday afternoon at 1:00 PM Pacific Time.
Copyright © 2025 by Peggy Stuart
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