Short Story: Marie Antoinette

In this short story, Farhana Islam Tani explores a young girl’s intense desire for a porcelain doll and traces the nuanced and complex relationship she has with her mother.

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Pink satin dress netted with diaphanous lace, a cascade of brown curls spilled over the shoulders, rosy lips protruding from pale skin—Moumita could recall every detail of the porcelain Marie Antoinette doll she had seen in Ajmeri’s Antique Toy Shop. The delicate clink of the porcelain limbs was like a cupid’s arrow to her young heart. Compared to Antoinette, all the other dolls looked dreary. Moumita also remembered that her tearful eyes and quivering lips had little effect on her mother. She had one finger pointed at the doll and her head angled toward Mrs. Chowdhury, her eyes glazed over with anticipation.

“This is a very expensive porcelain doll. You will break it.” Mrs. Chowdhury said patiently at first. “You will get bored with it in a few days and forget all about it. Besides, you have plenty of good dolls back home.” Her mother tried to reason with her. Moumita, however, swatted away her mother’s words as if they were flies.

“But Maaaaa! All of my dolls are old and mangled.” Moumita persisted while ritualistically stomping her feet on the ground.

“No amount of nagging will do. I will not hear of it. End of discussion!”

Although it was the end of the discussion, Moumita silently pined for ‘Anette’ as she called the doll, and the thought of someone else owning the doll was unbearable.

While a dark nebula gathered in Moumita’s young psyche, and as she mourned her reluctant parting with Anette, she basked in the midday sun. She sat in an old bamboo chair, strategically positioned in the cooling shade of the balcony adjacent to her mother’s room. The south-facing balcony was spacious and allowed Moumita a view of a wide expanse of greenery. The noon light that poured into the balcony drew a diagonal path through the interior, illuminating the front half while plunging the back half into the shade.

As Moumita simmered in the shade, the yellowed effect of the sun felt intoxicating. Inattentively, she folded her right leg and tucked it under her left thigh. She focused her attention on the light that spilled through the balcony railing in stripes. Somehow, Moumita felt attuned to this time of the day—she noticed every flicker of light, every rustle of leaves, and relished the lazy warmth of the sun.

Suddenly, the telephone in the adjoining room cackled, disturbing Moumita’s serene moment. She heard her mother’s hurried thudding steps stop before the vexed phone, and when Mrs. Chowdhury picked up the phone, everything fell silent.

To Moumita, the silence seemed to stretch on for eons, and as the unbearable silence gripped her, she let her thoughts free-fall through the cracks of her mind—anything to keep her mind occupied. She thought about Antoinette again, and the thought of not owning the doll tormented her. Her thoughts bounced between Antoinette and silence, between silence and Antoinette, between Ant-lence and more silence. This continued for a while until she heard her mother put down the phone.

Mrs. Chowdhury shuffled her feet and headed towards the balcony. Her approaching footsteps gradually grew louder and louder before they stilled behind the chair where Moumita was lounging. She loomed over her daughter, casting a deeper shadow.

When Moumita turned her head back, she was confronted by her mother’s deep smile. There was something in her mother’s smile that made her uncomfortable. She almost wished her mother wasn’t smiling. Faintly, Mrs. Chowdhury hummed a familiar tune while she ran her fingers through her daughter’s hair. Moumita turned her head forward, closed her eyes, and allowed her mother to do as she pleased.

This is the least she could do after breaking my heart, Moumita thought to herself, enjoying her hair being gently brushed by her mother’s deft fingers. Mrs. Chowdhury then planted a kiss on her daughter’s forehead, announced it was time for a bath, and went back to the adjoining room.

The old chair croaked as she readjusted herself in the chair. For a moment, she mulled over whether to follow what her mother had instructed or remain glued to the chair for an hour longer as a show of protest. As the indecision plagued her, she decided to get up and step into the sunlight. Even though her eyes were closed, light seeped through her eyelids, blinding her anger and all her uneasiness into oblivion. Yes, to her, it was the best time of the day.

It had been three days since Moumita’s tryst with Antoinette. She had relentlessly followed her mother everywhere, trying to convince her that she must have the doll. She had nagged, whined, and pleaded, but her mother refused to budge. She even wailed like a daini, writhed wildly on the floor like a cockroach lying on its back. After exhausting all of her regular tricks, she then decided to take a more charitable approach.

“Ma, I will not ask for anything else ever again. Please, Ma, can you get me Anette?” Syrup oozed from Moumita’s voice. Mrs. Chowdhury, an experienced mother, knew the best thing to do when her ten-year-old daughter was being atrocious. She completely ignored her.

“If only Baba was in town, surely he would have bought the doll for me,” Moumita said accusatorily while glaring at her mother.

“Then you should ask your father to buy it for you once he returns. Don’t disturb me while I’m resting. ” But Moumita knew it would be too late by the time her father returned from his business trip. By then, another girl would be the fortunate owner of the porcelain doll. She felt helpless. Moumita couldn’t forget the liquid blue eyes, the gloss of the satin dress that adorned Antoinette, and her voluminous hair. All she had were a few raggedy old dolls, and the girls in her apartment building had the same. Imagine if she had Marie Antoinette, she would be the envy of the whole neighborhood. She must have Anette, or it would be the end of the world!

It was afternoon. Mrs. Chowdhury had lain down in bed for a nap, unable to get any sleep. Her forehead throbbed mercilessly. In the opposite corner of the room, Moumita squatted on the floor like a ghost with unfinished business. With deliberate tears in her eyes, she kept whimpering under her breath, punctuated with momentary sniffs and hiccups. Then the phone rang, silencing Moumita who had been haunting the corner of the room since noon. She perked up her ears. Could it be father? then there is a chance then I could have Anette. Mother will never say no to father. She thought hopefully.

Mrs. Chowdhury rose from the bed and demurely sat next to the telephone. She picked up the handset, unsurprised by the voice on the other end of the call. Crestfallen, Moumita realized it was not her father. Her mother spoke into the receiver in a hushed tone, in monosyllables- “ hmmm….yes..hmm” interjected with an occasional chuckle here and there.

Moumita pretended she could not hear her mother, instead focused all her energy on peeling the nail polish from her chipped toe. Then, her attention shifted to the blackened lines between the white tiles. She had the urge to peel off the black lines, just as she did with the nail polish. She followed her instinct and began to scratch the imperceptible black furrows between the tiles.

Mrs. Chowdhury had her back to her daughter. Although Moumita could not see her, she knew every expression her mother wore on her face. Mrs Chowdhury then let out a series of sonorous giggles and inattentively played with the handset cord. Moumita felt invisible, as if she did not exist in her mother’s world anymore. Mother seemed like a different person- she blushed and giggled like the elder sisters in school when they talked to the naughty boys. But our teacher strictly instructed them not to talk to boys. Moumita hated telephones, and what she despised even more was the satiated look on her mother’s face after the end of these calls.

Somehow, resolutely, she felt she must have the doll. Then an idea flickered in her mind; she knew exactly what she had to do to get Anette. Just before her mother put down the phone, she cranked up her volume. She sniffed her nose loudly and deliberately to attract her mother’s attention. Mrs. Chowdhury turned around to give another dose of motherly lecture, but was confronted by Moumita’s grief-stricken face. It hit her hard to look at those sad tearful eyes. For a moment, she forgot the irrational desire behind those eyes.

Before more time could pass, Moumita said accusatorily, “You don’t care about me, all you care about is talking on the phone. Is the phone more important than me?”

Panic showed on Mrs. Chowdhury’s face, followed by suspicion and uneasiness, and finally silence. For the rest of the day, Moumita could not find her mother anywhere, but she was not worried. She had done her part well, it had given her immense pleasure, now all she had to do was wait.

The next day, when Moumita returned from school, she found Marie Antoinette resting on her bed. She shrieked in delight and whirled the doll around. Her mother came into the room—happy to see Moumita happy.

“You must be very careful with her; make sure you do not break her,” cautioned Mrs. Chowdhury. She was relieved to see her mother was her old self again. Vigorously nodding at her mother, she immediately sat down to play with the new doll. Mrs. Chowdhury sat beside her daughter.

“What are you going to do with Anette?”

“I’m going to arrange a marriage for her with the best-looking Ken in the neighborhood. Let’s see… there is Lubana’s Ken, who has a horse, and Gayatri’s Ken, who has a car. Gayatri’s father had recently bought the toy car from China. The car is sooo beautiful.”

“Maybe you should ask Anette, who she prefers as her partner,” said her mother.

“Don’t be silly Ma. Dolls can’t talk. Besides, I like the red car. Imagine how pretty Anette would look in that car” Moumita had that glazed-over look on her face again.

Author Bio

Farhana Islam Tani is a writer, artist, and teacher from Bangladesh. In her work, she is drawn to the intricate dynamics of women navigating layered patriarchal spaces, exploring both the quiet tensions and the resilient bonds that form between them. Most days, she splits her time between the classroom and her personal studio, a space devoted entirely to the slow, rewarding work of writing and making art.