The Guillotine Story
By: Anna Herrington
Tags: Childhood, Latchkey Kid, Psychiatry, Guillotines, Memoir

The Guillotine Story

On Barbies, Marie Antoinette, and Being Left Home Alone

The guillotine was sitting on the kitchen table when I returned home from school that Spring day, left behind by my decade-older brother. It stood about 18" high, with a metal blade wedged between the wooden verticals — grooved for the blade’s easy descent. The top center of the blade had a hole drilled in it, a leather cord tied through, and the free end was looped around a nail hammered askew to keep the blade fixed until time for an execution.

My brother had a report due on Marie Antoinette that week, visual aids gave extra credit. As woodshop was beloved and history was not at this point in his life, much more energy went into this extra credit than did the paper itself.

While eyeing the rough semi-circle cut into the guillotine base for cradling necks, I mentally inventoried my stuffed animals, my dolls, and eventually, thought it the perfect size for my Barbie doll…or maybe Skipper.

I’d had to beg for more than a year for any type of doll like Barbie as she was looked at with scorn by both my mother and sister. Barbie was the exact image of everything frightful a girl could emulate, in my household’s opinion, and she looked scarily like some of my southern U.S. classmates’ mothers, especially in her cruise-in-the-convertible outfit she wore in the Sears Christmas catalog.

I thought she was fabulous for exactly the same reasons. My opinions were heightened by the ban placed on her purchase by my progressive mother, who looked nothing like anyone else’s mother, much less like Barbie cruising in her convertible.

Once my pleas were successful and Barbies were ensconced in my room, my fascination with them was short-lived. They were hard dolls, not cuddly at all, and too late I realized their hair wouldn’t grow back after cutting — even with shampoos, even after six months. The only fun part left was changing their clothes, and unlike at my friends’ houses, my dolls were clothed as plainly as I was.

To my frugal Yankee mother, indulging a child with pretty things, much less indulging a Barbie (“A Bar-r-rbie,” she would say with dripping disdain), was the fastest way to ensure a girl would be frivolous, materialistic, a gold digger, or worst of all, just like the other girls’ Atlanta, Georgia mothers who adorned themselves with pink and lace.

It was homemade polyester Stretch-and-Sew creations for my Barbie and me.

By the time the guillotine arrived, I was bored with not only my botched-hair Barbie and her Plain Jane clothes, but also my bendy-legged Barbie, my home-made-crew-cut adorned Skipper, and the sole Ken owned on our street. Ken was suspect to all of us kids, he looked like no one’s father and none of us knew what to do with him…even his store-bought clothes were weird.

The guillotine meant I could play ‘Marie Antoinette.’ My brother had told me all about her, embellishing the gory details, of course. Even as a child I loved history much more than dolls.

My first attempts at playing Marie Antoinette with Barbies were not very satisfying. The first drop of the guillotine blade merely bounced off ‘Marie’s’ neck and her head didn’t roll at all. Even after using the kitchen knife sharpener, that blade was dull as toast.

More creative efforts were needed.

I re-set up shop in the carport as I’d promised I’d never make a mess in the house while home alone. I gathered the kitchen knives I’d also promised never to use — and the doomed royals, er, Barbies…and Ken. Why not? I thought, he’s dumb.

After noticing that the dolls’ knobby neckpieces were why I had no dramatic flourish of head rolling, I methodically sawed through all of them but Ken’s, leaving beige bits of plastic scattered around on the cement carport floor. Ken’s neck was remarkably stubborn and I soon gave up on him to focus my attention on the real actors in this drama, the Barbie-Maries.

Placing the dolls’ heads back onto their jaggedly chopped neckstubs, I chose my first Marie and awkwardly walked her up the pirates’ gangplank to meet her fate (I wasn’t sure the original Marie walked a gangplank but it seemed like the right kind of thing). I then laid her down on the guillotine, neck positioned carefully — not only for tender last rites, but for the best possibility of a long head roll across the carport, hoping it might even roll off the edge into the azalea bush below.

I wanted Barbie’s death to be just like Marie Antoinette’s.

I ghoulishly imagined the head-roll.

(To be fair to my imaginative child-self, my father had just died, this perfectly good guillotine shows up, I’d been raised among Barbie mockers…and then there’s my brother’s gory details. Death was on my mind.)

After a few tries and a couple tweaks to increase the inclined plane of the guillotine base — success! Marie’s head not only chopped right off, but even rolled a few inches. The short hair caused too much drag, slowing down her head roll though, so a few more snips and the now mostly-bald heads gave me the rolling distance I was looking for.

(My fellow history fan friend in Paris assures me this pre-head-chopping hair-chopping also happened to the original Marie.)

With the addition of ketchup stuffed into their hollow heads — yes, sadly— I was satisfied with my historic re-creation and played happily executing wicked royals until dusk gathered in. Growing hungry, I went inside searching for a snack, leaving the detritus of my game messily scattered and forgotten. Sticky heads slowly glued themselves to the carport floor as the ketchup congealed.

When my mother came home that evening, she wore a somber countenance and seemed more quiet than usual. After an absent-minded kiss to my forehead combined with a chin-hold and concerned look in my eyes, she went out of the room. I soon heard the mumble of her voice on the phone, a usual nightly ritual. She was on the phone for a long time that night.

The next day during school, I was surprised and horrified to hear my name blaring over my elementary class intercom, followed by: “…please come to the office, your mother is here to pick you up.” I reluctantly went, she briskly did, and soon we were headed off to a destination unknown to me, unspoken by her.

“This is Dr. Pompous — he would like to ask you some questions,” my mother said when we’d arrived at the dark, cavernous office stuffed with books and smelling of cigars and leather. As she backed away and exited, relief was clearly visible on her face that this was not going to be her question-and-answer session.

I suppose he did ask me questions about my Marie Antoinette game and I must have answered, but the memories that linger are these: being left alone with a total stranger who was old and rather beaky-nosed with spectacles, his one long black nostril hair that swayed gently in and out with each of his in- and ex-halations, and the slick burgundy leather sticking to the backs of my legs as I wondered idly whether my legs would ever grow long enough for my feet to touch the ground when I sat on a couch.

After my mother rejoined us, Dr. Pompous prepared his pronouncement. As Mom sat down beside me, her feet barely touched the ground themselves.

“Your daughter has Penis Envy.” the psychiatrist declared.

That made me sit up and take notice.

Envy? One of the Top Ten’s ‘Envy’ ? I knew about that word from church…and why did he say…penis?! Boy, was this guy in trouble. Or I was, it was hard to tell.

I glanced over to see my mother’s mottled glare.

“That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard! I knew I shouldn’t have let So-and-So talk me into this… Daughter, it’s time to go.” She grabbed my hand and we walked out the door.

On the way back to school my mother finally asked,” Why did you cut off all the Barbie doll heads?”

I explained.

“…and chop off all their hair, chop up all their necks?”

I explained.

“Why did you leave the Ken doll alone? Why wasn’t his head chopped?”

I explained.

Silence reigned for the rest of the ride back to school.

When I got home that afternoon, the cleaned-up guillotine and the cleaned-up Barbies, Skipper and Ken, were all arrayed on my dresser ready to play with some more. The ketchup disappeared— and there were no more visits to Dr. Pompous.

(…and very soon after that, I was enrolled in after-school gymnastics, after-school band, and after-school kids group.)