The Pilgrim Candle Dolls

{c}The Pilgrim Candle Dolls

When six-year-old Madelyn woke up on the last chilly Saturday in November, the box of Thanksgiving decorations was sitting on the dining room table, just as her mother promised. Madelyn loved Thanksgiving best of all the holidays, even better than Christmas, because her cousins always came to stay for four whole days, and they all got to play far past their bedtime when the parents sat visiting in the living room. Before the company arrived, Mama always needed a lot of help baking oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, tearing up bread for stuffing, tidying the house, and putting up all the decorations. Madelyn would watch as Mama arranged the baby pumpkins and gourds with a few bright maple leaves in an old wooden butter bowl as a centerpiece. Then Mama would take the autumn leaf garland out of the big box and arrange it on the piano, and then she would place the Pilgrim story picture book on the family room coffee table where Madelyn would spend hours paging through it.
But what Madelyn loved most of all was in a separate little shoebox at the bottom of the bigger one. It always came last, and Madelyn herself got to lift it out. She would delicately lift off the lid and unwrap each tiny Pilgrim candle. There were six of them, three girls in gray wax dresses and caps with white aprons and three boys in gray suits, white collars, and tall black hats. Each pale wax face had blue dot eyes and a cherry oval mouth. As long as Madelyn could remember, these candle people stood on the window sill in the family room where she involved them in all of her games and adventures during the Thanksgiving season. Last year, she had decided to christen them permanently, so the girls became Hannah, Sarah, and Elizabeth, and the boys became Robert, Jonathan, and Samuel. For days now, Madelyn had been waiting to see her little wax friends, and when she caught sight of that large Thanksgiving box, she ran to find her mother.
When Mama was ready to begin unpacking the box, Madelyn could hardly contain herself. She wasn’t interested in the garlands or even in the picture book, and she lost no time pulling out the shoebox and opening the lid. She picked out one tissue-wrapped bundle and began to unroll it. But something was wrong. When the doll was almost unwrapped, the paper tore in Madelyn’s hasty little hands. The tissue was stuck against the Pilgrim’s face and clothes, and Madelyn had to peel off sticky paper bit by bit. And then, worst of all, Madelyn saw the candle doll’s face.
“Oh, honey,” Mama gasped, “they must have melted!”
Madelyn couldn’t tell whether she stared down at Hannah, Sarah, or Elisabeth. The once perfectly-carved face was now mangled and mooshed beyond recognition, flattened and imprinted with the wrinkles of the tissue paper. The mouth had disappeared, and the eyes stared sorrowfully back at Madelyn.
All the Pilgrims had suffered the same fate. The hot summer must have been too much for those delicate forms sleeping up in the attic. Every face was distorted, and the figures could no longer stand with their bases lopsided and misshapen. Madelyn stood in silent shock with a quivering lip as she and Mama unwrapped each doll, hoping the August heat had spared at least one. When all six lay grimly on the dining room table, Madelyn gave an pitiful little shriek, “Oh, I hate them!” and ran to her bedroom.
Mama disposed of the melted Pilgrim candles in the small trash can in the garage where her Madelyn wouldn’t find them and reminded her daughter about the fun she was going to have with her cousins. She tried to comfort her with promises that they would buy some new Pilgrims, but Madelyn said she could never have any Pilgrim friends again.
So she spend the rest of the week moody and sad, half-heartedly helping her mother with holiday preparations. Mama dusted the family room window ledge and there weren’t any candle people to move. Madelyn helped Mama tear up the bread for the stuffing, but the little wax dolls didn’t get to stand on the drain board and watch. Mama read the story of the Pilgrims from the picture book, and for the first time, Hannah, Sarah, Elizabeth, Robert, Jonathan, and Samuel didn’t sit in Madelyn’s lap to listen, too.
When the cousins finally arrived, Madelyn cheered up, and after Thanksgiving dinner she played explorers with Jill and Jessie, ages nine and seven, and Michael, four. They rode through the living room on wild horses until they came to an ocean in the hall, and then they set sail to find an island in the mudroom, where no humans had ever traveled before.
“I’ve found a cave!” Jill exclaimed to the rest of her party as she opened the door to the garage.
“A cave!” they all chorused.
Only Michael hesitated when the others had all scrambled down the steps onto the cold, concrete floor. “It’s dark,” he stated flatly.
“Of course, it’s dark, scaredy cat. Caves are always dark. Don’t you know anything?” Jill had no pity for her little brother.
Michael whimpered but stepped down into the garage, and the four children began exploring the cave. They discovered treasure in a tool box and killed a python coiled up on a hose winder. They had almost run out of adventures to challenge them in the cave when Jill spotted the Pilgrim dolls lying in the trash near the door.
“Monsters!” she cried. “Quick! Out with your swords!”
Michael wailed, and Madelyn and Jessie rushed to the trash can to see the monsters. Madelyn froze when she saw what Jill was pointing to.
“Those--aren’t--monsters!” She stared angrily at her cousin.
“They look like monsters to me. Or maybe some monster tortured them,” Jill persisted.
“That’s Hannah . . . and Robert and . . .” Tears began to roll down Madelyn’s cheeks. “I’m not playing anymore!” She pushed between Jill and Jessie and slammed the door on her way into the house.
“Madelyn pushed us!” Jessie opened the door and called down the hallway. But they forgot about the offense when they saw their aunt bringing out the pies, and they decided to pause their game.
Madelyn sat by herself for the rest of the day, remembering all the good times she and her Pilgrim friends had had together and how they would never again fight off the Play Mobile knights or explore caves behind the couch or watch the family’s Thanksgiving celebrations from their window ledge. Now poor Hannah, Sarah, Elizabeth, Robert, Jonathan and Samuel lay mangled and alone out in the cold, dark garage. Maybe they were afraid of monsters, she thought. But then she had an idea.
As Jill, Jessie, and Michael built a fort out of sofa cushions, Madelyn slipped quietly down the hallway to the mudroom. Slowly, she opened the door to the garage, saying a silent prayer that the hose really wouldn’t turn out to be a snake after all. She knelt down beside the trash can and lifted out each distorted Pilgrim figure. When she had recovered all six, she folded them up in her shirt like a sack and tiptoed back down the hallway, past the couch fort, and up the stairs to her bedroom.
Madelyn sat by her windowsill and set each little candle doll on the ledge, letting them lean against the pane if they couldn’t stand up alone.
“There,” she whispered. “Happy Thanksgiving.”