THE WANDERING DOLL

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THE WANDERING DOLL    

When she was about sixteen, her mother had started to say: “ But what now do you  do of all those toys piled up in the cellar ( under the stairs) Now you’re a girl….” Indeed her mother had said: “ Now you’re grown up” And Sara had felt her heart trembling at those words. How? At not yet sixteen, would she already be an adult? “ You should give them to your cousins, who are still children.” And her mother had come back a lot of times to the matter, pressing her to give away her childhood toys.

Sara was not particularly fond of the toys she had had as a child, with the exception of two dolls which had been and still were important for her. One was Lela, which she had received as a gift for her birthday, when she was five. Lela, which was made of soft, fluffy rubber, so much fluffy it was that you felt like skin to touch her, had blonde  ringlets, great amber glass eyes. The doll had a chubby face, with full, round cheeks looked like ripe apples. Her look, especially her face, had always reminded Sara a  quiet, good little girl who, however, could sometimes happen to be even a little rascal., as her watchful gaze and that hint of mischievous smile made us guess, a  slightly crooked smile.

Amy, the other doll, had long black braids, a green glittering band encircled her forehead . She had a tanned complexion , like an Indian, her eyes were black, her long black lashes had golden tips. She had made of plastic, too, but a hard plastic, that looked like wood or cardboard.

For Sara , as a child, those two dolls had been friends, very special friends indeed. Their presence had comforted her in moments of fear, loneliness, suffering.  She remembered when, as a child, she used to talk with them. And, after telling them or asking them something, Sara stood silently , looking , intently, at their faces, staring above all at their mouth and their eyes, since she was sure that, even if they hadn’t said a word, they surely would have answered her with their eyes, with their look. Everything was….in understanding what their eyes, their gazes were saying. It had happened sometimes that it had seemed to her  to see their mouth open and to hear words uttered from them. They were words which resembled those of the language she also spoke, but nevertheless, they weren’t quite the same.

Sara even now was sorry to have to be separated from them, she wanted that the dolls remained in her house. But when her cousins came for the toys, her mother was  adamant, so her beloved dolls ended up , Lela to Paula, who was four, and Amy to Petra, who was six. It was Petra who chose, and she seemed to have been whole enchanted by Amy, although the doll was wearing a now rather worn tunic and she was without shoes. When Sara had received Amy  as a gift, she wore white sandals, but it happened , one day, that Sara, coming back home , found the doll barefoot, without being able to understand how her sandals had disappeared. Sara had kept on wondering and wondering  where her doll’s sandals might have gone. Her mother had said, laughing: “ You know, she will have lost her shoes walking”    

One day, it had passed months since Sara had given away all her toys, and even her favorite dolls, Petra called her on phone and, sobbing, told her that Amy was gone. Oh, she had to find her! Sara had to help her to find Amy! “ If she has disappeared, either you forgot her somewhere or someone took her away” Sara said.  Petra protested proudly: she would never have forgotten Amy, which was always in her company. “Then someone took her away. Do you remember where she was the last time that you saw her?” Sara asked.

“I had put her sitting on the swing, in the garden. I turned a moment to pick up an handkerchief ,and when I looked at the swing again, Amy was disappeared. (was gone)”       

“ Here, you see: someone must have taken her away” “Impossible! It’s impossible: no one entered the garden”  Petra protested . “ Yes, I’m sure….listen Sara…Amy is gone…she is gone by herself”

“Sorry, I don’t understand….do you mean  that  she would have gone by herself? And how could she have done it?”

Sara was completely stunned , to say the least (minimum), she felt short of breath.

“ How did she do it?” Petra was saying. “ I thought you know”

“No, I don’t know” Sara stammered.

“ Oh, yet my aunt, your mom, told me that Amy is able to walk” Petra , sure, claimed.” Yes, Amy is able to walk , Aunt saw her walk….well, I haven’t seen her walk, but, since she is able to walk, as aunt Mary told me, then Amy was gone walking away”

Sara, although shocked by what Petra had said, had to promise her cousin that, of course, she would help her to find Petra, to get the doll come back home.

Ah, above all Sara couldn’t understand how, why it occurred to her mother to tell Petra those lies, to tell her that Amy was able to walk, that,  yes,  she had seen the doll walk.

But if she had been shocked at what her little cousin had told her, she found herself absolutely lost, at all confused at the explanation she received from her mother ___about the story she had made up for Petra___when she decided to confront her ( to ask to her).

“Oh, you should understand, you are grown up now” Her mother snorted. And here that hers: YOU ARE GROWN UP NOW___ again, from which Sara could not help but feel hurt. “And what should I understand? That if the adults tell lies to children, they do it for good?” It would have come spontaneously to ask her, but Sara had been silent.

“ Eh, your cousin, little Petra, is really in love with that…oh that doll, which looks like a savage…I don’t understand how a doll as that, not at all with a pleasant look, can like someone so much…..” her mother sighed, running a hand on her forehead “ However …” she kept on saying “ however Petra is very attached

to that doll….oh, an almost ugly doll, for me . Her mother told me about it a lot….oh, think, she told me that Petra even sewed , with her hands, a whole wardrobe for the doll, a wardrobe including evening dresses, sportswear, coats, skirts, pants. Oh, Petra even made a pair of shoes for the doll!”

Shoes, to hearing ___shoes___and shoes for Amy, Sara couldn’t help but remember what her mother had said to her, giggling, when, many years ago, she had found the doll without shoes, when Amy white sandals,inexplicably had gone ,and it had been impossible to find them again. “ She must have lost them walking”

What had her mother meant with that mocking phrase? Back then she was a child , and she didn’t understand what she seemed to understand now instead, that it had been her mother who had made the white sandals of Amy disappear. Her mother ,who, Sara was only now realizing it, had been never able to suffer the doll. “ So Amy was wearing shoes when she disappeared” came to say to Sara.” But why did you make up that story for Petra? You made her believe that Amy can walk! You even told her you saw the doll walking! And Petra believes it! She is convinced that the doll has gone away walking on her legs….and you know it is not possible……The doll is gone because someone took her.”

“ Oh, you see, if Petra believes that she has gone away on her own initiative ( will), then she can even believe that her beloved doll will come back to her when …when she will be tired of wandering”

Sara just shook her head and sighed. No, she couldn’t understand. She seemed her mother want to have fun deceiving the little Petra. Soon her cousin started to insist that Sara help her to get in touch with a television program which dealt with missing people, which was called :WHERE ARE YOU?

Petra insisted so much that Sara, albeit reluctantly, contacted the edition staff if the transmission. naturally, as she had foreseen, as she had expected, the transmission, being dedicated to the search of the missing people could not deal with….missing dolls. But they promised her that they would soon realize a

program dedicated to toys, or rather to missing toys. It would have been a version of____WHERE ARE YOU?____for those, children or adults, who were looking for a toy; or even for any other object to which they cared a lot and which had disappeared, or which they had lost.

Petra ‘s impatience grew day by day. She wanted absolutely Amy come back, she couldn’t resigned herself to her disappearance. She didn’t even want to consider the possibility that her beloved doll could have decided to go away  ever, with the will of never returning. At the same time Petra kept on wondering why

she__her doll___was(had) gone. Wasn’t she perhaps well in her company? “Oh, she has to come back!” she sighed ; and she pressed Sara of requests. “We have to find a way to get her back! You think she will come back, don’t you?”   She convinced, indeed forced Sara to put an advertisement in several newspapers, accompanied by a photo of the doll, to ask Amy to come back, and to ask to anyone who saw the doll to get in touch with her.   But Amy, obviously wasn’t coming back. Petra was more and more desperate. She was always crying and shouting: “ Amy! Amy, where are you? Amy, come back!” Not only, the child kept even on asking to everyone, known and also unknown people, If they had seen her doll, and on praying them , if they would see Amy, to call her, to take the doll to her. At night she stayed awake and even she went out of the house because she got it into her head, who knows why, that Amy would come back at night. Then, if the doll coming back at night, there were no one who opened the door for her, it might as well be that she, finding the door closed, seeing no one waiting for her,_____it might be___she went again away, and  this time for ever. It was this thought, this fear that kept Petra awake at night.

It was then that, without even knowing why, Sara too began to tell a made up story to her little cousin.“You know, Petra, even when Amy was my doll, and I was a child then, it happened several time that she had gone away, disappearing. Sometimes she was away  for a long time, but she always came back. You don’t have to worry,  you will see that she will come back this time too. “ Petra was very relieved, very reassured by the story which Sara had offered her about Amy. Sara knew well that what she had told to Petra was not true at all. Then, that she wanted to put her conscience at peace, by telling herself she had told only a story , instead of a lie, it didn’t make much difference.

Petra was soon curious, of an insatiable curiosity, to know more about the escapes of Amy from home in the past, when she had been the Sara’s doll. Petra wanted to know where the doll went when she disappeared, becoming unavailable for days and days. She wanted to know what Amy was like when she had come back home. Was she happy or sad? What had Amy said, what had told her?

Petra insisted to ask her what days of the week Amy had gone away, and what days she used to come back. And then the child kept on asking what time did the doll disappear? What time did she come back? By day or by night? Of course Sara had to invent, and she tried to invent in order to please Petra. 

____Ah, no, it had never happened that Amy had gone away on a Sunday, or even on a Saturday____Sara said. “ But what day did she go away?” Petra insisted, implacably “ Do you remember? Perhaps on a Monday?”    “ Yes, now that I’m thinking about it, I seem to remember that she usually went away on Monday” Sara said, thoughtfully, after pretending to try  to remember.

As Sara was going on with the story about Amy which she had made up for Petra, gradually adding new facts, new details , to satisfy the curiosity of the little girl, to answer her questions ,something strange was happening to her, something which scared her terribly but; at the same time, attracted her. It was as if, while Sara was telling to Petra about Amy, and , she knew, her story was a pure fiction, at a certain point she had started to believe the story she was telling, as it were a true story. Indeed it was as if what she was telling about Amy, that is what she is inventing ( making up), became true, real, really happened precisely through her words, her story. So when she was telling of the doll’s returns home, of Amy who had almost always come back happy, even euphoric from her travels, of Amy who had at least made her understand that she had been in wonderful places, Sara felt like she had really experienced those situations , like she had really seen Amy coming back all excited , and she really had heard the doll talking

about the wonderful countryside, woods, mountains where she had been. It was a feeling that made her dizzy.  Petra, thanks this story, had stopped to despair about Amy’s disappearance. She now could believe her doll would come back, as she had come back all the other times she had gone ( was gone). Sure that Petra believed the story invented by Sara, since she, Petra, was a child.  But now Sara herself believed the story.                                                                                                                                                                                     IIt had passed more than a month since Amy had gone away, and every day she talked about the doll with Petra, who was waiting to see her coming back at any moment.                                                                       One day Petra phoned her.” You know, I was wrong…..Amy hadn’t gone away. I found her in a drawer of an old furniture in the attic” Petra spoke in a calm and cold voice, a strange voice which didn’t sound like hers,

which didn’t sound  like a child voice. “ Ah, well (good) “ Sara said, but she had felt rather disappointment than surprise at that unexpected news.

“ She hadn’t gone away…..I found her. But Amy is dead” Petra said , in a hard voice, without a hint of emotion. “ Dead? How dead?” Sara asked, who wanted to ask : “ How can you know that the doll is dead?”  “ Yeah, Amy is dead. Her head is broken” Petra said in that strange, adult voice into which her voice had changed. And, without adding a word, she hung up the phone.