Ragdoll

1915 

“Magda, they are going to kill me.”

“Mario ssh, Agata will hear you.” Magda stopped her husband before he could stutter another word. She continued buttoning his thick gray uniform and licked the rare salty tear that had glided on her upper lip. 

Agata was indeed eavesdropping from the narrow and misty corridor that led downstairs. It was 1915, she was six years old and her papà was going to war.

War. In the words of adults, war sounded like a tropical place, yet she knew that her dad wasn’t going faraway. Troops camped outside the village and the front was merely kilometers north. In That moment though, what really worried her was seeing her mamma cry. Papà was the artist in the family, the one who showed emotions, mamma was the granitic column on which everyone could always count for support. If she was crying, if she was faltering, things were serious.

Her Papà turned and caught a glimpse of her.

“Come here, Agata.” He grabbed something from the bed and hid it behind his back. As she approached, he knelt and met her face. 

Papà was a towering man, almost two meters tall, with broad, muscular shoulders, ebony hair, and curly mustaches. His hands were so huge that they could cup Agata’s whole face, which came in very useful in the freezing northeastern nights, when, out of wood and money to buy it, they were the only source of warmth.

“Papà I don’t want you to go.”

Her dad’s eyes glittered with tears. “I don’t want to go. But I’ll come back soon to my precious Agata,” She peeked at Magda. “and Mamma.

In the meantime, I bought you something to keep you company. As long as you have her, I’ll be by your side.”

He revealed what was hidden behind his back and presented a ragdoll, “I called her Maria.”

Agata took the doll in her hands and admired her first bought toy. The doll had auburn braids, just like hers, and a light-yellow dress with white daisies. For eyes, she had shiny black buttons and a curved red thread as lips. Until then, her toys were all self-made with hay and corn silk.

She hugged papà and he collapsed on her, trembling and crying. Agata didn’t know much of the world but she felt that her dad was unwillingly saying goodbye. “I don’t want to live without my girls.” He muttered. “I want to be a dad, not a soldier.

Agata, be a good girl. You’re precious. Even in the most difficult times, don’t underestimate yourself, always value your life, your ideas.” He continued. “This is too much for a man to take.” Mamma cupped both in her protective arms and they crouched still in a moment that Agata grasped could never return again.

When papà departed in the afternoon, he waved goodbye just like when he left to work in the fields but that time, he never came back.

1944

“Mommy, mommy can I go play outside?”

Agata snorted. “Mario calm down. You just had lunch and it’s too hot. Check where the cat is.” 

Mario studied her, little persuaded but eventually left.

Agata frowned down at her seventh month pregnant belly and wondered what convinced her to not use protection the last time Luigi was home. Sometimes she looked at Mario and wondered if she really had the strength to face another child when one already seemed capable of draining her every energy. 

All her friends had grandmas and grandpas to help, but she had lost both her parents. 

Her dad would have loved Mario, who resembled him so much in looks and character, even if they had never met. For a moment she recalled the moment he left. Many years had passed but the world had learned nothing, and the war was still raging. How could she be so senseless to bring yet another creature into the world?

She massaged the tensed skin and stared outside the kitchen window. Everything was so unnaturally still, like in a painting. Not a soul walking, not a bug flying, not a dog barking. It was as if the world was pausing, expecting something.

Agata retreated backward. She had a bad presentiment.

“Mario.” She whispered. “Mario.” She called again.

“Yes, mom.” Mario appeared with Tui the cat in his arms.

“Put Tui in the little cage.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

At that exact moment, deafening sirens screamed from every street corner. Agata turned on the survival mode like she always did on such occasions. She grabbed the cat from her son’s arms and shove it rudely in the cage, lift it up, then violently took Mario’s hand and dragged him outside. “Mario move, we have to reach the air-raid shelters.”

Mario toddled behind her. “The shelter is near mom, we got time.” He muttered but, in the meantime, strengthened the grip around her fingers. Even his hands are as warm as dad’s, thought Agata. She pulled her son even more. I won’t lose another Mario to another war. She whispered to herself.

They reached the shelter and she looked back at the road. 

The thought of her dad kept haunting her. Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, but the thought of departing from the ragdoll became unbearable. Maria was safely hidden in her bedroom’s drawer, if she was fast, she could fetch the toy and come back safely. 

Agata hesitated then sat Mario in the arms of Mrs. Donati, their neighbor, place the cat near him, and left.

People screamed to stop her, but she was heedless. Ignoring her pregnancy, and the fact that she could leave her son orphan, she ran outside as fast as she could, entered the house, climbed the stairs, and fetched her ragdoll.

She had barely made it back to the shelter when the first bomb hit the ground.

She rested close to Mario and pulled him and the doll close. She thought of her husband, fighting with partisans in the woods. She hoped he would soon get back to her and their children. She clung to the old fabric of the doll’s dress and asked her father, if he really was up there like everyone told her when the news of his death came, to protect her family. 

When the raid was over, and everything went back to normal she drew a sigh of relief and finally laid down the doll on the bench.

“What were you thinking before?” asked Mrs. Donati, “you’re a mother, you’re pregnant.”

Agata nodded, “I know, I just...”

With the corner of the eye, she glimpsed a girl playing with her ragdoll. She grabbed the girl’s wrist and shouted. “Don’t you dare touch that doll ever again! You understand?” 

Mrs. Donati reprised her again. “Agata, calm down. It’s just a dull doll.”

1967 

“I can’t believe the amount of trash that Lucia has accumulated in twenty-three years. At least now dad has space for his painting room.” Mario climbed down the stairs, half-covered by a carton box. “Are we sure that Giulio won’t send her back when he sees all this stuff?”

“Mario, you’re 29, when will you stop mocking your sister?” asked Agata.

“Never, for as long as I’m alive.”

Mario kissed his mom on the forehead then dropped the box in front of the entrance where his dad and Lucia went back and forth to the car.

Lucia entered the house with the vastest of smiles. “Thanks, guys.” She said. “I can’t believe that from tomorrow, I'll be a married woman and will live with someone who’s not you.” She made as if to grab the box from the ground then blocked. “Oh mom, I forgot. I took the ragdoll that was my room. The one with the yellow dress.”

Agata stiffed. Without saying a word, she opened the box and took the doll out.

“You can’t take her away.”

Lucia stared at her, hurt. “It has been in my rooms for years, I thought…”

“I don’t want you to have it. The doll is mine.” She brought the doll to her chest and cuddled her.

“But…”

“There’s no but, you can take whatever else but not Maria.”

Agata disappeared upstairs and put the ragdoll on her side of the bed. She caressed the dirty fabric of Maria’s face and resented the behavior she had reserved for her daughter. 

“I can’t let go of you, Maria. I’m getting older, but I still need my dad.”

2005 

Agata glared at herself in the mirror. Even at 96, her wrinkles were not that bad. All of her remaining friends looked decrepit, but when she stared herself in the mirror, she still saw the girl she used to be.

She walked back to her room and looked at the pictures on the dresser which depicted her beautiful children, her beloved husband, who had left her and the kids too soon, she smiled at her nephews and she felt pure love. Besides all of the pictures, was her ragdoll. She didn’t know how she managed to safeguard the toy, but it appeared that also the doll hadn’t aged much. 

“When will I see my father again, Maria? Do you know? I’m so old, I’ve seen so much and he so little. When can I go back to him and tell him about the person I was while he was not with me?”

Agata heard voices in the garden and distracted from her deliberations. The three generations of women she had generated were gathered to meet her. Lucia, born in the midst of war, had aged into a graceful and loving woman. She had given birth to the most intelligent girl in the family so far, Elsa, who had studied medicine and was now a pediatrician. Elsa also had a daughter of her own, little Greta.

Despite the two generations who separated her from the girl, Agata saw a lot of herself in Greta. She had the same auburn hair that she used to have in youth. And she had a lighthearted, warm yet firm smile that reminded her that of her mom, Magda. That day though, Greta was unusually silent and instead of greeting her with the habitual gladness, hid behind her mother’s skirt. Her eyes full of tears.

“What happened darling?” Agata inquired. Greta concealed even more.

Elsa spoke for her. “Our cat disappeared; we can’t find him anywhere. She’s a little sad.”

Agata smiled warmly at Greta. “Cats are extremely intelligent creatures, I’m sure it will come back to you soon.” Greta peeked from behind the fabric. “In the meantime,” continued Agata, “I think I have something that can make you happy.” She stretched her hand towards the girl and offered her to come upstairs.

She took the ragdoll from the dresser and handed it to her. “This doll is very, very old. It was a gift from my dad, to keep me company while he was away. Her name is Maria.”

When Agata handed the doll to Greta, she felt nothing but happiness. It was time. Soon she would have her own dad to keep her company.

Greta hugged the toy. “She’s very pretty.”

“Yes she is, she looks like you. You should keep it.”

“Really?”

“Sure.”