Animal Tale #4

My doll's baby 

I always loved visiting my grandma. In her house, there was always something to do, someone to play with. Whether it was one of my many cousins, the cat, the dog, or an unexpected surprise doll.

You see, my grandma, Alma, always had a big vegetable garden. She grew all kinds of things.

I had two favourites. One of them was the carrots. I loved picking and eating them directly from the soil. Especially the small ones, which, for some reason, tasted so much better than the big ones. Maybe it was the thrill of sneaking them out when my grandma wasn’t looking, or maybe it was just that they were the perfect size for my mouth.

My other favourite was the zucchini. Not just because they made pretty flowers that my mum would dip in breadcrumbs, fill with ricotta, and fry in a pan. I loved the zucchini because, when my grandma was too busy to look after the garden, they became my dolls.

This was not a secret to Alma. On the contrary, she would be the one greeting me with an already named overgrown zucchini and say: “Today you have to take care of Marta.” 

I don’t know why, but they were always called Marta.

Marta would become my best friend for the day. First, I would draw, sometimes even carve, a face for her. All my dolls were always happy, or at least smiling. Then I would wander around the house looking for clean tissues, or, when I was lucky, scraps of fabric I could tie into dresses. The hair was always short, and, honestly, the hardest part. I’m not sure if you know this, but homegrown zucchini have surprisingly spiky hairs on top, not ideal when you’re trying to style them into the latest fashion hairstyle.

Once she was ready, we would start to play together. As it often goes with kids, I was the mother, and the zucchini was my baby. I’d push her around in a tiny stroller, defend her from the evil robber (the dog), and protect her from the sun.

This one time, things went differently. It all started normally, until I was faced with a fact that forced me to change my game. Marta (edition 30, maybe?) gave birth. I had always imagined myself as a young mother, so Marta couldn’t possibly be my daughter and a mother at the same time. So she became my friend instead. Marta and her daughter had many things in common: they were both long, squishy, and had no limbs; so it made sense to me that they were related.

I wasn’t a big fan of her daughter. Luckily for me, she moved out quite quickly. She wanted to explore the underworld, she said.

I was quite happy with that, and Marta seemed to recover quite quickly too.

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