Francesca's Promise

Life went on, seemingly as normal. It appeared to the townsfolk that the family were coping as best as they could, though Victoria felt as though she were putting on a play whenever she went out into the shop to serve customers. She would smile and make small talk and fuss over the children and try not to see Francesca in all of their innocent faces, and then at the end of the day she was retreat back into the house, behind the curtain, and her true face would take over. She would become quiet, her mouth a thin line, her eyes constantly glistening.

Maria would nearly always be sitting on the bottom step, staring forlornly at the spot where her sister had lay. She had stopped asking when Francesca would be coming home. It broke Victoria’s heart that all she could do to comfort her baby girl was gently brush her hair as she walked past, and whisper that mama and Francesca loved her.

It was a late night when things began to get strange. Victoria was allowing herself to seek comfort in the fact that Paul was once again out long past sunset, in the bar or trying his luck with some other woman. Victoria was long past caring. He disgusted her. She was allowing herself the smallest glass of wine, because thanks to the fact that she barely ate these days, the wine would cause her to relax enough to allow herself to cry, and she did need to cry. She only tried to disguise the fact that she was doing so when she heard little bare feet brushing against the wooden floor beside the living room door, and she looked to see Maria in her nightdress, clutching her own doll and rubbing at her eyes.

“Maria, baby, you need to go back to bed,” Victoria said gently, standing to do to her daughter. “It’s late, and we don’t want papa to come back and see you still up.”

“But mama, Francesca won’t let me sleep,” Maria said tiredly, and for a brief moment, Victoria felt herself freeze up. She quickly managed to snap herself out of it, instead continuing over to her young daughter and gently beginning to guide her out of the room.

“What’s Francesca doing?” she asked the little girl pleasantly, despite the fact that her heart was thundering in her ribcage.

“She’s jumping on her bed and playing with Raggie,” Maria yawned, rubbing at her eyes again as they reached the top of the stairs. “I asked her to stop, but she said she was having too much fun.”

“Well, maybe if I come in for a little while, she’ll settle down to sleep, too,” Victoria said, lifting the little girl up and placing her on the bed, tucking the covers around her. “Now, Maria, you know that Francesca doesn’t live here anymore, don’t you?”

“Yes, mama.”

“You know she’s gone to live with Jesus and the angels, right?”

“Yes, mama.”

“OK, princess. Francesca might have come to see you in a dream, but you need to get to sleep now.”

Maybe Maria was too tired to argue, but either way, Victoria was glad. She didn’t want to have to try and explain why the bedsheets on Francesca’s bed were so rumpled, when she knew she had made it up with great care and left it that way. There were plenty of explanations for it, she was certain. Maria was young, and children coped with grief in odd ways sometimes. It was perfectly plausible to assume that she had been dreaming and had maybe sleepwalked and messed the bed up herself, believing she was playing with her sister. Even if it wasn’t plausible, it was going to have to be the explanation Victoria accepted.

For a short while, it seemed to hold up. Maria didn’t mention any night time visits from her sister, and gradually Victoria managed to store the brief flash of hope that perhaps she would see her lost daughter again in the back of her mind where all of the most painful memories were kept. That was until she was closing up the shop around a week later, standing out among the shelves restocking as her husband counted the money in the till. Of course he would be on time to count the money, Victoria thought bitterly, though at least if he did such a thing he might stop accusing her of stealing some of it. That was hilarious, Victoria thought bitterly to herself. She knew full well where most of the money would disappear to that night – off to the pub with her husband, leaving the bare minimum for her to feed Maria.

There was a brief moment then where Victoria thought she may have spoken her thoughts out loud, because her husband gave an angered curse at that point that made her jump and nearly drop the jars she was stacking on the shelves. Instantly her mind went into overdrive and she trembled lightly, wondering if her husband had discovered there was less money than there should be and would blame her, and she found herself bracing for the punches before she had even turned around.

“Who put that god damn thing there?” Paul roared out, stomping over to something and pausing; Victoria couldn’t see what it was from where she was standing thanks to the counter.

“What is it, Paul?” she asked, as neutrally as possible, terrified that even her voice would set him off further.

“Where’s the other little brat?” Paul demanded, and with a jolt of fear as her husband turned to climb the stairs to their house, Victoria darted over, dodging behind the counter.

“Paul, what is it? Maria is doing her homework, and she’s been at school all day.”

“Then how did that get there, huh? I knew she had taken it, the little liar –”

“Paul!”

“Look!”

Victoria looked down at her husband’s feet finally, and then she felt her heart skip a beat and her breath catch in her throat.

“O-Oh!” she gasped out, and then she fell back against the counter behind her, her hand at her throat in shock.

There, sitting on the dirtied ground behind the counter, its faded colours not standing out all that much from the dusty flagstones of the floor, sat Raggie. It was most certainly the same doll, her ratty hair still sticking out in all directions, one of her button eyes still dangling on by a single thread. She sat facing her father, tilted backwards slightly to stare up at his face, though Victoria had no idea just how she was managing to balance like that.

“Did you know anything about this?” Paul demanded, and Victoria turned glistening brown eyes up to her husband.

“No, why – Paul, what do you even think I could have done?”

“Well it didn’t walk here by itself, did it? So that narrows it down to you or the brat, and I doubt she’s smart enough to think of something like this. Where have you been hiding it, woman?”

“I haven’t been hiding her – I mean, it – anywhere! I thought it was lost, or that it had been thrown out. I don’t know where it’s been!”

“Don’t lie! How did it get here?!”

“I don’t know, Paul!”

He took a step towards her then, and Victoria instinctively flinched backwards, lifting her hand up to protect herself and noticing at the last moment that Maria’s pale face was visible around the corner of the stairs, watching her mother with wide eyes.

“Please, Paul, not in front of –” Victoria began, but she was cut off at that moment by an angered yell from her husband, and he stopped dead in his tracks. Victoria couldn’t help but look down towards the floor, wondering just what had stopped her husband when usually no amount of begging would cause the same result.

Her husband’s shin was bleeding, his trouser leg ripped over the wound.

Raggie continued to stare up and grin.

The explosion that Victoria had been expecting never came. She wasn’t sure whether to be happy or continue to be anxious that her husband would bring the incident up again, because it was impossible that he could have forgotten. There was still a nasty cut on his shin, and Victoria thought that it probably needed stitches but of course Paul was far too proud to go and see a doctor. Maybe there was a small part of Victoria that hoped the wound would get infected, but she felt terrible for thinking it and never entertained the thoughts for long.

As for the ragdoll, she had disappeared again. In the commotion that followed, Victoria and her husband had taken their eye off of the toy, and when things had calmed down as much as they could have done there was no sign of the scrappy doll. Victoria noticed, but didn’t mention anything, and her husband was far too busy cursing everything under the sun and dripping blood everywhere to pay much attention. He hadn’t questioned Raggie’s whereabouts since then, but Victoria couldn’t help but worry.

She would have to try and get to the bottom of it. She knew that, though there were things that she couldn’t explain despite the fact she wanted to. She walked slowly up the stairs now, her heart hammering far too fast considering she was just walking around her own home, and finally she reached the first door on the right. She could hear Maria humming to herself as she hovered around outside, and Victoria peered in, seeing her youngest daughter sitting at her desk, kicking her feet through the air as she coloured.

“But you shouldn’t do that too much,” she suddenly said, not looking up from her drawing but chatting politely all the same. “I know that you didn’t want mama to get hurt, but you shouldn’t make papa madder.”

The little girl paused, her legs continuing to kick as her crayon stood still. Finally she let out a little sigh and began colouring again, nodding her head.

“I guess so,” she said, shrugging slightly.

Frowning to herself, Maria gently tapped on the door and let herself into her daughter’s room.

“Maria, baby?” she asked, and the little girl turned around and beamed.

“Mama! I been drawing.”

“What have you been drawing, sweetie?” Victoria asked, coming over as he daughter excitedly held the piece of paper up. There, drawn in clumsy, childish shapes, were three people, all with identical long hair, gradually getting shorter.

“Me, you, and Francesca,” Maria said proudly, pointing at each in turn. “I just needa draw Raggie on there too.”

She picked up a crayon and began scribbling determinedly.

“That’s really pretty, sweetie,” Victoria told her, watching as the little doll began to take shape next to Francesca.

“Papa doesn’t get to be on there because he’s nasty,” Maria suddenly said, her voice a lot harsher than it had been before. “Francesca says he’s bad and she doesn’t like him. I don’t like him.”

“Well, don’t you let him hear that,” Victoria said warningly. “You know how he gets.”

“I know. That’s when he’s really mean.”

Victoria thought that maybe she should say something against her daughter’s growing dislike of her father, but if she were honest with herself, she couldn’t blame the little girl for disliking him and she couldn’t say she was all too fond of Paul herself. Briefly she considered grabbing the bags and Maria and fleeing, but the doubt quickly clawed up at her again and she forced the thoughts out of her head.

“Maria, can mama ask you a few questions?” she asked gently, and Maria nodded, still scribbling away.

“Sure,” she chirped.

“Do you know where Raggie’s been hiding all this time?”

Maria firmly shook her head, and Victoria knew instantly that her daughter wasn’t lying.

“Nope,” she said. “Francesca had her; she brought her when she came back.”

Victoria began chewing on her bottom lip even though she barely realized it. There is was again, her daughter’s insistence that her sister was still around. Dreaming or not, Victoria knew that the conviction with which Maria spoke the words was worrying.

“But sweetie, do you not remember what mama told you the other night? Francesca lives in Heaven now.”

Maria nodded, turning eyes as dark as her mother’s onto Victoria’s face.

“I know, mama, but sometimes she comes down to visit. She says that papa has to pay for what he done to her.”

“Now, Maria, you know that a lot happened that night and we’re not allowed to put blame on people,” Victoria said hesitantly, and she detested that she tried to put such ideas into her surviving daughter’s head but she couldn’t imagine what Paul would do to the girl if Maria blurted something like that out in front of him.

“Mama, don’t be silly, papa pushed her and hurt her and sent her to Heaven,” Maria said firmly, her bottom lip sticking out in the way that it always did when she was feeling stubborn. “Francesca is mad, she doesn’t like that he did it to her and she thinks he needs to be told off for it. She wants to tell him off, see, and that’s why she comes back.”

“And how does she want to tell him off?” Victoria asked hesitantly, and she could feel her voice shaking ever so slightly now because there was something about Maria’s demeanour that told her this was no dream, no strange part of the grieving process – Maria was serious, her little face hardened with determination and anger.

“She won’t tell me,” Maria eventually admitted, her features twisting into a jealous scowl for a brief moment before she turned back to her drawing, scribbling in Raggie’s messy hair.

“Has she said anything about it?”

“No, she just giggles and looks at Raggie. I begged her to tell me what she was gonna do but she won’t say anything. She just says she wants to pay him back. I’m not gonna stop her, mama. Papa has it coming.”

Victoria was silent for a moment after the final words had left the young girl’s mouth. That was certainly a phrase more common of Francesca than Maria, who was usually a lot milder with her language. She preferred to stay quiet and hidden; it had been Francesca who had fire growing in her as she got older. Most of the phrases hadn’t exactly been typical of Maria, now Victoria thought about it, and it only made her nibble at her lip with more force, until she could taste little specks of blood on her tongue. Licking it away, she made a mental note to stop chewing, wondering just how she was going to get to the bottom of this without sounding concerned enough that she would frighten Maria.

“When does Francesca tell you this?” Victoria eventually settled on, hoping more than she thought she would that Maria would claim it was at night, like the first time. Then there was the slim chance that it was a dream after all, although that wouldn’t explain how the old ragdoll had managed to both appear and then disappear out of nowhere. However, it certainly didn’t seem that she would have even that amount of luck.

“Walking to school,” Maria replied brightly. “She keeps me company. She says papa is mean for not letting you walk with me. Raggie comes too.”

It was beginning to become too much for Victoria. She could feel her eyes burning as she blinked back the moisture there, her thoughts crashing through her skull far too quickly for her to keep up. Maria seemed unaware of this, humming as she finished up her drawing, and Victoria was glad. She honestly didn’t know what to say, every possibility falling flat and leaving her just as lost. Maybe it was a good thing that she hadn’t put too much effort into clearing her thoughts, because she would have found herself cast adrift once more at her little daughter’s next words.

“Mama,” Maria said, slightly hesitant as she turned to look at Victoria. “Sometimes Francesca asks me to come with her.”

Victoria blinked as her daughter looked round at her, visibly stunned. She saw the concern flicker through Maria’s brown eyes.

“What do you mean?” Victoria blurted out, forgetting to try and disguise her alarm.

“Well, she says she misses me lots, and I should come with her and Raggie. But I say no, cause I don’t want to go away from you. But she gets mad when I say that. Well, not all the time, but sometimes, she gets mad at me.”

“You mustn’t go with her, Maria,” Victoria said firmly, and she knew she shouldn’t be letting her fear get the better of her but she was so confused, and all she knew for certain right now was that she could not lose her surviving daughter. There would be nothing for her if Maria wasn’t around, and she couldn’t bear to go through that again, the guilt of knowing that she had let her child down, that she hadn’t protected her properly. A few large tears escaped from her eyes then, dripping down her cheeks and leaving little dark spots on her lap as they splashed down.

“Mama, don’t cry!” Maria cried out, jumping up and running to hug against her mother. “I won’t go with her, I promise! I said I wouldn’t, mama! Don’t be mad!”

Victoria scooped her child up into her arms, holding her close as Maria’s little arms wrapped around her. She buried her nose in the girl’s hair, trying to calm herself enough to speak.

“Mama’s not mad,” she eventually assured the girl. “She’s just worried. You know how much we both miss Francesca, and I don’t want to miss you in the same way.”

“I promise I won’t go,” Maria replied, her voice muffled against her mother’s shoulder.

“I know, baby girl. I know you won’t. It just frightens me. Francesca is in Heaven, she can’t be coming back to see you. You have to understand that, Maria.”

“But she does, mama. I don’t know why, but I do see her. I do.”

Victoria was stuck. The more she tried to work out exactly how this was occurring, the more fearful she became. Of course the obvious answer was that Maria’s grief was affecting her more negatively than Victoria could ever imagine, and the poor girl was having hallucinations involving her sister and her upset at losing her was making “Francesca” ask Maria to join her. Victoria didn’t know what she would do if that was the case – there was no way she could sneak enough money to take Maria to a professional, and telling Paul would just be useless – dangerous, even. But what was the other option? A ghost or some sort of spirit? That was another scenario that Victoria just couldn’t comprehend. Both options were dangerous for the pair of them.

“Maria, how?” Victoria moaned out, though she immediately felt awful at pressing such a question onto a girl as young as Maria.

“I don’t know, mama,” Maria whispered out, thumping her head gently against Victoria’s shoulder. “But I’m gonna find a way to show you. I will.”