Time Warp: The Headless Barbie (Aggie)

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Spring 2006

"Aaaagggiieeee!!" Gene screamed at the top of his lungs, as if it was the end of the world if he didn't get her immediate attention. He came barreling out of his playroom, holding two things in either hand. When he reached the edge of the stairs, the 8-year-old boy stopped and chucked both the Barbie doll and her separated head down the stairs. "It won't go back on, fix it!" he demanded, as if the nanny could move mountains if he asked for it.

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Agatha had been working for the Whitaker family for almost twenty years now, and she had been with Gene all his eight years of life. She was incredibly attached from the moment she met the young boy, and it took a lot for her to not call him her son... but she managed to keep the affection non-verbal.

She looked up from her reading, lunch simmering on the stove behind her, she had a particularly keen ear for Gene's wails and was able to usually tell the urgency of each situation just from the sound. With a small sigh and an amused smile, she rose from her chair and toward the direction of his screams, the beheaded doll and its missing piece landing at her feet when she reached the stairs.

"Gene," she said sighed stooping to pick up the pieces of the broken doll and examining it. Aggie was quite used to the young boy's demanding tone and didn't usually entertain it, "Say please." Her voice was even but not stern and she stretched out a hand toward the boy to beckon him down the stairs. "You really shouldn't be so rough with your poor dolls." She looked at the severed head with slight dismay, though it wasn't as if his parents couldn't simply by him another she /attempted/ to instill some amount of respect in him for his things.

Whether or not her efforts worked was up for debate.

"Come on," she led him toward the kitchen, still inspecting the point of separation as she brought out her tool kit. It wasn't the first and she doubted it would be the last she had to fix something of his.

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Gene frowned, staring down from the landing to the woman who’d been taking care of him for most of his life. All of his life, really. She wasn’t his mother, but Gene didn’t really know the significance of that. His ‘mother’ was the pretty black-haired lady who made him feel warm when she smiled at him, but whom he only saw late in the evenings or on the weekends. His ‘father’ was the lanky man he saw on holidays and occasionally between, but he always brought him a gift when he came home, so Gene didn’t mind him being away so much, if it meant he got stuff.

There were a couple of others who were like that too; they brought him stuff to make up for the fact that they weren’t always around. Gene adored visits from Grammy. She talked funny. Mommy said it was because she was ‘brit-ish’, whatever that was.

Aggie was the woman who would do anything for him, who was always around, and who would hold him when he wanted to be held, and listen to him cry when he needed to cry. She also put up with quite a bit of nonsense from him. “Please,” he said, obviously only because she told him to. The scowl stayed as he looked away stubbornly from her gentle scolding. “It was Joe’s fault!” he insisted defensively. G.I. Joe, he meant. “She was being bad, so Joe had to punish her, but Ken got sad and whiney, so now I gotta fix her.” And of course, Gene was neither a surgeon nor a doll maker, so he went to Aggie.

Aggie could do anything.

Gene hesitated, but eventually started down the stairs with a begrudged pace, stomping each step with obstinance until he reached the bottom and curled his tiny fingers around her hand. “….you can fix it….right?” he asked, looking up at the woman with somber, yet hopeful eyes as they walked to the kitchen.

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Aggie raised an eyebrow as her young ward stared her down, she was used to this dynamic and thought of it affectionately rather than annoying. She knew Eugene was stubborn, but she was too. Her arms folded over her chest as she waited for him to decide what he was going to do.

Sometimes she thought it was unfair for her to care for Gene in such a motherly way, did she have the right to those kinds of emotions. She was a nanny and his real mother was still present in his life (even if the time was rather limited). She was sure Gene preferred visits from his parents and grandparents as they were rare and brought him gifts. Though she was often amused by his observations on the shared accent between her and his grandmother, though Aggie's was less formal.

Aggie was the one who was in charge of discipline and making sure that when Gene did wander out around other people he didn't act completely hellishly. Though he still managed to be quite the brat.
Though it was forced she seemed quite pleased over his use of the word 'please', "Thank you Gene. Of course I will fix it." She smiled in amusement, chuckling at his reasoning, "And what was she doing that was so bad that Joe felt the need to remove her head?"

Her hand squeezed at his small one as she walked with him, "I'll certainly try." She helped Gene into a stool before sitting on one herself and starting to work on the doll. The stem had broken and she couldn't just pop it back on so she considered her options. She could probably just glue it back on but the head wouldn't be able to move anymore.

"Has Joe apologized to her and Ken yet?" She asked with a small smile, she enjoyed participating in the stories that Gene entertained himself with and was always intrigued to hear what daily events the dolls got themselves into.

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Gene never won against this woman. No matter how stubborn he was, he was always the one who gave in in the end. Not willingly, of course, but because if he didn’t, then h wouldn’t get what he wanted. And Gene wanted what he wanted. Even his eating habits, if Aggie stared at him long enough with that long, sharp look of authority, Gene would eventually eat whatever she put in front of him. He didn’t have to like it, though. Aggie’s was the only one whose cooking he would eat anyway. Her stuff just tasted better, even when it was something he didn’t like.

The boy’s face relaxed slightly when the nanny promised to fix the doll for him. He was happy, yes, but he was still in mourning, so Gene didn’t think it was right for him to so quickly show his sudden cheer. “She was spying,” he explained. “She…she was playing with him and being nice to him and trying to get him to spill top secret stuff of the army so she could tell it back to the enemies and he found out, so he went ‘off with her head!’” Gene hopped up onto the stool with his caretaker’s help, adjusted himself, and then continued the story. “But then Ken, he was her boyfriend and got sad and said it wasn’t her fault because the enemy co-uh…com….comerced her into doing it by taking her family hostage!” It was tragic.

Gene shook his head. “Not yet. If he wasn’t so angry all the time then he woulda found out before chopping off her head, but he’s so stubborn!” Gene pounded his tiny fists on the table in his frustration. “Darn that Joe! He’s always messing things up!” This wasn’t the first time that Joe had apparently lost his temper and broke something of Gene’s.