Happy 60th birthday, Adicia!

Adicia Éloïse Carson, née Troy, was originally born 5 April, but I didn’t remember this detail, and so gave her the birthdate of 11 July when starting over from scratch and memory. I wanted to make her a Cancer, the most sensitive sign on the Zodiac and one of my three favourite signs (the others being Pisces and Taurus). And 11 is my favourite number, my lucky number, my master life number by Western Numerology. (Hey, I’m skeptical and science-minded about many things, but not everything! Believing in Astrology and Numerology hurts absolutely no one, unlike vaccine-denialism or alternative “medicine.”)

Adicia ended up with a rather passive personality for much of Little Ragdoll, but I was able to channel and use that passivity to make her a strong character. There’s a compelling reason for her passivity, and she’s always much stronger than it would seem.

She’s the seventh of nine kids, and used to being the little sister, looked after and protected by her older sisters, her one decent brother, her various surrogate mothers, her friends. Even when she becomes the oldest sister left at home at age nine, she doesn’t suddenly step into a more assertive role. She’ll do anything to protect her baby sister Justine, and that means passivity, not rocking the boat.

When she runs away to avoid her upcoming forced marriage to an ex-convict forty years her senior, it’s the first time she’s acted instead of being acted upon. Her plans don’t go exactly as planned, however, and she runs right back to Ricky’s house when she sees her mother. It seems she’s thrust back into a passive role all over again when Ricky rescues her with an offer of convenience marriage.

Adicia doesn’t immediately jump at Ricky’s proposal, even though it’s an obvious solution, the kind of rags to riches story many poor girls dream about. She takes some time to think about it, and could’ve easily said no. She actively chooses to marry Ricky, and to stay with him.

This seeming rags to riches happy ever after has an unexpected, nightmarish twist when Ricky is drafted into the Air Force during the last active year of the draft lottery. Adicia is finally forced to take charge and stand on her own two feet, and grows a lot while he’s away. She grows to resent being seen as a pathetic little ragdoll, the little sister, a sympathy case as the pregnant wife of a draftee, “just” a woman, an adult who looks more like a child with her very petite frame.

Adicia says in the Epilogue that her separation from Ricky was probably the best thing that ever happened to her, since it forced her to come into her own as an independent, self-sufficient woman.