How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales (3 page)

Pink Chiffon

Pink Lace

Pink Lady's Slippers

Pink Daisies

Pink Lace

We the undersigned will write all our poems on pink paper.

We the undersigned will write our poems on pink paper for now and forevermore.

We the undersigned promise to think pink.

We the undersigned forever pink.

We will wear pink every Saturday.

We will wear pink every Monday.

We will only write our poems on pink paper.

We the undersigned:

FOREVER PINK!

Once upon a time there were two girls. One had blonde hair, one had brown. The girl with blonde hair lived in a house made of stone. The girl with brown hair lived in a house made of wood. Both of the girls lived in houses surrounded by trees. Next to the wood house was a creek the girls called the Fake Creek. The water came from a pipe, rusted and buried into a hill. Across from the stone house flowed the Good Stream. The two girls had names for everything. Out by the Fake Creek and the Good Stream they would clasp hands and sing children's songs, though they were fourteen.

Oh jolly playmate,

Come out and play with me,

And bring your dollies three,

Climb up my apple tree,

Slide down my rainbow,

Into my cellar door,

And we'll be jolly friends,

Forevermore.

At the stone house, everything was brown and gray. Not just the stones: the light, and the walls. Sweaters the dark-haired mother wore. The wood house was brighter: pale green and overflowing with children. The blonde girl, named S—, envied the family that lived inside there. The brunette was named K— and she envied S—'s lonely fairy-tale cottage.

It was a real girlhood friendship. It was etched in the Book of Childhood Dreams. Yet with S—, K— felt herself growing older each day. This was unpleasant. The page was being turned before the picture could be colored in—there was a frantic feeling about this.

On hot summer evenings, the friends watched television in the attic of the stone house. The television perched on an old wooden table, its rabbit-ear antennae cocked to the side. In twilight they watched a show about supernatural things that happened in a strange, murky twilight. They planned it like this. The blonde girl's mother had forbidden the program from viewing, but the two girls really loved it. The show began with forbidding dark music . . . and the actors stared out of the screen. “This seems about evil,” the blonde girl would comment. “It seems about evil,” the brunette would agree.

Oh jolly playmate,

I cannot play with you.

My dolly has the flu,

The mumps and measles too.

I can't slide down your rain barrel,

And through your cellar door.

But we'll be jolly friends,

Forevermore, more, more, more, more.

On weekend afternoons they would ride on a green train to downtown and buy colorful earrings made of feathers—from peacocks and from other birds. Green, blue, black, and brown. And jackets made of green wool, dark green faded to gray—coats young men had maybe worn in the army, coats young men might have died in, they thought.

K—'s mother packed K— lunch every day in a brown paper bag. Even in summer (which it was when this story took place) she would pack a lunch for K— to take with her to S—'s house when she went over to play. Sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. S— and K— would split the sandwich on the green train when they were on their way downtown to buy feather earrings or the coats of dead men.

Up in the attic at S—'s house they were allowed only water, but they snuck food coloring into the room. “Drink me,” they'd say to their glasses of water, dripping red in—they vowed to eat only pink food that summer. Summer of 1983.

On the train sometimes they'd plug cords into a yellow box that played music. Their friend P—, whose parents allowed her to drink vodka, had made them cassettes. They listened to these and also recorded songs of their own.

And her name is

P-I-N-K-Y

P-I-N, no lie

K-Y, me-oh-my

She's $69.95

Give her a try

P-I-N-K-Y

P-I-N I cry

K-Y don't be shy

$69.95, boy

Give her a try

It was a hot summer. It was once upon a time. It was the suburbs. They made themselves drinks to take into the woods and to the Good Stream. Silver thermos, crushed ice, and the reddest of wines.

Once upon a time, in that summer, the girls (one blonde-haired, one brown) wore pink skirts and pink checkered sneakers. They had recently seen an episode of
The Twilight Zone
in which a wife awoke from a dream and had forgotten her very own name. They replayed the scene near the Fake Creek. S— spread her arms to the sky. “I will now recite a poem about pink!” she exclaimed. Then she recited a long story-poem in which two girls (one blonde-haired, one brown) stood by a creek in pink clothes and invented a world in which no mothers went mad. S—'s mother had recently been forgetting to blow out the candles at night; this was on purpose. Fire trucks had to come on several occasions. On this day, the two friends walked back to the yellow wood house, where S— was also now living. The Apple Pie Family was home. They were treated to ice cream—it was white ice cream with Red Hots nested inside. As the treat melted, it turned into pink.

The girls fed each other. Pink dripped down their throats.

Say say my enemy,

Come out and fight with me,

And bring your weapons three,

Climb up my torture tree,

Slide down my razor blade,

Into my poison pit,

And we'll be jolly enemies,

Forevermore more,

Shut the door.

Once upon a time, in a town that was part of a city, two girls grew up who loved pink. They exchanged letters typed on pink paper (many years later, when e-letters were invented, they learned to turn the background of e-letters pink). They invented a dessert called the Pink Lady Slipper. At the market, they bought some ladyfingers. These were small cakes baked into the shape of large fingers. The girls filled them with Cool Whip swirled pink with red drops of dye. S— held a finger out to K—'s mouth, playing that K— was a witch and that she was Hansel.

Many years later, S— died. She thought no one had helped her and so she leapt from a window.

Think pink.

Drink pink.

The disaster is now.

I'm yours.

You do not know me.

You never will.

How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales

There was once a mother whose only child loved fairy tales above all else and accepted as dolls only those that told stories. Of course, the child suffered as a result, for there were not many dolls that could perform such a task. Her mother suffered as well: when she went to the department store on birthdays or Christmas, she often left empty-handed, destined to disappoint her only child, who asked for more and more stories over the years. The child never said she was disappointed; she only said she wanted more fairy tales—that's all she ever wanted, she said. “The ones with the goriest endings. Find the dolls that can tell those, won't you please?”

By her fifteenth birthday the girl had precisely two dolls: one that told wonderful stories and one that told very bad stories. The girl was very good-natured. She told her mother, one cold winter evening, that even two dolls (one that could tell wonderful stories and one that could tell terrible stories) were better than no dolls, and that their household had more fairy tales than many far more impoverished homes, where perhaps no storytelling dolls had ever lived. And then she hugged her mother and kissed her good-night.

That very same night, at a late hour and after some vodka, the mother suddenly wondered—for the first time—how she might wean her daughter from fairy tales. Then there was a knock on the door. There stood a shivering doll—probably a witch, for she was life-sized—and she asked the mother for shelter. The girl's mother said, “Can you tell stories? My daughter does not allow any dolls in the house that cannot tell stories.” The doll saw that she had no choice; she was a rag doll and she had gotten wet. She had icicles dangling off her yarn hair; her large fingers nearly were frozen, like links of meat one might keep in the freezer.

“I can.”

“And will you tell them for a long time?”

“All night.”

They agreed on some terms.

The mother let the doll in and set her in a rocking chair by the fire, where her cotton stuffing nicely and evenly warmed—but not too much. The mother gently woke up her daughter and said, “There is a doll here that has promised to tell stories all night, on the condition that your other dolls do not argue, or interrupt.” The daughter woke up her dolls—the one that could tell good stories and the one that could tell bad stories—and brought them to the living room and sat near the hearth. The mother had laid out treats for them all (lollipops with chocolate centers in the miniature globes, jelly beans, toast).

The thawed doll spoke. “Yes, I will tell stories, but there must be no interruptions or I will tell no more stories to you.” The mother, the daughter, and the two dolls ate their snacks and went back to their beds.

The doll began: “An owl flew by a garden, sat on a tree trunk, and drank some water. An owl flew by a garden, sat on a tree trunk, and drank some water. An owl flew by a garden, sat on a tree trunk, and drank some water.” Over and over again, the doll repeated this sentence.

The good doll listened and said from her little doll bed, “That's a beautiful story, but I'm afraid your audience might become tired of it. I'm not tired of it, of course, I think it's a lovely story, but—”And then the bad doll shouted from
her
bed, “That's not even a story!”

The big doll gazed coldly into the fire. “Doll One, you've interrupted me. There were to be no interruptions. And Doll Two, you have interrupted and you have argued. That was only the beginning of the story. I was going to change it later. I was only just starting out.” She stared at the fire. Her expression hardened—which was difficult as her whole head was made of a large walnut shell—and then the hardness turned into sadness. The big doll stood, and she sighed, and she picked up the two littler dolls from their beds. “I will take these with me and teach them how to behave.” Then she flew out of a window.

The mother rushed to the daughter, who had been blissfully sleeping—dreaming the whole thing just like a character might in an old storybook: a frozen rag doll, walnut-headed and big, played the lead role in the dream, as if she were an old illustration drawn hovering above the girl's very head while she was sleeping. The mother knelt down, clasped the daughter's warm hands in her own, and said, “The dolls were
told
not to interrupt, and
never
to argue, and now look what's happened. They're both gone. You won't get any more fairy tales. They're trouble, I tell you, they're trouble.”

The girl vowed never to ask for a talking doll ever again. Though smiling, she seemed very unhappy. The mother paced around the house for hours each day. “If only we had followed her rules—we could have seated the dolls in their miniature high chairs, taped over their little doll mouths, and listened to her fairy tales. Then we'd still have the dolls. We'd still have the fairy tales. We should have let her finish her story—it wasn't a very good story, but it was only beginning.”

The daughter tried to comfort the mother. “At least we still have each other. Maybe she was just lonely—maybe she needed some friends. It was worse for her, really. She didn't know how to tell a good story.” The daughter looked out the window at night, hoping to catch a glimpse of the dolls—it was something to hope for, anyway, that she might someday see them floating around in the dark sky, the big doll repeating her story over and over again while one small doll gently admonished, and the other berated, the tale.