Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback (39 page)

Fingerhut or something? No, that stuff would have been too cheap

for you.

When this happened again the next day, I was curious but still

didn’t really think much of it. When I realized it was going to happen every day, that’s when I started to worry. I asked Dad about it, but he was already sick by then and he wasn’t really up to pondering the

imponderables with me.

I mean honestly, what was it? Did you see a wrinkle? Did you

hope to stare it away? Don’t look at me like that. I’m joking. You

never had a wrinkle in your life.

• 324 •

• Erzebet YellowBoy •

So here’s this woman, and for some reason she’s doing this crazy

thing. Every day, morning to night, face in that mirror. And there’s this kid who doesn’t understand why suddenly her mom isn’t fixing

breakfast, or lunch or supper for that matter, who isn’t putting out clothes for her to wear to school, who isn’t taking her shopping for new clothes when she grows out of the old, who isn’t bitching about

a messy room, who isn’t asking about homework, who doesn’t show

up to parent-teacher conferences, who isn’t doing a damned thing

except standing in her bedroom, in front of a piece of glass on the

wall.

You’d think someone would have called Children’s Services, but

they didn’t. It was like magic, the way the teachers and even the

principal believed me when I said you were busy. They all knew Dad

was sick, so they didn’t ask about him. He was sick, but it was you I had to make excuses for.

This kid, right, after a couple years of this, she’s kind of learned to accept that things will never go back to the way they were. She

understands that she can’t invite friends over because then she’d have to explain to them what her mother is doing, and she doesn’t know

what her mother is doing so how can she explain it? She realizes

that the other kids’ mothers aren’t like this, so she doesn’t go visit them because she can’t stand the sight of their moms in the kitchen, or coming in from work, briefcase in hand, or calling them into the

house to wash up before supper.

This goes on for about three years. I know, it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. The kid is around ten years old when finally, she’s worked up the nerve to do something about it. I mean, she wants her mom

back, right? It can’t be like it was before the mirror, but it could be something else, something better than having a mom who does

nothing but this one stupid thing. Almost anything would be better

than that. And then, as if all this isn’t bad enough, Dad dies. You

remember that, I’m sure. That makes the kid even more determined.

This kid thinks and thinks about her mom, about all the things her

mom used to enjoy, about all of the things they did together before the

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• The Mirror Tells All •

mirror, even though she can hardly remember some of them because

she’d been so young. She thought, Mom liked shoes, but I don’t know

what size she wears. Mom liked steak, but I don’t know how to cook

one. Mom liked music, but the old radio was gone. And then she

remembered how, before the mirror had appeared on the wall, her

mother used to sit at her dressing table in the morning doing her hair.

Her mother had liked to do her hair. Now, this little girl had since grown out of purple ponies and glitter, and in fact she was as much of a tomboy by then as a girl could be. She didn’t know anything about

how to do hair—she put her own in a ponytail in the morning and

then forgot about it. That was
doing hair
. Then she remembered this old doll she used to have, and how its hair had been braided, and the braids had been laced through with ribbons. Not just any ribbon either.

This ribbon had been embroidered with colorful, detailed scenes of

animals frolicking, flowers blooming—all sorts of wonderful, tiny

things had been sewn into that ribbon. When her mother had given

her the doll she’d said, “This is very old. It’s been in our family for a long time, and it was my doll when I was a girl, just like you. It’s your turn to take care of her now, just like I’ve done for all these years.”

The girl remembered this because, at the time, she thought that doll was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. And now she thought,

that is what I’ll do. I’ll get my mother a beautiful ribbon to weave through her hair. It’ll give her something to do in front of that mirror.

Problem was, the girl had no money. Oh sure, she was always

provided for, but no one thought to give her cash. Why would they?

So one day, after school, instead of getting on the bus as she’d done every day, she walked the two miles or so into town. She’d never been into town, but that didn’t stop her. She needed a ribbon, and that was the only place she’d find one.

Yeah, you didn’t know I did that, did you. Well, you wouldn’t.

She knew the way; every kid knew the way. It’s all the girls talked

about in class—how their mothers had taken them to the boutiques,

to the mall, to wherever it is mothers take their daughters to buy

them pretty baubles and bras and whatever else it is that mothers

• 326 •

• Erzebet YellowBoy •

buy. Well, after a lot of walking and searching for just the right shop, she found it. It was three floors of sparkling handbags, row upon row of shoes, a lingerie section in which she could have got lost for days.

It was utterly and completely filled with stuff—the kind of stuff you loved, once upon a time.

The girl found the perfect ribbon, embroidered and with the extra

bonus of having beads sewn into the seams. And without a second

thought, she stole that ribbon, put it in her pocket and walked out.

That night she brought the ribbon to her mother. The room was

dark, but for one small lamp lit on the nightstand. Dad’s side of the bed was made up tight, but yours was a mess. I remember that. It

made me sad. So this girl brings her mother the ribbon, stands in

front of her mother with the thing in her hand and says, “Mother, I

brought you something.”

Did you look down? No. Did you respond in any way? No. You

just stood there, like a damned statue, saying nothing.

Fine, I thought. I left the ribbon on your dressing table and left

the room. Do you know how that felt? Do you? You may as well have

ripped my heart out and fed it to the wolves. I almost hated you then.

Don’t wince. What do you expect? Jesus. You can’t be that far gone.

Don’t worry, I didn’t hate you. That’s funny, me telling you not to

worry. As if you would.

It took the girl about three years to get over that one. She felt

pretty dumb for having tried in the first place, but eventually—you

know how resilient kids are—she decided to try again.

By this time (you won’t have known this either), she’d got a job. It wasn’t much of a job, and it wasn’t a legal job, but a kid has to have some cash on hand, you know? You won’t remember Mr. Spinner. He

was the janitor at the middle school. He used to tell these great stories to any kid who would listen. This girl was pretty starved for attention and interaction, so she listened. And maybe he listened to all the

things she didn’t say, because, one day, he offered her a job helping him mop and buff the floors after all the other kids had gone home.

I saved up every penny I earned for a whole year. I realized my

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• The Mirror Tells All •

mistake, see, with the ribbon. It was too cheap for your tastes. I knew this time I had to do better. So when the girl—yeah, that’s still me, in case you’d forgotten—had saved up enough money, she went into

town again.

Quit squirming. I know there’s no action in this story. What do

you expect? Not much can happen when the main character is just

standing there.

The girl thought she was on the right track with the hair thing,

even though the first time she’d got it wrong. And maybe she was

feeling a little guilty for having thrown her mother’s good hairbrush at the mirror. That hairbrush was like something out of the court of some French king. Unbelievably ornate, with bristles tough as the

day they were plucked from the boar. So very you. What I wanted

was to find a matching comb. That, I thought, would bring you out of your stupor. Because sometimes, if I stayed up late enough at night, I’d catch you brushing your hair.

The girl found a comb, a perfect, silver comb that maybe wasn’t as

ornate as the hairbrush, but was still eye-catching and breathtaking in its beauty. She didn’t even know they made stuff like that. It cost her every cent she had, but she didn’t care. Her mother would have

to be
blind
to ignore this gift, she was certain.

This time she didn’t take silence as an answer. She held the comb

out to her mother, and nothing happened. She waved it in front

of her mother’s face, and nothing happened. She started shouting,

“Mom, look! I brought you this comb! Look at it, take it, will you?”

and nothing happened. Her mom just stood there with that dead

look on her face, staring into the mirror.

The girl wanted to cry, she wanted to sit down on the floor right

then and there and wail her heart out. Do you remember what she

did instead? No? She moved around behind her mother, and started

combing her mother’s hair. That’s what she did. Gently, so as not to pull on the tangles, she combed out every strand until they lay, soft and shining, against her mother’s back. Then she put the comb on

the dressing table with the brush and left the room.

• 328 •

• Erzebet YellowBoy •

Getting bored, are you? I bet. All right well, I’m nearly done. I’ll pick up the pace a little, if that will help.

Fast-forward two years; the girl is now sixteen. Sweet sixteen, and

her mother is still there, in front of that mirror. Do you know how

awful puberty is when you have to go through it alone? At sixteen

the girl, now a young woman really, was in the throes of it. All sorts of stuff was going on in her body and in her mind. All sorts. She’s

trying to achieve some kind of independence, to be her own person,

that kind of thing, and here she’s got this monster in the closet, right, this dirty secret that she can’t share with anyone. Because how, really, do you tell someone that your mother has been standing in front of

a mirror for years on end? It’s ridiculous. No one would believe you anyway even if you did tell. They’d think you were making it up.

That’s what you’d become to me by then. A monster. A horrible

dragon clutching its treasure in a dark room. I had to do
something
.

Anything, I thought, would be better than this.

But what? I didn’t know. I didn’t know until one day, who knows

why, Mr. Jonet—he was the English teacher that year—started

talking about apples. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, apples. He

went through every story that ever had an apple in it, he went on and on about the health properties of apples, the symbolism of apples, all of this stuff about apples. It drove the class nuts. Rumor had it that he’d fallen in love with Miss Hayton, the biology teacher. We made

jokes about him bringing her an apple, like some pet schoolboy. We

got sick of hearing about apples.

Then he told a story about a woman named Eve. She was apparently

the first woman, ever, on earth. She was good, pure good, no evil in her at all. Kind of like you used to be, before the mirror came. Or at least how I remember you to be. Rose-colored glasses and all that. So anyway, this Eve lady was brought low by an apple. The fruit of evil, it was, and she took a bite and then she wasn’t so good any more. Cast

out of the garden, I think it was a garden, by a serpent or something.

But basically, Mr. Jonet said, what had happened was that Eve’s eyes had been opened to everything that was around her, to all of the

• 329 •

• The Mirror Tells All •

nuances of life, to all of the little details that she couldn’t have seen before, because pure good can’t see anything but good, and that’s

unhealthy. That, he said, is what leads us to a fall. When we can’t see and appreciate the bad in something as well as the good, we’re in

trouble. Rumor had it Miss Hayton had turned him down.

And the girl thought, maybe if I take my mother an apple, her eyes

will open, too, and she’ll look at something other than that mirror.

It couldn’t be just any apple, though, could it? It had to be the best apple, the ripest apple, the reddest apple, because for her mother,

only the best would do. The girl didn’t really know anything about

apples, which were good for what, which were sweet, which were

sour, none of that. She’d just eaten whatever apples were offered

her. But she learned, and that autumn she went into town again and

brought home the best apples she could find.

Oh, right. I said I’d speed it up. You do look a little uncomfortable.

You can probably guess what happens next.

The girl takes her mother the apple, and the woman doesn’t

blink an eye. Doesn’t acknowledge the girl standing there beside her with an apple in her hand. The girl can’t take it any more, she starts shouting and cursing and crying and making a real scene. She throws

the apple against the wall and slams the door on her way out of the

room. The next morning, she packs a bag and is gone.

What happened to you anyway? The doctor said the delivery boy

found you lying on your bedroom floor. I didn’t even know you let

those kids have a key to the house, but I guess the groceries had to come from somewhere. One year I’ve been gone, and not a word