Raised on Fairy Tales
a story that interrogates the impact of the tales girls grow up with
If you were raised on fairy tales, you might dress as Cinderella for Halloween and receive so many compliments on your peroxide-blonde hair that you dye it that way permanently, choking on bleach every four to six weeks because the landlord painted the bathroom windows shut. While your step-mother works the late shift, and Papa battles demons, you may sit cross-legged in front of the television set, your childhood bleeding into adolescence as you watch peasants made into princesses by perfect princes.
One night, slumped unconscious again on the family room couch, princess movies leaking into your dreams, a fairy might tap on your window and invite you into the deep, dark woods beyond your home. You might follow the sparkle of your little friend’s body glitter through the gnarled limbs to a crackling bonfire where humans dance with shadows and spirits. A boy, blonde and broad— a prince, really— may materialize from the darkness and ask you to dance. Later, if he takes you into the woods, woozy with whiskey, and lays you down upon the forest floor, you may be reminded of Snow White, Sleeping Beauty. This is how the story goes, you might think, as he lifts your drowsy limbs, kisses your frozen lips.
A month later, when you find yourself pregnant, he may enchant you with his princely magnanimity, inviting you to live in his home—his castle, he calls it. You may think two things at once: what a perfect boy, what other options are there? His home may be more caravan and less castle, but if you sing as you set about cleaning it, you just might manifest your happily ever after. Soap suds will collect at your wrists, shimmering, iridescent bubbles that pop as you scrub, and scrub, and scrub.
The scratching from the kitchenette at night is only helpful mice. The rotting pumpkins outside, smashed by teenage neighbors, are only the remains of Cinderella’s carriage. The smell of your prince—like pennies and smoke—is only the smell of a man, working long days to provide for his one, true love. Men who stay for the whole story are hard to find, your stepmother might tell you over the phone one night. You may think, then, of your mother, who also didn’t stay. This life is a fairytale.
If you were raised on fairy tales, when you struggle to sleep, you may worry, in those blue-black insomniac hours, that it is not a pea beneath your mattress, nor the life swelling beneath your stomach, but the man sleeping beside you that makes your mind spin, spin, spin, like the spindle of a spinning wheel. When you wake him, desperate for reassurance that he is the prince you’ve always dreamed of, he may slide a thick, lazy tongue between your lips and tell you to go back to sleep. You might close your eyes, stiffening, remembering his tongue on that first night in the woods, before reminding yourself of all he has done, all he has sacrificed to create this little kingdom for you, his queen, and the heir you will raise together.
One day, waiting for the bus home after your appointment at the clinic, a printed princess, pressed into a linen book cover, may catch your eye. Trapped as she is behind the greasy glass of a bookstore window, weeping dust in a faded blue gown, she might call to you. You may rescue her and shove the stained hardback into your coat pocket, snug against your swelling belly as you board the 203.
If you were raised on certain fairy tales, you may be surprised to learn, when you open this molded, molting book, that there are other, very different, fairy tales. You may begin reading these stories to the bulge in your nightgown, flipping age-spotted pages while you wait for your prince to return from wherever he is. You might tell your belly stories of a girl who saves herself from the wolf, pointing to princesses who wielded silver daggers before being flattened for the silver screen. You may drift asleep, book spread open on your lap, until the rattling of the bedroom’s accordion door wakes you, telling you your prince has returned at last.
You may look at him through foggy contacts as he enters the room, blinking until the fuzzy golden halo around his head focuses, becomes a tangled crown of hair. He may slump halfway onto the bed, body thick and heavy as a troll’s, a clumsy hand petting your stomach in jerky swipes. Fucking bitch fired me, he may say, his hand sweeping lower with each stroke. You may clench your legs together, the last fragments of sleep falling from your shoulders like a discarded cloak. You lost your job, you may ask, as his hands tug at your sweatpants. He may not respond to this, or you, when you add, I don’t feel like it tonight. You may feel your child kick, its foot so close to the insistent curl of his knuckles around your waistband. You may squirm and twist, the room filling with the smell of pine and whiskey and fire until his fingers freeze, still twisted in the drawstring of your pants. As he chokes a snore into the quilt, he might remind you of a slumbering dragon. Lying there, him gurgling next to you, you may wish for your own wings— not a dragon’s, but a swan’s.
You may think of your favorite story in the book where a woman dons the skin of a swan and flies away. Over the swell of your belly you may be able to see the tips of your unpolished toes. They aren’t wings, but they might be enough.
If you were raised on fairy tales, the next night, when the moon is high and the prince is asleep, you may stumble, backpacked and bewildered onto the shoulder of the lonely highway beside your doublewide. You may clutch one hand to your belly and the other around an old, tattered book. You may falter, glancing back at his crumbling castle, briefly illuminated by the passing sixteen-wheeler. But you will push forward, branches breaking in your braids, and disappear into the wilderness beyond your world.
This story was previously published as the third story in a three-part flash collection by F(r)iction. If you are a writer, I encourage you to submit your own stories to the journal! Publishing with F(r)iction was a dream. Their editorial staff are so insightful and their artists and designers are seriously talented.
I already published the first and second story on Substack, so you can check them out at the links below:
Read Sleepover
Love this collage! What app do you use for it?
gorgeous as always!!