Fragments from a Fairy Tale
- Heather Wolf
- 4 hours ago
- 13 min read
A personal essay by Heather Wolf
Once upon a time, there lived a little girl, whose mother was a real-life fairy godmother. She read to the little girl and her big sister, story after story, Madeline and Heidi, Little Women and Charlotte’s Web. She baked cookies, sugar cookies and spritz cookies, thumbprint cookies and Kalachi cookies, snickerdoodle cookies and so many batches of chocolate chip cookies she could have built a stairway to heaven. And she sewed, plastic aprons for the little girl’s cookie-baking birthday parties, life-sized baby dolls for her real-life baby dolls, cathedral window quilts worthy of a princess for her princesses. A god-send, she was, and her devotion commanded the little girl’s worship.
The little girl believed her mother was the most beautiful woman in the whole wide world, especially when she dressed up in her pretties for a night out with their father. The little girl would lie on her mother’s bed, and in the mirror of her vanity, watch her ready herself, curl her hair, apply her make-up. “Can I have some?” She would ask of her Merle Norman lipstick and Acqua Net hairspray and Shalimar perfume. “Not tonight, Sweetheart,” she would say. “But one day. One day, you’ll grow up to be just like Mommy.”
The little girl came to believe that, next to her mother, she was nothing.
The little girl’s father took her – often only her – to the playground, to the amusement park, to the roller-skating rink, where, when the disc jockey announced “Couples skate,” he would take her hand and lead her about the darkened, disco-lit rink, the two of them one among the other lovers.
The little girl came to believe that, to her father, she was everything.
The little girl’s mother descended from her own fairy godmother, a gifted seamstress, who made for her daughter and granddaughters matching dresses and matching purses, matching coats and matching hand muffs. A god-send she was, and her devotion commanded the little girl’s worship. The mother used any excuse to dress herself and her daughters in these matching pretties. “How precious,” her grandmother said, her mother said, all of the women said. How could the little girl not love these pretties? She was growing up to be just like Mommy and her mommy’s Mommy.
Her big sister was growing up to be even more like Mommy. She made breakfast for the little girl while their mother slept late, snacks while their mother napped. She played with the her little sister, Memory and Trouble, Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders, dress-up and school house, her rouse to teach the little girl to read and write before she started kindergarten. A god-send she was, and her devotion commanded the little girl’s worship.
Her big sister even looked their mother. They so resembled one another that their mother framed her own baby picture next to that of her elder daughter, the only difference between them the transition from black and white to color. Even in real life, with twenty-seven years separating them, perfect strangers would stop to marvel at their resemblance. When a passerby marveled at the likeness of the little girl to her mother, which only occurred if her big sister was not with them, her mother would say, proudly, “You should see my older daughter.”
Her big sister even acted like their mother, bounding with energy and charm. Her mother once befriended a fellow grocery-store shopper and invited her to dinner. (She accepted.) Her sister once befriended their fellow hotel guests, boasting of her new watch. (They marveled.) The little girl could sit in her stroller for hours, talking to herself, or alone in her bedroom, talking to her toys. “Don’t be so shy,” they urged her. But the little girl could never live up to her mother and her big sister.
The little girl came to believe that, next to her big sister, she was nothing.
One day when the little girl was three, she sat for hours threading tiny beads onto a tiny needle. On that day, her mother declared her future: She would become a surgeon. The little girl did not remember this day, but over and over, her mother would relay this story. “Not a wooden needle. A real needle. Not wooden beads. Glass beads. Eensie, teensie, tiny beads.” Yes, the little girl would become a surgeon. Never mind that only little boys grew up to be surgeons. Never mind that little girls grew up to be mothers.
The little girl came to believe that her big sister belonged to their mother, and she belonged, almost, to their father.
One day when the little girl was four, her big sister taught her to read Hop on Pop, which she would perform for their father when he returned from work. Over and over, she practiced, and when night fell, she donned her favorite “Daddy’s Little Girl” t-shirt and took up her usual position atop the living room radiator, where she would wait – and wait – for her father’s car to round the bend. When he arrived, finally, she hopped on her pop and read the book to him flawlessly. Her father showered her – not her big sister – with kisses and praise.
The little girl came to believe that, to her father, even next to her big sister, she was everything.
The little girl’s mother surrounded herself with pictures of her daughters. She snapped them at every dance recital, before every first day of school, on every holiday, on any day, at any moment. Twice each year, she passed the duty onto a professional. Inside the mall kiosk, she would huddle her daughters, dress and undress them like little Barbie dolls. She framed her favorites in 8x10 Lucite boxes and added them to her wall of pictures, her daughters reduced to two dimensions.
One Christmas, her mother gifted the little girl her very own Barbie doll, complete with her own wardrobe box, which she filled with clothes she fashioned and stitched herself: strapless minidresses and thigh-high miniskirts, mid-drift halter tops and barely-there bikinis. Her big sister, who received her Barbie doll years earlier, taught her how to comb Barbie’s perfect hair, undress Barbie’s perfect body, which looked to the little girl very much like her mother’s perfect body, like her big sister’s perfect body.
Both her mother and her big sister were lithe and lean. The little girl was short and plump, on the cusp of, her mother would insist later when she grew to five feet and 100 pounds, a “weight problem.”
Their mother also fashioned and stitched the girls’ dance costumes, ballerina tutus and flapper dresses and Native American regalia. “How precious,” her mother said, all of the mothers said. The little girl’s favorite: a genie with slinky drop-waist pants and a barely-there bikini top. It made her feel like a big girl.
The little girl came to believe that, to her mother, she was nothing but a body, a not good enough body.
The little girl felt like a very little girl when her father spanked her. When he returned from work, he would come to her bedroom, where she was already serving out her mother’s punishment, lay her across his knee, and, it seemed to her, unleash all of his might onto her bottom.
The little girl came to believe that, to her father, she was also nothing but a body, a not good enough body.
When the little girl was four, her parents separated. The little girl did not cry when her father moved away. But soon thereafter, she cried inconsolably when her mother replaced Little Red Baby, who was leeching stuffing from the holes the little girl had worried into her arms and legs. She cried inconsolably when her mother declared her a big girl and cast aside her car seat. She cried inconsolably in the movie theater when Benjii got separated from his mother. She cried inconsolably when, on one of her father’s return visits to the city where he had left her, she got separated from him, she at the top of the escalator, he gliding off without her.
The little girl came to believe that, to her father, she was also nothing.
Even after her parents separated, the little girl’s mother worked only as a mother. To her daughters, she would bad-mouth their friends’ mothers who worked and bad-mouth their father when he begged her to work. Tight-lipped and defiant, she would spit: “Why have children if you’re going to pay someone else to raise them.”
The little girl was invited to a friend’s birthday party, and she wanted to purchase the present she had picked out for him, a machine gun that strobed technicolor and spewed sparks. “Not today,” the little girl’s mother said. The check her father sent every month had not yet arrived, and they could barely afford this trip to the grocery store. In the little girl’s old life, before her mother declared her a big girl and cast aside her car seat, she sat atop her perch and watched the world wiz by, played for her viewing pleasure. In this new life, she could see only the occasional billboard, traffic lights, street signs. The world loomed over her. At that moment, the Esso Gas sign loomed over her. “Listen to me, Sweetheart. Listen to what I’m saying to you,” she said to her, not to her big sister. “Never, ever be dependent on a man.”
One Christmas when the little girl’s parents were separated – and every year after until they reunited and were firmly entrenched in their new lives together – the little girl and her big sister received a box of Christmas gifts, return address: New York, New York. Before she was a mother, the mother explained to her daughters, she worked at a brokerage firm in The City. These gifts were from her former boss. “Such a nice man,” she would say, wistfully. Then she would regale her daughters with a fairy tale, in which their mother and this nice man starred. Every morning, she journeyed to a magical land with a mythical castle, filled with toys that rang and sang and clicked and clacked. At the heart of this castle sat a kindly king, who ruled his subjects with benevolence and generosity. When the little girls opened their packages each year, this fairy tale came to life in the form of his lavish gifts, shiny boxes with shiny ribbons from F.A.O. Schwartz and Saks Fifth Avenue, filled with plush stuffed animals and miniature leather handbags and just-released Walkman cassette players. These treasures landed in their peasant lives with all of the fanfare of this kindly king’s trumpeters, and all of the girls, including their mother, oohed and aahed at their splendor.
Their father, too, sent Christmas gifts. One year, he sent the little girl a Rubik’s cube, an electronic circuit building kit, a rocks and minerals collection, presents that exercised not her body but her mind. It was her very own fairy tale, come to life, in which her father played her kindly king.
The little girl came to believe in the kindly king, Provider and Savior.
When the little girl was seven, her parents reunited. Her father still paid her mother a monthly allowance, which he now left on her mother’s nightstand like a John would his whore. Despite his new and better job, in this new and cheaper city, the mother was forced to eek out the family’s survival on a pittance. Bargain toilet paper, vats of soup made from leftover bones, small portions of cheap proteins stretched across multiple meals, tuna casserole, diced chicken breasts a hundred and one ways, spaghetti sauce with last-call ground meat. No, they could not eat out. No, they could not buy school supplies. No, they could not buy school clothes. Not yet. Not until payday. Still the little girl’s mother refused to work.
The little girl’s father now worked for a chain of jewelry stores, selling dazzling gems, rubies and emeralds, sapphires and diamonds, to kindly kings and their queens. “Can you imagine,” he would say of their wealth, though, it seemed, he could imagine. Each week, he played the lottery, and at every encounter with luxury, he invoked his fantastical winnings. To the forty-foot catamaran, to the ocean-front castle, to the Georgian mansion, he would say, “When I win the lottery.”
The little girl’s father received a small inheritance that he invested in a side business. On nights and weekends, he sold frozen pizza to swimming pools, skating rinks, and bowling alleys. Within a year, his supplier declared bankruptcy, and his franchise was rendered worthless. The little girl’s mother often said of her father’s effort: “Your father, that stupid son-of-a-bitch.”
The father’s tyranny tightened. He reduced the amount of the mother’s check and ceased investment in their home beyond his do-it-yourself abilities. He declined tree services, even after a misstep left him dangling from a forty-foot oak, screaming for his life. He refused extermination services, until a colony of carpenter ants ate away an entire side of their home. He refused septic tank services until sewage backed up into the house, leaving the little girl’s mother to mop up their shit.
The little girl came to believe that her father was not, would never be, their kindly king.
When the little girl was ten, her mother took, finally, a part-time job as an administrative assistant. Her boss: the little girl’s father. Who else would allow her to leave work early for her children, she said, though she never interviewed for another job. “Why have children if you’re going to pay someone else to raise them?” Every day, when she returned from work, she would describe their father’s workplace tyranny. “Your father, that stupid son-of-a-bitch.”
Her mother decided her father, whose real name was Harton, needed a nickname. Hartoni, Macaroni, she mused, until she landed on Bologna, which she adapted to Balony so it would fit on the vanity license plate she convinced him to affix to his car. He took it in jest until they fought. “Balony,” she said to silence him. “Balony,” she said to stay him. “Balony,” she said, as if he were a dog.
The little girl came to believe that her sister belonged to their mother, and she belonged to her father, this man her mother loathed.
When the not-so-little girl was fourteen, her father took her out for a special dinner, special because they never ate out, special because they were never alone, special because it was her first date with a man. Over the entrée he insisted they share, he regaled her with a story: While he waited for his lottery number to come in, he had played the market. Six days earlier, he instructed his broker to purchase 50 shares of Federal Express at $9.50. That day, he sold the stock for $11. “That’s $75 of profit in one week!” Can you imagine? The not-so-little girl sat, rapt at her would-be kindly king.
Soon it came time for the not-so-little girl to leave home, to set forth into the great wilderness of life, to seek her happily-ever-after. Her only guide: the map of femininity her mother had drawn for her. She would become the surgeon her mother had imagined, gain independence from man the way her mother had counseled, marry her kindly king the way her mother had dreamed, become the devoted mother the way her mother had modeled. But after she left home, the map turned into a hologram that, as she traipsed through the woods, shifted and trembled. The not-so-little girl lost her way. For here, in the woods, lived so many men, so many would-be kindly kings, some of whom showered her with attention. Surely she could bypass her mother’s long, hard road to happily-ever-after.
She had come to believe in the kindly king, Provider and Savior.
Fraternities of would-be kindly kings lived together in storybook mansions, where they held lavish balls, invited all of the fairest maidens of the land, and installed henchmen at their doors to ensure only the worthiest gained entry. One night, the not-so-little girl was lucky enough to be chosen, by the henchmen, and then, by a would-be king, who plucked her from the crowd of other fair maidens and pulled her onto his lap. There she sat, perched like a child, enamored of his greatness. How could she not bid his beckoning? And so, she lay with him. The following morning, he expelled her from his lair.
She had come to believe that she was nothing but a body, a not good enough body.
The not-so-little girl happened upon on a valley where all of the fair maidens lived, sororities of them in their own storybook mansions. Here, they were not in competition for the affections of the would-be kindly kings, but in communion with one another. And oh, how she longed to live among them. And what luck! These maidens were hosting their own ball, no would-be kings allowed. There, they would choose the worthiest to gain entry. No dress of hers was suitable, no gown her mother or grandmother could stitch would ever match their finery. But she did her best to ready herself. She combed and coiffed her imperfect hair, dressed and undressed her imperfect body, to no avail. These women did not want her.
She had she not come to believe that, next to other women, she was nothing.
The not-so-little girl never sent word of her whereabouts back home. Her mother called and wrote and wrote and called, but she avoided her calls, threw her letters and postcards in the garbage. When at last her mother reached her, when the not-so-little girl tried to explain her growing disillusionment in her mother’s teachings, her mother asked, “What happened to my good little girl?” The not-so-little girl spewed her fury and hung up before her mother could respond.
Lo, the not-so-little girl happened upon another would-be kindly king who did want her. He asked for her phone number, not her body, and she was besotted with his chivalry. So when he invited her to stroll the grounds of this kingdom, she accepted. He led her through glade and dale, and at a secluded clearing, he unzipped his jeans, unleashed his manhood, and with a faint nod, pressed on her shoulders. In this way, this would-be kindly king courted her, calling often, always before competition. “You’re my good luck charm,” he told her. “I need you,” he told her. And always, she obliged him.
She had come to believe that she belonged not to the women but to the men.
Another would-be kindly king called her, a football player, famous in this fair kingdom. How could she decline his invitation to his lair? He met her at the door and with barely a greeting, he unzipped his jeans and gestured to his offering. Now the not-so-little girl harbored no illusion that he would choose her. Rather, she was afraid to decline. With nary a swipe of his hand, he could pin her and take whatever dignity remained to her. Immediately after, he showed her to the door. And as the not-so-little girl made her way alone, on the dark streets, she thought: Even a whore gets money left on her bedside table.
The following day, the not so little girl declared herself a business major and set her sights on Wall Street. New York, New York. The City. Fuck everything she had come to believe. Fuck womanhood. Fuck motherhood. Fuck the kindly king. She no longer wanted him. She would become him.
Heather Wolf earned her MFA at NYU and was a contributor to Tolstoy Together: 85 Days of War and Peace with Yiyun Li, published by A Public Space. She lives in Annapolis, Maryland, where she spends her days writing and teaching and practicing yoga.
Images: Vintage girls from Getty Images
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