A Fairytale
by Steph Jurusz
"Tell me a story!" my daughter demanded.
"You want another fairytale?"
"Please?" she asked, her eyes widening at the familiar, glossed-over term. She had heard it, knew all the stories but did not grasp their meaning.
"I think you're getting a bit old for those."
Once upon a modern time in the world of reality, rather than slammed between the pages of a well-loved storybook, lived a girl who was not beautiful. No one had ever compared her to a fairy princess or said she had perfect, rose red lips, snow-white skin, or raven black hair. A boy in high school once poetically described the petals of her mouth as "chicken lips." Her hair was a crispy blackish brown and tired roots of light brown crept up from her scalp and vomited like a pallid fountain from her crown. Gaunt, sallow skin was stretched across her bones - not rosy and vital, but pale and cold. She stayed locked in the tower, the third floor of an old four flat, since mid-November. This was not due to any decree of an evil king or an enchantment of a jealous witch, merely the only reprieve from the biting ice-laden air that careened off the lake in dense, steely sheets. This girl was of typical height, waifish build, and had no spectacularly discerning features. An averagely average girl, so typical one would overlook her amongst the mediocrity of sniffling bundled masses waiting for the 8:15 train. "Snow white" in practice, but far from "fairest of them all."
Staring down at the snow-covered street below, where streetlamps were enveloped in orange orbs of light and falling snow, the female who shall remain nameless, inhaled deeply opposite the glowing end of a cigarette. The lightheaded feeling was familiar, comforting. She didn't even particularly enjoy smoking, didn't consider herself a smoker, but the feeling of floating away in an ash filled cloud allowed her to better appreciate when her breathing returned to normal and blood pressure lowered. It was a change of pace.
Under her skin, muscles moved. Her heart beat. Her lungs expelled grey air, the muscles enclosing her chest and stomach, arching, bending, and stretching across the frame of her ribs and spine. Muscle and sense memories are considered the most powerfully evocative, allowing through a simple, perhaps unintended action to trigger a series of synapses in the brain which tie a memory to a physical sensation, whether it be of drunken nights, pilfered kisses, or another evening spent with the same four people shooting the shit on the back porch; insulation against the cold and the loneliness of winter. However further introspection revealed stains and holes: lies, miscommunication, bullshit, and bastards. Wandering alone in the dead of night to the train station, half-drunk, entirely angry, puffing away on another Parliament.
She leaned on the windowsill, which had known over ten different colors in its lifetime, each painted over one another like a thick rubbery skin, into the cold of the winter air. Smoke and the heat of her breath melded and curled into one long trail; smoke clawing into breath and dragging it in tow over her lips until it expired and hung dead in the air. A long, dull thumbnail flicked crumbling ash from the filter. She watched it flutter and disintegrate into heavy grey flakes falling to the ground. Dirty snow. The sill, thick and warped, old wood gently nibbled into her forearms, which glowed a sickly white-orange reflection of the streetlights. There was a freckle she had had since birth, a long thin scar from a fight with her brother as a little girl, and the thin pinkish bars of a grill burn that still looked like freshly laid wax which framed a round, scabbed crater where the man who could have been king decided to extinguish a cigarette not so long ago, forfeiting all chances to take the throne. She would be not the royal ashtray so she took her leave from the court, permanently. The kingdom crumbled but she no longer cared.
She dropped the filter, and watched it tumble with a glowing ruby-red cherry locked inside until it broke apart into splinters of cold, grey soot as it collided with the ground. If she were to make the same jump she would be injured, but she would survive. A cigarette's lifespan is already fleeting, born in a glow of fire and stomped out in a matter of minutes. It's a mini time bomb. Except it doesn't explode at the end, usually. A tiny lifetime, crammed in a harbinger of premature death. Where did she think these things up? She laughed.
I laughed.
Cars pushed past through the slimy slush with wet determination. A man in an oversized gorilla coat walked down the street and one lone, intrepid bike rider braved the winter cold, his face, which was undoubtedly beaded, obscured by a balaclava. His eyes glowed a dry cold red. He reminded her of a guy who's name she struggled to recall now. Was it...Jon? They had met briefly and gone out on one incredibly awkward date that included far too much liquor and even more ganja than she cared to recall, a sure recipe for romance.
"How do you ride your bike in the winter?"
"I wear a ski mask and a really sexy snow suit," was all she could recall of any of their exchanges, now. This was probably a good thing. Slush splashed thickly onto the rider's legs as she watched him careen drunkenly into a soiled snowdrift. Someone had one too many PBRs. She smiled hoping it might have been him. Fucking drunken bikers.
The bar down the street was silent and neon signs buzzed, bragging an offering of alcoholic beverages to non-existent crowds. She breathed in the icy air and lightly swirled her fingertips against one another, the ridges of her fingerprints like frozen tire tracks. Her eyes floated, lightheaded, down the street, following the glow of the orange, sulfurous lamp bulbs. Her roommate had stepped out for the evening; she no longer had a television, so the room hummed with a hollow, dull silence. The air outside seemed frozen in place; if any sound was there it was locked in the air and hung like a dull phantom. The sound of the biker's collision was dull, hollow and barely carried up to her window. Prince charming and his un-trusty steed failed once again. He had neither rescued her from the tower nor succeeded in sparking her sympathy or interest.
Poor little average girl, neither beautiful, nor ugly, suspended in static. Work. Home. Sleep. Wake. Lather, rinse, repeat. She was not an orphan; she did not have an evil stepmother. She had a batshit crazy landlord who filled their flat with "useful" trash when they weren't home, and a roommate who was in a constant state of inebriation. She was not under an enchanted sleeping spell--she was just exhausted and worn thin. If there were any frogs in the city, a kiss would not transform them into princes. She learned early on that there are no princes in Chicago. If they only knew that back home, the city is not a fairytale of bright glittering lights and smiling streets of welcoming arms.
Her mother called sometime in October to hear about "life in the big city." She answered drunk and angry, as usual for a Saturday night. Why the fuck her mother insisted on calling on a Saturday night was a mystery. Wasn't there a bingo game or a Tupperware party she was supposed to be attending? Mother somehow still held the illusion that women left home in order to meet their husbands, women cannot be taught to think like men and wouldn't she come home and meet the nice son of one her Bible study ladies some weekend? Yes mother. Sounds like a grrrrreat idea. Just like Tony the Tiger. Hmm? Making light of the situation? Of course not. Yes. I'll stop working and come home so you can die a grandmother or maybe even a great grandmother if we're lucky enough to have another teenage pregnancy in the family.
She hung up mid sentence and had no desire to continue the conversation at a later date. An oversized, glitter laden Christmas card from Indianapolis bent in her tiny mail slot, sending warm holiday greetings of peace and happiness in the New Year as if nothing had ever changed between mother and daughter.
She was not particularly talented or particularly intelligent. She had known neither tragedy nor great joy. Whether or not she was a beautiful princess or a lonely girl smoking her last cigarette of the winter on a silent Sunday night, there would be no prince charming. There would be no fairy godmothers to procure a gown for the ball, a reward for righteously endured toil. Things never worked that way. If she wanted anything she had to get it herself, second hand or on clearance. A single kiss would not awaken her from the static dreams of a slumberous reality, nor would it be sweet; it would taste of smoke and tobacco and cheap beer. There would be no white horses, no pumpkin carriages. Things were never as beautiful as they appeared. She noted that even the horse-drawn carriages on Michigan avenue had a certain cheapness about them; perhaps it was the smell of manure (something never mentioned in Cinderella) or the fat, t-shirt wearing tourists that rode in them, feigning an air of sophistication and dignity in an antiquated mode of transportation that made them comparable to a plastic bag; something that was once novel, useful and innovative was now unnecessary and wanton.
She rejected fairytale notions. They were two-dimensional. No one could smell the inevitable shit from the supposedly pristine white horses or feel the uncertainty and fear Cinderella felt when she slipped her foot in the glass slipper for the prince. How could she supposedly love a man she danced with once? Was it love or a business exchange? Give me your foot and I shall give you a lifetime of riches and idealized promises of happiness. We can wear white and live in a castle on a cloud, one that never needs cleaning, and we shall never smell the bleach coming from the laundry or see the servants polishing the marble. That's a lot in exchange for properly fitting footwear.
What she should have been asking is "Does this prince have some sort of weird foot fetish?" Come to think of it, did the prince have amnesia and not remember that Cinderella was a blonde? What if some other chick had the same shoe size and he ended up marrying Esther with the buckteeth and facial wart instead of Cinderella? The course of "true love" never did run smooth, except in picture books and Disney movies.
Back in reality, Dana was more likely to have her purse stolen rather than her heart. She carried mace in her pocket and a "don't fuck with me" look that clawed out from under her makeup. She would be the servant polishing the marble, or the leathery, arthritic washerwoman, with crusty, knobby fingers, bleaching the bloodstains from Cinderella's silky unmentionables. No one would ever have to know that even Cinderella bled like the lowly maid. Cinderella's days would be filled with tedious throne sitting, sumptuous meals, and exhausting balls at which she would be expected to dance with the prince, long after their affection had faded and before they locked themselves behind separately monumental doors. Would the illusion of perfection be worth the ultimate apathy and indifference to come?
Dana pushed the window shut, it whined with ice and layers of careless repainting, acting in opposition to her efforts. Everything was a constant push and pull, "for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction". She would leave the warmth of the apartment and its fussy windows and walk through the slush to work. She would pass the homeless man on the corner of Division and Milwaukee who rattled his cup outside the subway stairs. No one would chase her up those stairs, begging her not to go, unless it was some creepy old man asking either for money, booze, or her phone number. These were not castle stairs, which she would run down before the clock struck midnight, leaving a glass slipper behind. The wet, dirty snow would pull, snag her boots like the grabby staircase in the Cinderella story, while she struggled to escape and trudge on. Maybe Cinderella had enough dancing and just wanted to be left alone but that fucking shoe did her in.
Cinderella never braved a Chicago winter, obviously, if she had she may have thought twice about putting on those ridiculous glass slippers, just out of sympathy for these real girls, but fairytale girls never think about anyone but themselves. They never worry about weather forecasts, train schedules, and when rent is due. She would be lucky if she avoided her boots soaking through with piss and slush. Nothing was worse than spending an entire shift in cold, wet boots, especially if they smelled like piss; certainly no good for dancing. But what good did glass slippers do in that case? The chance of falling and breaking them was far too great.
"Can you spare a quarter?"
She would half grunt an indefinite response and trudge past, avoiding eye contact as she pulled her hood tighter on her head as the wind threatened to tear it off. Her numb fingers wouldn't be able to grasp it as the wind pushed it back and each little bit of pulling and readjustment would be undone by the bellowing of the icy wind until she would finally surrender. He hair would swirl around in icy tendrils that would melt and trickle like tangled, torn strips of seaweed when she finally reached the diner.
That's the way things went: sloppiness, carelessness. Everything was a giant, clumsy movement, the human population filled the fingers of a giant glove, moving and trying to go about their business but lacking any real dexterity. She groped helplessly through life, getting a job, an apartment, a small group of mediocre friends, and fucking around with a few passably attractive men to help pass the time. She had no passions, no real talents; she merely took whatever she could get her hands on. She wasn't a gold-digger like Cinderella; She starved like Gretel locked in the witch's candy cottage, watching her brother grow fat, hoping to sneak her share but ending up with just enough to survive.
She was never careless with her heart; she merely disregarded it. Sex and love were mutually exclusive. Romance was rejected as a cruel joke. "They only want to get in your pants," and she let them. Of course, Cinderella never thought about sex. Hell, she probably tried to cop a feel when they were dancing to try and guess how big his dick was. Innocent and pure of heart, my ass. Cinderella wanted what every girl wants, a steady source of income and feigned emotional attachment, they just call it "true love" in the books. Those books would call fucking "making love," even when the glass slippers are off and shattered in the corner, the dress is torn, and a smattering of bruises is lodged between two strangers' desperately satisfied sighs. In real life he won't replace the glass slippers or offer to pay for the dress, he'll slip out to other conquests before she wakes up, the only evidence he was ever there being a fading shadow of warmth in an unmade bed.
The knights were lost on the crusades or had neglected to polish their armor, "for another day," they told themselves. Yes, another day. There was no rescuing to be done here. Her illusions had been shattered; naïve impressions of romance squashed out like a burning cigarette and shut between the pages of a picture book. Winter was cold and numb. Life would not turn out like Cinderella, Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty.
Dana flicked off the lights, pulled her coat off the hook near the door and shoved her feet into salt-crusted boots, without taking a look in the mirror on the way out; not like it even had the courtesy of lying to her, "You are the fairest of them all," not that she would have believed it anyway. Instead, she shut the door behind her and clicked it closed, letting the lock turn in the key before removing it with knowing satisfaction. Another day of work would go and come with customers demanding pancakes, coffee, muffins, sandwiches, soft drinks and salads. The apartment would still be dark when she returned. It was as predictable as a storybook ending, without any promise of eternal happiness, or something like it. But a girl could still dream, right?
Yes, but it would be futile.
She had already fallen asleep; the illusion would live another day.