my cinderella wakes up with the taste of ashes in her mouth and thinks of her mother’s waning sickness. my cinderella has nightmares of watching her mother’s chest rising, a wheeze escaping her ribs. my cinderella does not cry about this, because she lives in the place fires begin.
her stepmother has perfect teeth and high eyebrows. “are you done sweeping?” she asks. “i need to see myself in my tiles.”
there are long days spent like this. sometimes cinderella gets caught on things. she spends four hours with a toothbrush swiveling in small circles, her whole body trembling. she thinks if everything is perfect, nothing bad will happen. if she checks the stove eight times, it will not poison her like her stepmother’s venom. if she lets the cat scratch her once a day, it will learn to love her. if she just gets these baseboards clean, maybe her father will come home to her.
the invitation comes when she is adjusting the pictures on the wall. it is announced with fanfare. her stepmother sends out the request for dresses instantly while cinderella watches, waiting.
“baby,” stepmother wakes her on the day of, “hope you know how long you’ll be working for today.” strokes her hair a little.
cinderella stares at her. doesn’t want to go to the ball, where people will be twirling around on floors someone else spent six hours polishing, where people will be careless in eating food someone else toiled over cooking. where people like her fade into the shadows.
when she opens her mouth, she says, “let me go, stepmother.” it is worth the look of shock and terror on that woman’s face to tell a lie. cinderella, after the slap, hides her face and smiles.
they leave trumpeting. her step sisters are cupcakes floating on shoes cinderella has sown together.
in the night, she rises from her bed and coaxes a little mouse onto her hands and snaps its little neck.
boiling the fur of it off is easy. she feeds the bits to the cat, who twines around her feet. she takes the bones under the poplar tree and lays them out just-so. she says the words her mother used to know.
deep from the shadows comes the Fairy. pink and pretty with eyes that are totally empty. cinderella knows better than to look at them directly. “you summon me?” asks the ancient one. “what needs be done?”
cinderella does not want a ball. cinderella wants a night off. she explains slowly what she wants. she gives the Fairy three things: a needle. a fingernail. a strand of hair. the deal is done, midnight comes.
she dresses in her mother’s dress, hidden under the floorboards. it is beautiful, white, shines like a river. on her feet are no shoes at all. she wants to feel the ground that carries her, that has been tilled by people like her.
at the gates, they stop her. no carriage, nothing but a smile on her. but she’s so polite. so willing. has big fluttering eyelashes. lures the guards beyond the light of the castle’s torches. knows how to work a kitchen knife.
inside, she is blinded by the brightness of lamps on granite. everyone here is laughing. gliding. cinderella glides too, effortless without any shoes.
her stepsisters hang off one another, have their arms draped off the prince. cinderella walks up. smiles. says the words her mother taught her.
they erupt into screams. “needles” they howl, dancing in shoes cinderella made, “needles in my feet.” they bleed all over the floors someone worked hard for. “That,” says cinderella, “is one for me.”
the prince is without words. stepmother in her skirts tumbles as she skitters forwards. she is bubbling with improper language to speak in front of royals. on her hand is a nail chipped from slapping her stepdaughter. cinderella looks her in the eyes when she says the word. without a pause, violent scratches appear over her stepmother. she is torn open.
“that,” says cinderella, “is for my mother.”
cinderella tips over candle sticks and sets things on fire. leaves them all with the taste of ashes in their lungs. turns. does not run.
the prince follows. on his steps, as the clock strikes midnight, he finds a footprint in blood. he swears he will find whomever it belongs to if he has to try the shoes of every girl in the kingdom.
but cinderella is no longer a girl. the last, a ring of cathair, has turned her into whiskers and a tail. she sits there, watching him in the light. she twines around his legs and purrs at him. he finds her white coat fascinating.
she lives off of castle food for the rest of her life. sometimes, when she is bored, she bats all of the pictures straight in the front hall.
nobody ever finds the girl. at the funeral of the stepmother, a white cat sits by the feet of the widowed man who was her father. he has nightmares of his first wife forever after.
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