i. When I am a mother, I will pull my children close by the hems of their worn nightclothes, and I will ask them kindly to sit and listen. “There are stories I must tell you,” I will say, “and I will tell you them a week from now and a month from now and a year from now, until they feel as at home on your tongue as your own stories.”
ii. I will begin at the beginning, with the Genesis of all things; glorious Eve, mother of us all, who surveyed the fruitful garden, the lush green leaves residing at her breast and hip, and still desired more. Eve, who knew that knowledge is of the utmost power. The story says that the serpent tricked her, foolish and forever unsatisfied. We women, though, know better. They conspired together, cunning and clever, and Eve devoured that fruit as she devoured knowledge: whole, and unapologetic.
iii. There are many great stories of ambitious women who were hoodwinked into eating fruit, it seems. Persephone, queen of the Underworld, stolen from her mother and forced to wed a king. Oh, no, my children must not grow up believing that Persephone was tricked into anything. She bit down on those pomegranate seeds and imagined she was biting down on the heart of a god. Red juice dribbled down her chin, and she pretended it was blood.
iv. I will tell them of Cleopatra, the last magnificent Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt. Chained to her brother by her father’s misguided wishes, she simply laughed, shooed him away with an uninterested shrug. Her radiant grin glimmered alone on gold pieces throughout the land, jostling together in pockets, traded between grimy, greedy fingertips. Shakespeare could only be so lucky to steal her story—a rumored death, a lover’s suicide, and then her own.
v. Of Catherine of Aragon, I will recite accomplishments and inspirations despite the most dire of situations, the total absence of luck. “A woman does not need luck,” I will remind them. “She needs only herself and her ambition.” Ferdinand and Isabella’s daughter, promised to England while her soft hair still fell in tiny plaits, who overthrew a wretched king and still lived to tell the tale, mountains of supporters remaining at her side for the rest of her life.
vi. I will tell my children that Great Women are not always Good Women, and that they must be loved all the same. Marie Antoinette, so unjustly blamed for the fall of an empire, as if desiring the best were a crime. Her head fell as hard and as swift as France, bloodied and bitter, merciless. The pattern of strong women in history, it seems, is that they end up scapegoats, for they are so easy to blame.
vii. They will tire, I’m sure, tiny heads bobbing slowly, chests rising and falling so rhythmically. There are so many more stories to tell, and all the time in the world to tell them. If I should birth sons, daughters, whomever, I will sear these stories into the insides of their eyelids, so that they may dream of soft, creamy skin, tender eyes, and teeth sharp as fangs. So that they may one day pass these stories onto their own children, of biting fruit like bloody, beating hearts, of cunning plots, of red-painted smirks, always curving up, up, up.
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