How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales: and Other Stories
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How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales: and Other Stories
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Overview
Elegant and brutal, the stories in Kate Bernheimer's latest collection occupy a heightened landscape, where the familiar cedes to the grotesque and nonsense just as often devolves into terror. These are fairy tales out of time, renewing classic stories we think we know, like one of Bernheimer's girls, whose hands of steel turn to flowers, leaving her beautiful but alone.
Kate Bernheimer is the author of the short story collection Horse, Flower, Bird and the editor of My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales and the journal Fairy Tale Review.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781566893480 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Coffee House Press |
| Publication date: | 07/14/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 158 |
| File size: | 767 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Old Dinosaur
An old dinosaur lived in a big city, and one evening he sat in his room all alone, thinking how he had first lost his wife, then his two children, then little by little all of his relatives, and then his last friend, a small child who had walked with him daily through the park blocks until that very evening. The old dinosaur was alone and forsaken. He was sad at heart — yes, that is the saying.
Hardest of all to bear, of course, was the loss of his two daughters, and the grieving for that never had ceased. Of course, as was reasonable, he blamed humans for his misfortunes. He was sitting quietly, deep in thought about this, when all at once he heard bells ringing from the white church down the street. He was surprised to find that he had stayed up all night in the armchair by the small fireplace. (Usually he climbed into bed in his giant pajamas on which were printed pandas and rainbows.)
The old dinosaur lit a lamp in the window. He left through the window, by flying. He was in no other way striking — he was pretty much an ordinary dinosaur guy. When he arrived at the church it was lighted — a strange and diffuse glow filled the space. There were no candles burning. It was crowded, the pews overflowing. When the old dinosaur came to his usual row, it was occupied; so was the row in front of it; and so was the row in front of that one; and so on, and so on, to the front of the room. There, he turned around and stared at all of the humans who stood and stared back at him. They all held photographs: the photographs were of his relatives, the ones mentioned before, who had died.
The scene wasn't striking, but it had a strong feeling. The people were dressed in beautiful vintage clothing — the fabrics elegant, dusty, and dark. Their faces were pale. No one spoke and no one sang, yet the church was filled with a murmur — like bees, who also were gone from the planet. He thought of them then.
A woman — elderly, very stoop-shouldered — began to walk toward him slowly. As she got closer he saw that she was, in fact, a dinosaur too — and not only that, she was his beloved great aunt. She was dressed, now, in the manner of humans. She wore a black bonnet with lacy white trim. Her pale green dinosaur's face peeked out at him. In her hands, she held a photograph of herself torn out of a children's history book.
"Look at that altar," she said, taking his arm. "You will see your two daughters." And he did: he saw one hanging from gallows, the other tied to a wheel. "You see," said his great aunt. "That would have happened to them, if they had lived. The innocent children." Her eyes misted over. They stood there for a long time.
The old dinosaur flew home — this was difficult, as he was trembling — and as soon as he got through the window he kneeled on the hard, wooden floor. "I have seen mercy," he thought. He could not think of anything to do besides think about mercy. On the third day, he lay down and died.
He was the last dinosaur. My story is done.
CHAPTER 2Pink Horse Tale
A long time ago, I was very poor and often traded my body for cigarettes, Chelada, or food (these are listed in order of preference).
I had two children — both daughters — and together we lived in a motel on the coast. It was a knotty-pine kitchenette cabin, and had come furnished with a teapot, a few chipped flowered plates, some utensils, and bedding. The cabin overlooked a paved parking lot and beyond it, the beach.
If a man came to visit, I sent my youngest girl out to find driftwood and starfish and shells. (Her sister went to elementary school, so often was gone.) There was no market for these trinkets among the occasional tourists, but they were precious to my young girls, truly their only possessions. We carefully washed them and kept them along the edge of the porch rail outside, and on the white windowsills inside, which otherwise were totally bare, apart from a pink horse my youngest had found in the woods.
That pink horse, how she loved it.
Once, when she had gone a long way to gather her treasures — all the way through a natural tunnel that had grown inside the cliff, which led to a narrow beach that would trap you and kill you if you were stuck there during high tide — an old woman with pink hair approached her and sang her a song.
My daughter told me about this old woman. I almost didn't believe her. Later that week, the girl brought home a sea urchin, closed. She said that when the sea urchin opened, the old woman would return and on top of that, the old woman had promised to bring us good luck at that time.
I got an empty jar from the cupboard — a nice jar that had once been full of beach plum jelly but had long been gathering dust. My daughter and I walked down to the edge of the ocean and filled the jar with salt water. Back home, we placed the closed sea urchin carefully inside the jar. It quickly sunk, and stayed closed.
The next morning, my littlest girl didn't wake up. The sea urchin had bloomed.
It was on her grave that my other daughter placed the pink horse. And then she too was taken — by the high tide — the very same week. She'd gone into the magic tunnel at a very bad time. Of course now I do nothing but drink Chelada all day, haunted by pink. Pink urchins, pink cigarettes. Pink horse, pink horse, pink horse on the grave — if ever the pink horse flies into the sky, your daughters will come back to life. The pink-haired old woman sang that to me once when I was passed out in the sand. For now, there you stand in the dark of the wood — beautiful, all-powerful, and silent.
Pink horse, you are everything, and everything is everlasting in you.
I'm yours. I will hold you to the sky until my arms get tired and then I will hold you some more. You are very serious. I understand that. It is nice how you gave me my outfit, the one with the knee socks and belt. Also I like to wear the slippers that match the stick handles when we go out. People might wonder why we do this — it is not the usual custom. But we so like to be together: you two gazing off into the distance, me loving you best. We will have each other for always: my legs and your sticks. We have serious eyes; some people think we have problems.
CHAPTER 3Tale of Disappearance
When I was still young, my sister told me there was a witch in the woods who tried to find little boys, and when she found them she ate them. My sister kept me safe from the witch, at least most of the time. Then my sister was taken. Before she was taken, she told me to disappear into the woods. She said this would save me.
She said, Brother, here are the things you'll need:
Cardboard Brown Paint Nails that Change Colors Twigs, Six Inches Long, Half Inch Thick Gold Bead Large Fake Bird Pruning Shears
Brother, she said. You may cut a piece of cardboard about five inches square, and you may paint it brown if desired, or if your chosen cardboard is not brown to begin with; this will help disguise the cardboard, which will then disguise you. Snip your twigs in half and glue them to the front of the cardboard. Keep doing this until you've made a small door with a handle. Then, take some more cardboard and make a good roof. And then glue a gold bead to the door's handle. Nip the legs from the fake bird with pruning shears. Make sure the top of each leg is flat and also is even. Cut a two-inch square of cardboard for each leg and glue these to the cut ends of the legs. Let the glue cure for ten minutes. Place the house on its back with the door facing up. Glue the bird's legs to the bottom. Let these cure for an hour before standing the house up onto the feet. The house should stand on its own — this is how you know a good house. Put the house in the woods and get inside of the house with all the nails. Hammer the nails into the cardboard. Then you are safe. If the witch sees you in there, she will think you're a witch. Also, the nails will change color along with the seasons and this will hide you from everyone else.
I did as she told me; I made the small house. This was one night, when the witch slept. Then I carried it carefully into the woods and set it down on the ground. I became small, I crawled inside, and then I hammered and hammered.
I'm still in here now, but it is cold and I am so lonely, even though crows visit the house and poke it with beaks. Sometimes they tip us right over — me and the house — and the nails stick in the ground and the fake bird legs poke up and only a hard wind will get us upright once again.
I don't really want to be found, but the problem with that is the complete solitude. When I had my sister, she told me great stories — now I only have fragments of those that I can even remember; I am very old now and do not have a good brain.
When I was still young, my sister would come from her bedroom in a pink nightgown and slippers — running into my room in the dark, with a flashlight. She'd perch on the edge of my bed with a big blue book of the witch's, the only book in the house, but she never read any words. She turned the pages and she recited, but I knew she said things the book itself never said, things about ukuleles and pirates and donkeys. She said, Brother, once upon a time there was a glittering and beautiful place full of pirates and donkeys and monkeys! Brother, once upon a time there was a land of card decks and sugar and saddles! The book's real words were not very good. I can't bear to say them; they were all very bad. Okay, I'll say one. It was cock — and the cock had a tail. It was cocktail. You know what I'm talking about.
So I don't read anymore, in my house made of nails. The paper would make too much noise and someone wicked might find me. Still, at least I'd have company then — did I mention that it's lonely in here? Did I tell you this house is too heavy for words?
CHAPTER 4The Librarian's Tale
As the town librarian, I don't have many opportunities for social contact — unless you count books. I live in a secret compartment behind the front desk: if you pull out the first volume of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women series, the entire wall swings completely wide open — and there's my apartment.
The apartment has just enough room for what one human might need: a wooden table with one wooden chair, a single mattress with a thin coverlet, and a one-burner stove. Teakettle, slippers, and candles.
I store all the food I need in the crate on the front stoop of the library, which used to be for returned books (no one comes to the library anymore, so I tuck my bread and cheese inside of the crate, wrapped in a kerchief). In summer I will leave a jar of water in there overnight; cools it off, which is nice. In the morning I sit on the stoop and sip from the jar as I watch the sun come up in the sky — it rises above the church across the road. (Behind the church is a hill that is good for moongazing.) When the sun is up, I take the skeleton key and pretend to use it to open the library door. This is in case anyone driving by happens to look: they will think that I am just then arriving to work.
No one knows that I sleep in the library — not even my mother, Professor Helen C. Andersen, who lives down the road. She thinks I live all the way over the hill toward the next town, in a small trailer she purchased for me and my sister and three elderly goats.
It is not that I don't like the trailer; I love it! It's a wonderful trailer: metal, with the sweetest casement windows you ever did see, and an awning with a picnic table underneath it. There's a tree swing under an elm near the barn. But when my sister died, I felt so sorry for those three elderly goats. They missed her a lot — she was the one who paid more attention to them.
It's not that I didn't love the goats, but they were so needy. I let them move into the trailer. They didn't take up much room, and it seemed that the company suited them well; they didn't yell at me as much as they had from the barn. They began to nibble at the curtains — who could blame them, as the pattern featured potatoes, carrots, and parsley — eventually I gave them the run of the place and moved into the bookcase apartment. I visit to freshen their water and give them some time out of doors on the lawn.
The thing is, I don't understand why no one ever comes to the library. Books are no different from goats! They enjoy an afternoon out on the lawn.
I try to rotate my attentions around — this is a small library, so each book gets a turn pretty often. Right now I am reading The Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti, which is a dark fairy tale featuring cats and rats in a very nice font. I have become a little catlike and ratlike — thinking, "Come buy, come buy" as I hear cars driving past. None of the drivers slow down; they seem not to notice the new blinking LIBRARY sign: I had expected that some might mistake it for a new bar.
My new desperation — I think it has to do with the weather. Winter is coming. And so it is good that behind the shelf, in my secret compartment, I have that woodstove. And I have all of the books one ever could need. Still, I worry about the goats and about my dead sister. I miss my good mother. I should visit all of them more.
I'm yours. I have some dark notions, but you glow green. You are cold to the touch and I like that. You make the light glow, except when it doesn't. That can be alarming, but I understand it is not your intention. My hand has no trouble holding you up — some might find that surprising or maybe they don't. They don't know how I feel — but who knows how anyone feels? Once upon a time, we found each other out here in the gray on mossy ground. That's something special. And you know what? I will share this with you. Since I have been yours my head is brimming with air and with trouble — or is it my body? It seems my soul has gone tired though my head has expanded. Still, I am yours and I will fill myself up with your spirit. It will bring us down to where I belong.
CHAPTER 5Professor Helen C. Andersen
The new fabulist moved into her office this week. It's next to my office. I asked my chair to assign her an office on the other end of the building, because I am a very private person, but he assigned her the office next to mine. My chair claims I will be a good mentor for her. He put in a one-way mirror between us so she could observe me. But why would I be a good mentor for her? She has streaky blonde hair with pale pink highlights; she wears three-inch heels and straight-legged jeans. Why would she need mentoring from me?
Let's be realistic. I have lived in this town for my entire forty-three years and wear my grandmother's clothes. I am not a good mentor for her. I can see that she judges my outfits by the way she watches me through her side of the mirror. My life was nice here, before. It was quiet. I did all my research at the town library, where my daughter is the librarian. There is a desk in the children's room always waiting for me. But then I was asked to keep watch over her.
She showed up in town with her pink-and-blonde hair and her new collection of stories about flying ponies, and everyone loved her on sight. I'm dutiful. I know my place. I started going to my office at school more often — in order to mentor her, of course. If I am asked to do something I do it. I am a realist that way.
And one must help the town's newest women fit in ... it isn't easy for them. The women in this town can be ... how to put this ... so cold. My other daughter was a real victim of them.
How do you stay so thin, I asked the new one over lunch just today, in an effort to mentor her. Is it natural, or do you have a problem? I asked her. People in town may start to think you have a problem, I told her, if you do not gain weight.
As for me, I do have some problems. One of my problems is that when I sit down to write, I do not write about flying pink ponies. My stories do not come to me through telepathy, as the new fabulist says her stories come directly to her. "They appear on my forehead and I read them in the mirror," she told me, her eyes brimming with tears.
As for me, I have a very large forehead and it makes me look like a man. The more I drink, the more I become convinced this is so. I stare in the mirror a lot.
My new project is to find things out about her to expose the new fabulist as an imposter. For example, did you know she was once hospitalized for attempted suicide? I mean who does she think she is? One of my daughters? Or me? And pink ponies. Pink hair. This town was a lot nicer before her arrival, before she came here.
Now, when I look in the mirror, there is a terrible glare. She's on the other side of it — always — I fear.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Kate Bernheimer.
Excerpted by permission of COFFEE HOUSE PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
The Old Dinosaur,
Pink Horse Tale,
Tale of Disappearance,
The Librarian's Tale,
Professor Helen C. Andersen,
Oh Jolly Playmate!,
How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales,
Babes in the Woods,
The Girl with the Talking Shadow,