The Justifications of an Evil Stepmother

You hear her humming as she sweeps the hearth for the fourth time today. She normally hums, the girl who has fallen asleep more than once in the ash of the fireplace because of how tired she is during her chores, but today the melody is a bouncy one. You can hear her smile as the notes skip along the way she had earlier when she went to the garden out back.

You are the reason she’s so happy. You are also the reason why, even though she doesn’t know it yet, she will end the day in a puddle of tears. You promised her the only wish she’s expressed in all the years you’ve known her. All these years of being her stepmother, and she never—not once—has asked for anything. Not a new dress or extra food.

You’ve made her scrub the floors, wash the windows, and iron all the clothes. After she laundered them, of course. Yet not once has the girl complained or questioned anything.

When the heavy parchment came bearing the invitation to the ball, the girl’s eyes lit up with the stars of a wish. You asked her why she looked at the parchment that way. In her small, soft voice, she expressed that wish: to go to the ball and see the prince to know what a royal person looked like.

You don’t know what made you yield in that moment. Maybe it was the flicker in her eyes of the romance of life. Maybe it was knowing that once, long ago, that same flicker rose inside you. When you were young and naïve about the world, stupid about its reality and how it worked.

You said she could go, her face beamed, and in that instant you knew. You knew if she went to the ball, the rays from the sun in her face would outshine everyone else. Including your own daughters. And though you tried to escape the heat of your reneged decision, you also knew that if you didn’t go back on your word the heat would turn you into cinders.

So now you must tell the girl she will not be going to the ball.

Truly, you hate being harsh. The girl wouldn’t believe it, even if she heard it from your own mouth, but you were quite the opposite of how she knows you now. When you were a girl yourself, you had often hummed too. The humming was all you had to distract you from the beatings. From the dank cellar where you got locked at least once a week. From the scurrying sounds in that cellar.

That’s why you can’t stand the mice the girl has befriended. Not because they are filthy rodents, as you say in that airy voice you’ve perfected for the people of the village, to convince them you’ve come from pedigree. No, your real reason to hate the mice is because of the hours you spent in that cellar. Of how they bit you and crawled over you and left additional marks of those hours.

You’ve heard the whispers in the town square. What the people think of you and how you treat the girl. They think you’re horrible. A monster. They have no idea what a monster is. How monsters call themselves your father and bind you and leave you helpless, sometimes with a blindfold restraining your sight. How monsters take what isn’t theirs to have, over and over, in dark places with filthy mice, and yet have no trouble facing the world with a smile and courteous words. As if they weren’t a monster but a friend.

The people of this small town where you’ve been left a widow think it’s better to hide their ugly truths behind false words and fake smiles. But when you finally escaped your monster, you decided that no matter what you became or who you were, you would let the entire world know how you felt. You wouldn’t hide your truth. Your disdain. Your disappointment.

The girl doesn’t complain about her life. In a way, you think, she understands that everything is much easier for her. And so do you. Which is why, even though sometimes it pains you, only the harshest of words for her leave your mouth.

Because she does have an easier life. Her father wasn’t a monster. Not to her and certainly not to you. It took him so long to earn your trust, but once he did—once you believed not all men are monsters—you fell headlong into love. He took you away from all the monsters and all the sidelong looks and the gossip of that other place your father and mother called home. He accepted the two daughters you birthed as if they were his own.

He already had a daughter, he said. He knew how precious they were. More precious than diamonds. You believed him, because that’s how he treated you.

Losing him nearly shattered you. It’s the one emotion you hide from the world. Because your other pains are on display for them to see, even if they don’t know that that’s what they’re seeing. Even you, with your lofty goal to be fully transparent, had to leave some part of your life opaque where you could hide the good things. Otherwise someone would take them away from you, and you have so few of them.

The girl’s humming reminds you of all the good she had and still has. You don’t lock her in the cellar. You don’t beat her mercilessly; only when she truly deserves it. Yet she still hums. She hums because she doesn’t really know, not the way you do, how life could be worse.

She’s been brimming with anticipation for the ball all day. But she already has so many good things. She doesn’t need this. Your own daughters do, but she doesn’t. So you go to her, peer at her down your nose, and tell her she won’t be going.

Finally, her humming stops. Finally. And you have something good for just yourself once again.