Frau Holle

“Frau Holle”, Maria gasped in disbelief and amazement, when snow started falling thick and fast on a sunny afternoon in July.

Frau Holle, who causes snow to fall on earth whenever she makes her bed and shakes her duvet and pillow out of the window until the feathers fall. The Germans must have been obsessed with fresh air even in the Middle Ages. When Maria was little, it was her favorite of the Brothers Grimm’s fairytales, and not only because her name was almost the same like the one of the two protagonists.

She used to read the story over and over again of the widow who had one beautiful, kind and hardworking stepdaughter, and one ugly, selfish and lazy biological daughter. They both happened to be called Marie. As it goes in fairytales, she only loved her real daughter, and made her stepdaughter do all the chores. One day she made her spin wool outside by the well. When the thread on the reel became all bloody from her tormented fingers, she washed it in the well and dropped it in the water by accident. Terrified of the wrath of her stepmother, she dived in to retrieve the reel, but lost consciousness. When she came to, she was in a beautiful meadow and started wandering around. Eventually she reached kind Frau Holle’s house, who took her in, in return for doing housework and – most importantly – making her bed every day. Marie agreed and did her job well. The feathers flew abundantly every day, as did snow on earth. After some time she wanted to go back to where she came from, and Frau Holle let her go, but not before rewarding her for her hard work by sending her through a gate that dropped gold all over her as she stood underneath it, all for her to keep. Marie became Goldmarie, the Golden Mary.

Back home, the stepmother wanted the same fortune for her real daughter and made her jump in the well. She, too, ended up at Frau Holle’s house, and entered the same deal, but her housekeeping skills left much to be desired, and the duvet shaking was only halfhearted, hence there were hardly any feathers and only very little snow. On the way back home through the gate she did not get any gold, but pitch thrown all over her instead, which stuck on her for the rest of her life. She turned into Pechmarie – Pitch Mary. The end.

When it snowed heavily in her childhood, Maria used to proclaim excitedly, “ it’s Goldmarie’s turn!” When only a few flakes fell, it was all Pechmarie’s fault.

Once there was Frau Holle The Movie on one of the two TV channels of those days. The scene where Goldmarie is showered with gold stuck in her mind for years to come. It was not gold coins that fell on her, as Maria had previously assumed, but glitter type gold dust, the one (and the only) thing she later despised when her children got their craft kits out. Back then it was the most wonderful thing – it stuck on Goldmarie’s long, wavy, blonde hair, on her white flowing dress and her skin, and it make her look even prettier than she already was.

Maria used to stand in the doorframe of her room and imagine that she was Goldmarie standing in the gate. In real life she was nothing like Goldmarie. A bit chubby and clumsy, dressed mostly in trousers and tops. She was no princess, and she certainly wasn’t Daddy’s little princess. Daddy was too busy building a new life with his secretary, Fräulein Goldig.

As she grew up, she gradually identified more with Pechmarie. In her teens, she saw herself ugly and too sluggish to reach her full potential. In her twenties, she developed into not exactly a swan, but a good enough chick, a solid bird that would turn heads every now and again, if she made some effort. She worked hard enough to graduate, and her housekeeping skills were sufficient to not raise eyebrows of the majority of visitors, except for her mother. Nevertheless she constantly felt judged for not being as perfect as Goldmarie.

Already in her preteens she started questioning.

Why was the pretty one always the kind and good one, and the ugly one nasty?

And why was she always blonde and fair?

Why wasn’t it considered a possibility that Pechmarie did not spend her days idle? Perhaps she tried to figure out long before Newton why the apple fell on the ground, or maybe she painted really well, or she wrote books or studied star constellations.

Why was the stepmother always mean, and if the father was so good and noble, what drew him to her in the first place?

These questions still had the power to infuriate her every now and again, the fact that so many girls are striving to be Goldmarie, not questioning whether being her was really so desirable.

Last winter she had dinner with a friend. They had a good rant about how some in their friendship circle dressed up their daughters and paraded them on facebook. It was one of those days where anything she didn’t agree with could potentially become cause for major upset. Snow had fallen, it was slippery, and driving home she started skidding and crashed against a lamppost. She drove slowly, hence she didn’t sustain any major injuries, but she had concussion and felt like she was half unconscious, half hallucinating.

“Bloody Goldmarie”, she thought, or said out loud (she couldn’t tell which one), as she sat there, too weak to move or do anything at all. She tried to open her eyes. She only managed a short glimpse, and everything was blurry. Eventually she could keep her eyes open for longer and it became clearer. She saw a figure outside her car window, and old woman. She recognized her straightaway. The big teeth, the round glasses, the white hair in a bun, the kind smile. Frau Holle.

“What are you doing here? Just leave me alone!”

“My child, I have been sensing some resentment from you for a long time. Why are you so angry with me?”

Maria felt rage welling up in her, and her strength returned immediately. “Because of the way you treated Pechmarie,” she shouted, close to tears, but she did not want to cry. “She didn’t deserve that. It’s not her fault her mother preferred her, and insufficient duvet shaking does not justify having pitch stuck on you for the rest of your life.” She took deep breaths, trying to compose herself.

“Those wretched Grimm Brothers again”, Frau Holle muttered through clenched teeth. She talked through the closed window, but Maria could hear her very clearly, as if there was no barrier between them. “They exaggerate everything.” Her features and her speech softened again. “The pitch came off completely with the third bath. Admittedly, the hair had to be cut short, but it grew back, and the dress had to be thrown out, but it was nothing special, and they were not so poor that they couldn’t have afforded another one.”

“Really?” Maria asked, pacified for a second, but then again angry. “But that’s not even the point. Why is it that girls are just noticed on how they look, and how they please others. But I guess I shouldn’t expect you to understand, you come from a different time.”

“I understand your time and all other times.” Frau Holle suddenly sat next to her in the passenger seat, although Maria couldn’t remember her opening the door. “Look. Pechmarie was engaged to the local goldsmith. He was a good catch, but she didn’t like him, whereas Goldmarie would have gladly married him, but their mother would hear nothing of it.” She drew her shawl closer around her. “When Pechmarie came back home after she spent some time with me, her short hair and the tem-por-ary pitch on her skin was enough to put him off. He started noticing her sister more. He thought, him being a goldsmith, they would make a good match with all that gold on her, and their mother finally agreed. It was all planned by me and both Maries.” Her glasses were fogging up and she took them off to clean them with a cloth tissue from one of her pockets of her skirt. “Pechmarie had good handwriting and started working for a Mathematician, who also taught her all there was to know back then about numbers. He was very progressive for those days. He taught some lads as well, and she ended up marrying one of them, and both stepsisters and their husbands lived happily ever after.” She put her glasses back on and her tissue back in her pocket.

Although that should have been good news to Maria, she felt sad. “If only I could have a drop of Pechmarie’s blood in me. She was so determined. She didn’t care what others thought of her.”

“But you do have her blood”, Frau Holle smiled as she took her hand. “She is your great great great great great grandmother.”

“I don’t believe you”, said Maria. This was getting ridiculous. How stupid did Frau Holle think she was. And how stupid was she herself, thinking this conversation, that was clearly a dream, could be real. She heard the siren of an ambulance in the far distance, and Frau Holle was slowly floating away from the car.

“I will prove it to you”, Frau Holle said, her voice fading.

“How?’

“Can you hear me, madam?” A paramedic shone a torch on her, but her face was turned the other way. She felt like she was slowly waking up.

And just before Maria fully regained consciousness and Frau Holle’s image and voice disappeared completely, she called, now from a distance, “I will make my bed in July!”