Cinderella Liberator by Rebecca Solnit

Author:Rebecca Solnit
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2019-05-13T16:00:00+00:00

5

TRUTHS and CAKES

The fairy godmother told Cinderella that she didn’t actually have to stay there and work all day every day. That very day, she put on her boots and got on one of the dapple-gray horses, and the prince got on his black horse. They rode out to the apple orchard that belonged to the kind old apple farmer. There, they stood on ladders and picked apples until they were tired and they had thirty big baskets of apples. The old apple farmer promised to introduce the young prince to the neighbors, the other farmers. And he asked the prince to come back in the winter, when they cut back the branches of the apple trees when they are bare, and in the spring, when the trees are in bloom and the bees are all buzzing around.

Prince Nevermind rode home to tell his parents he wanted to be a farmer, not a prince, or maybe a farmer-prince, but the fairy godmother was waiting for Cinderella. Go left until you get to the windmill, and then down the lane and up the alley, and you will find your cake shop. Next to it is a stable with five stalls and five dapple-gray horses inside, and the coachwoman lives upstairs from the horses.

Why didn’t you tell me I was free to go earlier? said Cinderella.

The fairy godmother said, I was really busy helping some other children, and then I lost the directions to your house. Also, I am here to help people but they have to ask for help. You never asked for help until the night of the ball.

(It is true that if you want or need help, it is really helpful to ask for it.)

Nowadays, Pearlita runs a hair salon where she piles up people’s hair as high as it will go, and she’s happy because she’s doing what she loves. Paloma is the seamstress at a dress shop, where she makes dresses all day, because she discovered she liked making beautiful dresses even more than wearing them. They don’t miss the days when they sat at home doing nothing and waiting for life to begin. They are good at what they do.

One day they went to Cinderella and said they were very sorry for how they had treated her, and that they were wrong, and could they be friends? Cinderella served them slices of cake, and later on Paloma made her some riding pants, and then Pearlita brought over some hair cream for the horse’s tails, and they were friends.

They became their truest selves, and so did their mother. Their mother, Cinderella’s stepmother, turned into the roaring in the trees on stormy nights. Sometimes you can hear her outside, a strong wind rattling the windows and shaking the leaves off the trees, saying More and more and more, or Mine, mine, mine, and then the hungry wind dies down and she is gone until next time.

Sometimes that roaring is inside your own heart and head, and then

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