by Sky Sommers
‘Visit for a few days’ my…elbow. Mellie started pushing the boundaries from the get-go, with Ella and with sending the twins over more often and for longer as well.
Yes, Ella’s Godmother evicts her and it’s the person who takes her in that she hates.
When Ella moved in, we gave her the room intended for the baby. When I no longer had to get up every hour to feed Henry, we divided our bedroom into two so Henry could have his own playroom. A cupboard of a room and he spends most of his time playing in the kitchen with pots and pans, but there you go.
For a long time, the Godmother allowed the twins to visit us only occasionally. Not more than a weekend at a time and not even every week. Ella refused to let them stay in her room. Apparently, teenagers need more privacy than married people who have to share a room. So pretty much immediately I had to start remodelling the room that was intended to be my vet’s office.
Now the twins are here more often than not. They don’t mind sleeping on the floor in our pantry while we are still remodelling. Hired hands mean money and money is scarcer with too many mouths to feed. So we save up and have another thing done. Save up and have another thing demolished in my lovely office.
There is no escaping it, I simply have to move the twins from our pantry before they eat us to the poorhouse!
That’s right. In the Magic Kingdom we don’t have refrigerators, we have larders and storage rooms and pantries.
In the morning, I never know what supplies we still have and which ones have vanished overnight.
When I made a wish at 25 to be a mother, I distinctly remember writing down ‘not necessarily by giving birth’.
This is as ‘not necessarily’ as they come.
Raising four kids brings out the best and, unfortunately, the worst in people who have lived a child-free life for 35 years.
You have all the time in the world to do as you please when you will. Sleeping in late. Eating out… Travelling... Having the bathroom to yourself or to share with just one other grown-up…
Imagine one day it all stops and you need to put the wishes and wants of not just one tiny person, but the wishes and wants of five people before your own.
It has been...an adjustment.
So, this is our happily ever after.
Mostly happily ever after.
Well, happily if you count…
The bedlam.
The copious amounts of food that apparently only I know how to cook.
The fights.
The kids.
The truth is…
‘When are we going to school?’ Hans asks, clinking his plate against others hung up on our make-shift dishwasher.
Henry opens his eyes and smiles at me widely.
‘Soon,’ I say, smiling back at my baby.
He’s still a baby to me.
Even if he is almost three.
Three.
Soon.
So soon.
Too soon.
‘As soon as Ella finishes school,’ I tell Hans.
Provided we have enough money saved up from our various business activities.
Maybe we can even send both of them, if Peter negotiates the price. My former investment banker of a husband hasn’t lost his savvy negotiating touch, which is why he is so good in his new job as a journalist. People trust him when he promises he will not reveal his sources when writing his article. And to date, he never has, no matter how the palace guards pester him. They will sooner shut down the paper than get Peter to reveal a source.
Hans drops his spoon and knife into the kitchen sink with a plonk.
Henry laughs, wriggles out of my arms and runs to the sink to drop something into the water too.
Hans hands him a spoon that the toddler drops in and claps his hands at the funny sound.
‘Hans, Greta, can I count on you helping me to prepare the restaurant for the night?’ I ask.
Greta nods more enthusiastically than Hans.
‘Good,’ I say. ‘I have things to pick up from the market, I’ll make you a list,’ I tell Hans who makes a face. ‘You,’ I nod at Greta, ‘Can help me with the cooking. It’s about time you learnt how to make a proper stew.’
Now I really do get why the stepmothers in the fairy-tales did what they did.
Trust me, the stories we are all told as kids have great big holes in them.
There are always two sides to one story, possibly more.
The truth is probably somewhere in between.
Just remember these fun facts:
1. Some of the stepmothers in the Brothers Grimm stories were originally mothers, they changed them to stepmothers when they realised parents actually read these stories to their kids before bedtime.
2. Unconditional love for someone else’s children is rare.
3. There are no good role-models for stepmothers. Maria in ‘The Sound of Music’ doesn’t count. She was almost a nun.
Not all stepmothers set out with an intention to be the necessary evil, you know?
Sometimes, it just turns out that way.
And sometimes…
Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.
* * *
My husband doesn’t want to touch me.
I lie with eyes wide open and listen to him breathing.
How can he sleep when he no longer loves me?
At least I think he doesn’t.
Why else would he refuse to ravage me, despite the entirely inappropriate sleeping attire?
When he climbed into bed with me tonight, I was naked.
He patted me on my bare hip and when I tried snuggling into him, he blatantly turned his back on me and fell asleep.
You’d think he was tired.
But for the tenth night in a row?!?
It’s not like it’s shrug and let go, wait for a better night, set a better mood, make more of an effort.
Do you know what effort it takes for a mom of a toddler who still wakes up every two hours every night to spruce herself up, do her hair, bit of make-up, shave the important bits, wash off the baby-goo, find something sexy to wear that still fits or feel hot enough to decide not to wear a thing and LAY HERSELF OUT FOR HER MAN?
If you’ve never given birth or had to sleep 45 minutes at a time through crying fits, you wouldn’t understand the effort.
I used to judge the frazzled, crazy-eyed moms I used to see walking their prams in the park.
Why can’t they look like yummy mummies, I used to think.
Can’t they comb their hair?
Use at least lipstick if not blush?
Put on clean clothes?
Now I’m one of those moms.
If I didn’t have a restaurant to run, I would look frazzled and worn and dirty all the time.
Now I mostly look frazzled.
Or dirty, if the stove acts up.
I’ve given up on the dream of being a yummy mummy.
The dream of having relations with my man is still very much alive.
Or it was.
Until tonight.
I could ravage him myself, except the earth-shattering snores are a dead giveaway of one unwilling participant.
I sigh and snuggle my bum up against his.
Fine.
Tomorrow is another day.
Ella
Sunday, February 24th
Dear diary,
I used to love fairy-tales until I was in one.
Hopefully, this year will be better than the last two. I’m graduating and things are so bad they can only get better, right? It’s been two years since we moved to Father’s, although it feels like a century.
My life is all about chores. The loading and unloading of our dishwashing contraption as well as the makeshift donkey-powered machine
for washing clothes (both Belle’s inventions) is constant and I can’t be home all the time to do it! I have to go to school! The restaurant is making money, we can afford to get a maid or buy better things, but no, Grace says we are saving for the twins to go to school and we have to be frugal. Which is another word for stingy.
She expects me to do everything around the house and she never praises, much less notices when I do something right. Only points out my flaws.
All three of us are relegated to the role of servants, but since I’m the eldest - as SHE keeps reminding me ALL the time - I have to ‘be responsible’, as she calls it. Which is code for ‘Do bloody EVERYTHING’.
All the things I do - airing the rooms, sweeping the floors, doing the dishes, taking out the trash and changing the flowers after the guests are gone and waitressing and making sure everyone is happy the whole night - simply goes unnoticed. I never see any gratitude. At all.
When I see a guest out of sorts and try to cheer them up, she accuses me of being lazy or flirting.
I swear she invents things for me to do and makes them as difficult as possible. She sends me to the furthest places to get stuff for her, for the house, for the restaurant.
She does this on purpose, I’m sure.
At least I get tips at the restaurant. One tip from a visiting warrior witch was particularly helpful - a make-up kit that saved me half an hour every morning and lasted for a few months. Half an hour of more sleep, ahh!
If Grace wasn’t out and about so much, she would have more time to do the chores herself. Who goes to the market every day, I ask you and for hours on end as well? It’s only half an hour’s walk away. I should know, the market is next to the school in the town square.
Father is never around. He goes off on research trips to scout for stories for the newspaper that he publishes, although it doesn’t do him any good. The circulation is still about 100 copies a month, which barely covers the costs of printing. Still, he keeps at it and has persevered for two years. Maybe it’s an excuse to get away from home, I don’t know. Like Mellie, he always brings back nice things from faraway places, but I’d prefer a Father who’s home than the gifts, to be honest. When I complain to him about Grace, he just shrugs and says ‘Everyone has to pitch in, that’s what families do.’
Stepmother has a herb garden. To grow herbs to use at the restaurant, she says. In salads, she says. Why can’t she buy all the fresh ingredients from the market like everybody else does? She goes there often enough, almost every day. Some days she is disappointed with the produce and doesn’t buy anything, coming home empty-handed after spending hours away with Henry in tow. She says that’s why she prefers to grow her own herbs. Because she can’t rely on others for the quality she needs.
She could pay someone to grow the things to the level of her demands, because we must have money now. Grace tests out Belle’s inventions before Belle sells them. I’m sure Belle pays her handsomely for that. Nobody is supposed to know, of course, and everyone just assumes we have bought our contraptions at full price, like everyone else.
And her restaurant is THE place to dine. It’s the only place to dine, since others have tried replicating what Grace does and have failed. Would you believe it all started two years ago with her feeding a few aristocrats who then said they would love to be able to eat like that every night?
Now people flock here from all over the kingdom to taste her cooking and they keep coming back for more.
Maybe she’s a witch?
An evil one, except nobody knows this but me?
With school and studying and the chores, I have no free time. I have no time for anything or anyone! All the other girls at school already have suitors. I have no time for suitors!
Instead of trying to find me a good match - I am already seventeen! - it’s ‘Ella do this and Ella do that!’
Betty and John have been going steady for the past two years. Or is it two and a half? They’ll probably get married straight after graduation. Betty’s going around, holding his hand and pulling him into empty classrooms for kisses every chance she gets. She’s taunting me with the boy I once had a crush on. But I’ve lost the attachment since. I can’t hear John anymore. Alas, I can still hear Betty. Because I hate her with a passion.
At school, Betty has made my life hell. Not just with parading John around like he’s the prize cow and I or every girl, for that matter, should be jealous. All my hopes of elevated status after Father sorted things out with the king have all been crushed under Betty’s constant taunting. ‘Scullery maid, Ashen-puttel (whatever that means), Dusty, Twiggy - these are just a few of the choice nicknames she has given me that her posse keeps repeating and John does nothing to stop them. He looks mighty uncomfortable, but he does nothing. Maybe it’s the disappointment that made me stop liking him and disengage mentally? Does disappointment lead to indifference and kill the mind-reading connection?
Anyway, I get all this abuse for just occasionally helping Grace out at the restaurant. Thank goodness nobody knows I’m a servant in my own home!
I don’t have the time to read Father’s draft articles that he writes for his newspaper, ‘The Guardian’. He is the only journalist we have in the kingdom and he has asked ME to read them and tell him what I think. By the tenth time of me saying ‘I haven’t managed’ he stopped asking. He probably thinks I don’t want to read them. I do. I just don’t know WHEN I could!
I barely have time to write snippets into my diary, which I carry with me everywhere. Even now, I’m in the toilet, writing this, risking everyone thinking that I have constipation.
Mellie suggested I should entice an aristo boy at school. While I don’t really want a husband YET and I definitely don’t want to choose between an education and having offspring - like some of my former classmates who have had to drop out of school straight after having babies - Mellie says it’s my best ticket out of home. I swear, I keep forgetting Mellie is my aunt, on our shopping trips she’s more of a chummy girlfriend. She’s even asked me not to call her Aunt Melisandra, just Melisandra. I tell her everything, which is just as well, because I don’t have female friends at school. Betty has made sure nobody wants me for a friend. And Greta is twelve, she wouldn’t understand things anyway. But Mellie does. Except sometimes, she does act like an overprotective aunt - when she is trying to organise my life.
I want to have fun before I marry, to go to a proper ball and take it all in, the palace, the society, the fashions. Oh, I hope there is a ball soon. Which I told Mellie. She said she’d help me with the dress and shoes. She thinks I’ll surely land a husband there and I didn’t argue. If it gets me to the ball, why would I look a gift horse in the mouth? They’ll have to have a ball this year. Prince Nicholas is turning eighteen this May. Maybe if I go, maybe, just maybe, I’ll catch someone’s eye and then engage the kind gentleman in riveting conversation, he’ll sweep me off my feet in a waltz, we’ll fall madly in love and he’ll take me away from here.
Still, Mellie has a point. But surely, an easier solution to escape home would be for me to go live with her? You’d think, wouldn’t you? But she won’t have any of it! A year ago, when Henry was about one and things got unbearable, I begged Godmother to take me back. Henry was teething, nobody was sleeping and I had to go to school on a fuzzy brain.
Do you know what Mellie said?
That I should be happy that I have a nuclear family. A Father and a Mother figure. But I want HER to be my family, not them. Which I told her. Then Mellie went and bought me a new dress and new shoes and make-up and we went to a spa and she listened to me for hours and I felt loads better, but not for long. Mellie said me moving back to her place wouldn’t make sense because she is away a lot.
But in that case I would get her place all to myself and get some peace and quiet. I’d have to cook and clean, but only for me. Hmm…maybe I should talk to her about it again the next time I see her. Which may be
in months… Imagine, months of me living on my own at Mellie’s…bliss! Yes, I’d have to do everything myself, but only for me, not for six people!
I thought with Father I was getting a family. Instead, I ended up in my very own personal version of hell.
Oh, I hope there is a ball. Soon.
Chapter 2. The Kitchen
Grace
I stir the beef stew in a pot the size of a small house.
When you make the jump from constant eating out and cooking for two maybe once a week to cooking for six four times a day and seven days a week overnight, then feeding half of a small village of Borough on five nights a week is not such a huge stretch.
I add a laurel leaf.
It floats to the bubbling surface, sticks and slowly sinks with the help of my wooden spoon.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a vet.
Now, instead of healing animals, I’m cooking them.
For a living.
In a restaurant.
Because in this corner of the Magic Kingdom we use magic to heal animals. The witch IS the vet and my dream job is redundant. The idea of a fancy restaurant on the other hand - that was novel. In fact, I don’t know how they survived before we arrived and offered an option of eating out.
A familiar mop of black curls appears in the doorway, letting in rays of the afternoon sun.
‘Hello, Grizelda.’
The witch sniffs the air, ‘Beef? I like beef...’ she says, eyes darting around the kitchen.
Right, now I have to keep Hans and Greta far far away from the restaurant tonight.
I sigh.
There go two of my best servers.
But if I don’t take care, she’ll eat them and then I’ll lose them anyway. For good.
Hans and Greta had a run-in with Grizelda a while ago, before we arrived and it didn’t end well. Which makes me think back to Hans and Greta’s real parents, may they rest in peace.
How hungry do you have to be to send your own kids into the woods and purposefully leave them there? More importantly, how inept do you have to be at hunting, fishing, berry-and-mushroom-picking with such great woods all around you to end up starving?