The Merry Spinster

by Mallory Ortberg

  They had six children, all healthy, all carrying their parents’ promise of beauty. Johnnie kept the gray-green comb on the mantelpiece over the fireplace in the kitchen, and often I would catch him staring at it. I suppose sometimes I stared at it, too.

  So the seven years came to an end, and Johnnie had not repented of his ill-gotten wife, nor of his heretical promise, and she was still determined to drown him. A faraway look came to her beautiful eyes, and she was ever smiling and looking out the window toward the sea. Johnnie took to varnishing the fishing boat down by the slip, the first honest work I’d seen from him in years. Some afternoons he took the children with him, and sailed out and around the bay. He always had at least the decency to look sheepish after those trips.

  Seven years on God’s soil, and after that a brief, drowned life with a flooded, faithless people, with no hope of salvation or eternity thereafter; this was the bargain Johnnie thought fair, and meant to give his children as inheritance besides. He was ever careless with his own soul, but now he grew careless with theirs. I had baptized the children each myself in secret after they had been born, although I suspect I always knew that would not do much good when the time came. I had baptized Johnnie too, for all the good it had done him.

  On the last night of their marriage, I arose from my bed and fashioned a little cross out of old radio coils. I buried it in the embers of the kitchen fire until it glowed red, and I went into the children’s room and pulled back the covers from their beds. I pressed the cross between each of their shoulder blades in turn, oldest to youngest. Had they been awake, they likely would have screeched like anything, but I had put enough Veronal in their milk at supper that they would not have stirred if the world were ending. There would be enough time for screaming in the morning, if they thought it would help ease the pain. If Johnnie was determined to be drowned, that was his affair, but he would not drag six little souls with him, to grow up in dark and dripping sea caves with a thief for a father and a murderer for a mother.

  I’d given Johnnie the Veronal too, and he lolled back and forth as I tied his hands and feet. Our family has always raised sheep; branding and binding were not new to me. It was a heavy thing, to carry my son out to the boat and put him in it. He was the only son I ever had, and he was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, even now. I had not bothered to drug Gem-de-Lovely. I grabbed the fire iron from the hearth and thrust the point into the hollow of her collarbone. She woke up choking on her throat’s blood and glaring furiously at me.

  “Come with me,” I told her, and kept her in front of me as we went down the stairs. She clutched at her bleeding neck with one hand and tried to open the door to the children’s room with the other. I had thought of that, too; the door was covered in dozens more of the wire crosses I had made. She shook her head and wept. I prodded her in the small of the back and walked with her toward the little boat tied up at the launch.

  “Your man is waiting for you,” I said. “Get in the boat.”

  “Give me my children,” she said.

  “You are lucky I have not cut off all the hair on your head,” I said. “Trouble me again and I will; I have scissors in my pocket.”

  “Give me my children,” she said, falling to her knees in the sand and clasping my feet.

  “Your bargain was never with them,” I said. “You will have Johnnie, and you will have your comb, and you will go home, and I will call that fair.”

  “Alas, alas, for my fine children!” she cried. “Alas, that I must leave them to live and die on dry land!”

  Well, she would have gone on like that for who knows how long if no one had stopped her, so I jabbed her with the fire iron. “Get in the boat,” I said. She snapped her mouth closed and stared at me instead. Then I jabbed her again, once in the leg and once in the side, and she must not have liked that so well, because she shook her head something fierce at me. But she also started walking back toward the sea. She had gray blood like a squid, and it pulsed all over her dress as she swung her leg over the side and stepped into the boat.

  So I had them both in the boat then, Gem-de-Lovely, who was wicked, and Johnnie Croy, who was stupid, and upstairs sleeping all six of their children, safe and whole. Johnnie lay quietly on the floor of the boat. I think he was awake then. His mouth hung a little open and he did not look at me, nor move or speak. The woman looked at me still, and so I looked back at her, and would for as long as she remained in sight. I took her comb out of my pocket and set it down next to her.

  “Woman,” I said, “I never liked you.” I jabbed the fire iron through the side of her neck, piercing the pulse. It seemed like enough to kill her, although of course one never knows with creatures. It was just as likely that as soon as she touched seawater, all her wounds would close over like a starfish, and she’d sprout new and harder skin, and new and longer limbs.

  “And I,” she said to me, glaring as hard as she could (if she’d had a fire iron then herself, I’d have been in terrible trouble), “I have never liked you, nor ever will.” Her mouth was full of that gray blood, and it dripped down her chin as she talked.

  “A whip for a horse,” I said, “a bridle for a donkey, and a rod for the back of fools.” I don’t know why I warned her next, but I did. “I’m going to speak a bible over you now,” I told her. “Brace yourself.”

  She lifted a hand and tried to smile. “At present, I can do little more than listen and bleed.” Well, that suited me fine, too. I don’t know why I felt like she deserved a warning now. I certainly hadn’t spared her much. But I’ll take credit for a little mercy, if anyone sees fit to add it to my glory. I made the cross over her first, then him. They both shuddered under the sign of it.

  “Lord God,” I said, “you gathered all the oceans into a single place; at your command the waters dry up and the rivers disappear. You have set up the shore as the boundary of the sea; though the waves toss, they cannot prevail, and though they roar, they cannot pass over it. We commit the earthly remains of my son, Johnnie, to the deep, and we commit this woman, too. Grant them a sure sinking, and a final baptism, and do not let them pass back over the shore, not even when the sea gives up her dead in the final resurrection.”

  I knelt down at the side of the boat next to my son, who would not look at me, and I stroked his hair. “You should never have taken her comb,” I said to him.

  The book of Matthew, chapter eighteen: Jesus said to the disciples, “Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. Better that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of those little ones.” Well, I know my scripture, and I know what offends me, and I knew which man by whom the offense had come.

  “If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off,” I said to Johnnie, “and cast them from thee: it is better to enter into life halted or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee. Johnnie, thine eye has offended thee.”

  Well. He didn’t like that, but he could hardly disagree with it either. He would have taken those children with him. I call that offense to little ones, and I had my knife, so I used it. “Tell me which one you wish to keep, and I’ll spare it,” I said to him. He didn’t want to answer me, so I waited. “I have saved you from the worst of sins,” I said. “Let me help a bit more, and do not make me send my only son full-blind to his death in the sea.” He waited another minute, then jerked his head to the right, and I thanked him.

  As he had used it for theft and unlawful gain, and lusts of the flesh, and shirking his duty—as he would have used it to take his children to drown with him—I cut off the left hand of Johnnie Croy. As he had used it to look too long in the wrong direction, I cut out his left eye, too.

  But as he had not taken the children, I left him his right hand and the right eye in his head. The rest I threw into the sea. All the whi
le he said nothing, only groaned, while his wife bled and glared beside him. When it was finished, he turned his face from me, and rested his head on his good arm, and seemed to fall back asleep.

  Then I shoved the boat with my foot and watched it float out across the water for a long time. After a while I could no longer see the woman’s face, although I have no doubt it was still turned toward me. She watched me, I think, for as long as she could. She may have tried to speak her own bible back at me, or she may have only gurgled. I don’t know. I did not hear her again. Eventually the sun came up. I took my fire iron and I went home to raise up those six children. My son Johnnie was very beautiful, and I loved him.

  TEN

  The Frog’s Princess

  In an old time, in an old country, there lived a man whose daughters were all beautiful and unlucky. To be beautiful in this place was to be noticed; it was for this reason his daughters were so remarkably unlucky. Here people prayed to be forgotten, and they prayed with their faces to the floor.

  It was the man’s youngest daughter who was the unluckiest of all. He was so beautiful that the sun herself noticed and had in fact fallen quite in love with him, and never let her rays stray from his face for even a moment while she hung above the rim of the world. So the youngest daughter slept with his face jammed into a pillow, and with coverlets piled over his head, but the sun would not let him sleep unnoticed. Every day she found him, and every day she woke him while everyone else was still asleep. Beauty is never private.

  “Beauty does not belong exclusively to you,” the man told his daughters. “Beauty is a public good, and you are responsible for it.”

  “What does that mean, exactly?” the youngest daughter asked. The sun burned hot on his forehead.

  “It means—in a sense—that according to a certain understanding you belong to everyone,” the man said. (The man himself was not beautiful, but he was often covered in beautiful objects, which he considered to amount, more or less, to the same thing.)

  “By that reasoning,” his daughter said, “I belong at least partly to myself. Certainly at least as much as I belong to anybody else.”

  “Don’t be clever,” his father said. “Go and play outside, where people can see you.”

  In this country, a daughter was least safe at the age when they wished to play while other people wished to notice them. When people wanted to notice him, the man’s youngest daughter had learned, nothing could talk them out of it. They noticed, then they offered remark, and then they acted, always in that order.

  The land near the man’s house was very old and thickly wooded. In this forest, beneath a linden tree, there was a well full of standing water. In the heat of the day, when the sun’s attentions became unbearable, the man’s youngest daughter would run across the highway and into the woods, where the trees stood so close together that almost no light reached the ground.

  (Obviously some light did reach the ground. Otherwise how else could a well have possibly been built there? It had by this time been abandoned, but in order for a well to be abandoned, it must first have been built. There had once been enough light in the woods to make a well feasible there, and enough light now for a brackish layer of organic material to have wrapped long gray-green fingers around it. Enough light too, for the layer to spread itself over old tree throws and root pits, given sufficient time. So let us say there was light sufficient for our present purposes.)

  So that was where the youngest daughter went, generally, when he did not feel disposed to belong to anyone, and he would sit at the edge of the well in a spot where the brackish layer had not yet thrown down roots. He would take with him a golden ball, as round and as yellow as the sun. He would throw it straight up in the air, then catch it when it came down; he never threw it in any other direction. In this way, he might throw and catch and fling away the sun as easily as he liked. It was his favorite pastime, and he never tired of it.

  On this day, it happened that he threw the golden ball so high into the branches overhead that it disappeared into the spreading darkness, only to drop suddenly far to the left of him and vanish with a smothering sound into the well. He leaned over the edge and looked down, but the water was so dark, and the well so deep, that he could not see the slightest sign that anything had ever been there but scum and mosquitoes. If anyone had tried to console him in that moment, he would have sunk down onto the stone and refused them, but no one did, so he continued to lean over the well, looking down.

  (You may be wondering why he did not try to fish the ball out of the well himself; you are only wondering this because you have not seen the well with your own eyes. The well’s only redeeming feature was its solitude. The water within had not run for years and smelled like old coins.)

  Also, he was not stupid, and knew better than to dive into water he didn’t know how deep, when there was only one way in or out. Eventually, however, someone came along and noticed his crying (as someone generally did), and called out to him (as someone generally did after noticing him): “What is the matter with you? Yours is a face too beautiful for tears.” Which was patently untrue, but people said it just the same. He looked around to find the voice and saw that a frog had thrust its flat, wet head out of the well. The frog looked like a calf’s heart with a mouth slit across it.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he said. “I was crying because I lost something that I love.”

  “Are crying,” the frog said. “You haven’t stopped yet.” Which was a fair thing to point out, if slightly unkind. “Be still, and stop crying—or carry on crying for as long as you like, I suppose. Whichever you prefer, only, I can help you find it.”

  “But you don’t know what I’ve lost,” he said.

  “Oh,” the frog said vaguely, “didn’t you mention it?”

  “I don’t believe I did. I’m sure I didn’t, actually.”

  “Tell me what it was, then,” the frog said, “or better still, I can simply tell you what’s in this well that wasn’t here an hour ago, and you can tell me if it belonged to you.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “Yes, oh,” the frog said. “I can help you, but what will you give me if I bring you back your plaything?”

  “But I did not ask you to help me,” he said, “so why should I promise you anything?”

  “You are sitting on my well,” said the frog. “You are beautiful, and you are crying, and I saw you before anyone else did; that is almost the same thing as asking, or being asked, anyhow.” The frog brushed its long, thumbless hand over his, and the man’s youngest daughter had no answer for that.

  “I don’t know what I should promise you,” he said. “You can have anything else that I own. I could bring you something, if there was something that you wanted, and that you could not get for yourself, I suppose. My chain of office that my father gave me.” That was all he could think to offer.

  The frog said, “Keep your boyish treasures—I don’t want them, nor is there anything you can fetch for me I could not get myself. I do not need an errand boy. But if you will accept me as a companion, and let me sit next to you at your father’s table, and eat from the plate you eat from, and drink from your cup, and sleep in your bed; if you would promise this to me, then I’ll dive back into the well and bring your golden ball back to you.”

  “Yi-i-i-i-ikes,” the boy said slowly. He thought of his father’s words: You are responsible for your beauty. “Well,” he said. “I could promise all this to you, if you brought it back to me.” He hoped that maybe the frog was joking, although he had no reason to believe it was; people rarely joked with him. He thought, as he often did before making a promise, that perhaps he would not have to keep it, or that maybe the promise would not be so bad in the keeping as it had been in the making.

  But no one was ever joking when they asked him to make a promise, and everyone always remembered when he owed them something. And it should be remembered here that he was the youngest daughter, after all, and had not yet learned as much about being a daught
er as some of the others. At any rate, as soon as the frog heard him say yes, it stopped listening to him and dove back into the water, a dark clot darting swiftly under the surface, until it disappeared from sight entirely.

  A few minutes later the frog paddled up to the edge of the well with the golden ball bulging between its thin lips and spat it out onto the grass. Its tongue was a livid purple and bulged out of its mouth. But the youngest daughter was too happy to pay much attention to how the frog looked. He was so relieved, in fact, that he picked up the ball immediately and ran for home.

  “Wait,” said the frog, wheezing and dripping. “Take me along. I cannot run as fast as you can; that is not my fault but yours.” But he could no longer hear the frog, and quickly forgot about it and what it had done for him in the forest.

  The next day the youngest daughter was sitting at the table with his father and all his sisters, when something with a lipless mouth and thumbless hands hauled itself up the front steps of the house. It knocked on the door and called out, “Daughter, youngest, open the door for me!” So he ran to see who it was, and opened the door wide to see the frog sitting there, panting from the strain of crawling up the stairs. He slammed the door shut and sat back down at the table. His father saw his face and asked, “Why are you so distressed, and who was at the door?”