Snow White, the Later Years

I’ve been thinking lately about all the ways life isn’t feeling the way I thought it would, now that I am squarely in the middle of my story. Not that we ever know when the middle is - if I took a bite out of a poison apple tomorrow, the middle of my story would have happened when I was twenty-seven. If I’m in the middle now, I’ll live to be one-hundred-and-eight. But you catch my drift, I’m not a kid, I’ve been through some things. My firstborn is in his first year of college, my daughter is at the end of her sophomore year of high school. Democracy is on fire and everything feels fragile and uncertain.

When my kids were little, I used to volunteer in their classrooms. I loved it. There were two kindergarten teachers at my son’s elementary school, one of them was very proper. She was always dressed impeccably, which struck me as odd, because how do you get on the floor and cross your legs and read to a roomful of five-year-olds if you’re in a pencil skirt and sweater set? What about the finger-paint and play-doh and general mayhem? But to each their own. She ran a tight ship, her classroom was organized, her kids lined up in perfect rows.

The other teacher had long, grey, wild curly hair down her back and twinkling eyes. Her room was full of colorful artwork, there were bookshelves everywhere, and corners of the room with bean bags where kids could take a book and read if they needed some space. There was a hanging rack full of dress-up clothes, and at recess the kids could partake if they wanted to, and if they felt like staying in costume the rest of the day, she didn’t mind. If two kids wanted the same costume, she’d sit with them and come up with a solution.

She’d play music and get the kids up on their feet if they were struggling to pay attention, even if it was in the middle of a math lesson. She encouraged them to start sentences with “I feel” if they were having a problem with someone. I was very happy my kid ended up in her classroom, it could have gone the other way.

I’d go in once a week and read a story to the class while she set up a project, or I’d help her with anything that needed doing. It was a little bit like Lord of the Flies in there, but it was also my favorite time of the week. Five-year-olds say the best things. They want to know why you can’t feel it if the earth is spinning. Then, no matter what you say, they want you to spin and spin and then collapse in a heap and watch everything spin around you. “See?!” they’ll laugh, “now you can see it spinning!” They want to know how many years it would take to count to infinity. Or if horses really sleep standing up.

Photo by Robyn Budlender on Unsplash

Sometimes I’d read them a story I brought in - Where the Wild Things Are, Leonardo the Terrible Monster, A Visitor for Bear - books I loved to read to my own kids. Sometimes one of the kids would hand me a book from the bookshelves, and occasionally I’d know I was going to have to get creative. I could not bring myself to teach a bunch of five-year-olds that a knight in shining armor was coming to save the day. That the prince would rescue Rapunzel from the tower, or fill-in-the-blank with every other fairytale we grew up hearing where there’s a damsel in distress and a dude shows up to rescue her.

I couldn’t do that to any of the kids - why teach the girls they can’t save themselves? Why teach the boys that girls need saving? Why teach kids who aren’t thinking about these effed up gender norms that this is how things are, when, let’s be very fucking real, this is not how things are. Also, half the time three of the boys would be in sparkly tutus by then, and three of the girls would be dressed as fire chiefs, and you can bet I wasn’t going to be the one to screw that up.

So I’d read half the story as written, and then I’d make the rest of it up on the fly. Some of the kids knew the original story and they’d start laughing and saying, “Hey, that’s not what happens!” and start telling me what the brothers Grimm had written, but I’d tell them the brothers Grimm didn’t know shit (I wouldn’t say it like that, don’t get excited), and my story was the real story that only the very special kids got to hear. Then I’d say they’d better not tell their friends the real story, which is the fastest way to make sure a story spreads amongst five-year-olds, in case you wondered. The first time I did it, the teacher turned around. We made eye contact and I hesitated. Her eyes danced and I took that as a yes. I guarantee this would not have flown in the other classroom.

In any case, I think we’ve been done a disservice, and now that we’re all grown up, I think we should talk about it. In Snow White, the Evil Queen is so vain and vile, she orders the Huntsman to kill her (seven-year-old) stepdaughter so she can remain the fairest in the land. I think we know what kind of woman this is, and which way she would have voted in the last election. This is the kind of woman who throws other girls and women to the wolves, literally.

I’m sure you know the story, but maybe you haven’t thought about it for years. The Huntsman takes Snow White to the forest, but he just can’t kill her, so he leaves her there and tells her to run. He assumes a wild animal will kill her, anyway. He brings the Queen the lungs and liver of a wild boar as proof Snow White is dead. Snow White finds the cottage of the Seven Dwarfs in the forest, and enters. Makes a mess, falls asleep, and is found by the Dwarfs when they return from the mines in the morning.

She explains her situation. They feel terrible for her. Can we pause while I mention at no time growing up, hearing this story, did I realize she was seven years old? They agree to keep her safe, and she promises to help with the household chores. It’s a very sweet roommate situation under the circumstances, based on empathy and compassion and looking out for people even when you don’t know them. I think we can guess which way all Seven of the Dwarfs (little people) would have voted. Some time goes by, there’s a lot of whistling as you work, even Grumpy loves Snow White.

Of course, the damned Mirror on the Wall has to ruin everything and tell the Evil Queen Snow White is alive and well and living with the Seven Dwarfs in the forest, and the Evil Queen has to use her Dark Maga Magic and go to the woods with her red apple and poison her. So now we have Snow White in a glass coffin in the woods where her friends can keep an eye on her (weird, but okay) and hope she wakes up, because she doesn’t look dead. She seems dead, though.

Photo by Sarah Penney on Unsplash

One day a thirty-one-year-old prince comes by and sees now-fourteen-year-old Snow White COMATOSE IN A GLASS COFFIN, and decides he has to have her. Please pause and have all the feelings. She is now fourteen. She is comatose. I know I said that, I feel it bears repeating. He begs the Seven Dwarfs to open the casket. Some early versions have him begging the Seven Dwarfs to sell her to him, but they refuse. There are versions where his servants carry the glass coffin back to his castle. Whatever happens, bottom line, he sees a girl who can’t speak, can’t move, certainly can’t consent - and frankly, at fourteen in most normal, sane states, couldn’t consent if she were awake - and decides she’s the one, and he has to kiss her.

Some way or another, he convinces the people around him to allow this, they do, and he kisses her and breaks the spell, because it’s “Love’s True Kiss.” Allow me to say, the fuck it is. It’s a very sick grown-ass man taking something he wants from a comatose minor. It’s a thirty-one-year-old man who is attracted to a young girl because she’s beautiful and literally can’t say no.

Of course, it’s a fairytale written by men, so here we are. Snow White falls in love with him instantly, because of course she does. He’s a prince! She gets to go live in a castle, and eventually become queen, what more could any young girl want? Especially if she’s been raised on fairy tales! Hmm, let’s think. Given the choice, she probably would have liked to grow up with her dad, doing normal kid things like going to school and figuring out who she was, instead of having to flee for her life.

If, at any point, she decided she wanted to be in a relationship, she might like to be awake when she met the person, just a guess. She might want the person to appreciate her quick wit, her kindness, her resilience. Even in the scenario where this bullshit goes down the way it did, a real prince would take her to the hospital, not the castle. Then she’d get to talk to a therapist for a good long while, as in months and years, because that’s some trauma to work through. Ugh, whatever. Then maybe she’d find someone closer to her own age at some point, if she wanted to, down the line. Later. Way later.

Can you imagine teaching kids this is a love story, and that they lived happily ever after with a beginning like that? Let’s go with the original story, though, and check in on Snow White, fifteen years later, shall we?

Snow White (Maggie to her friends) wakes up alone. It’s not unusual, Brock is probably seeing someone on the side. He’ll deny it if she asks, he always does, but she can tell. He doesn’t even shower when he gets back, and there’s some new perfume she’s been smelling lately. Plus he’s being nice, bringing her flowers. She’s supposed to accept this, he’s the king after all, but who made these rules? Her father never saw other women when her mother was alive, she knows because one of her mother’s handmaidens told her. Her father was devoted to her mother, they were in love. How could he have followed up a love like that by marrying a woman who only wanted his power and status, and had no interest whatsoever in his little daughter? How could he have been so blind? Maybe it was the grief.

She gets out of bed. She wants to be up before the kids, she likes to be the one to make them breakfast and pack their lunches, even though there’s staff to do that. Brock gets pissed at her for it, he says it’s inappropriate for someone of her stature, and it robs the cooks of the feeling that their lives have meaning. The first time he said that to her she choked. He’s such a prick. The cooks have families of their own. They have dreams and heartbreaks and all kinds of purpose without cooking his stupid eggs. Not that anyone can afford eggs anymore.

She’s always giving them time off, handing them cash bonuses on the side, making sure they see the palace doctors when they have issues, or their children do. The staff love her, they’d kill for her - if Brock ever found out all the things she does without his knowledge, they might have to.

Maggie brushes her teeth and looks in the mirror. She spits, rinses, throws some cold water on her face. Stares at her reflection. She’s twenty-nine. She was seven when she went to the woods, she can still remember begging the Huntsman not to kill her. She can still remember how cold it was when she started walking, and how she was scared of every noise in the forest, sure that some wild animal would make her their breakfast.

She cried for her mother that morning, silent tears as she hurried along looking for shelter, wishing for the millionth time of her little life that her mother had survived childbirth. Wondering if it was her fault, somehow. Her life would have been so different if her mother had lived. Her father would be happy, and alive. Her mother would have loved her so much, she felt sure of it. She wouldn’t be walking through the woods scared and alone, trying not to get eaten.

Maggie sighs, and tries to shake it off. She’s had these thoughts countless times, might as well pull on her robe and get the day going. She gives herself one last glance in the mirror. She still looks good. Ruby red lips, thick, dark hair. She was fourteen when Brock found her in the forest and broke the spell with true love’s kiss or whatever, but is this true love? Their daughter is fourteen, and she’s such an innocent, sweet girl still. Looking at her makes Maggie think about things differently. The thought of her child with a thirty-one year old man hits different, it makes her feel sick. Brock wasted no time. They came back to the palace and got married the same week.

Brock invited everyone in the land, even that nasty old bitch who’d killed both her parents and tried to kill her. He didn’t tell Maggie he’d invited her, she found out on their wedding day. Turned out Brock had some Dark Magic of his own, and he sent the Evil Queen an outfit for the wedding, befitting the stepmother of the bride, replete with shoes.

They were iron slippers though, and the Evil Queen didn’t realize once she started dancing, she would not be able to stop. No one knew at first. Maggie did not realize her stepmother was even there until the receiving line after the ceremony. Prior to that, she felt like she was having some kind of out-of-body experience. She’d been in a coma for the better part of seven years. All the activity of the week had exhausted her. Brock was very handsome, but he was thirty-one, he was a man, and Maggie was only fourteen. It was a lot to process.

Brock was aggressive and Maggie had no one to talk to, no girlfriends, no friends at all. He wanted to do things she didn’t understand. She longed for the Seven Dwarfs, but Brock wouldn’t hear of allowing them to come to the castle. She cried herself to sleep at night and wondered why she didn’t feel grateful. Brock said she should, lots of young women wanted to marry him.

When Maggie’s stepmother approached, Maggie went from feeling like she was watching the experience from somewhere a hundred feet above, to suddenly crashing into her own body, heart pounding, hands shaking. The room went grey for a minute, and she grabbed Brock’s arm. He pulled her to him, but it was harsh, it hurt. He leaned down and whispered in her ear that she was not to embarrass him, that he had a plan and she needed to trust him and act like a queen, not a child. Maggie tried to stand up straight and look her stepmother in the eye. The Evil Queen congratulated her. It was odd, Maggie thought she looked scared and small.

It wasn’t until well after Maggie and Brock’s first dance, long after Brock’s parents had presented them to the assembled guests, long after Maggie longed to go to bed but knew she couldn’t, that she noticed the Evil Queen was still dancing. Alone. People were staring and she wasn’t dancing in a normal way. She looked exhausted. She looked like she would give anything to be able to stop dancing. Maggie asked Brock what was happening. He told her the Evil Queen would dance until she died, that Maggie and her parents would finally have vengeance for all the pain that woman had caused.

Maggie begged him to make it stop. Nothing would bring her parents back, nothing would replace the years she’d lost. She’d rather let the women die alone in an empty castle with no friends. It didn’t matter to her anymore. Brock seethed with rage. It had cost him a lot to arrange this Dark Magic, it was his wedding gift to her, and nothing could break the spell. What was wrong with Maggie, why was she so ungrateful?

She felt tears springing to her eyes. Brock scared her. She had been hoping he’d be a king like her father had been, a man like that. Her father had been so kind and loving. He’d been her safe place in a thunderstorm. She hadn’t even had any say in what was happening. Brock kissed her, and here she was at the palace, getting married.

Later that night, after the Evil Queen had collapsed and was taken away by the palace guards quickly and without pomp, like a bag of bones, after all the guests had left, and Maggie had been bathed and dressed by her handmaidens, she closed her eyes when Brock got on top of her. One of the handmaidens was older and kind, and she’d taken Maggie aside. She said the less you fight him, the less it will hurt, and it will get better over time. So Maggie let him do what he wanted. There wasn’t any point fighting, he was going to do what he wanted, anyway.

Little by little she tried to adjust to her new life, her new responsibilities. Brock allowed her to have a tutor, and for that she was grateful. She used to love reading, she remembered that. It was slow-going, but it came back to her because she worked hard. It was the one thing she was passionate about, and the one thing that had kept her alive all these years - books. There was a remarkable library in the palace, and that is where Maggie spent her days when there weren’t events she needed to attend with the king.

She was pregnant quickly, and had Gisèle before the year was out. Hunter the year after that, named after the Huntsman who didn’t kill her. He wasn’t a terrific guy, he was willing to leave her alone in the woods at seven, but he couldn’t bring himself to kill her, and for that, Maggie was thankful. He had empathy and he tried. He killed the boar. It was something.

When she could - after she’d made friends with the staff and they knew her heart and she had their loyalty - she’d visit the Seven Dwarfs. On this last visit, to her horror, she’d found there were only five waiting for her in the cottage. Sleepy and Sneezy had been deported on their way home from the mines one morning. It made no sense. They’d been in this country for decades. They’d done everything the right way, but it didn’t matter. They were shoved into the back of a van by men in masks. The administration accused them of being part of a gang, and sent them to a mega prison on the other side of the world.

The thought of it made Maggie’s heart hurt. It made no sense at all. They were good people. They weren’t part of a gang, it was preposterous. It was a mistake. She went to Brock as soon as he arrived back from his trip, but he was furious with her for defying his orders to stay away from the woods. He turned things around this way when they fought, it happened every time.

He accused her of going behind his back, and being deceitful. He said she knew how he felt about her visiting the Dwarfs, and that’s why she hadn’t asked his permission. This time, Maggie wasn’t having it. These were her friends. She told him he’d been away and she was lonely. The Dwarfs were her family, they’d kept her safe, she wouldn’t have made it without them. The kids were at school. There was nothing wrong with taking a short trip to the forest. Her handmaidens were there and so were the drivers. Two of the palace guards, too. Maggie said if anyone was deceitful it was Brock, and he’d better not think she was naive.

It didn’t go well. He lunged at her, and shoved her against the wall of their bedroom. He said she might have forgotten herself, but he was the king. If she kept speaking to him in such a disrespectful and unhinged manner, he’d have to assume she was having a bout of PTSD, and needed rest in the sanatorium. She understood the threat, he’d made it before.

If she didn’t behave, he’d have her locked away. She wouldn’t get to see her children. She backed down instantly. This is how things were now. She couldn’t vote anymore, she’d taken Brock’s last name when they got married. Her last name didn’t match the name on her birth certificate, and Brock said she didn’t need a passport, she would only travel internationally with him, in her duties as Queen. He could work it out for those events.

Maggie knew her one priority was to make sure her daughter was safe. Her son would be okay, he was a prince after all. If she was locked away, Brock would have Gisèle married off in no time, probably to a man twice her age. Whatever prince or king of a nearby kingdom would most benefit Brock. Once, she overheard him telling his golfing buddy what an asset Gisèle was, and that he’d date her himself if she wasn’t his daughter. Maggie gagged when she heard that, because what kind of man speaks about his own daughter that way?

She knew what she had to do. She apologized. Said she’d just been lonely because he’d been gone so much, and it wouldn’t happen again. She smiled up at him and he softened, released his hold on her a bit. He liked it when she was like this, it turned him on. She gave him what he wanted, even though she could smell the perfume of the woman he was seeing, and when it was over she asked if he was hungry. He said he was famished, he’d eaten dinner, but would love something sweet. She told him she’d make his favorite if he could wait an hour.

Maggie went downstairs, humming. She wrapped her robe around her a little more tightly, checked in on the kids to make sure they were sleeping. She went down to the kitchen and turned on the oven, pre-heated it to 450 degrees. Pulled the pie crusts out of the walk-in. She opened the fruit drawer and took out four perfect honey-crisp apples.

She pocketed one and crept down to the cellar walking to the back wall. She lightly pushed on the shelves there, and they swayed forward, revealing the Mirror on the Wall. She’d gone to her father’s castle after the Evil Queen died to retrieve it. She held up the apple. “You know what to do,” she said.

The Middle

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Friends, I hope you can meet me on Thursday evening when I’ll be in conversation Off the Page with the fantastic Paul Crenshaw! All details about this first Come As You Are Conversation are here. It’s going to be a really good time.