My sisters and I, between the four of us, probably show nearly every symptom of having been sexually abused as children. Physical problems, mental ones, emotional ones: the signs are there, but we don’t talk about it. My older sisters talk almost constantly about their various physical problems, but have never mentioned sexual abuse as a possible factor. My younger sister? Well, she’s the one who does the acting out, sleeping around, making really unwise choices, having brief intense affairs, and all of that.

Four or five years ago, she asked me whether I had ever wondered whether I’d been sexually abused. Her timing was bad: I was on the way out the door to the first meeting of a class, and our younger brother was visiting. I meant to get back to her on it, but… well, I didn’t.

Part of it is because it’s all tangled up in shame and guilt and denial. As much as things happened to us, there are the things we did to each other. And it becomes difficult to confront, because I don’t know how to approach one part without acknowledging the others. I remember the sheer mean-ness of how we—me, my older sisters, my mother—treated my little sister because we were jealous of how her father favored her over the rest of us. We teased her, a lot. And none of us protected her.

And there is the anger I hold towards my next-older sister, who even if she didn’t sexually abuse me (she may or may not have, I don’t remember clearly enough to say), definitely taught me that she had the right to touch my body whenever and however she chose, whether or not I wanted her to do so. It’s something I’m not entirely able to forgive, and as I grow older, I still hold her responsible for it. She may have been hurt herself, she may have been young, but I still believe she should have been old enough to know better.

I worry, sometimes, that part of why I am reluctant to get clear memories of my childhood is that I, too, did things to hurt my siblings. I don’t know, and I also have no idea what I would do with those memories if I had them. The rule against speaking holds strong, and words are a weak tool for making up for sins I committed a quarter of a century ago.

The rest of this post is a story I wrote quite a few years ago, pulling together some memories I had on this topic.

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Revenge
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Excitement flared as soon as I saw the door. I had to have that room. It HAD to be my room. A lock, and no one in the family had the key. Nothing could be better than that.

I got the room, not so much because of the lock, but because the room was roughly the size of a large closet, and only had a tiny window, which looked out on the blank wall of the neighbor’s house. When we moved in, the room was mine. And there was no key to the lock.

For the first time in my memory, I could sleep every single night, safe behind my dead-bolted door. I had that room for six months.

The next summer, I went to visit my father for the first time. I was away for the whole summer. I was eight, and I mostly forgot what it was like, back home. At the end of the summer, I returned. I was nine now, and, with my hair in fancy cornrows and beads, and my ears pierced, I was a new person. Someone who could sleep at night for three whole months, with the door wide open, and not have to worry.

I took my suitcase up to my room, and got ready to show my family all the things I’d made and gotten that summer. But something was different. I looked around the room. My red white and blue quilt still lay across my bright red bed. My books were on their shelves. My toys were piled in their box. My winter clothes sat on the closet shelves. What was different?

And then I saw it. The lock was broken!

Mom! What happened to my LOCK?!

My little sister, the blonde haired, blue-eyed princess, the one everyone loved best, had been in the room. She locked the door. No one could get it open. She couldn’t get it open. My stepfather got a ladder, and climbed into the room from outside. He broke the lock so she wouldn’t get stuck in there again.

How could she ruin this for me? How could she RUIN it?!

I was furious. I was helpless. I wanted nothing more than revenge.

My revenge came within a few weeks. She said she had missed me. She begged and begged, and finally convinced me to move my bed out into the big room, and have it across from hers. We could share a room. We could be friends. I didn’t want to be her friend. She ruined my lock.

That night, I heard the sounds, and I turned to face the wall. I didn’t have to hear them. I closed my eyes. I didn’t have to see the shadows. I made myself a story. I didn’t have to be in that room.

Later, I heard her voice. “I had a nightmare. Can I get in bed with you?”

My revenge was ready. “No. You’ll be fine. Go to sleep.”

The next night, as we got ready to go to sleep, she begged. “I don’t want to have a nightmare. Can I sleep in your bed?”

“No.”

“Please, please, can I sleep in your bed?”

“No. Here,” I gave her my stuffed cat, a present from my stepmother. “Sleep with this. You won’t have nightmares if you sleep with this.” It was a lie, and I knew it. But I was her big sister, and she believed me.

The sounds came again that night, and the next, and the next. I learned always to sleep facing the wall. I had to be invisible. If he noticed me, I wouldn’t be safe any more. With her in the room, I was safe. He didn’t love me, because I wasn’t his real daughter.

She finally gave up begging to share my bed. We didn’t talk about our
nightmares.

But she finally figured out how to get her own revenge. One day, we were playing outside, and both of us wanted the bicycle at the same time. I was three years older, so I was able to shove her away, and get on the seat.

“I hate you,” she shouted,

“Why?” I asked, since that had stumped her in the past.

“I hate you because you’re black.” The words, lashing from the mouth of a six year old, couldn’t have been her own. We didn’t talk about me being black in the family, not openly. We both knew it was something not to talk about, even if we didn’t know why.

It hurt. She hated me for something I had no control over.

Even if it wasn’t really my skin color at fault.

She slapped me. I ran inside to tell.

She ran after me. Mom was at the store, or at the doctor, or somewhere not at home. My sister’s father was taking care of us.

“She slapped me,” I tattled.

“Because she pulled down my pants outside,” she lied in retaliation.

My stepfather grabbed the excuse. Even though it would never occur to me to do that, he was happy to punish me.

“I’ll show you what it’s like to have your pants pulled down,” he shouted, and yanked down my pants and underwear. My sister and brothers watched, without surprise. Spankings were common enough.

He quickly glanced around the room, and picked up an extension cord. He pushed me over the arm of a chair, and began to lash my bottom and thighs. “You’ll never do something like that again,” he warned.

The pain began to burn through my whole body. “I DIDN’T do it!” I protested. It did no good. He continued to whip me with the extension cord.

My body was on fire. I couldn’t make it stop. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” I begged, but I couldn’t stop him.

Afterwards, my bottom and thighs were raw with welts, but it was okay, because it was fall, and I wouldn’t be wearing shorts any more until summer. No one would see the welts.

My sister and I kept seeking revenge. I pulled further and further away from her. She searched out ways to punish me for the things that neither of us could control.

I still hate her for making me lose my lock.

I still feel guilty for not sharing my bed.

I am finally learning that I hated the wrong person all those years.

Not sure what else to add as introduction, so I’ll post the story behind the cut.

Irene lit the candle and put on her headphones. It got harder to sleep every night. She sat cross-legged on her bed and closed her eyes, willing the music to carry her away. She watched the candle flickering through her eyelids, took a breath, and reached for calmness. The argument with her mother left reluctantly, with a nagging, warning pause. Irene’s head tingled as she let her mind float further away from her life. Waves of energy passed through her, and pressed her body to the bed. Then it came. She saw the grey landscape in front of her, and made her way to an ocean shore. The dim blocky buildings stood randomly, almost as though someone had accidentally dropped them, and left them behind.

Irene’s mind flowed. She wandered between the buildings until she felt a calm reach her stomach. Her head felt oddly tight, and she knew she was nearly finished. A tingling sensation in her middle slowly brought back awareness of the stereo, and the blankets beneath her. The candle flickered, and she leaned to blow it out.

Shamus walked through the seacoast ruins known as the City of the Goddess. The rains had not come this fall, and the lands were parched. The year before, the rains would not leave, and the fields had drowned. People whispered that the Goddess had left them to wander, that she might never return. Shamus frowned.

“Primitives,” he muttered angrily, and glared into the winds. He picked up a piece of driftwood, and bashed it against a stone wall, punishing it for its difference from the bustling streets and towers of his homeland. “In two years and three months, I can escape this place and live somewhere with irrigation and educated citizens again.” Shamus squinted towards the village through the dusk, and began to trudge home.

“They don’t even know how to light their own village. How could they forget how to build cities?” Shamus muttered to himself, venting his frustration before he reached home. His parents would not let him say anything critical of the villagers in their presence. “As though there were anything I could learn from people like this!” He hurled the remains of the stick into the ocean.

“Hey, Dreamer.”

Irene looked up from her lunch. “Hi, Shanna.” She pulled her books to her side, making room for her friend. They sat close together, so they wouldn’t need to shout over the lunchroom noise.

“You look tired. Stay up late doing your homework?”

Irene snorted. “Nah. No need, when I can do it all at lunch before I go home.” She looked down at her lunch. “I just have trouble sleeping, sometimes. Insomnia.”

“Have you tried meditating?”

“Yeah, but it just gives me weird dreams, anymore.”

“What sort of weird dreams?” This wasn’t a part of their usual discussion.

Irene paused. “Well, I have really vivid dreams. I made up a city that I go to when I meditate, and I seem to dream about it a lot. And last night, there was this guy in my dream, and he kept muttering, and hitting everything with a huge stick. It was a little nerve-wracking. I like that city, and here he is, beating it up.”

“Sounds like a real jerk.” Shanna sounded uncomfortable. “So, did you finish that English paper?”

“Shit. I knew I would forget something.”

Shamus crested the final hill, and dropped his pack in dismay. A group of twenty villagers was circled in front of the largest building, watching the priest begin some ritual. “They never come to the ruins!” He sat down, frustrated. “Never! But now, when I leave the village to get away from their incessant praying, they’re here.”

Shamus circled the group, staying out of sight. He had come hoping to catch a glimpse of the woman he sometimes saw wandering the city. There were barely two hundred people in the village, but he didn’t recognize her. Maybe if she liked to wander the ruins, she would be someone he could talk to. But she must also like solitude, if she came to the ruins alone. How could he find her, if the villagers filled the city with their chanting?

“Oh, Goddess, we have strayed from your ways.” The villagers repeated the priest’s moans. Shamus scowled, and picked up his bag. He stalked to the nearest opening of the sea wall. His parents had been reluctant to let him stay in the villagers’ sacred, haunted, city alone overnight. If he went home, they were unlikely to let him come back again.

Shamus slid his bag from his back, and began to beat it against the wall. “Stupid,” he muttered. “Provincial. Idiotic. Peasants.” With each syllable, he smashed the bag against the wall.

“Irene!” The shrill voice went through the protective layers of music, and straight to Irene’s ears. She sighed, and stood to open the door. It was yanked out of her hand. Her mother stood over her. “This is the fifth time I’ve called you. Why haven’t you done the dishes yet? Or started dinner?”

Irene knew better than to answer. The best way to survive her mother’s anger was to live through it. It didn’t matter that it was Jake’s turn to wash the dishes and start dinner. It didn’t matter that Irene was doing schoolwork. Irene hurried to the kitchen, keeping her head down, to avoid her mother’s gaze. “I’m sorry,” Irene whispered. Sometimes, acting small would appease her. Maybe it did, because her mother smacked her ear once, and then let her go into the kitchen.

The sink filled, and Irene was up to her elbows in suds when the tingling started in her head again, like she was meditating. She nearly laughed at the thought of being calm with her mother standing over her, ready to break any dish that wasn’t clean enough, ready to beat Irene to move faster.

“I’m not going.” Shamus stood like a rock in the corner of the front room.

“This is a major ceremony for the villagers,” his father remonstrated, “and it would be an act of good faith for the Empire to show its presence.”

“And it won’t hurt to add our prayers to whatever deity they’re praying to,” his mother added.

“But it’s a pointless waste of time,” Shamus exploded, “It’s going to make the villagers think we approve.”

“What would you be doing otherwise?” his father asked, frustrated.

“I don’t see why you can’t go out there with us,” his mother added. “You spend all your free time sulking in those ruins as it is.”

Shamus’ jaw set stubbornly, but he looked at his parents and said, “I’ll go.”

“Irene! What is wrong with you? This is the fourth time I’ve said your name.”

Irene blinked vaguely, and half-recognized Shanna’s face across the table from her. She shook her head, trying to relieve the tingling that would not go away. Dim shapes moved among the tables, and she could hear the rush of waves in the distance.

“Are you okay?” Shanna’s voice grew concerned. She leaned closer, and peered at Irene’s face.

“I feel a little weird,” Irene admitted. “But if I can make it through the next two classes, I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Do I have a choice?” Irene couldn’t go home, even if she was going totally insane. Her mother had called in sick to work after drinking all night. Her mother was never safe to be near when she was drinking. School was better. Shanna should know that, by now.

Shanna didn’t look relieved enough, so Irene added, “I didn’t get much sleep last night. Jake was out all night with his friends, and my mom kept me up.”

“Your brother is going wild.” Shanna sounded half-approving.

“Yeah, well, someone has to.”

Shamus watched the entire town fall into place behind the priest. He stood back, flinching at the slightest touch of the uncouth townspeople. Why had he agreed to come to this ritual?

He fell behind as they neared the city, wondering whether he should turn around and leave. He blew irritably through his nose, and followed the people into the ruins. Stones crumbled to either side, and Shamus wondered how such ignorant people could have created a city so lasting.

Shamus felt the muscles along his neck tighten with frustration as the priest resumed his droning. The Goddess was unlikely to listen to the whining of peasants, even if she did exist. Shamus turned impatiently, and walked down the fading streets.

There, at the end of an alleyway, he caught a glimpse of trailing hair and skirts. But no, it was a trick of the light, since the alley had no outlet, and there was nothing there when he went to the end of it.

“You’d be doing better if you thought about more cheerful things,” Shanna suggested irritably.

Irene looked up from her lunch, and picked Shanna’s face out from among the ghost buildings. “What do you mean by that?”

“Just what I said. Even when you meditate, you go to a bleak grey ruin, with no plants or sun. What’s wrong with you?”

Shanna’s words hit Irene like a smack from her mother. “I can’t control it,” Irene said, feeling helpless. Would even Shanna desert her?

“It’s your dream, Irene. Try making the sun shine. Why not take charge?” Shanna looked at her, and left the table.

Irene fought down the panic that rose in her chest. She couldn’t stop the buildings, and had more and more trouble even making them dim enough to see the real world. And voices had begun to chant incessantly. Irene knew, with a sick feeling, that she really was going crazy. She had stopped meditating a week ago, but reality kept getting dimmer.

Shamus rounded another corner, and stopped short. A shaft of sunlight broke through the constant grey of the city, and paused briefly on a mist of green near a doorstep. He hurried to examine the light, forgetting for a moment why it so astounded him. But the light vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

Shamus stood on the doorstep, absently twirling a new leaf between his fingers. He hadn’t seen the sun in the city. Ever. Even when the sun burned relentlessly on the fields, the city was always dim. Stifling and dim in the summers, icy and bleak in the winters. But the sun had shone on this doorstep. Sounds of chanting reached Shamus’ ears, and he returned to the street.

The first poem is the one I went digging through journals to find. I wrote the first stanza in college, and added the ending several years later. I think it was written by Rynn, the oldest “runaway.”

I look behind me–are you there?
You have no need to follow–I chain myself.
Eighteen years together, six apart,
and I still have not freed myself from you,
from my past.

I looked for indenture–you took me a slave.

This one was a couple of pages before that, and I had absolutely no memory of writing it. The handwriting is different, and I do have a knack for not noticing the existence of something another part has written, even if it’s in the same journal. I think it was written by one of the teenagers; they’re saying Ellis, who is the one who did the things no one else wanted to do.

She loved me. When it first started, I was really proud, and flattered. I mean, my sisters already despised me for having been born to ruin their lives. I might as well get the attention and presents they punished me for taking away. She loved me not.

So, looking back, it’s hard to put my finger on what was, and on what was not okay. My mother was not supposed to be my first serious relationship. But she loved me. Or not.

Really, that’s what’s so hard about the whole thing with Mom. She didn’t come into my bedroom at night, or at least, that wasn’t what the thing was about. It was about the way our whole interaction was about me being her partner, except I wasn’t equal. My feelings about her are so confused. I loved her not. I loved her.

I guess I can look at this as coming out of a long break-up after a seven-year relationship. But that’s the thing–the whole context of us being together was abusive. And when you add the physical side of it… But doesn’t everyone live through that? I love her. I love her not.

The next two, I wrote when I was ten or eleven. At the time, I figured they were safe to write, because I could say they were “just poems.” I didn’t keep a journal, because people read them and got mad about what I said. I guess they were more subtle than they seem to me, since I showed them to teachers, and they just said I wrote nice poetry. Just guessing, based on who was around then, I think they were probably written by either Michelle (the “good girl”) or Amanda (the youngest “runaway”).

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all?” The words echo, sullen and dusty. The mirror stands alone in a forgotten corner. It is an unpleasant memory, and were it not for superstition, it would have been destroyed long ago. But mirrors must never be destroyed, for they hold something of ourselves.

Even now, I can remember being a child. With scuffed knees and dusty elbows, running aimlessly through my days. And I can remember those first, painful days of growing older, my body stretching and changing, with me tugging, tugging, tugging to be my own self, apart from my mother.

It is mostly my mother that I remember. The stern, separate shadow at the edges of my childhood; the ropes that bound me ever closer to her as I fought to separate myself. In the beginning, we fought much as other mothers and daughters. She would push me back towards childhood, I would strain to grow, ever faster. Later, though, we changed. She grew more insistent in her pushing, and I found a safety in assuming the aspect she wished to see. The more I gave in, the more she pushed me to become what she wanted.

I watched myself fading; watched as I became less and less of a person. But giving in was safe. My mother raged; fought and raged against anything she could not control. I couldn’t fight her. She was too strong, she had too much of me. And so I let her force me to… and so I made myself over in her image.

She grew older, as mothers do. She would ask me, sometimes, or tell me, that we looked just like sisters. What could I say? We didn’t, although she was a beautiful woman. But I was young. She was more beautiful, but I was younger.

One day, she rushed into our cottage, cheeks glowing with an excitement I had never seen on her face before. “Look at me! Am I not the most beautiful woman you have ever seen?”
I looked up from the ashes in the corner. She was, indeed, beautiful. And I had seen few women, living in our small village at the very edge of the world. “Yes, Mother,” I answered. What was I to answer? It was easier than fighting.

“I have found a way to keep this beauty, and more,” she rejoiced. I looked at her, silent, skeptical, but an open vessel for her words. “In the forest,” she continued, “I met a man who told me that for a few small… favors, he would teach me all I ever need know, and more.”
I nodded, but said nothing. “He will come tonight. You will let him in, but do not speak to him.” That, we both knew, would never have occurred to me. I am a private person, easily ignored. “After you have let him in, go out to the woods, and do not return until the morning. If anyone should ask you, in the morning, where you went, explain that you wandered too far, and passed the night in a woodsman’s cottage.”

My soul shuddered at the thought of a night alone in the woods; I shrank from what others would think of me for “passing the night” in a woodsman’s cottage. But, “Yes, Mother.” And that was all.

A man rose near our cottage door with the setting sun. I looked up to see him, startled at his sudden appearance. I beckoned him inside. He shrank in my mind as he entered the house, until he appeared no different from other men. I offered him food and drink, and walked to the well to inform my mother that her guest had arrived.

“Go to the woods, daughter,” she said. And for the benefit of the women standing with her at the well, “I would have some fresh berries.” The women looked askance at me, for no maiden would dare enter the forest after sunset, and no maid’s mother would suggest that she do so. I ducked my head. “Yes, Mother.”

I lifted the basket from my mother’s side, and walked slowly into the forest. Perhaps I hoped she would call me back, or that the other women would shout for me to return. But no one said a word, and my feet took me inevitably to the woods.

I returned in the morning, and she looked exactly as she always had. But she seemed more confident of her beauty, and perhaps she was more beautiful after all. A hectic flush rose in her cheeks. “Daughter, come, help me pack our belongings. My guest last night told me that the king is looking for a new wife. She needn’t be noble, he said–he looks for beauty to distract him from his old wife’s death, and a mother for his daughter. Perhaps….”

How could she have thought of this? But it was easier to follow along with her, and, after all, there might be some man in the city who truly did not care for nobility, and needed a wife only slightly past her prime. The women in the village would never take me in. I, who spent a night in the woods alone.

We loaded what we could in our small cart, and hitched our donkey to the front. What king would take a peasant to wed? I wondered, but said nothing. Mother rode, driving the cart, and I trudged along behind, carrying what little was my own on my back. Somehow, Mother found a kindly, old couple to give us shelter each night of our journey.

At least she was wise enough to realize that no one would believe she traveled to marry the king. So she told a story of her brother in the city, who had lost his wife, and wished for a housekeeper. She told this story so often that even I came to believe her.

We journeyed several weeks to the city. Near the end, the flush rose ever stronger in her cheeks, until it did seem to increase her beauty. It was dangerous, it was poisonous, but it was beauty.

When we finally arrived, Mother seemed to know exactly where to go. She told the gatekeeper the same story about her brother, and even produced an address. I kept silent; Mother has never allowed me to contradict her, or to expose her in untruth.

We found the address she had given, and the stranger greeted us warmly. He smiled indulgently at me, and sent me to our rooms with Mother’s bags and boxes. Then he and Mother swept through one of the side doors, and shut it firmly behind them.

I carried my bag into the rooms, and then all of Mother’s possessions. Then, for want of better entertainment, I unpacked the bags, and began to make a home of these rooms. I finished quickly, for there was little to unpack. I stared out the window and wandered the short hallway, waiting for Mother and the stranger to emerge. There were no servants, and no other people in the house, although it was so large that our country cottage would have fit into it several times over. The house was echoing and dangerous.

Mother praised me lavishly for arranging her things when she emerged, and the stranger gave me several coins and sent me to explore the town. I was unsure of finding my way in such a large place, but I did not protest as they shooed me out the door.

In my wanderings, I heard many women, both young and old, whispering of the balls held each night, at which the king sought to distract himself, at which the king sought a new wife. I bought apples and cabbages, and went home to tell my mother of the balls. Perhaps we would attend, and she would see that her aims would not succeed.

“Of course, daughter, for that is why we came,” she answered briskly. “And isn’t it wonderful that your uncle could give us a home?”

“Yes, Mother.” I left my questions about this uncle unsaid.

Mother came into the kitchen, as I chopped cabbage and apples. “Daughter.” I looked up, and saw that she was wearing a gown I had never seen before. “Does this gown not flatter me? Am I not fortunate to have such a generous brother?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Well, come, give me a kiss, for luck. I will be attending the ball tonight.”

“Yes, Mother.”

She did not return until early the next morning. I woke to find her standing over my bed, the flush deeper than ever. “He danced with me. He sat and ate with me. But he says that his daughter is lonely, that she wants a companion. You will come with me tonight.”

I was given more coins, and sent out again. I bought ribbons and lace, and listened to the gossip about the stranger, the woman who had captured the king’s attention. The gossip even mentioned her beauty and sparkling wit.

When I returned home, Mother hurried me to our rooms, so that I could dress, and so I could assist her. My gown was simple, of the sort that the governess of a wealthy family should wear.
Mother’s dress was beautiful on its own, but became mesmerizing when animated with her living flesh; or perhaps it was Mother who was beautiful after all.

“Am I not beautiful, daughter? The most beautiful woman you have ever seen?”

“Yes, Mother.” For once, I did not feel doubtful.

The stranger provided a carriage and footmen, and we arrived at the ball only late enough for fashion. Mother glided in, and every eye turned to meet her. She took me gently by the elbow, and led me across the room. A man came, and bowed over her hand. She bowed demurely, and turned. “This is my daughter,” she said softly. The man, the king, beckoned, and a small girl approached. She was put in my charge, and my mother made me understand that I was to keep her happy and quiet, and out of their way for the remainder of the evening.

Mother found me and the girl asleep on a bench in the flower garden, shortly after dawn. She found an expression of motherly concern I had never seen, and gently lifted the girl to carry her inside. I followed, not knowing what to do with my own arms, watching my mother place the girl carefully in her small bed.

“Such a sweet child,” Mother whispered, “I could come to love her as my own, couldn’t I?”

So many words welled up in my throat, but my tone was respectful when I whispered, “Yes, Mother.”

It was as though a glamour shimmered around Mother on the third night. She shone so bright I could barely look at her. She offered me a new dress, one appropriate for the modest daughter of a wealthy family. We arrived early enough to watch as the other ladies entered the ballroom.

“Am I not the fairest among these, Daughter?”

“Yes, Mother.” She turned away from me as though I had never spoken, and I saw that the king had arrived.

I took the princess, and we waited for our parents the whole night, wandering in the gardens, feeding the swans in the pond with the bread from our dinner. By the time we fell asleep, the girl held my hand with something very like affection.

Of course, the king did marry Mother. He accepted me as a daughter, and placed me with his own child. I saw Mother only when a queen from another realm would visit, and only to reassure her that the glamour remained, that she was the most beautiful woman in the realm.

Years went by, and I was well past the age for marriage, when the king remembered that he had a daughter, and that daughters need to marry. He sent word to other kingdoms, and young men began to visit. But they, like the king, saw only my mother. The princess, my sister, was bewildered. She had been raised to become a queen; she knew nothing of growing up except being a queen. She could not understand the rejection, could not comprehend the possibility that she would not marry a prince.

And what reason was there for her to be rejected? She was young, beautiful. My mother had no need of the princes’ attention.

Yet the queen called me to her each evening. “Am I not the fairest woman you have ever seen?”

Each evening my answer was the same. “Yes, Mother.”

And each night I held my sister, the princess, as she sobbed out her fears. She did not know what her life would be, she needed a prince to rescue her from the uncertainty.

Then came a night when the prince seemed more noble, when the princess seemed more in need of rescue, and I could think of nothing but my sister when the queen asked her question.

“Am I not the most beautiful woman in this realm?”

I should not have answered as I did. Having made myself a mirror all my life, I should have remembered that mirrors reflect only what the viewer wishes to see. Forgotten in a dusty corner, reflecting only cobwebs, I wonder about other choices. Was I made a mirror, or did I become one of my own free will?

“The Rule of Silence” (musings) and “Revenge” (story)

“I Have Learned My Lessons Well” (story)