My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales

RABIH ALAMEDDINE. A Kiss to Wake the Sleeper

MOTHER ISSUED DIRECTIONS AND HER ASSISTANTS CLEANED. ONE scrubbed the floor and mopped, covering it with lye, and the other suctioned dust out of the living room. Mother fanned her magazines out on the coffee table, making sure that each title could be discerned at a glance. I had nothing better to do than witness.

I reached for my brush, combed and combed my hair, a ritual of untangling. “I’m a mess,” I announced.

Mother hesitated, stopped what she was doing for only an instant. “I dislike that word.”

“I am a mess.”

“All right,” she said. “You may be a mess, but you’re clean. You’re a clean mess.”

“I’m a fine mess.”

“Well, you’re my mess,” Mother said, “and today we’re going to fix you,” and she began washing her hands. She had a smile on her face, or maybe a grimace. You cannot decipher nuance through plastic.

I was a mess. I had SCID (no dirty jokes about skid marks, not that kind of mess — ha, ha), Severe Combined Immunodeficiency. No B cells, no T cells, nothing to protect me from any organism wishing to penetrate my body. A walking, talking gossamer. It sucked.

Thirteen years — thirteen years of living inside an antiseptic bubble, making sure my environment was scoured clean, daily scrubbing of every inch of skin, keeping the world and its dangers at bay. It double sucked.

Mother was sure the nuns would be able to cure me — sure of it, emphatic about it, double emphatic, triple emphatic. She’d heard about them, talked to them, and believed in their miracles. But she couldn’t convince them to come to us no matter how much she offered them. The healing chamber couldn’t be moved. I had to leave my bubble for the first time in years and go there. We had to travel hundreds of miles to some suckhole castle in some podunk village in the middle of nowhere.

How would you pack for that?

The driver stopped the car in front of the pack of camels. Three nuns in full Halloween costume, white habits and all, waited for us. We’d driven through a forest on a gutted, gravelly road (Mercedes shock absorbers weren’t as perfect as advertised). Lushness still surrounded the car on three sides, but before us lay emptiness — a desert where nothing grew, not one thing.

“Camels?” Mother fumed. “Stay here and let me deal with this.”

I ignored her command. A camel ride might prove interesting, a change, if nothing else. Getting out of the car wearing the protective suit and lugging the oxygen tank was no mean feat. Mother argued with the nuns, until one of them interrupted to ask if she was ill as well.

“No,” my mother replied, “just my child. I wear this so she doesn’t feel odd.” In solidarity was what she usually said. She had on the same protective suit, sans oxygen tank, except hers fit better, of course. “We can drive there,” she said. “We don’t need camels. You ladies should keep up with some of our modern conveniences.”

“A car won’t survive the drive,” one nun said.

“The camels barely do,” another said.

“Once you cross the line,” the third said, “nothing survives, not for long. No human, no plant, no infection. Until she reaches the room.”

“She will not need the suit.”

“No one can accompany her. Only seekers live.”

“The camels might return.”

“If they’re fortunate.”

“If the princess smiles upon their fate.”

While my mother interjected, “No, this won’t do,” “You must be completely mad,” “This is insane,” and, “Can she at least take the pâté de campagne with her,” the nuns explained what I must do: how to reach the room, how not to disturb the sleeper, how to look for possible signs that I was cured, how to parcel out the three loaves of bread and three eggs, and, most important, how to make sure that I had enough energy for the perilous return trip.

Hungry. I was hungry. My belly twisted and spasmed, my stomach grumbled and growled, and at least once every hour, a mewl escaped my lips.

Yet dare I touch the last egg? I dared not.

On the cherry-colored night table, the last boiled egg and loaf of bread lay next to the clay water pitcher, the loaf as fresh as the day I walked into the chamber. As for the egg, as long as it rested next to the princess, rot it would not. The sleeping beauty exuded much power, much goodness. Peace and tranquillity seeped from her every pore, health and well-being resided in her domain. I’d never been more hale, or more hungry. I hadn’t needed my suit or tank since I arrived. In the beginning I felt liberated and unshackled. Without the bubble, my breath was light. I was even able to pinch myself. But I definitely needed food.

My gaze returned to the egg, and my stomach whimpered.

Upon first discovering the sleeping princess, the nuns, wanting her curative powers close at hand, attempted to bring her to the convent, but were unable to lift her. Indeed, a cluster of cloistered virgins could not move a single pebble out of the room.

Frankly, I could understand her position.

Since the mountain would not come, the nuns chose to erect a cloister next to the castle, but building was halted mid-brick, plans dropped, once they understood that for three leagues around, nothing outside of the healing chamber survived. Life flourished within, death without — a reverse Disneyland. (Please! You know it’s true.) In a small room in the tower the beauty slept and breathed, while everything else in the palace, everyone else, breathed no more. Carcasses of her family, skeletons of nobles and attendants, of servants and slaves, of pets and parasites littered the crumbling castle. I stepped over many a pile of bones when I ascended the stairs. Terribly unpleasant.

Wild forest turned to desert precisely three leagues from the room. The transformation was immediate and striking: before an invisible line, forest; desert after. No creature, no plant, crossed. I noticed not a single living thing after I passed the boundary, not till I reached the princess lying on her altar of a bed in the middle of the chamber. Inside the room, the princess wore the healing if slightly off-putting color forest green. Outside, what was once a lush garden had atrophied. Man-made lines delineated arid squares. Outsized trunks and gnarled roots, sculptures created by an insane or indifferent artist, were all that remained of the once-great oaks, the beeches, birches, and lindens. Desert dust invaded every nook in the castle, except for the sleeper’s pristine chamber, where no mote dared enter.

And I was so hungry. The perfectly shaped egg called to me. The perfectly shaped egg knew my name. “Don’t I look sumptuous and luscious?” it said. “Come eat me. Devour me as you did my sisters.”

Devour her sisters I had. I was supposed to wait before eating the first egg and its accompanying loaf, then wait some more for the second. The third should be consumed toward the end because of the rigors of the return trip. I didn’t wait. I was hungry. I was weak. Can you blame me? The minute I walked into the room, I was hungry as never before.

One egg left, one loaf, and an awful journey back. How was I going to withstand it? I would die, obscure and nameless, in a strange land far from home. Since it was unlikely that I would survive, should I eat the egg and sate my hunger sooner rather than later? A morsel? A tiny bite?

I needed distraction. A ritual of ennui, that was what this was, a rite of tedium. No magazines, no television, nothing. Through the window, I saw the same view I had seen every day, desiccated land to the thin horizon, overwhelming and barren — and boring, boring, boring. Even the plastic bubble was better than this.

I prayed for a flood, torrents and storms, but would have settled for a drop of rain, a drip of variance.

The sleeper’s slow and steady breathing was the only sound to be heard, never varying, never ending. The whole chamber smelled of her. It was the first thing I noticed when I walked in, the scent of summer flowers, jasmine and lilac, of summer days, never varying, never ending. Before boredom set in, I endeavored to discover where the scent emanated from, what part of her body. My nose reconnoitered all of her: her clothes, her hair, her mouth, her arms, her feet. I even examined under her skirt — still smooth there. The puberty fairy hadn’t yet struck her either. The scent was all of her. She never needed to be bathed, her hair never needed combing or untangling. She was pristine in slumber, perfection in human form. Before I grew so weak, I could not stop myself from touching her skin — its smoothness, its suppleness, seduced me.

I prayed for a blemish. If only to ameliorate the tedium.

And my prayer was answered.

I felt a little flutter on the back of my left wrist, slightly below the sleeve of my shirt. Instinctively, as if I’d been doing it all my life, my right hand smacked my wrist. The sound of the slap echoed and reverberated in the sacred room. I removed my hand to see what was underneath. On the back of my wrist, the remnants of a mosquito and our blood, a minuscule cave painting in brown and red.

Where had it come from? How could it have invaded her space? Nothing had ever disturbed this room. I forced myself to stand. I had to examine the princess’s skin. Could she have been bitten too? Would I be punished if the princess was harmed on my watch — harmed by a mosquito bite? Would that mosquito live for years or centuries instead of days?

I felt dizzy as I stood, queasy. A faint sour smell tortured my nostrils. It was a delicate and wispy odor, and yet stark. Led by my nose, I discovered that the princess was the source, but I couldn’t pinpoint where precisely. I heard a feeble flicker of a sound on the windowpane. A butterfly, yellow spotted with red, fought the glass trying to break into the room. I walked over to let her in — a butterfly in the room, how remarkable! In an instant, a loud thump: a bird, probably a starling, had flown into the glass and fallen, disappearing from view. The frightened butterfly followed suit. I opened the window to see where the bird landed, if it was still alive. I couldn’t differentiate anything on the desert floor so far below.

The breeze was fresh, no longer broiling and stifling. Spring in the desert inferno?

I allowed myself to enjoy the unsullied air tickling my face. This was so new to me. I leaned on the windowsill and remembered all the languorous hours I’d spend staring out the plastic window. I considered opening all four windows in the tower to ventilate the chamber.

Another butterfly, deeper yellow, redder spots, came in through the chamber window. The sky looked different, then not. Was it changing color? I looked to the horizon. Nothing. I stared, and distinctions began to materialize, as when shapes slowly reveal themselves after your eyes adjust to darkness. Clouds were forming in the distance — in the great distance, but moving rather rapidly. Everything was. In the great distance, I could just make out the shape of a human approaching, a female form leaning on a staff. An awkward gait, an aged walk, it was an older woman, probably as old as Mother, older even. She had wild hair, not a hat, not a habit — wild white hair like a halo about her head. The crazy crone moved gingerly, but not slowly at all.

My heart beat faster, thumped harder within my ribs, my mouth as dry as the desert outside.

But then, was it dry outside?

The air felt moist.

What was happening?

I drew in a sustained breath. The acidic smell was faint no longer. It invaded the room, coupling with the fresh air entering the chamber, but it was no longer so unappealing. My senses must have become inured. The red-spotted butterfly hovered over the sleeping princess, deciding where to land. I raised my arm to shoo her away and noted a thin film of moisture on my skin.

Had I broken out in sweat?

A drop of water landed on the windowsill.

What magic was this?

I ran my index finger through the wetness. Dark, pregnant clouds scudded below a heavy sky laden with clouds only slightly less dark. The mad crone appeared in the once-great garden, no longer moving. She was standing next to a beast; not just a beast, a hyena — a hyena? She was looking up at my window, her unkempt hair sparkling, rumpling in the wind. I wondered if she was looking at me or simply at the chamber. Neither, it seemed. Her eyes were trained on the castle wall below. Mine followed.

From my lips, which had emitted not a sound in days, came a scream. Slithering up the jagged wall, coming right at me, was a long and heavy desert snake. Its eyes bored into mine. In its mouth, the starling struggled still; around its mouth, streaks of live blood. I screamed and screamed and shut the window, trying to hold the snake, the world, at bay. The windows I had kept closed against the scorching wind outside I would now keep closed against more hideous threats.

Water was pelleting the windows. The mother storm had erupted. The crazy crone, arms raised to the sky in joy and in command, glared at me. The hyena at her side moved not. They both cackled, and I heard them through the panes. The snake writhed at the window, its gullet now engorged with bird. It, too, glared at me. Birds began flying into all four windows, all kinds of birds, starlings, finches, and cardinals, ducks, loons, and herons. Two pigeons landed on the ledge of the east window and pecked on the pane. Then they began to copulate before my eyes, in the rain, a slow and languid mating. A stork alit on the north ledge and glared. Snails inched across the pane, their viscous trails polluting the streaks of rain. The stork began feasting on them, cracking their shells with its long beak, which was soon covered with waxy muck. Insects on all the windows, flies, mosquitoes, crickets, ants. The old fairy gestured with her arm toward the tower. The hyena nodded its head. The fairy spoke, and her words echoed in the room as if she stood next to me.

“The time has come, goddaughter.”

Was she a relative?

I panicked. It was so embarrassing when I did not recognize a family member. Yet even from a distance, she did not look like anyone I knew. She looked like a witch. I tried to concentrate on her facial features. Evidently she had not been speaking to me. My godmother was still young.

A plant of some kind sprouted and wound itself around the fairy godmother’s calf. Plants everywhere, on all sides, shoots, roots, trees, grass, hemlock, all entwined with poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac. All over, sprouting, shooting upward. Thistles, so many thistles, brambles, blackberry, and brier, sweetbrier, greenbrier. Within minutes, a tangled messy mass of impenetrable thorns encircled the tower, a deadly poisonous brier patch, a vast thorny wood.

The rain stopped. Rats invaded the brier patch first, then snakes, scorpions, spiders, mosquitoes, flies. What had been a dry, clear desert was now a moist, teaming thicket of menace.

How would I ever leave this castle?

But leave I must.

The air in the chamber had turned oppressive and smothering, unbearably humid, astringent. The princess reeked of sweat, of brine and yeast, of uncovered and uncooked meat, of rank humanity. Smells I most certainly was not used to. The red-spotted butterfly rested on the princess’s groin, its spread wings seeming to have doubled in size.

What strange occurrence was this?

Stranger yet, men began to arrive.

Outside, a hunting party halted at the outskirts of the brier. Their leader, the prince, jumped off his horse and unsheathed his sword, using it to clear a path through the thorns. None could follow him, for the brier closed rank behind him. Another prince arrived by himself, not ten yards away from the first. He too unsheathed his sword and commenced his journey. To the south, more princes, yet more from the east and more from the west, a multitude of princes — desperate princes, all seeking entry.

Where had they all come from? What had called them?

Many were unable to enter the thicket of thorn. Princes struck and slashed and cut but could not come through — weak princes. Exhausted by their ineffective efforts, they laid their bodies on the ground to recuperate, and the brier extended itself and swallowed them dead. Stronger princes, those who entered, met no happier fate. Murderous plants killed some, poisonous snakes killed others. Princes bled to death, wounded by many a thorn. Princes grew tired and could not keep their swords raised. Their death was the most horrific of all. The brier attacked them, lifted their bodies for one last look at the tower, the desideratum, teased them with one last look at the sky, then devoured them whole. A few, too few, still struggled below, but so many died, a massacre, a princely genocide.

I watched in horror, forgetting everything around me. I retreated from the window, nauseated. I clutched my stomach, as if I had been punched, as if its lining were being carved by a knife. I doubled up in pain. I vomited, but nothing came up. I had not eaten, nothing had entered me, in so long.

Then I heard heavy footsteps rushing up the stairs: thump, thump, thump, thump. The thick wooden door swung open, flew off its hinges, and slammed into the wall. It shattered into pieces. The prince bolted into the room, stormed to the bed, and stopped before the sleeping beauty. He had eyes for nothing else, while mine were glued to him.

The hero had come through. He had lost his sword, his shirt, and his shoes to the brier. Streaked in blood, he had deep wounds on his forehead, on his side, on both palms. Blood ran down his virile, hairy, powerful, masculine calves. The front of his pantaloons exhibited no small excitement. Sweaty, perspiring, he too reeked, yet my stomach had no wish to rebel — surrender, yes. I cleared my throat, ahemmed, but he paid me no mind. Nothing but the princess was his world. He ran his hand along the softness of her bare arm. He seemed surprised at the lack of a response. I wanted to tell him that it was not his fault, that she had not wakened, had not moved, in a hundred years. I wanted only to save him time, to protect him from frustration. I wanted to tell him she was not the one for him, not at all. But he bent his golden torso and smelled her, inhaled deeply, and I almost fainted. He extended his tongue and licked the moistness of her cleavage. And then he kissed her.

He kissed her.

And he kissed her.

She remained asleep, her breathing slow and steady as ever. He licked her lips, then her neck. He lifted himself atop the bed and straddled her. The engorged groin within the pantaloons loomed larger. He bent and kissed the princess once more. He tore off her blouse and chemise, squeezed her milk-white breasts, pinched them, bit them with abandon.

I wanted to stop him. I wanted to warn him that she was an archetype. But if I could not keep a butterfly off her, I would never be able to fend off a prince. My knees felt weak, my breathing was shallow, my skin sensitive and sweaty. I had to sit down.

And he tore off her skirt and undergarments. Still she slept.

I opened my mouth to scream, but what left my lips was a deep, sensuous sigh.

Where once all was smooth and barren, now grew a follicle forest, and into that forest the prince’s face disappeared.

I moaned and the princess echoed me. I was stunned.

She did not open her eyes, and I was unsure whether she had wakened, but she moaned once more. He grunted, buried his face deeper, and she moved. She spread her naked legs wider. Her lips parted, taking in a deep breath. She moaned, he moaned, I moaned. A volcano erupted in my stomach, its heat flooding my body.

The princess’s eyelids flew open. The sleeper had awakened. Her lashes fluttered, and I felt as if I were being whipped.

She sat up on her elbows, bent her knees. With one hand, she held the prince’s head and bucked. He grunted, grunted, grunted, like a pig finding truffle.

She screamed in ecstasy. I screamed in ecstasy.

The room was stifling. My body was stifling.

The prince lifted himself off her. The princess growled. I mewled.

She tore off his pantaloons and his erection sprang up. I whimpered.

The prince entered the princess brutally. She pushed herself into him in return. I could no longer distinguish the sounds they were making. They attacked each other in an aggressive ancestral rhythm.

The lava reached my groin. The lava reached my eyes, and tears rolled. The heat rattled my soul. My body shook and spasmed.

The prince kissed the princess, and their tongues fought, intertwined, became one. Their lips coupled and melded. Their hips merged. His hands cleaved to her breasts, hers to his back. Their feet joined. Before my eyes, two humans disappeared into a monstrous, nebulous one. The prince and the princess rocked back and forth but only for a few moments. They finally settled into a solid amorphous shape on the bed, a weird conjoined entity.

It took time, slow time, to regain some semblance of control over my senses. I was sopping wet, exhausted, but no longer weak. I decided to depart from this room. I did not care whether harm had come to the princess. I did not know whether I was healed or not, but this certainly was a sign. I snatched the egg and the loaf, devoured the latter first. It was damp, not fresh, and I loved it. I bit into the egg, ate half of it in one swallow. It was rank, sour, almost rotten, and utterly delicious. I finished it and licked my hands and my fingers.

As soon as I exited the room, my first drop of blood appeared — a pellet of blood struck the sand dust of the tower’s stairwell. More blood as I descended, as I stepped over the skeletons of the princess’s family. Outside, the weather was pitch-perfect. As a light wind flirted with my face, I felt healthy and joyful. The brier had left the hero’s slashed path for my egress. I walked on, corpses of failed princes to my right and left, above my head, offering a final farewell. Surrounded by brier I traveled, thorns pricked me everywhere, pulled at my hair, snagged and tangled it.

Bloodied and bleeding, refreshed and rejuvenated, upon my head a tiara of thorns, I returned to Mother.