Whisper Me This(2)

Marley gives me a withering glare. “Don’t be chicken.”

So I take a big breath and drop to my knees beside her. My hands are shaking, but I manage to press the buttons on both latches.

Click. Click.

I lift the lid.

Nothing jumps out to bite me. On top is a layer of blue tissue paper that crinkles as I set it carefully aside.

Beneath it, neatly folded, is a white dress. It’s made of shiny, slippery fabric and is covered over with lace.

“Silk,” Marley says. She knows all the words, even though she’s only seven minutes older than me. “Or maybe satin.”

These are words we learned from reading time with Mom.

At school they are teaching us reading, but only easy words and boring stories about mice and cats. We already know all the letters and the way they fit together to make words. We don’t say this. If Mom finds out, maybe she’ll stop reading stories at bedtime and tell us to read our own.

Bedtime is my favorite Mom time. She’s not too busy to hug me then. She doesn’t have a list of chores for me to do, and she doesn’t quiz me about the names of countries I’m supposed to be memorizing or make me count to a hundred or recite Bible verses.

She snuggles up with me in my bed, both of us holding the book, and reads me stories by the light of my bedside lamp. She never reads to Marley, but it’s still Marley who remembers all the words, even the hardest ones.

Last night Mom read “Cinderella,” the one from a big, fat book with Grimm on the spine, not the one from the glossy picture book, where the stepsisters have pointy noses and Cinderella looks so light on her feet she might drift up into the sky.

I can only pick out some of the words in that book. Marley says grim means dark, and for sure, there are lots of dark words on those pages.

Silk and satin are there, but also hideous. And orphaned.

“What if we were orphaned?” she asked me, the night Mom read “Hansel and Gretel.”

“They weren’t orphaned,” I told her. “Their father was still alive.”

“Maybe they would have been better off orphaned,” she says, “since he wanted to kill them and all.”

Her words made me feel like I feel now, shivery and shaky. It’s not the witch in the gingerbread house that scares me; it’s the idea of my parents not wanting me anymore. When I wake screaming from nightmares and Mom comes to soothe me with hugs and soft words, it’s always from the same dream. Always she asks, “What were you dreaming, little one? Tell me.”

And always I tell her, “I don’t remember.”

And always it’s a lie.

But I’m not dreaming now. I’m with Marley and we are safely hidden in the forbidden closet. The dress doesn’t look anything like the pictures in the “Cinderella” book, but I do think the word silk suits it just fine.

“Put it on,” Marley says. “You can be Cinderella.”

“I don’t want to be Cinderella.”

“What about Princess Leia? That’s even better.”

We haven’t seen the Star Wars movies. Mom says we’re too young. But we’ve heard about them from other kids. Lacey at school has a picture book all about the story, and we’ve seen Princess Leia in her white dress, carrying a gun through the spaceship. Leia is much more exciting than Cinderella and balls and dancing.

Still.

“We’ll get in trouble.” My hands are already smoothing the material, though.

“Nobody will know.”

Underneath the dress are two small pink blankets and one blue stuffed bear. The bear is a twin to the one sitting on my bed, the one that goes with me into dreamland every night.

Wrapped in one of the blankets is a picture. Marley and I stare at it, trying to make sense of the image. A girl holds two babies bundled in pink blankets. The girl has my mother’s face, but she’s wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt and has long, loose hair hanging down almost to her waist. She wears lots of blue eye shadow and thick mascara.

The girl looks like Mom, except that Mom always wears a dress or slacks and a blouse. Her hair is short. She never puts anything on her face except lotion and ChapStick.

The picture makes my stomach feel sick, so I wrap it back up in the blanket. I pull the dress on over my head. It makes a whispering swish and spills out around me on the floor, more like Cinderella’s train than Leia’s dress. Marley picks out a pair of high-heeled shoes, and I’m balancing on them, precarious, checking out my transformation in the full-length mirror, when the closet door opens, and the Evil Stepmother stands there, staring at me, hands on both hips, lips pressed tightly together in an expression that means I am in serious trouble.

Because it’s not the Evil Stepmother at all, and I’m neither Cinderella nor the brave Princess Leia saving an empire. My own real, true mother has caught me snooping in things that do not belong to me.

“What are you doing?”

It’s a trick question and I know better than to answer. She can see what I’m doing.

“Who were you talking to?”

“Nobody.”

Her eyes burn me. I try to hold her gaze, but I’m balancing on high heels. My foot slips into the toe of the shoe and then sideways. I topple over, grabbing at an armful of dresses for balance, but they slide off their hangers and come with me, all of us in a heap at the bottom of the closet.