The Fitting

It was the one she used for everything, felt there in her apron pocket. Then the herald rapped his knuckles on our door. Mother peeked through the wall sliver and could see the shoe. I could tell by her gauging eyes. Her brow gave way to a stillness in her face like someone who had finished deciding. The prince’s reflection flashed in the teardrop that she dabbed quickly away.

That morning, on the day one of her daughters might be chosen, she kept herself shut up in her chambers, and I had heard not one word from within. The foyer lamp cast a long shadow upon the small, quiet line of waiting daughters.

Mother appeared at my sister’s side while I strained to hear the man’s voice beyond the threshold. Ushered solemnly to the back room, Ethel nodded at Mother’s whispers. Hands petting locks, feeding fairytales, tracing the outline of what she called love. Ear pressed to the door between us, I heard, “Hush, child. Every word is accounted for.”

Ethel emerged first, teetering on legs of tremor, it seemed. Her gait made my skeleton melt inside of me, understanding before my brain did. My mouth was dry. Ethel saw only the promise beyond the front door and walked through with what pride remained. The herald offered his arm, and she took it, carefully climbing inside the carriage. I wished she would show me her face.

A red bird swooped down from the oak tree, pecked a few grains from the ground, then was gone as the carriage door reopened. The prince turned away from my gaze, and the herald was back on his feet. There was blood on the shoe. Mother’s cough turned my skin rigid.

A hot hand pressed into the base of my neck. “Now you,” Mother said quietly. Her free hand gripped her apron, and something moved through me. Something I had no word for. Ethel leaned into the doorway, hesitant to come inside.

The back room held no light save for the slowly fading evening colors holding to the amber-paned window. Frigid hands pressed and considered my heels. Lifting one foot off the floor and then the other, Mother kneeled with practiced gentleness. When her fingers finally went immobile, her face released what it had been holding as the matter was settled back into stillness.

“Just a small adjustment,” she said. That was the word she chose.

It was in her hand like a conjured coin, appearing the way things do when they’d been there all along. Blood on her apron from where she wiped it.

It wasn’t the foot that hurt. It was the force. Mother’s foot remembered.

“We hem what doesn’t fit,” she said, wiping the blade with the same stain before securing it in her pocket.

It was the way something could be silently pressed past my will on its way inside my skin.

Through the house and out the door I went, reaching for the herald’s arm without one glance at Ethel, now gripping the white wood of the doorframe behind me. The herald’s hand devoured the carriage door latch, then I saw the prince for the first time. He handed the shoe to me, and it fit. Now. The herald’s eyes stared through the shoe, his face nowhere to be seen. The prince seemed pleased, keeping his fingers laced, having touched nothing.

I pressed my face to the carriage glass and breathed. The birds sang evening songs against the first act of the night sky.

Then the prince looked down and saw blood in the shoe, and I was returned to our door. Now hobbling outside the shoe my foot had died inside, Mother caught me in her arms. Her face was red but not surprised.

The monster that I wanted her to be never raged against me. Never used the words again. Something was gone, but I still had myself. Safe inside the unspoken language of the back room, I found worth. More than a silver spoon. More than a chosen foot. More than a dish served inside itself.