 | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  |
Exposing the Truth—To Myself
comforting about reading Hans Christian Anderson and Brothers Grimm fairy tales repeatedly as
a child, and what specific things caused me to turn to them again as an adult to serve as a means
of expression. Looking back I knew it had nothing to do with being a princess, or riches, or
finding Prince Charming. It was something beyond the repeated theme of good verses evil. It was
more than the evil doers being brought to justice. I sensed that some thing I longed for happened
in these tales. I discovered the answer with the help of Anderson's tale The Wild Swans.
Fairy tale quotes (gold color text) in the following story are from Hans Christian Anderson,
The Wild Swans. Illustrated Junior Library ed. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, Inc., 1945
unless otherwise indicated.
excellent website: SurLaLune Fairy Tale Pages here
flickers of feeling that receded before I could grasp onto anything solid. I felt something familiar
about the predicaments of the downtrodden girls in a number of the stories, but it was Elise from
Anderson’s tale of The Wild Swans who tugged for my attention. I can’t count the number of
times I read that tale as a child. Something there comforted me. Now there was something
else—something about that path to deliverance, and it scared me. Back and forth, from story to
memories until I stopped at one awful memory of a day 40 years ago . . .
I don’t know how I knew what was in that white envelope—maybe it was the look on her face
or the way she was running toward me from my father’s car—but I knew, and I had to protect
her.
“Mom, give me the letter! I’ll hide it for you.”
I didn’t want him to see her with the letter from his lover, but she ran past me, and all I could do
was run after her.
My father was a mean man and whatever was about to happen would be ugly. When they flew
at each other, I did my best to keep him off of her, but he swat me away like a dirty fly. That’s
when something inside me broke apart. NO MORE! I wasn’t going to let him to hurt my mother
the way he had hurt me, so this time, for her sake, I had to fight back.
I hauled off and kicked him with everything I had in me. He looked down at me with surprise
and disgust then shoved us both aside and took off running down the hall. I heard him slam and
lock the door to their bedroom. My mother ran to the kitchen, and then ran back with a knife in
her hand. I thought they were going to kill each other.
I must have blanked out to that place I’d go whenever my father had me by the neck. Next
thing I knew, they were both in the bedroom. They were still yelling, but they weren’t hitting
each other anymore. She’d only used the knife to unlock the door. That’s when I remembered I
had to leave to play a violin concerto for a district competition.
“Mom, I have a concert.”
She turned and looked at me. “Oh—I’m sorry—go, go play well.”
It felt genuine when she said that. Her voice and her eyes seemed to be acknowledging
something real about me. It wasn’t like that very often, and I wanted to stay with her.
I crept out of the house in a fog of confused compassion and heartache.
“Poor Elise wept and thought of her eleven brothers who were all lost. She crept sadly out of the
palace and wandered about all day, over meadows and marshes into a big forest…”
I don’t remember how I got there, but I made it to the bus that would take us downtown. I sat
next to my friend pretending everything was OK. My friend was one of my mother’s favorite
piano students—one of the girls she liked to call “a little genius.” I tried to figure out what it took
in terms of musical ability to be a genius in my mom’s eyes, but I never seemed to get it right.
Outside, in public, she would brag about me to other people—my daughter played this piece
and my daughter won that award. But she’d tell them strange things, too—things that weren’t
true—things like books I was reading that I’d never heard of.
At home it was different. Everything I did fell short. She was quick to remind me I wasn’t
good enough. “Moron!” I know it was the same for my sister. Yet, my mother seemed to like
me some of the time. I knew there was no hope with my father—he hated me, but I was
determined to find a way to make my mother happy.
“The beautiful open sea lay before the maiden, but not a sail was to be seen on it, nor a single
boat. How was she ever to get any further? She looked at the numberless little pebbles on the
beach. They were all worn quite round by the water. Glass, iron stone—whatever was washed up—
had taken their shapes from the water, which yet was much softer than her little hand.
“With all its rolling, it is untiring, and everything hard is smoothed down,” she said. “I will be
just as untiring. Thank you for your lesson, you clear rolling waves! Sometime, so my heart tells
me, you will bear me to my beloved brothers.”
At the competition, I remember hearing my friend begin the piano accompaniment. With violin
tucked under my chin and bow gracefully arched over the strings it seemed simple—another
day, another performance. I’d done this so many times, always on a quest for the moment of
inspiration that would let me in on the secret. Would this be the time I’d unravel the mystery to
being a little genius? That afternoon, I only made it to “unravel.”
I started to shiver, and when my bow reached the strings it wasn’t because I set it there. It
crashed against the top of the violin, and all I could do was stand there and shake. I couldn’t
feel my hands, and I couldn’t move my arms to stop the hideous scratching sound coming from
my violin. Like the tales of girls without hands, it was as if my father had chopped mine off in
revenge for my being the musician he longed to be and, on top of that insult, finally fighting back.
“Your brothers can be delivered,” she [the fairy] said. “But have you the courage and endurance
enough for it?”
STOP SHAKING! I could do this! I tried to lift my bow from the strings, but it crashed back
down and bounced uncontrollably. NO! I HAD to do it—for my mother’s sake. How could I
embarrass her after all she’d been through?
Riding the bus home, I held a little medal hanging from a blue ribbon—the highest rating
possible. I had a long piece of yellow paper, too, with complimentary things a judge had written
about the performance I’d given once the feeling returned to my hands. Not a word about the
shaking episode—like it never happened, but the blue ribbon and the words of praise did little
to ease my sense of dread and humiliation.
When I got back home, it was quiet—like nothing had happened there either. Terrified I’d run
into my father, I tiptoed up the stairs to my bedroom. I thought about that morning and I thought
about the competition. I knew I wouldn’t say anything about either. I couldn’t let myself think
about tomorrow, or if there would be one. I don’t know where my father was—maybe in the
den where he stayed for a number of months before he finally left. The good thing was after that
day, he seemed to forget all about me, and he left me alone.
I was scheduled to play another violin concerto, this time with a youth orchestra at the college
where my mother was a professor of music theory. I’d been terrified for weeks fearing another
attack of the armless maiden syndrome, but for my mother’s sake . . .
When I began the first movement, I heard the right notes, and though it felt more like the violin
was playing me, I realized I was OK. I finished the first movement and lowered my violin for a
moment. Customary etiquette for classical music calls for silence in between the movements of a
concerto. I heard familiar sounds of rustling programs, polite coughs and people shifting in their
seats, but overall it was quiet in the house. Too quiet. Like the times it was quiet in the house
after my father beat me, and my mother vanished into thin air. Quiet as the following day, when
my mother acted as if nothing had happened to me. Quiet as the dark and lonely secrets I
learned were mine to keep. Mandatory silence quiet.
“But remember, from the moment you begin this work till it is finished, even if it
takes years, you must not utter a word. The first word you say will fall like a
murderer’s dagger into the hearts of your brothers. Their lives hang on your tongue.
Mark this well.”
I started to shiver. Oh, God, please not again. The orchestra was playing, so I had to think fast.
THINK! THINK!!! OK!
I decided to play a bit softer—quietly until I was sure my arms were doing what I wanted them
to do. Miraculously it helped, and before long I was playing normally. I thanked God through
the rest of that second movement that I’d managed not to fall apart. Everything would be OK
now. By the time I started the third movement I was ecstatic with relief and played to the finish
from the bottom of my heart.
I was completely worn out, but happy as we headed for the car. I climbed in, and my mother
started the engine.
“Why were you playing so softly in the second movement?” she asked with seething
disapproval. “I couldn’t hear you. I wish you’d played louder so that I could have heard it.”
That’s when I felt pain worse than anything I’d felt all those times my father beat me up. Searing
pain in my chest, hotter than any bottle of red chili pepper sauce my father had forced down my
throat.
I couldn’t do it—make her happy. I couldn’t breathe.
It was as if my life had ended.
That memory jolted me back to the present with a vengeance. I flipped back to the story of
The Wild Swans.
“She seized the horrid nettles with her delicate hands, and they burnt like fire. Great blisters rose
on her hands and arms, but she suffered it willingly if only it would deliver her beloved brothers.
She crushed every nettle with her bare feet and twisted it into green flax.”
As a child, I turned to this tale for comfort. Why? Though I doubt I understood the
complexities, I did know that for the sake of her brothers, despite the anguish, the silence and
the suffering, Elise could endure because the brothers she loved were her advocates. As she
endured for them, they, in return, did everything they could to protect her, and in the end . . .
“The crowd pressed around her [Elise] to destroy her work, but just then eleven wild swans flew
down and perched upon the cart, flapping their wings. The crowd gave way before them in terror.
“It is a sign from Heaven! She is innocent," they whispered. But they dared not say it aloud.
The executioner seized her by the hand but she hastily threw the eleven shirts over the swans, who
were immediately transformed to eleven handsome princes. But the youngest had a swan’s wing
in place of an arm, for one sleeve was wanting to his shirt of mail. She had not been able to
finish it.
“Now I may speak! I am innocent.”
. . . when Elise proclaimed her innocence her brothers stood with her, and when her strength
gave way to the strain, her brothers bore witness to the truth, and exposed the injustice.
Endurance—for the sake of each other.
Oh, Dear God!
It’s supposed to be a two-way street
“Mommy, where are you? He’s hurting me!”
My heart raced with a runaway trolley of emotions, and though I clung on for dear life— I knew
it was over. It was then, on the crumbling platform of that two-way streetcar, my train of
thought derailed big-time. I flew off sliding face-first into the dirty truth.
For the sake of each other.
I guess I couldn’t hide in the forest forever.
ALL of it—the pain, the suffering, the silence, the determined quest for perfection—all had been
for the sake of my mother. Were it possible to spin flax into fiber strong enough to string my
violin, I’d gladly have picked and crushed stinging nettles ‘til my hands were burnt and blistered,
to weave silvery notes into brilliant melodies of golden genius. Good God! I’d have even
whistled while I worked were it enough to please her. The child I was would be my mother's
advocate until the bitter end, because I believed her to be mine.
I was wrong. Damn near dead wrong.
All of it WAS for her sake, but none of it was for mine.
How I had longed for protection when I heard the sound of my father ripping his belt like a
scourge from his belt loops. But she sat there, watching me run, and ignored all of it.
OK, I say to myself, maybe she was too scared to move. I can understand that—I know how
that feels.
But even my compassion won’t buy that one. Time after time, watching me run to God surely
wasn’t the only one who knew what was going to happen, and never say a word about it—
ever? Not once did she offer me a word of comfort, not even on following days when he
wasn’t around to hear her. Couldn’t she have said something?
“Then she [Gerda] tucked up her little dress so that she might run faster, but the narcissus
blossoms struck her on the legs as she jumped over them, so she stopped and said, “Perhaps you
can tell me something.” She stooped down close to the flower and listened.
“I can see myself, I can see myself,” said the narcissus. “Oh, how sweet is my scent…”
(Hans Christian Anderson, The Snow Queen)
In that sickening quiet of the aftermath, though my soul cried out for my mother to expose the
injustice, when she finally broke her silence, her belittling words and impossible expectations left
me wondering if I deserved everything my father did to me. Her words hit me hard—hard
enough for me to want to say something in my own defense, but whatever I tried to say she
drowned out with snarling insults and that phrase I didn't understand, but that cut out a piece of
my heart every time she spat it out.
“You’re projecting!”
It was never enough—for my mother or for my father.
Olive or onion with your martinis?
What the hell difference did it make? There was no right answer.
There is no “enough” to satiate the madness that feeds such masquerades.
For the sake of the child I was, who in silence—for my sake and survival—endured the
unending chant of a swan song.
For the sake of the child who grew to a woman still haunted by a grinding fear of humanity.
For the sake of each other. For the sake of deliverance.
Now I will speak and proclaim for myself what has always been the truth:
I am innocent.
after I completed it. As I worked on it, it spoke to me of the spiritual comfort to be found in
my bond with nature. It also represented swirling mystery—the round elements, each a nucleus
of potential growth influenced by freedom of choice as well as forces beyond our control.
I intentionally created winglike hands to give this wise old soul a mythical feel and titled it
MOTHER NATURE. A few days after completing “For the Sake of . . . ,” I realized how
much those appendages resembled the wings of a swan. For me it was an especially profound
and magical discovery. As I look at it now, I see it filled with representation of my own
deliverance and have retitled it.
www.megfoxart.com
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
© 2006 Meg Fox
All rights reserved
This material may not be reproduced in
any form without the author's express
written permission.