By Judy Raymond
Once there was a girl who was not a princess. She did not live in a castle, and no fairies gave her gifts at her christening, though she had a delicate christening gown with satin ribbons that her father’s cousin had stitched by hand.
But afterwards her father went away, and the christening guests, and no one came to their house again.
The girl knew she was plain and stupid and unworthy of attention or affection, so she did not speak very much or complain about anything, but tried not to attract notice. But her mother scolded her regularly, so that she would not think too highly of herself.
She tried to stay out of her mother’s way, and lost herself in books. She even wrote stories herself, in case one day someone cared what she had to say.
In the rainy-season thunderstorms she would sit at her window and watch the bamboo by the river bowing before the wind and the lightning prancing like a moko jumbie on the ridge, and wonder if one day she might climb over those hills and go far away.
Sometimes her mother would send her out to buy bread, or milk, and passing men and boys spoke to her, but she kept her eyes on the ground; and once another girl at school told her she looked beautiful. Her teachers praised her work and other girls spoke of going away to study, and she thought if she could do that, she would never have to go back to the house she had to call home.
There was a room her mother told her she must never go into, or something terrible would happen. But during her hours alone, she was tempted. When she turned sixteen, there was no party, but she would have liked something to mark the day, and finally she could not resist any more.
She turned the doorhandle and went in.
Her mother sat in the middle of the room, in a rocking chair, but she wasn’t rocking, so that the chair would not creak against the floor and her daughter wouldn’t know she was there.
Her mother smiled and said, “The fairies sent you gifts when you were born, but I kept them in here and they have rotted or crumbled away. I have a gift for you now, though.”
The girl looked around, but the room was empty apart from the chair, and her mother seated in it, and dust drifting in the grey light from the little window.
“It’s not that kind of gift,” said her mother. “I’ve been saving it for you since you were christened. It has long turned to bitter poison and it will blight your life and bring you endless pain, and you will wish many times that you had refused it, but you have not the power.
“Here,” she said, and she raised an empty hand and made as if she were blowing a kiss at her daughter. “I give you hope.”
Writer, editor and journalist Judy Raymond lives in Trinidad, West Indies. She is the author of four nonfiction books, including biographical studies of Trinidadian artists. Her book The Colour of Shadows: Images of Caribbean Slavery (2016) was awarded a research grant from the Paul Mellon Centre for the Study of British Art and was a runner-up for the Hollick Arvon prize, non-fiction category for a work in progress at the Bocas Lit Fest. Raymond’s work has also been published in anthologies. She has recently begun writing fiction. Her short story “The Old Monsters” was shortlisted for the 2023 Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival Award for Writers in the Caribbean. She was also longlisted for the 2022 CRAFT Short Fiction Prize and the 2022 Retreat West First Chapter competition.
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