I learned something deeply disturbing about myself while Piper was here and I’ve been debating whether to spill it.
Well, okay. That’s a total lie. I didn’t debate it for one teensy-weensy moment. And it’s worse than being the liar I just proved myself to be.
Ready?
Here it is:
I am an unfit aunt.
And before you protest, “Oh, no, Tracey; you’re a great aunt” because you guys are nice that way, hear me out. Allow me to prove my incompetence. My unfitness. My complete and utter boobery. Okay?
Piper arrived late Easter afternoon. We painted, played games, watched a movie, etc. We talked about how she wants to be a designer. “But I wouldn’t use animal fur.” Okay. Good to know. Don’t wear my chinchilla wrap around Piper. Got it.
So it’s bedtime and she’s laying her sleeping bag on the “balloon bed” (aka the inflatable mattress). Her stuffed animals are then lovingly crammed into the sack before she climbs in on top of them. She’s very ritualistic about how she crams them in, the order in which they are crammed, and precisely how she slides in on top of the poor crammed animals. I offer to help her, but she’s got a system, you see. I get out my childhood fairy tale book, the one with the cover held in place by the merest molecules of decades-old masking tape. “Wow. That’s old, Tee Tee.” “Yep. It’s from the last century,” I say in a hushed tone. She smiles and watches as I flip the huge pages to find the story I’m going to read her. One of my favorites when I was a kid.
It’s called Donkeyskin.
Now ….
As much as I remember loving this story, I seem to have forgotten, in the yellow haze of age, some basic truths about the story of Donkeyskin.
The first of which being the fact that, as the story progresses, a donkey skin plays a pivotal part.
The second one being the fact that the title of the story, DONKEYSKIN, writ large above the story in a huge decorative font, might have offered the reader a clue as to the first fact.
However, it would appear that the yellow haze of age has also taken with it things like reading comprehension because I sit there and look at the title of the story, the title that basically screams DONKEYSKIN!! and do not comprehend what that could possibly mean or imply. I can’t say that I didn’t see it — the yellow haze of age hasn’t taken that yet — but it just didn’t register. It was a blip, a dot, a non-issue.
I forge ahead, eager to share a childhood favorite with my niece.
The basic setup for Donkeyskin is this: Handsome king and beautiful queen have a beautiful daughter and a magic donkey that poos gold. The beautiful queen falls deathly ill, and in a final beautifully bitchy act, makes the handsome king promise never to marry again unless he finds a woman as beautiful and virtuous as she. Beautiful queen dies happy — haha! — because she knows he will never ever find a woman like her. All manipulative and perfect and such.
So I’m reading along and ….. oh.
Hm.
Guess what?
Seems the handsome king searches far and wide for a replacement wife who matches the dead wife’s criteria. He comes up with bupkis.
So… as the story goes …. the lonely king decides … and I’d forgotten this through the yellow haze of age ….
“The only princess fairer and better than his late wife was his own daughter.”
Yep. You heard it. Fairy-tale incest. Awesome, Tee Tee.
But do I, Tee Tee, stop reading at this hint of possible fairy-tale incest?
No.
No, I do not.
“He told his daughter that he would marry her, since she alone met with the conditions of his promise.”
Piper stares up at me from the balloon bed, blue eyes huge and shocked and I don’t like this look. Make it go away. That’s the look for later, when she finds out about Santa; that’s not the look for here and now, for me, Tee Tee. She opens her mouth and starts to whisper, ” But, Tee Tee ….” I interrupt her, laugh gamely, and talk fast. “Oh, haha. Isn’t that silly? He can’t marry his daughter, can he? Haha.” Yes. Haha. Silly incest.
And in the corner of my mind where my common sense naps contentedly, I hear a faint alarm, a bell of warning, a dim gong gonging to rouse that sleeping part of me, but it snoozes on, dreaming of Christmas bells and pie. “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, Tee Tee.”
Meanwhile back in our looming Greek tragedy, the princess begs and begs her father to forget the idea, but he will not be swayed because he is a hideous perv. The Lilac Fairy, her godmother naturally, comes up with an idea to buy some time.
“Tell him to get you a dress the color of the weather before you give him an answer.”
He does so.
“Ask for a dress the color of the moon.”
She gets one.
“Uh, now …. demand a dress the color of the sun.”
And, voila, new dress.
So while the royal wardrobe grows bigger and bigger, I just keep reading because, well, I’m in it now, aren’t I? Fairy-tale incest is imminent, Piper’s eyes are bulging, and I’m determined to make them look normal again somehow. I mean, I can’t send her back to my sister looking like this. Like Tee Tee’s is a house of horrors that turns little girls into Marty Feldman, even though that’s exactly what it is at the moment. But it’s gonna be better. Somehow. The sun’ll come out tomorrow, I’m sure. If I just keep reading. Betcher bottom doll … ar …
The princess, even with all her gorgeous new duds, is frantic. Her pervy father will not relent because he is such a big fat perv. So The Lilac Fairy — no real genius so far, frankly — offers another idea.
“Now we must ask him something really hard. Demand the skin of his dear famous donkey who gives him all his gold.”
And here is where my plan — my ill-advised but well-intentioned plan — to de-bulge my niece’s eyes goes terribly horribly awry.
“The king thought it a queer wish but he did not hesitate. The donkey was killed and its skin brought to the unhappy princess.”
Holy animal abuse, Batman!
I glance down at my future no-fur designer and watch her whole face scrunch up, harginger of an approaching storm of tears. Oh, no. No. Make it go away, Tee Tee. Make it go away now. In that sleepy corner of my mind, the dim gong gongs louder and common sense rouses for a moment. I look down at her face and hear myself say — finally — “Uhm, sweetie, do you want to stop the story now?”
From deep in the furrow of her face comes a shaky, “No, Tee Tee. I want to hear how it ends.”
You know, this is so great. Singlehandedly, I have created the perfect nighty-nite moment for a 7-year-old girl: Fairy-tale incest, animal fur used as clothing, imminent tears. Just the ingredients necessary for a deep sleep full of nothing but sweet dreams.
I am reminded how much I loathe myself.
Maybe I can mitigate the damages with some saucy, age-appropriate banter, I think, but I am discombobbled by yellow haze and snoozy judgment and bad timing and the whole venture falls completely flat, like this:
“Pipey, wouldn’t it be cool if instead leaving piles of dog poo in the backyard, Hawkeye left piles of gold? That would be kinda neat, huh?”
“But Tee Tee, if it came from his bottom, I don’t think I’d like that very much.”
Good point. Shut up, Tee Tee, for the love of God. Just finish the whole squalid tale.
It basically goes like this: The Lilac Fairly urges the princess to leave, wrapped in the donkey skin. “All your dresses will follow you underground in a trunk.” (Of course. That’s where all my gowns are.) “Tap this wand when you want them.” So the princess wanders aimlessly, filthy in her donkey skin, until she finds a job cleaning pigsties. She works hard and lives in a hovel on the farm. One day, she passes a pond, sees her reflection and is disgusted at the sight. Back in her hut, she taps the wand and is immediately splendid again in her weather-colored dress. Just then, a handsome nosy prince happens by the farm. He passes the rickety shack, stares through the keyhole — as anyone would do in this situation — and falls immediately in love. He goes home and becomes lovesick and bedridden over the vision of Donkeyskin. “Mother,” he croaks, “have Donkeyskin make me a cake. Maybe that will help.” (Smart lad. Cake helps everything.) The cake is made, but, oops, a tiny delicate ring is left behind in the cake. Prince almost chokes on the thing. “Send for all the women in the kingdom!” (This sounds … familiar …) Donkeyskin shows up, hiding her glory under the grungy skin. She’s teased at court until the ring …. ta da! … fits perfectly. With a shake of her lovely shoulders, the donkey skin slips off and the princess is resplendent again in a sun-colored dress. The prince falls to his knees and begs her to marry him. At the wedding, Donkeyskin’s father arrives with a new “sensible” wife, having been forced, I guess, to choose from the dregs of society left to him after his daughter’s departure. Still, he’s delighted to find his daughter alive, gives her his blessing, and everyone is happy, happy, happy!
Phew. Dodged that fairy-tale incest bullet. Let’s never speak of it again.
“I’m glad the king didn’t marry his daughter, Tee Tee,” comes the somber little voice.
Drat.
“Yeah, me too.”
Then she brightens and changes the subject.
“Know what, Tee Tee? I think those dresses sounded really beautiful.”
And a 7-year-old saves the day.
“Yeah, me too, sweetie.”
Thank God for the resilience of kids because, frankly, I’m totally traumatized.
OMG, I’m crying laughing at this.
She’ll be okay- “The Uses of Enchantment” by Bruno Betelheim says so. Kids need all that Grimm hoo-ha to help them deal with life. (To hear it or read it, though, so DVD’s don’t count, sorry.)
You are one of the best story-tellers I know.
I agree with Sal. Lots of horrid stuff happens in the fairy tales, and some of it doesn’t end up all right – the kids learn to cope in a safe fantasy world that they control entirely: much like the hobbit children who say, “Close the book, Dads, we don’t want to hear any more.”
I remember that the ending of Cinderella, as in the fairy tale, has the stepmother fitted out with shoes that won’t let her stop moving, “and she danced until she fell down dead.” The End! 😀
If you were a kid like me, you’d subtly rewrite everything as you were reading it, by being the dashing hero rescuing everyone with his bravery and smarts. (Mostly, the smarts of knowing what was about to happen, having read it before.) There are worse things than to inspire a child to dream about making a difference. At the very least, you were with her the whole way through the story, so she learns to rely on you.
I got an idea. You’re an absolute wizard with paper and things. Since Piper loved the princess’s dresses in the story, why don’t you “make” them for her? (I’d leave out the “Donkeyskin” though.)
Sal — Thank you for saying that.
plantlady — Haha! She’s already got a whole paper doll of herself with clothes and everything! I posted it up here somewhere. But that’s a good idea. Or even encourage HER to make the dresses. She’s the one who wants to be the designer after all. 😉
Dear God in Heaven, Tracey! At first I was thinking, “how bad could this be? Tracey read this as a kid and survived it; we coddle our kids too much these days…”
Then I read on.
HOLY SMOKES!
At first I thought, “ok, she sounds like St. Dymphna who quite sensibly RAN AWAY from her incestuous father, rather than listen to a lilac fairy fixated on dresses!” But then…she’s in a Donkeyskin and this is her name, too? And she has fits of fashion-depression? The donkey poos gold?
No…even Catholics can’t come up with stuff like that!
Yellow haze!? Oh, my gosh, T, then I need to join “Aunts Anonymous” along with you–the same experience happened to me last week when I was reading Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs to the two middle kids! At least they’re younger than the Peep and not familiar enough with the story to know I changed the words. Half of me loved reading to them, but half of me felt icky.
Some stories for the next generation have been toned down in reprints, so I mess with them even more. When I babysat in high school, I noticed that my charges’ Little Red Riding Hood book had the wolf lock grandma in a closet so he could eat (gasp!) her later. I ran with it, adding a girl power twist: When he opened the closet, she beat him off with a boot. Go, granny! I’ve never made kids laugh so hard in my life.
Came here from the Anchoress. If you get over your trauma, you might be interested in reading Deerskin by Robin McKinley…it is a retelling of Donkeyskin. Very good, but very dark, and very not-for-kids, since the father really does violate his daughter.
I have a nephew not five months old…I already got him a copy of Where the Wild Things Are. I wonder if he will like stories (neither of his parents are into reading).
It’s amazing how we can totally remember things differently. I read a childhood fave of mine to Little Man – one of the stories about Anansi the spider – and it wasn’t unti I got to the end that I realized the moral of the story seemed to be that if you don’t do your work and cannot feed your family, then you can always find a way into tricking someone else out of their hard earned food and thus feed your family. And your family will be so greatful that they will take small portions so you can glut yourself. So then I had to explain why it is NOT good to be like Anansi the spider who lets his children and wife go hungry. It was a very confusing bedtime story situation.
Second only to the time I thought it would be AWESOME to watch The Triplets of Bellville with him. I loved that film. The message about the Granny saving her grandson against all odds is really sweet, right? I forgot about the Josephine Baker caricature that dances with her boobs bobbing for like thirty seconds at the beginning of the film. Or just how dark it is in general. Little Man saw the dancer and flips his head to the side and looks at me like, “Uh-oh. I’m not looking. Tell me when it’s over.”
And all I could think was, “Wow. I am a complete failure.”
Marisa — Yup. I feel ya, dawg.
I read the whole thing torn between Auntie-sympathetic horror and hysterical laughter. Laughter won. I don’t even know what else to say, nor can I think of corresponding tales from my own aunthood. But I will try, because I know I’ve got some.
Maybe some day you can give Piper a copy of this post you just shared with us. It’s fabulous. I completely agree with Sal about your storytelling abilities!
🙂
Anchoress-
Yes! I was thinking of St. Dymphna,too, but didn’t mention as she’s a bit obscure.
Our books are all boxed right now (new floors), but I’m looking this up as soon as the Grimms surface. This version sounds like a knock-off, with too many elements: gold-pooing donkey plus perv dad plus Color Named Fairy, plus the triple dresses. Not straightforward enough, though I could be wrong.
{Piper} the comment about the dog’s bottom- so kid-direct and priceless.
Tracey – on the plus side… when you do it, it results in an entertaining anecdote. 🙂 So, you know, that’s something.
And years from now she will think this is a very funny story.
My siblings and I somehow always seem to see the stories of our parents’ and older relative’s mistakes far more hilarious than the stories about all the wonderful, thoughtful and wise things they did. All my sister has to say is, “Remember the time I broke my arm and mom didn’t believe me?” and we’re OFF. Cackling like idiots. It sounds awful. But it’s pretty freaking funny to us.
Mom still doesn’t think that one is funny. Perspective and all that.
I am traumatized myself! And laughing my butt off at you. 🙂 It’s good I don’t live near my neice and nephew, I’d probably scar them worse than you’ve scarred poor Pipey.
Sal — I know, the “bottom” comment! Hahaha. Thinking practically — which we all know I do so well — it makes perfect sense. I mean, does anyone really want poo gold??
Marisa/Jayne — You’re right. She’ll think it’s funny some day. I hope. Really, she didn’t seem traumatized at all. I am, but she seems fine. Plus, she doesn’t seem to have outed me to my sister. You know, “Mommy, Tee Tee read me a really weird story about donkeys pooing gold and getting killed and this king who wanted to marry his daughter …” I would have heard about it if she had. 😉
sarahk — I cringed the entire time I was writing it. Full-body trauma, I am telling you.
I came over here from the Anchoress, too. Loved your story, and love all the Bougeureau on your page! I am step-mom to 2 girls (all grown up now) and auntie to 4 more (my older sister’s girls). My sister and I live on opposite ends of the country, so traumatizing the nieces is harder to do. I did, however, do quite a number on my husband’s kids with “Watership Down.” Apparently the “sick bunny snuff flick” didn’t go over as well with them as it did with me as a youngster. 🙂
Lorraine — Thanks for stopping by. Always happy to meet a fellow Bougeureau lover. He’s gotten a really unfair rap over the years.
And I’m totally laughing at /sick bunny snuff flick/. Good way to describe it, though. 😉
Thanks for telling this — I love that you kept going! And you have to save this for her to read when she’s older. That story is tad icky, and really weird (your favorite? really?) but nightfly is totally right, it’s a very messed up world kids have to learn to live in. You didn’t scar her, she knew that was wrong, and the brave princess tells a trusted adult (with an odd fashion fixation) and then escapes. Not bad for a fairytale. After laughing my head off at your post I nearly wept when I thought about what your neice most likely would have seen on the news last night.
Donkeyskin is originally from Charles Perrault, who is not well-known among tellers of tales because… well… a lot of his works are rather creepy. The aforementioned Deerskin is Robin McKinley’s reaction to the happy ending of Donkeyskin, because a story that involves even suggested incest should have some repercussions. (She doesn’t like to recommend that book. She had to write it, and she understands that many people like it or need it (trauma survivors in particular have written her thanks), but it’s very very dark, even with its somewhat happy ending.)
Anyway, if gruesome fairy tales bother you, make sure to pre-screen them because the originals are ALL dark and creepy. Sleeping Beauty isn’t awakened by a kiss but by suckling twins (the prince is long gone.) Snow White’s stepmother is forced to put on red-hot iron shoes and dance herself to death. And Little Red Riding Hood gets eaten for being so foolish as to talk to strangers in the woods. The tales we think of as “fairy tales” were softened up, primarily by the Victorians, to make them suitable for children; prior to that they were for adults. (“Sleeping Beauty in the Wood” was written for the French court.)
Melissa — I kept going! It’s so insane!
B. Durbin — Uhm, yeah. Thanks for the “pre-screening” tip. I just thought it was a funny story, man. Perhaps you need to chillax. Read it again. Try to pretend it’s funny.
(Why me, God???)
Came over from The Anchoress’s site. I was laughing the entire time, having had one or two of those “Oh my gosh, this is so inappropriate–WHAT was I thinking?” myself. Usually with my own kids.
Robin McKinley has written a couple of novels based on fairy tales. Her “Beauty” is a retelling of Beauty & the Beast and I think someone at Disney read it before making the cartoon version.
Oh— sorry. I didn’t mean to imply the story wasn’t funny; I just get into lecturing mode and sound as dry as a stick.
Personally, I’m all about the original stories. I just know there are some people who aren’t.
OH – it was Snow White’s stepmom, and not Cinderella’s, who danced till she fell down dead. It’s so hard to keep that sort of thing straight. Thanks B!
March Hare — You’re so right. You’re saying to yourself, “What am I doing?” But then, if you’re me, you just keep going! I’m still cringeing about it.
B. Durbin — I’m sorry. I was short with you. And I love the original stories, too, or I wouldn’t have plunged into this trauma head first.