ella

so she became the worse

cinderella’s evil stepmother - an imagined back story

her name was ella too once, before the world shortened it to lady tremaine. she was the second daughter of a baker in a village that smelled of yeast every dawn. she could divide dough by weight without a scale and she could carry a baby on her hip while kneading until her wrists burned. she laughed loud, the kind that made customers stay longer and buy an extra roll because happiness felt scarce and they wanted to take some home.

she married a miller at nineteen. he was gentle, quiet, the sort of man who wiped flour from her cheek with the back of his hand and called her “love” like it was her given name. they had two girls in two years. the first was sweet and slow, the second was quick and sharp and cried unless she was held. ella loved them both with a fierceness that startled her. she had never owned anything that breathed before.

the mill caught fire one night in january. the timbers were dry, the wind was cruel, the buckets were too few. she stood in the snow holding both babies, one on each hip, and watched the roof collapse. the miller ran back inside for the ledger. he never came out. they buried him with soot still in his lungs and the bakery debts in her name.

the banker gave her three weeks. she sold the furniture, the wedding ring, the extra rolls, her mother’s locket. she sold her laughter. it did not fetch much. she moved the girls into one room above the butcher shop and took in laundry from people who wrinkled their noses at the smell of burnt flour that clung to her hair. she scrubbed their sheets while her own babies cried themselves sick on the other side of the wall. she learned to count every cent, every crust, every minute. she learned that kindness from the powerful often comes with a bill.

she met the widower at the market. he was buying bread for a daughter who would not eat. his own wife had died in childbirth, same fire that took his heart, same blood that took his hope. he looked at ella’s girls clinging to her skirt and he said simply “i have room.” she did not love him. she needed room. she married him for the roof, for the full pantry, for the sound of her daughters stopping their hungry crying. she married him because the world had left her no other currency.

the first years were polite. he was kind in a distant way, the way you are kind to a neighbor’s dog. he gave her a budget for the household. it was generous. she managed it like a battlefield. she taught her daughters to walk softly, speak softer, take up less space so they would not be sent back to the room above the butcher shop. when his little girl ran to her with muddy feet she smiled and wiped them clean and said nothing about the rug. she said “good morning” every day and she meant it. she meant survive.

then he died too, suddenly, quietly, a fever that took him in a week. the lawyer read the will. everything went to his child. the house, the money, the stable, the spoons. ella was left with the title of lady and the duty of mother to a girl who was not hers and who looked at her with eyes that held his face. the money was placed in a trust for the child. ella was given an allowance, enough to keep the house running, not enough to leave. the lawyer said “you may stay as long as you raise her properly.” properly meant quietly, gratefully, without asking for more.

she taught her daughters to sew because sewing keeps hands busy and mouths shut. she taught them to count peas on the plate so no one could say they took too much. she taught them to stand straight because slouching looks like weakness and weakness gets sent away. she stopped saying good morning. she started saying “hurry up.” she started saying “do not embarrass us.” she started saying “we have nowhere else to go.”

the little girl grew and she laughed loud, the same laugh ella once had. she ran through the house without counting steps. she asked for seconds. she left crumbs. ella saw every crumb as proof that the girl believed she was safe, and safety was a luxury ella could no longer afford. so she scolded. she sent her to the attic. she made her scrub the stones where the crumbs had fallen. she told herself it was training. she told herself it was love, the hard kind, the only kind left.

she forgot the sound of her own laughter. she forgot the weight of a baby on her hip. she forgot that she had once been a girl who ran. she remembered only the ledger, the lawyer’s voice, the feel of the floor under her knees as she scrubbed away every trace of weakness. when the girl cried she turned away. when her own daughters cried she said “stop.” she said “we cannot afford tears.” she believed it.

she died in the same house, thinner, sharper, a woman made of accounts and angles. they buried her beside the husband she never loved and they put “devoted mother” on the stone. no one mentioned the baker’s daughter. no one mentioned the girl who could divide dough by weight. no one mentioned the laugh. they remembered only the woman who locked the attic door, who counted peas, who said “do not embarrass us.” they remembered the cruel stepmother. they forgot the woman who had once been kind and had kindness beaten out of her by hunger and lawyers and the sound of her own babies crying through a thin wall.

she deserved better. she became worse. that is the whole truth.

for context, i am not trying to justify her cruel treatment. this is just me imagining her having a back story. simply for fictional purposes!

writer of the day: sara

mimi