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The sickly daughter doesn’t talk much People who know her at school tend to keep away They didn’t know her well before she got sick anyway She was quiet even then
Now she misses school half the time When she’s there, her pale skin and watery eyes ic, like a literary heroine wasting fro She frightens the other students Even the kindest ones are tired of walking her to the nurse’s office
Still, she has an aura of led out for typical high school unpleasantness Her mother is a Sinclair
Of course, I feel no sense of ht, or lying in the fluorescent light of the school nurse’s office It is hardly glaone
I wake to find her standing in
“Don’t hover”
“I love you I’ care of you,” she says, her hand on her heart
“Well, stop it”
If I could shut my door on her, I would But I cannot stand up
Often I find notes lying around that appear to be records of what foods I’ve eaten on a particular day: Toast and jam, but only 1/2; apple and popcorn; salad with raisins; chocolate bar; pasta Hydration? Protein? Too er ale
It is not glamorous that I can’t drive a car It is nota novel in a pile of solden retrievers However, I a viewed as a ed clan of special people, and as part of a ical, important narrative, just because I am part of this clan
My mother is not immune to it, either
This is e have been brought up to be
Sinclairs Sinclairs
16
WHEN I WAS eight, Dad gave me a stack of fairy-tale books for Christmas They came with colored covers: The Yellow Fairy Book, The Blue Fairy Book, The Crie Inside were tales from all over the world, variations on variations of familiar stories
Read them and you hear echoes of one story inside another, then echoes of another inside that So many have the same premise: once upon a time, there were three
Three of so:
three pigs,
three bears,
three brothers,
three soldiers,
three billy goats
Three princesses
Since I got back fro some of my own Variations
I have time on , of a story you have heard before
ONCE UPON A tihters
As he grew old, he began to wonder which should inherit the kingdo decided to ask his daughters to demonstrate their love for him
To the eldest princess he said, “Tell me how you love me”
She loved hidom
To the middle princess he said, “Tell me how you love me”
She loved hith of iron
To the youngest princess he said, “Tell me how you love me”
This youngest princess thought for a long ti Finally she said she loved him as meat loves salt
“Then you do not love hter froe drawn up behind her so that she could not return
Now, this youngest princess goes into the forest with not so h a hard winter, taking shelter beneath trees She arrives at an inn and gets hired as assistant to the cook As the days and weeks go by, the princess learns the ways of the kitchen Eventually she surpasses her ehout the land