Coloring Cinderella
Crayons are for babies. Mice don’t wear pants.
There’s no such thing as magic wands, and Cinderella
looks so tired. But Mommy is lying down
with a cold cloth and Juanita has told you to behave,
so you open to page 1, fill the leaves
with lime-green summer, the sky with blue.
Red is for the sun, like Daddy yesterday,
popping out his forehead vein, shouting at you
for sitting on the pantry floor in your new dress. For shame.
Black is like the men down by the river. Good-for-nothings,
Grandfather says. Brown is Juanita and Mommy is pink.
You are careful to stay inside the lines on every page--
because Grandfather will correct you if you don’t— and because it is so easy
to be bad and you want to be a better girl at everything—like remembering
that eavesdropping on Bridge Club is not just impolite but worse than stealing
puffs of cigarettes or picking the cherry from the bourbon at the bottom
of Aunt Helen’s glass. Or that you must never repeat the words
that come up through the heating vent at night.
When you go to school you will need good discipline
and good posture. You will need good penmanship
to sign your notes when you are grown and you will need to know how
to wait your turn at The Nutcracker without cursing at the usher
for being a slow old bat, and how to keep your car off the sidewalk.
The neighbors will not want you falling headfirst over the gate
to sing at their swimming party or firing Grandfather’s pistol at their gardener.
On the last page, Cinderella is dressed up in princess clothes.
The Prince holds out a ring. Now is the time
to scribble out her hair, her hands and feet.
Now is the time to make her pretty horses bleed--
anything to keep her from climbing into that coach.
Crayons are for babies. Mice don’t wear pants.
There’s no such thing as magic wands, and Cinderella
looks so tired. But Mommy is lying down
with a cold cloth and Juanita has told you to behave,
so you open to page 1, fill the leaves
with lime-green summer, the sky with blue.
Red is for the sun, like Daddy yesterday,
popping out his forehead vein, shouting at you
for sitting on the pantry floor in your new dress. For shame.
Black is like the men down by the river. Good-for-nothings,
Grandfather says. Brown is Juanita and Mommy is pink.
You are careful to stay inside the lines on every page--
because Grandfather will correct you if you don’t— and because it is so easy
to be bad and you want to be a better girl at everything—like remembering
that eavesdropping on Bridge Club is not just impolite but worse than stealing
puffs of cigarettes or picking the cherry from the bourbon at the bottom
of Aunt Helen’s glass. Or that you must never repeat the words
that come up through the heating vent at night.
When you go to school you will need good discipline
and good posture. You will need good penmanship
to sign your notes when you are grown and you will need to know how
to wait your turn at The Nutcracker without cursing at the usher
for being a slow old bat, and how to keep your car off the sidewalk.
The neighbors will not want you falling headfirst over the gate
to sing at their swimming party or firing Grandfather’s pistol at their gardener.
On the last page, Cinderella is dressed up in princess clothes.
The Prince holds out a ring. Now is the time
to scribble out her hair, her hands and feet.
Now is the time to make her pretty horses bleed--
anything to keep her from climbing into that coach.
