A Revolution Is a Wish Your Heart Makes

a darker telling of the Cinderella story

Families are complicated. Hell, people are complicated in general, but that’s especially true when you’re involuntarily living together.

My mother, like many mothers, died in childbirth. My stepmother, like many stepmothers, resented both my presence and the love my father had for me: I was “the other woman” once removed.

I begged my father not to move in with her and her two daughters, whom she’d poisoned against me before we even stepped foot in their large, cold house (it helped not at all that I was unambiguously prettier than they were). But men will do just about anything to keep a lady permanently in their bed, and my father was men.

My stepmother was smart. She immediately convinced Father to will everything to her directly, assuring him that she’d make sure I got my share should that terrible day come. It did, and I was predictably excluded when it came time to divvy it all up. Insisting that the portion I was due wasn’t enough for a home of my own and that “people would talk” about an unsupervised young woman living on her own, she came up with a scheme that had my inheritance (that I was never meant to see) held hostage while I lived a life of indefinite indentured servitude to pay back all she’d had to spend on my care already.

And let me tell you: there’s nothing that will make you hate the bourgeoisie quite like working for them by force. It was the beginning of my radicalization.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner all had to be prepared, clothes had to be washed, floors and windows had to be cleaned, and their garish “decor” had to be dusted. If they noticed me sitting or resting for even a moment, they’d come up with some asinine urgent task, like cleaning the insides of drawers.

But I also had to do the shopping, and there’s no place like the market for information-gathering and organizing.

That’s where I discovered the underground railroad for indentured servants. It truly is amazing what people can accomplish when no one thinks they’re smart. A passed note here, some coded language there, “Are the apples any good this week?”: this is the way that we planned both our escapes and the revolution.

What most amazed me was the utilization of animals in our communication. Crows would deliver messages back and forth, trained to hide the notes in secret spots inside of chimneys and feed buckets. Mice did the same, their little fur backpacks making them look extra plump.

When my turn finally came, the ruling class was skittish and on high alert: servants were disappearing left and right, and though they pretended to be concerned for their welfare, we knew what really worried them: who would clean out their chamber pots in the mornings?

But the night of my escape wasn’t to be the whole story: the Prince, our man on the inside and an undercover dissident — bored monarchy can be dangerous, people! — was planning on sending the nobility out with a bang: a bomb at the end of a ball where they would all be gathered. I would rendezvous with him there, we’d set the bomb off, and we’d make our escape.

That evening, my “fairy godmother,” a woman of means on the side of the Resistance, brought me a dress and a coach. I readied myself quickly behind the barn and headed for the ball while the people of the town stared on, slack-jawed.

My family had kept me so dirty over the last several years that they didn’t even recognize me. The mind doesn’t just see what it wants to see, it sees what it expects to see.

I “met” the prince, and we danced as we cemented the details of the explosion that would go off at midnight. To anyone observing, we looked convincingly like two bozos in love, a true pairing of psychopaths. The servants of the castle, wise to the plan, gradually moved themselves closer to the exits.

But there was a problem. As the prince “chased” me down the steps and out of the way of the impending doom of those inside, our explosive device went up instead of out, resulting in some spectacular and disappointing fireworks above the castle, far away from its intended detonation place.

So we improvised. I went back home, giving no indication I’d been at the ball with my stepfamily or had intended to kill them, and hopefully, the entire system that had created them.

But the railroad kept its promise: the prince “found” me by going door to door, looking for the owner of the shoe that matched the one that had fallen off when I left. He’d wanted us to go that night anyway, but I was adamant: we would not leave until our goal had been accomplished.

Our pairing was as much a result of real romance and attraction as it was of revolutionary solidarity. So as we planned our wedding, we planned the demise of those we were leaving behind. We’d marry at the castle and then leave early for our honeymoon as the ruling class continued celebrating in the castle, all together once again.

Exactly one hour after our parting, we heard the explosion. We saw the flames. We even thought we could hear some screams wafting through the air.

We faced each other and smiled. We’d never forget our anniversary: the start of the revolution.

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Cinderella (the Disney version) was one of my favorite movies growing up; I must have watched it hundreds of times. It wasn’t until I was a grown-up that I really thought about how messed up the story actually was, and even so, I tried getting my daughter to enjoy the movie with me: it’s a classic!

She made fun of it after, prancing around mockingly saying, “Oh, look at me, I’m going to marry some guy just because he gave me a shoe!” She’s since refused to watch it again, though I think it’s partly because she saw a scary version of it on YouTube and is afraid of being reminded.

Or maybe she just doesn’t want to waste her time on it.

If I tried my best to emulate the beauty and kindness of the delicate princesses I watched over and over as a young girl, my daughter is the opposite. She’d rather be a ninja or some kind of general subversive badass, which I suppose should count as a win for feminism: she enjoys, and does not question, a vastly expanded bank of possibilities.

So in thinking about the story, I wondered if there might be a different telling…something that made Cinderella subversive, and interested in much more than the love of a prince. What if she were a revolutionary? A spy? A terrorist for the Cause?

This story is the result of those musings.