Fairy godmothers, another installment of Boardinghouse Reach... and a new poem
What girl has heard the story of Cinderella without wishing that she had a fairy godmother who would magically appear at times of need? You don’t have to be as miserable or exploited as Cinderella to need a fairy godmother—every girl needs one. It’s a well-kept secret, but every woman needs one, too.
We tend, as women, to focus on our need for Prince Charming to come along and ensure that we live happily ever after. But, in truth, the succor provided by the prince at the end of Cinderella is no more than a presumption. We’re told that the newly married couple lived happily ever after. But we’re given absolutely no indication about the content of that happiness—apart from the inference that Cinderella will no longer have to do a lot of housework.
Does the fairy godmother, like a family doctor, remain on call after the fairy tale ends? She’s the one, after all, who gave Cinderella the self-confidence and moxie—to say nothing of the wardrobe and the transportation—that allowed her to make her conquest at the ball.
Although Cinderella is usually seen as a love story, it is also the story of a young woman and her mentor. Cinderella, who has been coping fairly well up to this time (considering the circumstances!), is faced with a crisis. In order to move on to the next stage in her career—i.e., to go to the ball—she has to, in effect, become a version of herself that has only existed heretofore in her imagination. Cinderella knows what she needs—and a modern-day woman might read this as more education, a kick in the butt, and a new image. But she needs help if these changes are going to come about in time for her to get to the ball properly decked out.
Enter the fairy godmother, who sizes up the situation, waves her magic wand, and says some empowering words. “Of course you can get your Ph.D.,” she tells Cinderella, “and at one of the better schools, too!” In a shower of fairy dust, Cinderella’s true self becomes visible for the first time since her wicked stepmother assumed control of the household. The beautiful and powerful personage Cinderella always knew herself to be, despite her rags and the dirt under her fingernails, suddenly becomes manifest.
The main reason this happens is because her fairy godmother saw through the rags and the dirt to Cinderella’s innermost identity: she witnessed Cinderella, and in so witnessing her, she made it possible for Cinderella to fully become herself.
Far more women want a mentor than have one. Dating sites sometimes do the trick when it comes to a person’s search for a romantic partner. But most happy couples, when queried, have a story to tell about the strange and wonderful way in which they met. It was kismet, it was chance, it was plain, dumb luck. As it turns out, finding the mentor of your dreams bears a striking similarity to the search for love.
The shortest route, of course, is through your family. If your mother or another relative happens to be the right match to serve as a mentor for you, you don’t have to look further than your own front door.
Outside your circle of family and friends, mentors tend to be found in exactly the same places as potential romantic partners—at work, at school, at bus-stops, playgrounds or bookstores. You can never really tell where you’ll find a mentor, just as you can never accurately predict where and when you’ll fall in love.
And even if you never find a mentor, life may compensate you with the opportunity to be one. The job satisfaction is reputed to be very high for the fairy godmothers of this world.
***
Daniela fell apart on the night before her departure for Brazil. Her room was piled waist-high in books and papers and folded stacks of clothes. What to ship, what to carry. “A garota não sei”—the I-don’t-know girl—sat on the folded-out futon, immobilized.
It wasn’t the luggage, really, or how to carry it. These were only symbols of the larger questions assailing her: what do I do with my life now that I have lived on my own for five months in a foreign country? How can I go back to Bahia and live with my parents in my old girlhood room, following my father’s rules, driving around in the car he pays for? And yet how can I not? Should I stay longer and get a master’s here? Should I move to São Paulo, live with my brothers and get a job in a city where the stakes are higher but the crime rate is, too? And what should I do about it that my heart nearly breaks with love every time I lay eyes on a child; and how can I even think about a child when I am so far away from the point where I’d even want to think about getting married?
Daniela sat on the futon and wept. At one point, I held her in my arms, just as I’d hold Kyle, and told her that everything would be all right—that she’d make all the right decisions eventually, that the right decisions were worth waiting for, and even the mistakes would prove to be valuable in the end. It was the first time I’d seen her cry since she’d been here. I was so used to seeing her broad, brilliant smile.
Colby helped in practical ways. He gave her his own duffle-bag, as she hadn’t had or been able to find just the right piece of luggage for her books and clothes. We both encouraged and cheered her on. But it really looked hopeless that she’d get her stuff packed before morning, when we were to drive her to the airport and she’d catch a flight to L.A.
Then, staring through tears at her ticket, she realized that the connecting flight she’d booked would land after her plane left for Rio. All her psychological reserves broke down: She was a failure. She couldn’t face her father. How could she have been so stupid, and on and on.
People have made much greater mistakes while in the grasp of mixed feelings. But this was not the time for delivering any such information. I got on the phone with the airlines and booked an earlier flight for her, while Colby helped her pack the rest of her belongings. I told her not to worry about her room—I would clean up the mess later. We set the clock for very early, and told her to get some sleep.
It is hard to have someone who becomes such a good friend land on your doorstep and then know that she is about to fly off into the rest of her life in a place that is impossibly far away. That is the nature of boardinghouses: people come and go. It’s also the nature of our lives. We have parents; they die. We have spouses who leave us in one way or another, or we leave them. Our children (with luck) grow up and then move away. Our dearest friends—those who have known us since childhood—most likely live and work far away from where we live and work. We are blossoms on the tree together, glorious for a time—and then the wind scatters us. Life scatters us.
I lay in bed pressed up against Colby’s warm back, not wanting to close my eyes even for a second, watching out for the thief who would take all of this away from me—more friendship and love than I had ever felt before.
Weary, heart-sore, filled with the sense of my wealth, my bounty, my loss, I fell asleep.
***
Daniela was gone. Alison was gone. Babe, our three-week girl from Korea, gave Kyle a last ride in the air atop her bare feet, saying “Superman!”—the only word in English she’d mastered during her time here. When she left, she waved frantically at us from the window of the airport limo.
And then the house was empty. I’d been talking up the rooms to friends and friends of friends with whom I could forge an individual arrangement—and whom I could arrange to feed less often than seven nights a week.
As it happened, there was a tremendous shortage of student housing—the university had enrolled more students than it could accommodate for the fall semester. I began to be assailed with phone calls from the parents of entering freshmen who were terrified about the prospect of their precious child holing up in unsavory apartments or residential hotels in frightening neighborhoods.
These parents begged me, pleaded with me, to consider renting a room to their child. The $725 a month I was asking wasn’t in any way a problem. Dinner four nights a week? They found the arrangement more than fair.
I planned to get all girls this time. But the mother of one boy from Orange County was so forceful—she simply wouldn’t take no for an answer—that I agreed to show her son one of the rooms (after I’d gotten her to shut up long enough to allow me to have a few words with him on the phone). He sounded sweet and shy. Neither of them mentioned anything to me about special dietary requirements or peculiar habits. I was only told that he was rather tall.
Meanwhile, I’d arranged over the telephone to rent Camille’s old room to a girl from Colorado, and Alison’s room to a Vietnamese-American girl—also from Orange County—named Felicity.
It wasn’t that I had any aversion to the foreign students I got through the home-stay program—quite the contrary. But I was still having trouble making ends meet. The $300 more per month I’d pocket this way—as well as the reduced grocery requirements, to say nothing of the reduced time required for cooking—would help considerably to ease my financial burden and free me up to do more writing for hire.
I didn’t think much about what it would be like to play housemother to three middle-class American teenagers away from home for the first time.
***
Unlocking the Door Striving for integration: inviting every part of me to the party as I consider the now of who I am: The lovely little baby, no doubt schooled, early on, in the need to escape her helpless reality. The girl who learned theater craft, convincing herself. Convincing others. Who learned to hide so well that she locked the door and lost the key. That feeling when we find something we’ve lost—when we find something we forgot we ever had. There she is, behind that door: still scared. You move slowly, your face suffused with kindness. Wrap her in the motherly embrace you learned to give but never got. You murmur, “Mommy’s here” till her hurt and fear go away and she feels the sunlight on her face. And who you are now, and who she was, are kneaded into one again. Copyright ©️ 2024 by Barbara Quick