by piera
Cinderella is playing on the television. It is an old VHS, although it is not old yet: we are in 2002 and the whole family is arguing, as always around those years. I say that the whole family is arguing, but it is not true. On the first floor, the three older sisters and the parents are arguing but on the third floor, where the second and much older television is, where the ceiling is sloping so much so that on one side of the room only the four-year old daughter can stand up without touching the wooden planks, and where all the photo albums are kept and the parents’ bedroom has been improvised six years ago, the four years old daughter is watching Cinderella. She is trying to ignore the screams and the insults running up the stairs just to crash on the old blue, dusty couch where she is seated. They settle there, next to her, and one would think she does not bother to acknowledge this uncomfortable new presence: her gaze so heavily fixed and concentrated on the Fairy Godmother speaking nonsense while looking for her magic wand. But when I look at her eyes, so still and stern, I can’t help but wonder whether her efforts of ignoring the reality and plunge into the story are useless. When I look at the little girl’s gaze so seriously fixed on Cinderella disappearing into a starry cloud just to reappear a moment later transformed in a sliver-dressed princess, I think that, in reality, all of her focus is in her ears, listening carefully to the screams, trying to make a sense out of those words and accusations of which, even though she knows the meaning, she can’t find a logic nor a reason that might have prompted them. After a while the storm has gone so loud and violent that it would be impossible not to think that it has reached the little girl on the couch. Eventually, it all stops just the way a storm does, and the world goes so quiet it seems it doesn’t exist anymore. It always disappears, eventually. As always, the stiffened position ofthe little girl melts away with the world. In the silence, she can watch Cinderella dancing with the Prince. But this time, in an instant, the world reappears. It comes back with heavy steps up the stairs. There is a labored breath that matches their rhythm. It comes back in the form of the offbeat, syncopated squeaky sound of the wood on which the feet stomp their anger. Or is it frustration? To the little girl, it is anger. The stairs are built almost like a slide: they start off right from the floor and go down steeply, like a den in the earth. A woman’s head pops up from the den, her hair is curly and mouse grey, dark and beautiful. Her eyes are of a very light blue. Normally, they seem like the ice in those pictures you see in the WWF posters: a compact cliff made of hundreds of shades of blue and white and grey. But today they are melted into tears and the girl feels like drowning when she looks at them. The woman wears her usual dark green, long-sleeved t-shirt and black harem trousers. Why is she here? What did she had to bring up from the den the world and its mess and its tears? I look at the little girl to see if she reacts, maybe to tell her to run away. Don’t turn it off, the woman says to her daughter, as if this had somehow hinted at turning the TV off. But the little girl does not move: she goes on with her straight face as if nothing had happened, trying to follow Cinderella in her run. The mother sits next to the daughter. The little girl has a stern expression, a seemingly unyielding posture, her stiffness has come back to squeeze her, while the woman is pouting her lips and her chin is trembling, she is hugging her knees, stretching the sleeve of her t-shirt so that she might squeeze the cotton in her fists. The delicate shoe is on the palace stairs. When the prince picks it up, the mother almost throw herself towards the little girl and she forces her into the hug that she needs. The only movement of the daughter is a reinforced stiffness, she tries to see the carriage transforming itself back into a pumpkin through the curly dark hair of the woman, who is now sobbing and holding her so tightly that the girl seems frozen, compressed into some sort of asphyxiating pipe, or sucked up into a vacuum cleaner. The mother thanks the little girl for being the only one who treats her nicely. The daughter does not answer, as if she was pretending that the woman had disappeared, letting her breath and watch at the mice helping Cinderella endure the injustices and finally get her happy ending. The mother asks the little girl to go on loving her and being kind to her. Again, the little girl does not speak back, does not move. She looks at the pumpkin that had been transformed into a carriage being retransformed, just like that, back again into a pumpkin. If only the little girl could transform into a bar of soap. She could slide away then. Slide away from the hug, away from the couch and the room with that oppressing ceiling, away from the world. To get so slippery and hard to catch, to be so difficult to hold.