TheCinderellaSupportGroup
Cindy was annoyed at her sister yet again.
They had fought about attending a support group to help Cindy talk through her issues. Sophia told her that she needed someone else to talk to besides her, and then she said that she was leaving again. Not forever. But there was someone she said she had to help, so she and her familiar, Spooks the cat, left that morning. Cindy, of course, was a little bit jealous that her sister had turned out to be a witch, but she knew there was more to the story of why she was a witch than what Sophia was letting on.
Now, Cindy sat in a hard plastic chair, holding crappy coffee in a paper cup and watching the clock tick by. The therapist in charge introduced this group as “The Cinderella Support Group”, which was stupid, Cindy thought, because it was really just a group for people to deal with their family trauma. Cindy struggled to realize that her family trauma was much more terrible than the average family quarrels and was offended that the group was named after a silly fairytale. Cindy rolled her eyes as their third meeting progressed, and a woman named Kajong was wrapping up her story about her terrible stepmom and stepsisters.
“…so anyway, I pickled her meat and sent it my stepmom.” Kajong suddenly squealed and clapped her hands together in delight, bringing Cindy’s attention back to the meeting. “And the best part is, she ate it! Her own daughter,” she elaborated with a shake of her head, a smile plastered on her face.
Cindy never understood the need for revenge, but Cindy also had a sister who enacted all of her revenge for her. There were many parts of Cindy’s own story that remained unknown to her, so when she shook her head at the classless actions of Kajong’s revenge, she also never knew a world where her abusers got off easy. The therapist had just finished her response to Kajong’s story and gave her a few breathing exercises to control her anger when she spotted Cindy shaking her head.
“Cindy, would you like to share your experience with the group now? I know we haven’t gotten to you yet.”
Cindy was momentarily blindsided even though she knew the whole point of coming was to “talk through her feelings”, as Sophia had put it. So far, they had heard from a girl whose sisters ate their own mother, a girl whose mother had been turned into a cow and then killed, and a girl who had her pet fish killed because she loved it so much.
“Uh…sure, yeah, I can go. I guess, I had some bad experiences with my family, too, especially my father, and for a time, I thought my sister betrayed me when she was really just protecting me by… but anyway we’re really close now,” Cindy finished,
flustered. It had been almost fifteen years since everything had happened, and she was unsure how to even start telling her story.
The therapist smiled encouragingly. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”
“The beginning,” Cindy said out loud, processing her story, going way back to her fifteenth year. “It started when my sister came to tell me she was leaving. I was brushing my hair, and…” Cindy trailed off as her memories crumbled over her and swept her away like an avalanche. She continued her story while reflecting on her past memories:
Cindy sat in her red velvet chair at her vanity and combed her hair, roughly pulling at the tangled heap of blonde. She was beginning to get frustrated and pulled the comb harshly through her frizzy hair.
“You’re going to pull all your hair out, Cind,” Sophia said, moving over to Cindy and removing the comb from Cindy’s hands. Sophia’s cat, Spooks, jumped onto Cindy’s lap and began to purr.
Sophia sighed and remarked, “You look just like Mother.” But Sophia’s sigh was sad, and Cindy was much too young at the age of fifteen to know why Sophia was upset by that.
“I wish Mother was still here,” Cindy said, and tears filled her eyes.
Sophia did not respond, her lips pressed into a firm line, and she quickly changed the subject. “Look, there’s something we need to discuss.” Sophia put the comb back on the vanity and walked over to Cindy’s king-sized bed. She sat down on the bed, and Cindy picked up Spooks and sat down next to her. Their feet hung off the bed, and Cindy stared at them.
“And the next morning, she left,” Cindy continued. “She gathered up all her items into one trunk and waved goodbye to me from the carriage. I chased the carriage to the edge of the property line, just hoping she would change her mind.” Cindy frowned. “Of course, I know now that it wasn’t her decision to leave. My father forced her out.”
“Why would he do that?” The therapist prompted when Cindy grew quiet. It was harder for her to talk about than she thought it would be. She looked around at the
ten other women sitting around her and thought about how none of them were really able to move on, even as much as they tried to convince themselves that they had.
“Later that night, the King requested to have dinner with me. ”
Cindy walked into the grand dining room in one of her nicest dresses since it was a rarity that her father wanted company for dinner. The chandelier sparkled like the rhinestones on her dress. Her father stood up as she entered and appraised her appearance. Then, he pulled the chair out for her on the other side of the long table and sat back in his own chair, keeping a wide distance between them. “How have your studies been going?” he asked.
“Well,” she said, but she did not say much else. What was she to say to her father who had practically abandoned her a year ago when her mother died? He may have lost someone, but she did as well. She longed for his love but was unsure how to get it.
“Cindy, I am to be remarried,” he said.
Cindy picked at her food, hardly listening. She already knew he would need to remarry because he needed a boy to take over as his heir.
“I am going to remarry this weekend,” he said and paused again, trying to get Cindy’s attention.
Cindy looked up, hope sparking in her eyes. “Will Sophia be coming back then?”
“No, I’m afraid she’ll miss it,” he continued, his voice sounded harsh toward his other daughter. “Because she will not approve of my new wife.”
“Oh,” Cindy said, frowning. Sophia did not approve of many people, but she never outwardly voiced her opinions, except to Spooks and Cindy. “Who is it?”
“You, Cindy. I am going to marry you,” he said and continued eating as if this was not a big revelation.
Cindy was confused. “But I’m your daughter.”
“And you are just as lovely and kind as your mother.” Cindy grew quiet. Her father smiled at her and continued, “I love you, Cindy. We are to be married on Saturday, in three days time. Prepare yourself.”
“I will need a dress,” Cindy said.
“Of course. Anything for you.”
“I was so stupid,” Cindy said to the group. Tears pricked at her eyes, but she forced herself onward. “Sophia made me promise that I would look after myself, and I thought I could, but…” Cindy trailed off, the tears falling freely now. “I was so confused,” she whispered.
“I know it’s hard, Cindy, but you’re doing a really good job. Talking through our feelings is the best way to get them out and find a way to accept our past,” the therapist said.
Cindy nodded and wiped quickly at her tears. She cleared her throat and continued. “I asked for three dresses because I wanted to stall the wedding. I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing for me, and I really just wanted to talk to Sophia. But, in the end, he got all the dresses, and we arrived at the day of the wedding…”
When the wedding march started, Cindy walked into the ballroom by herself, a bouquet of blue flowers in her arms. She walked slowly, so slow that the organ had to slow the music to keep pace with her. She stood at the altar, scared and alone, despite the large crowd that had gathered for their union.
The wedding vows began, but before either one of them could say “I do”, Sophia stormed into the room with Spooks on her heels.
“That is quite enough,” she said. Then, she grabbed Cindy by the arm and started back up the hall. Their father fumed with anger and shouted at the guard to stop them, but Sophia waved her hand and the guards turned into lizards at their feet.
“I was so surprised. First, Sophia broke up our wedding, and then she turned the royal guards into lizards right in front of me. She was a witch, forged from our mother’s hatred and our father’s negligence. She took care of me to make sure I never had to resort to magic to protect myself.”
“A witch!” One of the women exclaimed. “She should be hanged for such a crime!”
“Stop,” the therapist demanded, and the woman shut up. “Continue, Cindy.”
Before Cindy could greet Sophia properly in the carriage, Sophia snapped, “What did I tell you? I told you to take care of yourself. Do you think that was taking care of yourself? I did not kill our mother just so you could marry our father!”
“What?”
Sophia went quiet, ashamed at what she had accidentally told her siter.
“What did you just say? You killed our mother?”
“She was about to die anyway,” Sophia explained.
Cindy slapped her sister across the cheek, exploding with anger. Spooks jumped onto Sophia’s lap, hissing defensively. Cindy recoiled.
“It’s okay,” Sophia told her cat, and Spooks backed off.
“Stop the carriage!” Cindy shouted and jumped off.
“Where are you going?” Sophia yelled after her.
But Cindy did not respond, and she marched onward. She was going to a new place, a faraway place where she did not ever need to see her sister or her father ever again. But first, a disguise.
“I was so angry. I felt so betrayed. I never stopped to ask for her side of the story. I felt so suffocated inside the carriage that I just needed to leave.”
“It’s normal to need some time and space to think for yourself, especially after everything you had just gone through,” the therapist said in her cooling voice.
Cindy thought about it, and she knew that she made the right decision to leave in the grand scheme of things. She needed to be independent for a while. “I paid a man all the money I had left to design me a cloak of donkey skin for disguise. He made it quickly, and I started walking again, putting as much distance between me and my family as I could. I found myself in a different country. It was so hot, and the cloak of donkey skin that I wore was suffocating. I passed out right there in the street and was brought to the Queen. She took a liking of me, and she kept me on for entertainment and to work in the kitchens. Every Sunday, I would take off my ugly donkey skin disguise and walk around in my wedding dress, which was the only dress I owned. I was walking in the fields when I ran into my prince the first time.”
The prince was sort of clumsy and ran right into Cindy, not realizing she was right in front of him until too late. “I’m sorry,” he said, but when he looked up, he was captivated by her beauty. “I don’t believe we’ve met. My name is James.”
“Cindy,” she said, and then immediately regretted it. Why would she tell him her own name?
“Why haven’t you been to any of the balls?” he asked.
“They are not really my scene,” she said. “I am a mere servant.”
“You don’t look like a mere servant.”
Cindy blushed, but she did not say anything else since she had already given away more than she should have.
“Honestly, I don’t like the balls at all,” he said.
“Don’t like them?” Cindy said, incredulously. “How could that be? There’s dancing, feasting, and… well mainly dancing.”
“I thought you said you didn’t like balls?”
“Oh, no, I said it was not my place to be there.” And it might reveal myself to the outside world, she thought. “But I love the dancing.”
“Well, maybe I just haven’t had the right dancing partner,” the prince said, but he said it nervously to the ground.
Cindy giggled. “That could be.”
“Will you go with me next Sunday?” the prince asked, finally looking up to meet her eyes.
“I cannot,” Cindy said sadly. “I must stay here.”
“Then can I meet you here next Sunday?” When Cindy hesitated, the prince added, “You can show me your favorite dance, and I’ll steal some food from the ball.”
“I reluctantly agreed,” Cindy continued. “I was still afraid that I would be discovered, but I was already falling for the prince.”
“He sounds dreamy,” another woman piped in.
The therapist shot the woman a look and nodded at Cindy to continue.
“Next Sunday, I met the prince at the same place. He brought the food in a wooden wicker basket and laid out a blanket for us to rest on after dancing. I sang him the songs my mother had taught me at a young age, and we took turns learning each other’s favorite songs and dances. We agreed to meet at the same spot next Sunday, and we did. I was falling more and more in love with him. This time we talked about the things we wanted most in the world and the things that brought us the most pain. I told him about my sister, and he encouraged me to reach out to her again.” Cindy smiled, thinking about how much she loved her prince and how supportive he had been of her.
“And did you?” the therapist asked.
“Yes, but not yet. First, I baked the prince a cake.”
Cindy brought the cake up to the prince, and he waved the other servants and royal guard out of the room. Then, he asked Cindy to join him. Cindy cast a furtive glance at the door, but the prince assured her that she was doing nothing wrong. Cindy sat down, and together they enjoyed the cake, talking and laughing the entire time. When they had finished their cake, the prince pulled Cindy to him and kissed her deeply
“I love you, Cindy,” he said when he pulled away. “Marry me.”
Cindy sighed. “I think I might love you too. ”
“But I could not marry the prince,” Cindy told the group just as she had told her prince at the time
“Why not?” Someone had called this out, and the group all muttered their agreement, distraught by this.
“I had only been hurt by loving people, and I did not want to be hurt again. Not so soon after everything that had happened. My prince was distraught by this, and he fell ill. The healer told him that he suffered from love sickness ” Cindy smiled at the idea of her prince loving her so much that he actually fell ill when Cindy told him she would not marry him.
“You eventually agreed to marry him, though?” the therapist asked, getting just as involved in Cindy’s love life as everyone else in the group.
“Yes, I did, after a little consulting with my sister. He’s the one who convinced me to talk to my sister and to hear her side of the story, so that’s what I did. Sophia and Spooks had been keeping an eye on me, so when I made this decision, Spooks knew to come for me. He showed me the way to Sophia.”
The cat left the room, and Cindy followed him to a fountain about a half mile from the palace. Sophia was sitting on the edge, sticking her long fingers into the smooth blue water.
“I really hoped you would eventually want to see me again,” Sophia said, not looking up from the fountain.
Cindy ran to her sister and hugged her tightly. Her feelings of betrayal were momentarily overwhelmed by how much she had missed her sister. Sophia hugged her back, and then she
pulled away and examined Cindy’s dirty face and donkey skin cloak. She chuckled slightly, “And what are you wearing?”
Cindy pulled it up over her shoulders slightly. “A disguise,” she said defensively.
“Not a very good one. Besides, I already put a charm over you that will make it almost impossible for our father to find you.”
“Why are you a witch?” Cindy blurt out.
“Because I just am,” Sophia replied gently. “Are you ready to hear my side of the story now?”
“Sophia told me how our mother was a vain and jealous woman She hated that Sophia was not beautiful like she was, so she punished Sophia for it, trying to make her beautiful is what she told Sophia. Sophia got her powers because of that torture.” There was now a hint of disgust in Cindy’s voice when she spoke of her mother. Her fondness for her mother was long gone, and she did not even know the full gory details of what their mother did to Sophia because Sophia wanted to spare Cindy the violence. “Our mother did not want anyone to replace her, so on her death bed, she was going to make her husband promise to never remarry unless she be as beautiful, as charming, as captivating as herself. Sophia saw this in our mother’s journal and knew that the only person who would ever be as beautiful as their mother was…” Cindy hesitated and then whispered, “Me. I so resembled our mother that our father would have no choice but to marry me. So, when the queen got sick, Sophia killed her before she could make her husband promise. But it didn’t do any good.”
“Your father shouldn’t have tried to marry you,” one of the women said quietly.
“Yeah,” agreed Ashputtle. “My father cut down a tree that I was hiding in and tried to convince my husband not to marry me, but he never did anything that evil.”
“What happened to him?” Kajong wondered aloud.
“Sophia actually killed him,” Cindy said. She had just found out. Sophia wanted to keep it from her, but it eventually came out. “He vowed to never stop hunting for me, and Sophia knew he couldn’t change.”
The group went silent, and then Kajong laughed. “Revenge is sweet.”
“I don’t think so,” argued another. “I forgave my abusers. Forgiveness is sweeter.”
A debate broke out about whether revenge or forgiveness was the right path. The therapist listened for minute, but eventually she got the group back on track by asking, “And the prince?”
Cindy looked around at the group and smiled at this memory. “My sister told me that I was going to have to figure out that one for myself, but in that moment, I knew that I would marry James and together we would be very happy. And we were very happy for a long time.” Cindy’s face fell and she tried not to let the tears fall. “He was killed last year when our country was invaded,” she choked out. “Sophia dragged me out just in time, but my-my prince wasn’t so lucky.”
“I’m so sorry, Cindy,” the therapist said. “Do you want to talk more about it?”
Cindy sat quietly for a minute and looked around at all the women going through the same challenging issues she was. She never wanted to talk about her past before, but this time it was different because she knew none of these women were going to pity her or blame her. She knew that they were all in it together. “Yes,” Cindy replied. She would dive headfirst into her trauma, and all the Cinderella girls would be there to support her.