Tales from the Brothers Grimm and the Sisters Weird (8 page)

And after she was gone, everybody went back to bed.

Once upon a time, before Medicare or golden-age retirement communities, there lived a beautiful young girl named Isabella, who stayed at home to take care of her parents. The boys in the village would whistle when they walked by her house and they'd call out, "Isabella, come out and play," or "Isabella, come see Clarence's new puppy," or "Isabella, will you watch us race?"

But Isabella always said no, she had to take care of her parents.

The years passed, and Isabella became a beautiful young woman. The young men of the village would carry flowers to her door and they'd say, "Isabella, come out for a picnic," or "Isabella, come to the dance," or "Isabella, will you kiss me?"

But Isabella always said no, she had to take care of her parents.

Until the day Isabella's parents died.

All the young men she had grown up with had married long ago, or they had left the village to seek their fortunes. There were new young men, of course. But—although they knew Isabella as a kind and gentle woman—they were too young to remember when Isabella had been young and beautiful, and they never came knocking at her door.

Then one day, one of her old suitors who had left the village came back. He was stooped and haggard, looking older than he was, and more wary and suspicious than Isabella remembered. The man's name was Siegfried and he was a woodcutter who lived in a small cottage in the forest. But his wife had just died and he needed help to raise his two small children.

Isabella was horrified when she learned that Siegfried had left his children alone in the cottage in the woods while he came to the village, and she immediately agreed to marry him and take care of all of them.

And beautiful children they were, Isabella thought when she and her new husband arrived back at the cottage, as beautiful as the carved marble angels over the doors of the cathedral. A boy and a girl, obviously twins, they couldn't have been older than six or seven.

"Hansel," Siegfried said to the boy, "Gretel," he said to the girl, "say hello to your new mother."

Isabella stooped down to hug the children, but Gretel said, "She's not our mother."

And Hansel said, "Our mother's dead." Then he added, "Our mother didn't love us."

And Gretel finished, "She wouldn't have died if she did."

How incredibly sad,
Isabella thought.
Oh, the poor, sweet dears.
Her eyes filled with tears for the sad, sad children. "Of course your mother loved you," she said. "She didn't
want
to leave you. And I'm not here to replace her. Nobody could ever do that. But I'm here to love you and take care of you just the way your mother did."

"How can you love us..." Hansel started.

And Gretel finished, "...when you've only just met us?"

The two children looked at each other. Their expressions never changed. In fact, Isabella thought, they really
had
no expressions: not happy, nor sad, nor angry. Just...
there.

She said, "But your father's told me so much about you."

Which wasn't true. All he had said was that their mother had died and that he needed help to raise them. He hadn't even said how their mother had died.

Now the children were looking at each other again, in silence. Simultaneously their gaze went back to Isabella.
They know I just Lied,
she guessed. It had seemed such a kind and harmless thing to say.

"Children," Siegfried murmured as though begging them to give Isabella a chance.

Still without a word, the children turned to leave.

"Wait," Isabella called. "I have brought you gifts."

The children stopped. Turned. Waited.

Isabella went to the small bag in which she had packed all her worldly possessions. "Hansel," she called, but both children approached. "Hold out your hand."

Hansel did.

Gretel watched with large, pale, unblinking eyes.

Isabella put her father's gold pocket watch into his palm, letting the chain run through her fingers one last time. "This was my father's," she said. "His father was a famous watchmaker, and he made it."

Hansel watched her with large, pale, unblinking eyes.

"Hold it up to your ear," Isabella said, trying to get him to bend his elbow. "Listen to it tick."

Gretel said, "We're too little to know how to tell time."

"But you can learn." Isabella felt her heart sinking.

Hansel said, "There's never anyplace to go in the woods. And no special time to be there." He moved to hand the watch back to Isabella, but she wouldn't take it.

"Keep it," she told him. "You may want it when you're older." To Gretel she said, "I have something for you, too. From my mother." But now her hand shook. Isabella took Gretel's cold hand and placed her mother's wedding ring on one of the child's fingers.

"It's too big," Hansel said as his sister lifted her hand and pointed her tiny fingers down, letting the ring fall back into Isabella's hand.

"You'll grow into it," Isabella said, putting the ring back on Gretel's finger.

"It isn't something to wear in the woods," Gretel said. Again she let the ring drop from her finger.

And Hansel let the watch drop.

Isabella stopped the ring from rolling under the bed, but the glass on the watch had cracked. "I'm sorry," she said, "there was no time to buy or make..." But when she looked up, the children had left and she could see them walking hand in hand out the front door. "I'm sorry," she whispered after them. She looked up at Siegfried, who shrugged as though he didn't know what to say either.

***

The next days were not easy ones. Try as she would, Isabella could not get the two children to like her.

The first day after her arrival, Isabella spent making a dress for Gretel from the pink cloth that the children's mother had woven before she died. All day long, while the children played outside, Isabella cut and pieced and sewed. Supper was a quiet and solemn meal, with Siegfried tired—having been out since dawn chopping wood—and with Isabella's fingers sore and needle-pricked from sewing, and with the children ... with the children sitting there saying nothing, but only watching everything with their large, pale eyes. After supper Isabella worked by candlelight, finishing the dress just in time to present it to Gretel before bedtime.

"I don't like pink," Gretel said, though she'd seen Isabella work on the pink cloth all day.

"She's never liked pink," Hansel said.

"Children," Siegfried pleaded.

But the children turned their cold eyes on him, and he ducked his head and said no more.

"I didn't know," Isabella apologized. "I'm sorry, I didn't know."

***

The second day after her arrival, Isabella spent making a jacket for Hansel.

"Do you like this color?" she asked before she started, holding up the green cloth.

"Yes," Hansel answered as he and his sister went out to play.

But that night, after cutting and piecing and sewing, when Isabella presented him with the jacket, Hansel said, "It's wool. I don't like wool. It itches."

"No, it doesn't," Isabella said, "not if you wear it over a shirt."

"Much too itchy," Gretel said.

Their father said nothing.

The third day after her arrival, Isabella spent baking cakes as a special supper treat. While she worked, there came a tapping at the door.

"Yes?" she said to the old woman who stood there nervously twisting her cane.

"Excuse me," the woman said, squinting nearsightedly at Isabella, "but I'm your neighbor. The baker's widow. I live on the land that borders on your woods."

Isabella was about to thank her for coming over to introduce herself, but the old woman continued speaking.

"You see, it's about them children of yours. Yesterday they come and throwed stones all over my garden. I saw them just as they was walking down the last row, dropping stones as they went. It's an awful mess, and it's going to take me the better part of a week to pick up. I hate to complain, but isn't there anything you can do?"

"I'm so sorry," Isabella gasped, feeling even worse because the woman seemed so apologetic. "I had no idea. I'll send them over to clean up—"

"No," the woman hastily interrupted her. And again, "No. No need for that. I just wanted to let you know." She kept bobbing her head, almost as though bowing, as she hobbled backward with her cane. "So sorry to bother you," she said.

At supper the children ate the cakes but said they were dry and flat and that even their mother's cakes had been better.

Isabella ignored the stinging in her eyes and said, "Our neighbor has been having a problem with stones in her garden."

Hansel said, "The soil around here is very rocky."

"Perhaps so," Isabella said, not wanting to accuse them, "but she says she saw you playing there and she thinks you might have accidentally brought some of the stones in with you."

"Our neighbor is very old," Gretel said. "She doesn't know what she sees."

"And she's never liked us," Hansel added.

Isabella looked to her husband to say something. But all he said was, "Perhaps," which said nothing.

The fourth day after her arrival, Isabella stopped the children as they went out to play. "Why don't you take this cake to our neighbor?" she asked.

The children looked at each other in that way that made Isabella almost think they were talking to each other without words.

Gretel asked, "To apologize for putting stones in her garden?"

"We already told you we didn't do that," Hansel said.

Isabella said, "And I believed you," although she didn't. "But this is simply to cheer her up about the stones, however they got there."

Hansel and Gretel looked at her with their unblinking eyes and expressionless faces. But they took the cake.

Later that morning as Isabella stood on the front stoop to shake out the dust from the rugs, she saw birds gathered on the path the children had taken. She stepped closer and saw what attracted them. It was pieces of the cake.

That evening, after the children had come home from playing and while Siegfried was still outside washing up at the water barrel by the front door, Isabella asked the children, "Did you take the cake to our neighbor as I asked you to?"

"Yes," Gretel said.

Hansel added, "She said it was dry and flat."

Isabella looked into their faces and couldn't bring herself to accuse them of lying. "Did part of the cake break off before you got there?" she asked.

"No," Hansel said.

"No," Gretel said.

Isabella had never raised children before and wasn't sure how they were supposed to act. She tried to remember when she had been a child herself and was fairly certain she had never acted like this.

The fifth day after her arrival, Isabella woke up later than usual because she'd spent a good deal of the night crying softly. Siegfried, who'd put his arms around her but said nothing, had already left to chop wood in the forest.

When Isabella opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Gretel standing right by the side of the bed, looking at her. Isabella shivered although it wasn't cold. "Good morning," she said, but Gretel didn't say anything.

To get away from Gretel's staring eyes, Isabella turned to get her comb from the nightstand on the other side of the bed.

And there was Hansel standing right by that side of the bed, looking at her.

"What are you doing?" Isabella asked.

It was Gretel, behind her, who answered. "We made you breakfast."

Isabella turned to look at her, and Hansel—behind her—said, "We hope you like it."

Again Isabella shivered. "Why don't the two of you go out and play?" she suggested.

Without a word, without a change of expression, the two children left the house.

The breakfast that the children had made for her was porridge. They had gathered berries for it, which spread purple stains across the pale lumps of cereal in the bowl. This was the first time the children had made any effort to do anything for her, Isabella told herself. The porridge was probably meant as an apology for the night before. And yet ... And yet it looked too ghastly to eat.

She dumped the contents of the bowl out the door and, as the day progressed, watched the grass beneath shrivel and die.

The children had lived in the woods all their lives, Isabella told herself. Surely they should know which berries were good to eat and which were not.

But she couldn't bring herself to believe they'd intentionally try to do her harm.

That evening Siegfried came home from chopping wood before the children returned from playing. Isabella set the table and kept stirring and stirring the stew so that it wouldn't overheat and stick to the pot, but still the children did not come. "Call them," she asked of Siegfried, not daring to admit to him that they never came when she called.

Siegfried stood in the doorway and called, "Hansel! Gretel! Dinner!"

Still the children did not come.

Isabella's annoyance began to turn to worry. What if something had happened to the children? What if they didn't come home because they couldn't? One moment she thought something dreadful must have happened, the next that something dreadful
better
have happened or she was going to punish those children as they had never been punished before.