The Shadow of the Bear: A Fairy Tale Retold (12 page)

“I’m not afraid,” she said defensively.

Now he seemed humored. “Of course. You’re not afraid of anything.  At least, you think you’re not.  That’s why I’m sending you home.”

“Thank you for your advice.” Rose thrust her chin in the air and marched away, not looking back. She was almost sure she heard him laughing softly behind her.

When she got home, the house was dark, except for a light shining in the upstairs hall. It came from under the door of their bedroom. She went upstairs slowly and opened the door. Mother was sitting on the bed, stroking Blanche’s head, which was buried in her lap.

Rose felt a pang inside her and quickly knelt down by the bed. “Blanche, I’m so sorry. I’m such an idiot,” she whispered.

“It’s not your fault,” Blanche’s voice came muffled. “I’m the one who’s—being so silly.”

Rose wanted to cry, but Mother put a gentle hand on her head and smoothed back her hair.

“It’s hard sometimes to be happy for other people’s happiness,” Mother said softly. “It just takes time.”

Blanche lifted her head and rubbed her red face with her hands. “It’s just that I’ve always wanted to go to a dance, and now I’m a senior and I’ll never get a chance to go to a prom,” she muttered. “It’s stupid.”

“No, it’s not!” Rose cried. “It’s your prom! You deserve to go—not me!”

“So, what are you going to do—ask Rob to take me instead?” Blanche blew her nose on a tissue Mother proffered.

“I could ask him,” Rose said staunchly.

Blanche chuckled. “He’d only laugh in your face. Spare yourself.”

She got up on the bed and hugged Rose. “Rose, it’s okay. I’ll be fine. I’ll even go look for dresses with you if you still want me to.”

“But now I feel miserable!” Rose collapsed on the bed. “I don’t want to go any more.”

“Stop it!” Blanche said. “You’ve got to go. You can’t be always bothering about me!”

But she looked so woeful that Rose burst out crying.

Mother laughed at her distraught daughter. “It’s all right, Rose.”

“I’ll get over it,” Blanche insisted.

“Oh, sure you will!” Rose sobbed.

“By the time I’m sixty, at least.”

“There will be other dances—in college, definitely,” Mother said soothingly.

“Yeah, dances I probably won’t get asked to,” Blanche cracked a smile.

“You never know,” Mother said, putting her arms around her and squeezing her. “You never know.”

Chapter 8

SO WHERE ARE WE going to find a prom dress?” Blanche asked her sister a couple Saturdays later as they left the house. It was a bright day, and spring had decided to make an appearance at last.

Rose paused on the steps to lovingly stroke the rosebushes in the window boxes, whose thorny stems were green with tiny leaves.

“I looked up the address of a thrift store in the phone book,” Rose said, hopping down the steps. “We’ll take the subway downtown and check it out.”

“You may only find old wedding dresses,” warned Blanche. “That’s all they had at the thrift stores back home.”

“So I’ll dye a wedding dress blue and wear it. Nobody has to know,” Rose countered. “I’m sure I can find something. It’s a wonderful advantage to know how to sew.”

Blanche fingered the ten dollars in her pocket as they came up from the subway. The morning sun brightened even the dingy city streets. All the stores were open. There were black men from the Caribbean with their wares laid out on colored carpets on the sidewalks: leather purses, woven handbags, sunglasses, and belts. So many were on one street that Blanche felt as though she were in a Mid-Eastern bazaar.

But Rose steered her past all of them. “Thrift stores,” she directed. “We dare not be distracted.”

Blanche obediently followed her sister’s lead.

They finally came to one in a side street. Inside the store, a mannequin with a jazzy dress and bracelets on stump styrofoam arms hovered on a table overseeing a tumbled pile of shoes. That was the sole attempt at interior decorating. The rest of the store was crammed with clothes—African prints, polyester dresses, designer rejects, name brands, Woolworth’s specials, formal dresses, satin bathrobes, denim skirts, sixties fashions, the widest hodgepodge of garments cramped into the smallest space imaginable.

For some time the two sisters searched through the various clothes and accessories. Rose chose a rack and began to paw through it, grabbing whatever she thought looked interesting and throwing it across her arm. Blanche was more cautious. She walked throughout the store, inching her way around other customers through the barely-visible aisles.

“Blanche, look!” Rose hurried over, sporting a black knitted swing coat. “Look!” It had long knitted strips attached to the sides of the collar, and Rose threw them around her neck like a model. It was a built-in scarf.

“Nice,” was Blanche’s comment.

Rose gazed at herself in the mirror, and wrapped her head in the black strips, like a movie star. “All I need is shades. Gosh, I feel so much like Audrey Hepburn that I could die. Isn’t this an awesome coat?”

“How much is it?”

“Uh—” Rose fumbled for the tag. “Twenty dollars.”

“You came for a prom dress.”

“All right, all right, don’t hassle me, I remember.” Rose slowly unwrapped the luxurious coat and slid out of it. “Boy, I want this so badly. It only has one moth hole.”

Blanche returned to the rack of blouses she had been going through. She needed a shirt to wear with the new plum skirt she had made. A simple white or ivory one would do. Here was a nice-looking oxford shirt—size 3. No. A nylon blouse in her size had a stupid bow on the neck. Never. A striped polyester number, a nurse’s uniform shirt, a cotton peasant blouse with embroidered flowers round the neck—the last one halted her, but the flowers were orange and bright blue, two colors she detested. No.

“Blanche, look!”

She sighed and turned. Rose was grinning out of a long blue fur coat with unbelievable light blue fur fringe. “Isn’t this cool?”

“Rose, you look like Cookie Monster.”

“I’ve never seen a coat like it before!”

“That’s because they keep it in a store like this, out of sight of the public.”

“It’s wild! Can you see me wearing this to school?”

“Rose, take it off. It’s an abomination.”

“It matches our uniforms. I wonder how much it is?”

“Rose! Your dress!”

“
Fifty-five?
Is this a thrift store?”

“They know how to keep dangerous garments off the streets. Take it off.”

Rose went back to her search, heaving the sigh of the censored. Blanche came upon a challis off-white blouse that looked interesting. She examined it for stains in the sleeves and back. No holes, no flaws. And, it was a brand name. The price decided her—five dollars. At last, something to try on.

“Blanche, look!” Rose exclaimed, exhilarated. She flourished a hanger with a satin dress dangling from it.

Blanche came over and examined it. The bodice was covered with blue-green sequins, and the long, full skirt had petals of dark green chiffon overlaying the underskirt of teal satin. “It’s beautiful,” she said, running a finger down the long gleaming folds of the skirt. “Try it on.”

Rose folded it lovingly atop the huge pile of clothes over her arm. “Come with me.” She looked at Blanche’s one blouse. “Is that all you have?”

“Yes.”

“Here, let me get some things for you to try on.” Rose grabbed a red satin dress from the rack and added a paisley print jumper from another to her pile. “It’s no fun unless you try something on that you know you won’t buy.”

The dressing room was one long closet, like a gym locker, where you sort of had to undress in front of whoever else happened to be in the room. The room was empty at the moment except for a white-haired old Hispanic lady over sixty trying on a smock, who beamed a smile at them as they came in.

“With our luck, a man will come in while we’re in here,” muttered Blanche, standing in a corner with her back to the door. She nervously buttoned up the blouse, and then turned to face the mirror. Yes, it fit.

Rose was engaged in the complicated exercise of undressing while keeping her coat draped over most of her. “Hm—nice blouse. Here, can you zipper me?”

Rose turned around for Blanche to fumble with the tiny nylon snake of a zipper. “There. Ooo, spectacular, huh?” The teal dress fit Rose’s slim figure well, although the satin skirt was a bit long. “Oh, this is terrific. I think I have a dress.”

Blanche stood beside her sister and noted that the blue-green embroidery on the dress matched her sister’s eyes. A small knot of jealousy twisted inside her. “It looks beautiful, Rose,” she said again. “You look like a jade princess.”

Rose was happy and swayed about the room, pretending to dance a waltz. “Where’s the tag?”

Blanche found it dangling from the armpit and gasped, “Hey, this is only eight dollars!”

“Cowabunga! This is it!” her sister laughed, exhilarated, and spun around, rippling the skirt. “And to think that some girls in my class are spending over five hundred dollars on their gowns!”

“You need to find shoes.”

“Next job. Okay, unzip me. Why don’t you try on the jumper?”

“Rose, it’s a maternity jumper.”

“Okay. Then try on that red dress I brought in for you.”

“I’d rather not try on a formal dress today,” Blanche said coldly.

Rose was nonplussed. “Okay, I will, then.”

Blanche noticed a black velvet jumper someone had left hanging on a hook in the dressing room. It looked interesting, so she slipped it off the hanger and wiggled into it. It was velveteen and a little tight, but she pulled down the blouse beneath it and it fit. She gazed at herself in the mirror. A perfect match.

“Hey, you look like someone out of a fairy tale—that’s neat,” Rose said.

Someone out of a fairy tale
, Blanche thought. Yes, the jumper with its tight bodice and narrow straps and full skirt looked like something that a fairy tale maiden would wear. It made her look like a little Tyrolean shepherd girl, like one of those foreign dolls. She liked it, but where in the world could she wear it? A dress like this would never fit in with the modern fashion scene. Not unless she was to wear it without a blouse (the neckline was so low she shuddered at the thought). She’d be scared to wear it to church, for fear of standing out. She could wear it at home, and pretend to be a shepherd girl, or peasant maid, if she wanted to.

But that was silly. Why should she want to do that?
Because,
something stubborn inside said.

She remembered that once, when she was a little girl, she had seen a pretty young woman with golden hair down to her knees in a long flowered dress, and had said to her, without thinking, “Are you a princess?” The girl had laughed very kindly at her and asked her what her name was. Blanche remembered going away from her, led by her mother’s hand, thinking to herself that the girl really was a princess, but in disguise. And she had resolved that someday, she would dress as though she were a princess in disguise.

Huh,
she thought to herself, gazing at her uninteresting figure in the mirror, her pale face even whiter above the black jumper,
fat chance of me ever looking like that girl.

A lament of horror came from Rose, and Blanche jumped.

“Blanche, look!”

Blanche looked and saw her sister standing in front of the mirror in the red satin dress with purple sequins wrapping the bodice and encrusting the swirling petals of the short skirt.

“What’s wrong?”

“I like it!” Rose buried her hands in her face. “What should I do?”

For crying out loud
, Blanche thought. “How much is it?”

“Eight dollars!”

“Well, decide which dress you like better!”

“Which one do you like better?”

“The jade one. The skirt is longer and more modest.”

“But this one is a fun one, Blanche. And the skirt reaches the knee. That’s Mom’s rule.”

“
Just
reaches the knee. Well, then get this one if you like it.”

“But the other one
is
more modest!”

Blanche stood beside her and attempted to be helpful. “Look, some of the sequins are detached here,” she pointed out.

“That’s easy to fix. The other one has the same problem.”

Silence.

Rose spun around, and the skirt flared out. It had a black crinoline sewn beneath it, so it didn’t matter. “I like it,” Rose emitted another sorrowful sigh.

“Why don’t you wait and see what kind of shoes you can find?”

“I’m getting black patent leather heels. That’ll go with either one.”

Silence.

“Maybe I’ll just buy both,” Rose said finally.

“Both?”

“Yeah. Then you can wear one in case someone asks you to go.”

Blanche rolled her eyes and said grimly, “No one is going to ask me to go to the prom.”

“Or we can save them for the next dance.”

The next dance. That was Rose for you. Pathetically optimistic. “Yes, but I don’t like both of them. I only like the jade one.”

“Well, then I’ll buy the jade one for you so I can have it too just in case I decide not to wear the red one.”