“What’s envy, Mother?” you asked her.
“Envy is when you hate someone because they have something you want,” she said simply.
You stared at her reflection in the three-way glass.
“Like being pretty,” you said.
“Exactly,” she yawned. A glimpse of her red throat. “Like being pretty. Or young,” she added, looking back at you in the glass. Her glossy dark red hair tumbling over one white shoulder. Her red robe brought out the bright blue of her eyes. The robe was a gift from the faraway country where your father was born. He bought her one in nearly every color, each jewel-bright and threaded with gold. You’d never met your father, but you’d seen pictures. He reminded you a little of the ogres in your fairy-tale books. Swarthy and stout, like you. You could see your eyes in his eyes. Your skin in his skin. There was a time when you even feared you might be part ogre, remember?
When you told Mother this once, she’d laughed hysterically. She’d thrown her head back and laughed until she’d cried. And then you cried too, you couldn’t help it. So it was true. You were definitely part ogre, just as you’d feared. Stop it, she said, and then she slapped you. Right across the face. Tears instantly stung your eyes. Listen to me, she hissed. Listen. And the world grew very still while she assured you with the softest voice that of course your father was not an ogre, of course not. He was a lovely man, god rest his soul. Handsome, even, many women thought so. He was just from a place where there happened to be more sun, that was all. And people in that place were darker and they were hairier. So you were darker and you were hairier. You were lovely. You were lucky, she’d said, putting her white hands on your shoulders. Shaking them a little. Lucky, do you hear me? She wished she had your skin and your hair, absolutely. Definitely. And then she petted you like a dog. Smiled at you in the three-way glass. And you knew then that she was lying. She didn’t wish that. Not at all.
Now you looked at her in the mirror until she looked away. Took a drag of her cigarette. Went back to brushing her hair with your gold toy brush.
“Anyway,” Mother said. “The beautiful maiden. She had this mirror. And the mirror talked to her.”
Yes, yes. This was your favorite part of the story. That the maiden talked to a mirror. That she had a friend in the glass who told her things. You were such a lonely little girl, weren’t you? Whispering to grass. Befriending sticks. Dreaming yourself into movies and books. Every screen, every page, like a door to another world, remember?
“What did it tell her?” you asked like you didn’t know. Like Mother hadn’t already told you this part a thousand times.
“That she was beautiful,” Mother said as if it was obvious. “The most beautiful in all the land.”
You nodded. An ache opened up inside you. Deep, deep. For what? Some other life, some other self, some other body. In a land far away. In a castle by the sea.
“But then one day,” Mother said, and her tone shifted. “One day, the mirror didn’t say that.” She was staring at her three selves in the glass when she said this.
“It didn’t?”
“No.”
And in the mirror, you saw a shimmer. A sparkling something that wasn’t there before.
“Mother?” you whispered, your eyes on the shimmer.
Not just a shimmer now, a shape. A darkly glimmering shape hovering in the mirror behind Mother’s reflection. Mother shook her head at the mirror. She took another drag of her cigarette. She was staring at the shape too. Like she wasn’t at all surprised to see it there.
“It said something else,” Mother whispered, her eyes on the shape. What sort of shape? Something or someone?
Someone.
A figure. Staring at Mother. You could feel it staring though it had no eyes you could see. Just a silhouette, remember?
“What did it say?”
“Something terrible,” Mother said, staring at the figure who stared back. “Something inevitable. Something true.”
Like what? Like what?
Mother shook her head again and again. She looked in the mirror like she was about to cry. The figure was looking at Mother sorrowfully. Fake sorrowfully, you felt, you didn’t know why. And that’s when it looked up. Lifted its eyes from Mother to you. Yes, it had eyes, though you couldn’t see them. You could feel them on you. A coldness. It stared at you and smiled. You knew it was smiling, though it had no mouth you could see either. Just a man-shaped shadow. Just that shimmering silhouette.
You should’ve been afraid. You really should’ve been. Definitely. But you weren’t, were you? When you felt his eyes on you, all of you was suddenly lit up. Like the glow-in-the dark stars on your bedroom ceiling. Like your grandmother’s chandelier. You were smiling now.