Cinderella - An alternative point of view - A short story

It’s been 10 years now since mother married that pathetic man, and then he only went and died two years later, saddling us with his equally pathetic daughter. I’ll never understand why mother chose to marry that man in the first place, but apparently he was rich, so I guess that justifies it. I barely remember my own father, though mother said he was as worthless as a cracked teapot. 

 

Speaking of the daughter, we enter the house and see her there scrubbing away at the floors, working hard as an ant. “You missed a spot” my mother scorns, rubbing her muddy shoe on the freshly cleaned boards, marring their gentle gleam with ugly brown smears. 

 

I have a momentary flicker of sympathy for the wretch, but then I remember what mother always says: “she isn’t like us, she likes to live this way. She isn’t delicate and refined like we are”. Something about this doesn’t quite ring true from my memories before her father’s death, but I shrug it off. Mother is always right.

 

There has just been an announcement that the palace is holding a ball and inviting all the young ladies of the realm for the prince to find a wife, and we are buzzing like bees with excitement. Mother is babbling to us about it and I see Cinderella’s head pop up like a jack-in-the-box, eyes shining as bright as stars. The poor dear probably doesn’t realise the invitation is surely just for respectable ladies, not for servants like her. She is rather pretty in her own way, like a flower sprouting from a weed, but surely the prince would not marry so low.

 

We dash past her in a frenzy of activity and planning. 

“We shall have to order new dresses” mother says, “We can’t have you looking last season in the Palace of all places.”

She hears no complaints from my sister and I, we are always as eager as a fine-nosed hound to get new clothes. Something that is pitifully infrequent these days now that our stepfather’s coin is dwindling. 

 

I look back at Cinderella as we ascend the stairs and see a mixture of sadness and envy displayed on her face. Perhaps she really is more like us than mother says.