It was all just a story to save their reputations.
“My gosh,” I said to my aunt, “haven’t they bollocksed it up now!”
She gave that ginger-and-lemon laugh of hers. “They can lie themselves silly,” she said as we set out cabbages, “it’s a boon to the local economy. Your uncle’s guild is delighted.”
***
I was born into others’ expectations and swaddled in their dreams. Bad fit. If they’d wanted me mild they should’ve named me Buttercup. They called me Rose and got what they asked for. I have plenty of spine.
My parents were like a pair of dessert soufflés—sweet but little to them. I’d have pretended to be a changeling if that might’ve spared their feelings. But everyone knows who I favor.
“Right there on your naming day,” Nurse told me, merry at the recollection; “blew in like a Mongol horde.”
My Aunt Feryal, rippling with scorn as if dressed in molten ribbons, pried me away from my mother and bestowed her own blessing.
“She’ll choose for herself too!” Feryal said, waving me like a flag, and my mother fainted.
The unspeakable curse, so almost no one spoke of it. But ideas are like dust, they get in everywhere. They couldn’t clean fast enough to keep me safe from thinking. Nurse fed me bits of family history along with my egg and toast.
“…knotted up her trousseau into a great long rope, scarpered out the window and found herself a lad from two counties over. I embroidered her a duvet cover and six matching pillowcases. It’d have been a waste of my good time,” and she glinted at me like a randy sparrow, “sending fancy nightgowns to her.”
***
I’ve adequate manners but I’m certainly not dainty and I didn’t improve with time. A bridegroom’s the standard prescription for that. My parents have plenty of cousins and the likeliest spawn were sent to woo me.
“Plow the field well,” giggled Nurse, over her glass of perry, “and sow it.”
“Fine help you are,” I said, rubbing my forehead. I had vertigo from curtseying to all the gormless morons I’m unfortunate enough to be related to.
***
“Forsooth, dad,” I said, after a week of it, “have you got a Handsome Swain Captive Breeding Program churning ’em out in our basement?”
They sent for the doctor, alarmed I was delirious. I’d forgotten they couldn’t digest irony. Finally my father came in stamping and said I had to choose.
Oops.
I made my break for it. Nurse told the gardener’s boy, who sneaked off to let Feryal know, and she sent Uncle Paul to fetch us.
***
Uncle Paul’s a blacksmith.
“You want a man who’s handy around the house,” Aunt Feryal said, waving a pizzelle iron to prove her point. Who’d have thought her so domestic?
They had a nice place—roomy, inside and out. “I was looking for freedom, not poverty,” my aunt said.
That was certainly a shared sentiment. I’d brought my own jewels and my favorite dresses. It’s tacky to arrive empty-handed.
But Feryal introduced me to the joys of dungarees and manageable hair and Nurse, who took over the garden cottage at the other side of the pond, was a whiz at the sorts of botanical specialties any woman would be wise to acquire.
I was a bit overdue anyway at learning how to work with my hands, so Uncle Paul cut some lumber to lengths I could wrangle on my own and I banged together a drying shed and the boys helped me set it in place.
Altogether quite a handsome family, and a fine advertisement for the wisdom of broadening the gene pool. I’m glad they’re my best mates.
***
You’d think all the drama would’ve died down by now, with this not having been a novel family occurrence, but we still hear occasional rescue parties from a mile away when they charge up my dad’s highway. I can’t stop myself, sometimes, from dragooning a few of the neighborhood young’uns to make up a peanut gallery, and we’ll sit by the road munching blackberry tart and cheer those other cousins on. They seem awfully hot to find me, those big bold brawny beauties, but they never even glance our way.
_________________________
An earlier version of this story was published 6/21/13 on Every Day Fiction.