Polly Shulman: The Grimm Legacy

To Mom and Scott, with love and thanks.

Snow fell hard: big, sticky flakes that got under my coat collar where the top button was missing. The weather had delayed my subway, and I was worried I would be late for class.

In front of school, a homeless woman was struggling with a shopping cart. A passing taxi sent out a freezing wave of gray slush, causing the woman and cart to topple over into the gutter.

I had to help. Her hands were icy claws as I pulled her to her feet. She felt much lighter than she looked in her bulky rags. “Thank you,” she said, shaking snow off the blanket that had covered her shoulders. Underneath she wore a T-shirt stuffed with newspaper. And on her feet, to my horror, I saw sandals.

The late bell was about to sound, but I couldn’t abandon someone wearing sandals in the middle of a snowstorm—not when I had a spare pair of shoes with me. I helped her set the cart back on its wheels, then took my gym sneakers out of my bag. “Here,” I said. “Can you use these?” They probably wouldn’t fit—I have embarrassingly large feet. But at least they would be better than sandals.

The woman took them and turned them over, studying the soles. She held the right sneaker close to her face and peered inside, seeming to sniff at it. The left she held to her ear like a telephone.

At last she looked at me. Her eyes were surprisingly bright, a pale, luminous gray like storm clouds.

“Thanks,” she said.

“You want my socks too? Probably not, they need to be washed.” As soon as I’d said it, I realized it was a pretty insensitive thing to say—people with nowhere to live don’t have much opportunity to do laundry. Probably they’re used to dirty socks.

“Thanks,” said the woman again, starting to smell the socks but evidently thinking better of it. “Wait,” she said as I turned toward school. She rummaged through the bags in the cart as the snow continued to tumble down and melt in my collar. I was getting impatient, but I waited till the woman found what she was looking for and held it out to me. “Keep it safe.”

“Um, thanks.”

It was a number 2 pencil—the ordinary yellow kind, with a pink eraser, like you use for the SATs. I put it in my book bag, pulled my scarf tighter, and turned toward the school door.

“Hurry, Elizabeth, you’re late,” said a grim voice. My social studies teacher, Mr. Mauskopf, was holding the door open for me. He was my favorite teacher, despite his intimidating sternness.

The homeless woman gave him a little wave, and Mr. Mauskopf nodded back as the door swung shut behind us. I thanked him and hurried to my locker, hearing the late bell chime.

The day went downhill from there. Ms. Sandoz made me play volleyball barefoot when she saw I didn’t have my sneakers, and charming Sadie Cane and Jessica Farmer spent the period playing Accidentally Stomp on the New Girl’s Toes. Then in social studies Mr. Mauskopf announced a research paper due right after New Year’s, effectively eliminating the vacation.

“Choose wisely, Elizabeth,” he said as he handed me the list of possible topics.

My stepsister Hannah called me that evening to ask me to mail her her black lace top. She’d handed it down to me when she left for college, but with Hannah, gifts rarely stayed given for long.

“What are you up to?” she asked.

“Working on ideas for my social studies research paper. European history, with Mr. Mauskopf.”

“I remember Mauskopf—what a weirdo! Does he still wear that green bow tie? And give out demerits if he catches you looking at the clock?”

“Yup.” I quoted him: “‘Time will pass—but will you?’”

Hannah laughed. “What are you writing about?”

“The Brothers Grimm.”

“The fairy-tale guys? For Mauskopf? Are you crazy?”

“It was on his list of suggested topics.”

“Don’t be a little goose. I bet he just put it on there as a test, to see who would be dumb enough to think fairy tales are history. Hey, I probably still have my term paper from that class. You can use it if you like. I’ll trade it for—hm—your good headphones.”

“No, thanks,” I said.

“You sure? It’s about the Paris Commune.”

“That’s cheating. Anyway, Mr. Mauskopf would notice.”

“Suit yourself. Send me that lace top tomorrow, okay? I need it by Saturday.” She hung up.

I chewed at the end of my pencil—the one the homeless woman had given me—and stared at the topic I’d circled, wondering whether to follow Hannah’s advice about switching topics. Mr. Mauskopf took history very seriously, and fairy tales don’t sound that serious. But if he didn’t want us writing about the Brothers Grimm, why put them on the topic list?

Fairy tales were a big part of my childhood. I used to sit in my mother’s lap while she read them out loud and pretend I could read along—until, after a while, I found I actually could. Later, in the hospital when Mom was too sick to hold a book, it was my turn to read our favorites out loud.

The stories all had happy endings. But they didn’t keep Mom from dying.

If she were alive now, I thought, she would definitely approve of my learning more about the men who wrote them. I decided to stick to my choice.

Strange as it sounds, once I decided I found myself actually looking forward to the term paper—it would give me something interesting to do. Vacation was going to be lonely since my best friend, Nicole, had moved to California. I hadn’t made any new friends in the four months I’d been at my new school, Fisher, and the girls I used to hang out with were too busy with ballet to pay much attention to me anymore.

I missed my ballet classes, but Dad said we couldn’t afford them now that he had to pay for my stepsisters’ college tuition, and I was never going to be a professional dancer anyway—I wasn’t obsessed enough, and my feet were too big.

Fairy tales might not be history, but as I learned in the hours I spent in the library over Christmas break, Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm were historians. They didn’t invent their fairy tales—they collected them, writing down the folk tales and stories they heard from friends and servants, aristocrats and innkeepers’ daughters.

Their first collection of stories was meant for grown-ups and I could see why—they’re way too bloody and creepy for children. Even the heroes go around boiling people in oil and feeding them red-hot coals. Imagine Disney making a musical version of “The Girl Without Hands,” a story about a girl whose widowed father chops off her hands when she refuses to marry him!

I thought I’d done a pretty good job when I finished the paper, but I still felt nervous when I handed it in. Mr. Mauskopf is a tough grader.

A few days after we returned from vacation, Mr. Mauskopf stopped me in the hall, pointing a long forefinger at the end of an outstretched arm. He always seemed to have twice as many elbows and knuckles as other people. “Elizabeth! Come see me at lunch,” he said. “My office.”

Was I in trouble? Had my paper creeped him out? Was Hannah right—had I failed some kind of test?