The May Queen
© 2007 Michelle Tocher, used by permission
[Images:"Fairy Stories by Hans Christian Anderson" illustration by Margaret Tarrant, 1910; "Thumbelina" by Eleanor Vere Boyle, 1872; "Butterfly Ride" illustration by Charles Robinson, 1911]

2

May

I dropped a bombshell. Poor little elf, she looked absolutely shell-shocked. She should have been told the truth a thousand years ago.

She was wearing a little pink cotton shirt with a boat-cut neckline, revealing her beautiful bones. She looked so lost, so pale. Good Lord, what's gotten into me? (Don't tell me. I know.) Still, I should have found a better way. What, though? How does one spill blood without making a mess?

That's twice I've lost my sweet, sweet child.

I don't pay the bill. I stay and have another beer. And, because his shift has ended, the waiter takes Molly's place in the booth. He says his name is DJ, or JD.

"Which stands for?"

"Daniel Jonathan, or Jonathan Daniel, whatever you wish."

"Sounds like some sort of gigolo."

He grins. "And you're some sort of witch."

He has taken off his white shirt and now wears a gray linen button-down item. It has a murky print, a swirl of yellow and pink water lilies that can be seen through a gray fog. I note the leather headband. The strong, stubbled jaw. High cheekbones. Deep-set eyes. Gorgeous stranger. This is what I didn't get married for.

But I'm not up to my usual antics, and if he weren't so over-the-top charming I'd give him the heave-ho. "Yep, I'm a witch, all right," I say. "I specialize in disenchantment."

He smirks and fingers the frost on his glass. He's got no words. I'm not even close to his age, but even if I were, he'd have no words. God, are those eyes of his really purple? A backdrop for stars. Nothing more beautiful than a man bewildered. What a refreshing contrast to the know-it-alls I've met. He saw Molly leave upset, and offered me his company when I decided on another drink. Here we are. I don't want to play with him. I don't think he wants to play with me, but something has pulled us together. Real magic, perhaps.

"Look," I say, "I just told my niece Molly that she's my daughter and I'm her mom. I vowed never, ever to tell her that."

"Why did you tell her now?"

"Because I'm dying, and that's another thing Molly doesn't know."

"Whoa," he says.

Woe. I rest the palm of my hand on a juice glass. "All my life I've kept secrets. I only divulge them to strangers, comme ça. To my family members, I'm a romantic figure, all glamour and mystery, and that's exactly how they want me to be. But I can no longer maintain the spell."

He leans forward, frowning. "Why did you vow to your sister not to tell that you were Molly's mother?"

"It's complicated."

"Try me."

"I have fairy blood."

His cheeks blaze.

"You do believe in fairy blood."

He doesn't miss a beat. "I think I do. Tell me more."

It is a delicious moment because I am frankly fascinated by what it means to have fairy blood. "If you have fairy blood, you have a special gift. A charm. It's a curse, too. Like your beauty. Like mine. You know the myth of Narcissus, right? Surely, my darling, you know your own story."

"No," he says. "I don't know it." He frowns. I'm sure he's heard the word "narcissist" before but I bet he doesn't know what the word means, let alone the story behind it.

"Well, when Narcissus was born, he was astonishingly beautiful, and he would be all his life. His mother wanted to know what his future had in store, so she took him to a blind seer named Tiresias who told her that her son would be happy so long as he never knew himself. And then one day he happened to see his reflection in the mirror of a very still pond, and he couldn't tear himself away. He was completely besotted with himself. That's the hazard for those born with fairy blood. We can get caught in our own charms — stuck on the surface."

"So tell me what's underneath," he purrs.

"Well, if Narcissus had been willing to see past his own reflection, he would have seen that the pond was teeming with fish. I've enjoyed surfaces long enough. I haven't plunged into my depths. It's not a matter of seeking. I don't have time to seek. It's a matter of being honest."

"So be honest. Be honest now." He leans back, like a swordsman with the tip of his rapier to my heart. Or a lover probing something deep.

"I wanted to help my sister. She and her husband had been trying to have a baby for more than a decade. Cora had abandoned all hope, and Gerald had retreated to the basement. He spent all his time making birdhouses.

"I came over just before Christmas, all enthused because I'd just gotten back from a trip to Eastern Europe. What a dismal household! I can tell you that no stockings were hung from the chimney with care. And to make it worse, I brought Cora a pair of ugly wooden gargoyles. Something for the mantle — I don't know."

"An odd gift," he remarks.

"Yes, well, she thought so too. She jammed them back into the box and told me they were hideous. Why hadn't I brought her something pretty? All those years of looking after me after our mother died, and I get her that crummy gift. But I knew what was really eating her. I asked her if she had considered adoption. No, absolutely not. She wasn't going to adopt."

"Why not?" JD inquires as he plays with the fingers of my glove.

"She had a thing about genes. The baby had to have good genes. I said, 'You can't control who your baby's going to be, Cora, even if you have one of your own.'

"She cut me off. She didn't want me telling her how to have a baby. I suggested we ask Dee, my eldest sister, if she would give her one of hers. Dee breeds like a rabbit — but Cora and I both knew Dee would never give up one of her bunnies, not even to her own sister. And that's when I became heroic. I said, 'Well, Cora, how about me? I could be your surrogate.'

"She resisted, but only a little. So we planned it. In a very clinical way, mind you, involving doctors and taking temperatures and arranging that special meeting."

"Special meeting?" JD drops the glove and sits up to hear the juicy part.

"I had known Gerald for ages. It was a family affair, you might say." I ignore his frank astonishment. "After the deed was performed, I have to say that Cora would have been happy to see me disappear off the face of the earth. She made me vow in writing that I would never, ever tell the child that I was her mother. It was easy enough to make that vow before the baby was conceived, but from the moment she started to wiggle around in me, I knew she was one of my own — a fairy child — only she wouldn't just flit about on the surface like me. She would have the courage to dive deep, be herself, no matter how radical. The last person I wanted to give her up to was Cora — all flat-footed and plain-speaking and dumb to gargoyles.

"Cora took her from the nurse in the delivery room, before I even held her. I never held her."

Tears spill out of my eyes. I can't contain them.

JD reaches for my hands and closes them in his. "I never met my birth mother," he says. "But I hope to hell she was like you." His eyes are shining. We marvel.

And order another lager.

Molly was born on Epiphany. January 6. A Christmas gift.

I don't have a sweater to pull around me on the brisk walk home. I do have three pints of beer sloshing around in an empty belly. I like alcohol too much. I drink for the spirits. But they leave me hollow.

I gave my baby up and I replaced her with a story. Thumbelina. I made her a mattress of violet petals, a roseleaf coverlet, a walnut cradle. I wouldn't let her be stolen away by an old toad who wanted to improve her lot. Thumbelina wouldn't have that kind of fate. I wouldn't leave her to shiver alone on a lily pad in a wild marsh.

But, of course, that is just what I did. I gave her up to my sister the toad.

I can still see Molly in her candy-striped pajamas, scrambling onto the sofa after dinner the Christmas I gave her the book. We read about the toad who saw Tiny in the window. The toad thought, What a perfect mate the fairy child will make for my ugly son! She hopped through the broken window, grabbed the cradle, and towed Tiny out to the marsh where she placed her on a lily pad.

When Tiny woke early in the morning, she began to cry bitterly, for she could see nothing but water on every side of the large green leaf, and no way of reaching the land.

"I don't think I like this story, Auntie May," said Molly, looking at me with big watery eyes.

"Don't you worry," I whispered. "I'm looking out for you, just like the fishes."

"What fishes?"

The little fishes, who swam about in the water beneath, had seen the toad, and heard about her plans, so they lifted their heads above the water to look at the little maiden. As soon as they caught sight of her, they saw she was very pretty, and it made them very sorry to think that she must go and live with the ugly toads. "No, it must never be!" they exclaimed, so they assembled together in the water, round the green stalk which held the leaf on which the little maiden stood, and gnawed it away at the root with their teeth. Then the leaf floated down the stream, carrying Tiny far away out of reach of land.

"Can you turn into a fish, Auntie May?"

"Not at this moment, Molly Mite. But if you were stuck on a lily pad and about to marry a toad, I would work out the spell!"

I think she believed me. And that's good, because it's true.

It's three o'clock in the morning and I'm standing on my balcony, looking at the black harbor water. I've been up all night, thinking. It's only a matter of weeks before I jet off to Hawaii. Why am I leaving? Because I want to be rocked in the arms of a handsome kahuna who has promised to chant me to sleep by the waves and tell me how to peel off my roles and let all my stage names go.

But is that what I really want to do? No. What I really want to do is to stay put. Now, that would be off script. Not expected of May Galloway.

I've been flying all my life. I'm a flit-about, a may fly, a cockchafer (see Thumbelina). I live in the air. I fly by the seat of my pants, by the stars, carried by the wind, whichever way it blows. And, in keeping with my nature, I have always looked down on creatures of the earth — toads and mice and moles — things that scurry around and live in holes. It was beneath me to land anywhere. Until I gave birth to a child. Until I gave her away.

Before I take off to some altogether different plane, I'd like to have said that I landed. That I died to my nature before I departed — went into a chrysalis and came out a butterfly.

How does one die before one dies? It doesn't need to be dramatic. Only effective. The harbor lights are silver on the black water, stabbing the back of my brain.

It's easy to die, of course. One simply falls backwards into the arms of love.

Molly

Saturday, May 7

I haven't even made coffee. I'm still in my nightshirt, sitting at my desk. Pansy has fled to the bedroom to sleep in the rats' nest that I left behind. I haven't been able to sleep for the past two nights. I wake up sweating — then I wake up cold. I feel like a fawn alone in a forest — bewildered, orphaned. I'm not going to say that I feel like Thumbelina, swept downstream. I reject that metaphor. I don't want to think about May or my parents or my past. I've got five emails from Eric that I haven't answered, or even read, and each one is longer than the last. As if he can get my attention with length.

I shut my computer down. I don't want anything coming in.

Fourteen days till we meet.

Today is Saturday. Saturn's day. What does that mean?

The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols is sitting on my desk, pebbled by sunlight. It's got a swirling pink-and-orange-sherbet cover. Maybe the dictionary can help me.

"In astrology ... Saturn sets the existing order of things in a rigid frame, and is thus opposed to all change." But those frames are "obstacles," barriers leading to "misfortune, impotence and paralysis." The book instructs us to defy Saturn, free our selves from the "internal prison of our animal nature and worldly ties ..."

I see the toad reach through the broken window. She grabs Tiny and carries her out to the marsh where the shrill of mating frogs shatters her ears.

I see her shivering, bone cold, stranded on a lily pad. She cranes her neck to look down into the murky water.

Fish snouts break the surface. Fish eyes blink at the child. According to the story, the fishes knew her wishes. How was that possible? They nibbled away at the lily roots and they freed her. She went floating downstream.

Words on the page blur and fog.

The phone rings. I don't take it. I wait for the beep and the message.

"Molly dear, it's your mom. Just checking to see that you're coming for dinner."

Saturday. Oh crap. Every Saturday I go for dinner with Mom and Dad. It's a tradition. It keeps us up to date says Mom. What if there's nothing to update? What if I don't want to provide an update? Am I not entitled to have a few dates of my own? A few secrets, Mom? Like you?

I defied Saturn yesterday. I told the cab driver he stank. That felt like liberation, like sailing downstream.

Dinner. Sure. Why not.

I walk over at five, dressed in my uniform for Saturday dinners — navy blue sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt. I tend to wear clothes that I can hide in. I don't like people looking at my body, checking out the size of my breasts or the shape of my ass. I often put my hair in braids or pigtails or I'll tie it back with elastic bands and bobby pins and stuff it under a baseball cap. I seek to look ordinary.

As usual, Dad comes to the door to greet me, shuffling along in moccasins that are always stretched bigger than his feet. He doesn't shave on Saturday: it's his way of snubbing Saturn and I love him for it. Though I'm pissed off that he's been such a quiet father (is it his Métis heritage?), so diligent but so content to be in the shadows. He rarely speaks unless he's spoken to. (His mother was Cree Indian and his father was British. I never knew them. His father died of diabetes, his mother during his birth). Dad was raised by three aunts who lived around Selkirk, Manitoba. He went from one to the other and called them all mother. The irony hits me as I walk into the living room. His only remaining mother is Renata. She's a medicine woman and her spirit name is White Snake. We don't see her too often, but when we do, it's usually because something has gone very wrong. Once, when the atmosphere in the house got really cold (and, believe me, it could get cold) White Snake came in and took Mom upstairs to her bedroom. Mom hollered like a madwoman and broke all the lamps in the room. I was only eight or nine at the time, and I ran out into the backyard and tried to bury myself in the sandbox. You don't want to mess with White Snake.

My father always told me to do what my heart tells me, but he's held back one of the most vital pieces of information — where my heart comes from, who gave me my heart.

"Cora!" he shouts into the kitchen. "Molly's here."

"Hi sweetie," she says, popping her head through the door to the dining room. "I've made a meatloaf. Not very special, I'm afraid, but I've been out in the garden all day."

She wants me to see it so we go out into the backyard. Her daffodils are up and her tulips are on the way. She's got a bundle of seed packets to show me. Delphinium, alyssum, wisteria, Virginia bluebells, forget-me-not.

We peer at the freshly tilled, coffee-ground beds. Her herb garden is a circle in the center of the lawn, a graveyard of popsicle sticks labeled in India ink.

I stare at the sticks. I've started to cry inside. The seeds are being watered by a secret spring, underneath. She's showing me her seed packets with all their pretty labels. Potentialities. "Where did you get all these seeds?" I ask.

"From a greenhouse near Oakville. They've got the best selection of everything," she says. "Really unusual varieties." She stoops over a patch of dirt marked Phlox. "It's worth going looking for seeds."

"You would know," I say suddenly.

She straightens up. She's wearing an old blue sweater woven with pink fibers, brown trousers and rubber garden shoes she got for five bucks at Wal-Mart. She shields her eyes because I'm standing in the sun. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Her gray hair is curly like mine, and it's flying all over her cabbage face. I feel a stab of love for her. Or is it the stab of betrayal? "I mean, I'm not exactly your seed, am I?"

She stumbles sideways so she can see my face. "What are you saying?"

"You tell me. Who was my real mom?"

"I'm your real mom," she barks. "Who else do you think raised you?"

"Yes, but you didn't conceive me. You didn't give birth to me."

She opens her mouth to speak and then snaps it shut.

"Why didn't you tell me, Mom?"

"Goddamn it, May! What the hell did she say? No, don't tell me—I don't want to know!" She throws her seed packets on the ground and stomps up the porch steps.

No way am I going to let her run for cover. I yank the edge of her sweater. "Why didn't you tell me? Why did you keep my origins a secret?"

She shakes me off and starts shoving little plastic pots into bigger ones.

"You wanted me all to yourself — is that right?"

"Lots of adopted kids don't know who their biological parents are," she says, whirling around.

"Yeah, but they know they're adopted."

"And what would that do? You'd spend your whole life trying to find your birth mother."

"So you figured it was best to tell me nothing?"

She rakes a smudge of dirt over her sweating brow and glares at me. "It wasn't anything you needed to know, Molly."

"Are you kidding? Did you think you could keep a secret like that from me? Don't you think I'd feel something was wrong? Like I was being locked out?"

I notice my father standing in the shadows on the other side of the sliding glass door.

"If you thought something was wrong," says Mom, "it was because May couldn't keep her big mouth shut. She kept dropping clues, hoping you'd pick them up. Like that stupid story she kept telling you about a barren mother and a barleycorn. Of course that's not going to sit right, with her repeating it over and over again. She kept wheedling her way in, trying to lay a claim on you!"

Dad slides the door open.

"I just didn't want to lose you!" Mom cries dramatically, dropping the plastic pots. She kicks off her garden shoes and barges through the door. Dad gives her a wide berth. I hear the upstairs bedroom door slam. Dad stands in the doorway, strands of gray hair flying out of his pony tail. He's handsome, I notice. Weathered. Wily.

"How much do you know, Moll?" he asks quietly.

"I know everything, Dad."

There's a pained twinkle in his blue-black eyes.

May

Monday, May 9

Cora won't return my calls. Neither will Molly.

Falling backwards seemed like a good idea at the time. But now I have to wonder. Does love have arms?

I haven't canceled my reservations. I can still fly away. I consider the prospect, standing naked before my full length mirror. (It is affixed to the back of my bathroom door.) I'm seriously tempted. What have I got to stay for? Cora would wish me a permanent good riddance.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not feeling sorry for myself. My cancer makes for a rather convenient exit. It could all be done so easily. May disappears to Hawaii. Writes a cryptic note— I love you. Goodbye. My lease is up in two months, and the lawyer can look after the details. It actually wouldn't be all that difficult to slip out of the world.

What do you think, my naked mirror? We've always had a compatible relationship, not to mention intimate. Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?

Well you're still my personal favorite, May. But then, who else do I see?

I've never been one to nip and tuck. I don't mind the size of my breasts — they're a bit on the heavy side, but they haven't gone south till lately, and my legs have never let me down. I like to run along the waterfront and cycle in the gym. I would swim, but I hate pools. I would rather be in the ocean. Diving — now there's an unrealized dream. I panicked on my first scuba dive in the Yucatan, right when I started to sink. The dive master grabbed me and brought me back up. "You're not ready," he said, which were the only English words I had heard him utter. (He was a gorgeous Argentinian with copper-gilded hair, who, on his day off, showed me some of his own secrets, which included an underwater paradise in a sheltered lagoon.)

Cancer is changing me rapidly. My thighs are swelling, my belly is bloated, and my hair has been like baby fuzz since the chemo. (I rely on Harriet, my trusty wig-made of real hair — an excellent cover up.) New wrinkles are running between my eyes and giving me a permanent frown. Vertical lines are appearing above my upper lip. Another good thing about dying. I won't have to become one of those old women, sloughing along on the sidelines. I see the specter of my future self sometimes on the streets. There's a woman who walks back and forth in front of Union Station, dragging a bedraggled carry-on bag stuffed with everything she owns. She wears a fox fur stole that is, I know, her most precious possession and a black felt ten-gallon hat that she likes to wrap with sheaves of cloth and stuff with flowers and grass. She weaves colorful threads into the weft of her skirt, and she pulls green webbed liquor bottle protectors over her socks.

That could be me if it wasn't for this merciful tumor growing in my belly. My flight is booked for two weeks from today. I hope that there won't be too much standing in line. Or gasping for breath. I'm starting to feel undue pressure on my right lung.

I want to be with my lovely kahuna, who will willingly (for a fee) cradle me on my march to the grave. I'm a fool to think of staying here. What will my future bring? Loneliness in the place where I feel it most, longing for the family I don't have. Checking myself into a hospice (sight unseen.) I have no concept of dying at home since I have no concept of home.

"We'll take it one step at a time," my oncologist has advised. (Her name is Alison Wiseman. I call her "Alice in Wonderland" because that's where we are.) In a few weeks, I will start getting visits from a nurse who will happily give me as much morphine as I need, while we watch my platelets drop and my bones give up the ghost.

I want to fly while I still have wings. I don't want to stand here and record every damned stage of my death. I will not disillusion you, my mirror. There is nothing "fair" about dying. No, I must go. I must give it all up. Molly told me to drop the story, and I will. I must.

Tiny sailed past many towns, and the little birds in the bushes saw her, and they sang to her, for she was such a lovely little creature.

A graceful little white butterfly always fluttered around her, and at last alighted on a leaf. Thumbelina took her girdle and bound one end of it round the butterfly, fastening the other end of the ribbon to the leaf. The leaf now glided onward much faster; and Thumbelina too, for she stood upon the leaf.

"I don't know, but I think she has some wonderful, warm place in mind," I said. "With sunlit meadows and..."

Cora interrupted us. It was way past Molly's bedtime. Nearly midnight. Not that Santa was coming or anything. Cora didn't believe in telling children about Santa coming down the chimney and all that rot. "Why lie to children?" she'd say to me, hands on her hips. Why, indeed?

We exchanged a peck on the cheek and Cora steered Molly out of the living room. I sat with the book on my lap and read on:

There came a big cockchafer flying up — and he saw her, and immediately clasped his claws round her slender waist, and flew with her up to a tree. The green leaf went swimming down the brook, and the butterfly with it; for he was fastened to the leaf and could not get away from it.

I closed the book and put it under the tree. The tears started coming. I had to get out of there. Gerald came into the living room. "Are you all right, May?" he asked.

"I'm fine," I said. "It's just a little hard, that's all."

He stroked my hair. He helped me with my coat. It was snowing heavily that night.

I'll never get that story out of my system. I can no more give it up than the white butterfly could avoid being harnessed by the child. I'm all caught up in it.

I step into the bath and sink into the warm, lavender water. Every cell is altered by its soft, oily touch. My body is capable of experiencing intense pleasure. I've always known where to find the nectar. There must be some nectar in death.

Michelle Tocher has been described as "an enchanting storyteller" with a deep understanding of fairy tales and their relevance to everyday life. Her books include How to Ride a Dragon: Women with Breast Cancer Tell Their Stories (Key Porter Books, 2002), and Brave Work: A Guide to the Hero's Journey at Work, which she co-wrote with Anna Simon. Formerly President of a Toronto communications company, she has spent nearly twenty years spinning yarns that demonstrate the power of the mythic imagination.. She recently finished her first novel, The May Queen. You can read more about Michelle Tocher at her website michelletocher.com