All the Cinderella stories resemble each other. But each Cinderella is different and deserves a different prince.
And then again, some Cinderellas don’t need a prince at all, on the contrary – a prince is just getting in their way.
A Cinderella of this particular type was sitting on a bench on Rothschild Avenue in Tel-Aviv. She was angry.
Anger made her rock her foot so hard that her crystal shoe eventually dropped down and cracked. Cinderella swore under her breath, kicked off the second shoe and lay down on the bench with her legs propped up on the back. It’s not uncommon in Tel-Aviv, even for princesses.
She was waiting for her prince, of course – what else would a lonely girl do on Rothschild Avenue in Tel-Aviv? But unlike many, many other Cinderellas this one was about to pay her prince back one hundred seventy three shekels and send him off.
Why, every bench around here is loaded with contenders, all you have to do is just walk by and smile, and they will drop to your feet like ripe fruit.
Cinderella hissed, picturing this smile of his and a pile of strange women at the feet of her prince, even though he almost wasn’t hers anymore.
Her heart shrank and wept. Well, he was a prince, after all… She didn’t allow herself to lay out her feelings and examine them. And her heart will hurt for a while and then heal. You aren’t in a fairytale, she hushed her gnawing soul. Her soul rolled into a ball and crawled under her ribs, whining.
The prince was late, as always.
To prevent herself from blowing up, highly irritated Cinderella dwelled into a usual matter – counting money and dividing it between little imaginary wallets. She imagined the wallets to be really tiny, that way they were bursting with imaginary money, which was even sticking out a bit from the tiny wallets, so it seemed like there was more of it than it actually was. But no matter how much you lie to yourself, there was significantly less money than wallets. Her night job in a coffee shop didn’t pay well, and her landlady recently raised the rent for her room by three hundred shekels, no less. And that knocked Cinderella right out of a carefully constructed spending scheme. And the decision regarding her scholarship request got delayed. In her mind, she started tossing the money from one wallet to another while moving her lips, frowning, lifting her finger and saying to herself: and what if I do this? And frowning again…
The prince stood in some distance and slowly melted.
He was late, he was guilty, he was prepared to be attacked – but couldn’t help this sensation of raw tenderness that flooded him every time he saw those blonde curls and cocked-up nose. And when she wrinkled her forehead and traced her index finger in front of her face, counting something in her mind, his legs went weak with happiness. After all, he could have missed her, walked by (or rather drive by) without looking back and never ever get to know this stubborn, annoying, pure, joyful, the best girl in the world…
– Soooo, – The best girl in the world hissed menacingly.
He came to, shook off sticky pink tenderness and got battle-ready.
“I don’t understand”, – He was shouting ten minutes later, stirring up his anger. – “I don’t understand, please, explain to me, what’s wrong with you becoming my wife, forgetting about that stinking hole of a diner and generally giving up work? You would be the most admired princess in whole Ramat Ha-Sharon! And you don’t need that scholarship, one phone call – and they will bring you on a golden tray not just a scholarship but also a diploma, all the way from Jerusalem!
“What am I doing wrong, I really don’t get it” – He added pitifully, losing his breath.
Cinderella was sitting there hunched over and somehow extinguished. Her bare foot was mindlessly kicking at her shoe.
She was really sad and nauseous.
“Yes, you really don’t get it”, – She sighed. Put her hand in her pocket and said, “Here’s your money, by the way. It’s half of our coffee shop bill from yesterday. And… I have to go, I’m late for work.”
She got up and plodded along the beautiful and joyful Rothschild Avenue, shoveling sand with her bare feet.
Prince just sat there with his mouth open and his heart stopped. He suddenly realized that she was leaving forever.
It’s just that some Cinderellas don’t want to be princesses.
And some Cinderellas would never get into a carriage if they know for sure it’s a pumpkin.
Some Cinderellas would walk barefoot weeping for their fairytale but they won’t enter a cage, even if it’s really comfortable and made of pure gold.
Some Cinderellas just want to live their lives their own way.
Silly wrong Cinderellas.
And silly wrong prince ran after his not-even-by-far-cry-princess, caught up to her, swung her towards him and mumbled silly wrong words, panting, asked for her forgiveness, promised to abandon the kingdom and the king, to start from scratch and lots of other wrong and silly stuff which was the only right and necessary thing right now.
And it didn’t matter that princes never abandon their kingdoms, and starting from scratch is pretty silly, to be honest – this particular prince, holding his love and wiping away tears from her puffy face, honestly believed what he was saying at that moment and thought that somehow, in some magical way everything was going to be fine. After all, fairytales are supposed to end well, right? So that’s it, prince thought, I said everything is going to be fine, so everything is going to be fine…
Translated by Diana Shnaiderman-Pereira