Mirella
by Laura Huey Chamberlain
Turns out my fairy godmother has issues of her own, and my boyfriend spent the early evening of my fifty-third birthday staunching a tiny knife-wound she inflicted on his neck. We’d just finished dinner at my favorite tapas restaurant, and we were walking to a blues club. It was April, and the night was cherry-blossom warm.
“What the fuck was that?” Charles flapped his arms around his neck, like windshield wipers. He hadn’t seen Mirella—he couldn’t see her. Once he calmed down, he speculated he’d been stung by a wasp, or a beetle, or a giant horsefly.
“Maybe.” I dabbed at his neck with a wadded tissue.
But I knew better. Mirella was back. I’d seen her do her twinkle-hover just before she brandished her miniature Ka-bar.
An hour later, at the club, the bleeding hadn’t stopped. I left Charles at intermission and promised to come back with fresh paper towels. Once inside the bathroom stall, I stomped my heel twice and fisted my hands. Mirella pixelated into view, just above the toilet-paper dispenser.
“Make the bleeding stop.”
“What?”
“No bullshit, Mirella. You stabbed him. I saw it. Make the bleeding stop or you go invisible again. For good.”
Mirella glowered. Her plump face, puffy gray hair, layers of taffeta—even the air around her—all turned red, as though she were caught in an angry bubble. Then she faded to herself again. She bowed her head.
“Don’t do that,” she said. “I hate being invisible.”
I extended my finger and she perched there, arranging her skirts so they fell just above her bobby socks.
“Why’d you stab him?”
Mirella picked at the lace on her left sock. She was concerned about me, she said. She was worried about my safety, my reputation. Charles was not Prince Charming. I needed to cultivate my independence, value my self-sufficiency. If I got lonely, I needed to make better use of my vibrator.
This was nothing new. Mirella had spouted these values since I was twelve. And she was right. Charles was not a prince. He was a balding high-school science teacher with two grown daughters and an aging dad bod. I transferred Mirella to the lid of the sanitary-products receptacle, and I pulled down my leggings.
“I’m sorry,” I said, sitting on the toilet. “The modern world hasn’t been kind to fairy godmothers. I know this. But I’ve never agreed to be home by midnight. Maybe it’s time for you to reinvent yourself. Have you thought about climate change? Universal access to affordable health care? Increasing voter turn-out among 18 to 29 year olds?”
I stood up, flushed the toilet, and offered Mirella my elbow. She landed lightly, only a little stiff in the knees. During the forty-one years she’d been assigned to me, she hadn’t changed much. She wore the same rhinestone tiara, and her cheeks were still dimpled. But her wings sometimes struggled to keep her aloft, and I suspected she was a little hard of hearing.
“Go,” I said, releasing her with a gentle bump of my elbow. She hovered for a moment, like a luna moth drying her wings, and then she evaporated.
***
Later, in my apartment, I popped open a beer for Charles and poured myself a single malt scotch. We both had to be at work early the next morning, and he wouldn’t be spending the night.
In the living room, I handed him his beer. “I’ve been working on something,” I said.
Charles was sitting in my favorite reading chair. Leo had jumped into his lap, and Charles was rubbing the backs of his ears. I leaned over and unbuttoned Charles’s shirt. I pushed open his knees and untied his shoes. He was wearing rocket-ship socks.
“Isn’t it your birthday?”
I paired two sets of headphones with my Bluetooth transmitter. “Shhh,” I said, my finger at my lips. “I’m making the rules. Put these on.”
Through my own headphones, a song began to stream. I moved my hips in small figure eights. Charles leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. His neck and shirt were spotted with blood, his chest sunken. But so what. I’m no dancer, I know this, and I’m no beauty. It’s just that Charles and I—we share a love of this music.
Just before the song ended, just as the vocals and guitar crescendoed and then dropped behind the pulse of a drum, Mirella materialized a little above Charles’s head. Her tiara had slipped down her forehead, and her jawline sagged. She glared at me. Poor Mirella, I thought, as I continued to lead with my hips. Poor, frightened Mirella. If she could only hear this lovely, lovely music.
Laura Huey Chamberlain lives, works, and writes in Alexandria, Virginia. Her fiction has appeared in journals including Hobart, jmww, MoonPark Review, and Cease, Cows. She was a finalist for the 2019 Best Microfiction.
