The Unwelcome Fairy Godmother and the Unfortunate Events that Followed After

I’m sitting in the kitchen feeding my youngest daughter. There are crumbs under my feet and a counter full of dirty dishes behind me. We can’t afford a dishwasher. The trash needs to be taken out, but I’m just letting it pile up because I know I’ll just stuff it in the van because we’re saving money by taking the trash to the dump ourselves. The boys are fighting in the bedroom. Somebody kicked the cat food bowl and there’s cat food all over the floor.

I’m trying to get my screaming ten-month old to eat something—anything. I’ve gone through peanut butter sandwiches, cheerios, cheese sticks and I’m trying mashed peas because what the heck, why not. And she’s just spat them out on me when the doorbell rings.

If I had just two more brain cells to rub together just then, I would have looked through the peek-hole in the door and pretended I wasn’t home. But I didn’t have two brain cells, so I just opened the door and stood there gawping at this old lady. Not just any old lady—this one was done out like a living cupcake. Swathes of pink tulle, purple rosettes, puffy pink sleeves, some kind of iridescent cape over it all, and a tiny, glistening tiara perched on top of her grey, permed curls.

“Amanda,” She twinkles at me, with these crisp blue eyes set in soft wrinkles. “I have come to rescue you!”

She paused. I wasn’t sure what your average princess type is supposed to say to the appearance of a fairy godmother, so after searching my brain for a line from a Disney movie, I just said, “But I’m fine.”

I mean my life is okay. I love my husband and my kids. I drive a minivan we bought used. I don’t really fit in my pre-kid clothes anymore so I just wear leggings and an oversized shirt pretty much always. It always seems weird when I say it, but we can’t afford for me to work, not with three kids who would need childcare, so I don’t have any work friends. I’m kind of lonely. I can’t afford to put the kids into many extracurricular programs because there’s three of them so I can’t meet mom friends that way. It’s not exactly what I thought happily ever after would look like, but it’s not evil stepmothers and rags, so… I stared at the apparition at my front door blankly. I think I was expecting her to start trying to sell me a vacuum.

Instead, she said, “Goodness, dear,” and brushed past me, the yards of pink tulle squeezing through my door and popping out into my living room. Her dress was ridiculous but it made my shabby living room even shabbier by contrast. The boys were clustered around the doorway, eyes wide. “Is your dress real?” Graham whispered.

She beamed at him. “It is indeed, my little man.”

“I’m not little. I’m this many!” He held out five fingers splayed defiantly.

I came out of my daze. Why was I letting this woman into my house? Why was I letting her talk to my kids? “Look, I can’t buy whatever you’re selling, so if you could just go—”

“Yes, dear, just give me half a second—” she stuck the tip of her tongue out of her mouth and produced a wand—and that’s when I got really uncomfortable. This was not some glitzy, dollar store rod of plastic, but a beam of light that made my living room look unearthly, humming a note I’d never heard before.

She waved it commandingly over my house and my eggshell white walls with crayon on them disappeared, replaced by brown walls and the strong scent of ginger and sugar.

“For two weeks!” She announced in the tones of someone bestowing a royal gift, “You will live in a gingerbread house!”

Candy flowers sprung up outside. The rug on the floor was braided out of licorice. The boys whooped. I looked into the kitchen and saw my daughter thoughtfully tasting the corner of the table, which seemed to be made of sugar cookie. “Wait, what—”

“If you turn anyone away from your door in this two-week period, you must live in a gingerbread house—forever!” And then this woman had the gall to twinkle at me out of bright blue eyes, and coo, “Have fun!” Then she turned the wand towards herself and vanished in a blink of light.

I went outside. Our yard, which had never been huge, was still small, only now it was covered in…fondant grass. I admit, I tried some, when I didn’t think anybody was looking, but really, who wouldn’t be looking?! Okay, yeah, ours is a tiny, nondescript house at the end of a cul de sac, but it just turned into a gingerbread house! Why weren’t my neighbors gathered in front of the yard? Why wasn’t old Mrs. Whatsherface giving me the stink eye for having a sidewalk made out of Smarties?!

The boys tumbled out after me, whooping. “HEY!” Ethan bellowed at a kid three houses down. “OUR TREE STUMPS ARE MADE OUT OF REECEES!”

Well, the adults may not have cared, but the kids were paying attention.

So began the strangest two weeks I have ever lived. My husband came home the night it happened, wide-eyed and pale as a sheet, wading past the six second-graders who were busily eating our front step.

“W-what happened to the house?” He croaked. I told him. I cried. He hugged me. And then I opened my eyes to see him break a little bit of the caramel brownie countertop off and munch it. He noticed me staring.

“Well…” he said, sheepishly, “It’s not all bad, anyway…”

I had no idea we had so many children in our neighborhood. So many interactions, so much chaos, so much noise.

“I like your cookie table.” A kid had appeared at my table with my sons. He had round eyes and a tuft of white-blonde hair. That’s all I saw of him because only his eyes cleared the table edge. They blinked at me, solemn and owlish. “It’s a very good cookie.”

“Thanks. It…regenerates.” I said. “Um… Do you even know what regenerate means?”

The eyes rolled and there was a tiny sigh. “Just because I’m small doesn’t mean I’m dumb.”

“No,” I heard myself saying firmly but nicely to a little hooligan who was trying to roll my erstwhile ottoman out the door. “You may not take away the giant gumdrop. You’re welcome to stay here and play on it, but you cannot take it away.”

One afternoon after school had let out I found three middle school girls ogling the giant lollipops that had appeared in our backyard. I diffidently suggested they use them as stick horses. The whoops and giggles coming from the backyard minutes later made me smile.

I met some adults, too. Old Lady Whatsherface was every bit as unpleasant as I’d imagined her to be, and it turned out her name was Worthington, which was enough like Whatsherface that my husband and I had a good giggle over it that night).

But I dutifully had her in for tea because I was afraid not to and listened to her rant about young parents who can’t keep order in their households, and how in her time, a woman kept her house clean and wasn’t slovenly. I stood there awkwardly clutching my mug in front of my sink of dirty dishes while my boys and an entire neighborhood’s worth of children rushed past shrieking and slapping each other with Twizzlers. Then she finished the whole miserable diatribe by saying in a voice as sugared as my walls, “Now you just have a lovely day, dear. I’m gonna bring you over some tomatoes from my garden tomorrow, okay? Don’t be a stranger!”

When she was gone I ate some of my caramel brownie kitchen counter and meditated on the kind of person I don’t want to be when I’m old.

One night I found my husband typing away on a spreadsheet. “What’cha doing, honey?” I asked.

He sighed. “Trying to figure out how we can pay for the extra dentist bills when this is all over.”

“Only six more days.” I said, with false optimism.

“Six more days for me,” he said, “Six more eternities for you.”

I sighed. (We did a lot of sighing, those two weeks.) “That’s true.”

I met the couple two houses down who always seemed busy and had more expensive cars than the rest of us. They came to fetch their preteen daughter, Megan, from our house one evening. All the cheap little solar lights I’d put along our front walk had turned into muffins and this spindly child with a bush of auburn hair showed up one afternoon wanting to ice and decorate them. They did look much nicer afterwards; she had quite a bit of talent with the icing bag. While the father, Tim, went to fetch Megan I surprised myself by really trying to draw her mother, Susan, into a conversation.

All of these encounters with grownups were accompanied with a vague sense that everyone knew something strange was happening at my house but nobody wanted to actually say out loud, in the real world: “Hey, have your boxwoods turned into enormous cinnamon buns with green icing?” I wasn’t about to mention it myself. The less weird we looked, the better. I was counting down each of the days leading to the end of the two weeks, hoping for peace and quiet and the ability to shut my door. But as each day brought more kids and more chaos, I was beginning to feel myself unravel.

Just when I thought I’d never make it another day, Shanique showed up with her tribe. Their car had broken down just up the road and her boys heard somehow about there being a real live gingerbread house just down the next street.

So, while her husband called the tow trucks, Shanique walked her six kids the half a block down to my house, where she found me in the front lawn, holding the baby on my hip and trying not to cry as an assortment of children ran around flinging giant cherry gushers at each other’s heads.

“Lands’ sakes!” She bellowed. “Leave that poor woman alone!” And then she looked at me over the heads of the startled children and said, “The kids told me this was some kind of park! I didn’t know it was your house! I’m going to help you.”

Let me tell you, when a nearly six-foot Black woman wearing a sparkling purple jacket says go home at the top of her lungs, even the most sugar dedicated child went home. And I, with sincerity for once, invited her into my house.

“Are you sure?” She said, glancing doubtfully at her kids, who were playing with my boys under what used to be a Bradford pear but was now some kind of candied pear tree.

“Technically I’m required to offer you hospitality or risk living in this candied nightmare forever,” I said, wiping cherry Gusher off my face with the baby’s burp cloth. “But after having a dozen kids in and out of my house for over a week, six well behaved children are nothing. I’d actually like you to come in. Would you like tea? Coffee? Maybe some of the lamp shade just inside the door? It’s a nice milk chocolate with little almond bits.” I giggled, weakly.

She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Alright. I have got to hear this story.”

So I told her. I told her about the fairy godmother, about the hordes of children, about the strange obliviousness of my adult neighbors. I told her about the adorable six-year-olds who would nearly vibrate with sheer amazement at the awesomeness of a house made of candy. I told her about the smart aleck ten-year-olds who thought they knew everything but who would sit with cookies and listen to me read books to the little kids. I told her what I hadn’t known before I said it out loud—that sometimes, despite the chaos and the stickiness and the disruption—sometimes there were things I liked about living in a gingerbread house.

Her husband dropped by about an hour later looking very curious and I invited them for supper—I didn’t even think about being required to, I just did it. I wanted to. Shanique ordered us pizza because she said I needed a break.

Somehow, after meeting Shanique the rest of the week didn’t feel so long. They dropped by and while Shanique was here, I had a break from constant visitors because I couldn’t turn them away, but she could. She was there with me when my house became my house again, two weeks after our fairy godmother visit, and we jumped around and shouted for joy at the sight of walls with crayon scribble and my secondhand furniture.

But things were different, afterwards…and I don’t know that I’d change them. I got to really liking Megan’s parents, and she became the boy’s favorite babysitter. I never did like Mrs. Worthington, but I did enjoy her fresh tomatoes. And there were others—the kids that had felt like overwhelming barbarian hordes became my sons’ good friends. When they weren’t hyped up on sugar, I liked having them around. And there was Shanique, the best of them all.

There she sits today, four years after what we call the Gingerbread Incident, in the middle of my mess, holding a cup of tea. She came with peanut butter sandwiches for the kids (“It was all that was in the house and I hate to come empty handed now that we can’t eat your dining room table…”) Before the Gingerbread Incident, I would have been mortified, but now I just open the door and in she comes. She has an opinion about everything and says it, she laughs loud and long. She wears sparkles and glitter and Louis Vuitton, and I wear black leggings and plain t-shirts from Walmart and I don’t care. It turns out I didn’t need rescuing from the chaos of my house; I just needed people to be part of the chaos alongside me.