1.

We the daughters of the twenty-first century are not mystified by Persephone’s behavior. In school we learn that Persephone is frolicking in a field when Hades kidnaps her and takes her underground. Persephone’s mother, Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, freaks out. Every plant in the world dies. Eventually Persephone is found, sitting beside Hades on an obsidian throne. He’s drinking something from a wooden goblet. She looks anorexic. Hades says she can leave if she must, but first why doesn’t she eat this—

It’s not till she emerges into the foreign sunlight—it’s not till she’s in her mother’s kitchen devouring pumpkin soup—it’s not till Demeter sighs with relief to know her daughter didn’t eat anything down there—that Persephone makes her confession about the six pomegranate seeds. Her mother smashes plates, slams doors. Meanwhile, Persephone sits quietly, disliking the freshness of the day, the soft winds that carry the smells of plants growing—

What Persephone will never confess is the unending night, the earthy smell of scotch on his breath, the way he mocked the universe and everyone in it but was so tender with the dead, with her, with beasts and ghosts. How low his voice got when he told her that attempts would be made to separate them—

Now we the daughters of the twenty-first century are going to marry men our mothers do not quite love. These men seem dark to them, dangerous, lacking good posture. We sit at our mothers’ tables, trying to explain why we have chosen to settle in distant, inhospitable cities where the gray days outnumber the sunny. We try to explain that our future husbands are at once cynical and compassionate. We fight bitterly over wedding invitations and veils, as though these are matters of life and death, which they are. We suggest to our mothers that they read a certain Greek myth; they raise their eyebrows at us as they always do nowadays; the grass begins to shrivel in the ground, and the apples in the orchard sicken on the branch.

2.
It is not easy to picture your mother having an affair. You tend to envision it as though it happened in a distant, more poetic, more tragic era; you think of Madame Bovary; you see a round mirror reflecting a jar of daisies and a woman in a gray dress reclining on a brass bed. Or you pull another image from the human photo album: a motel after midnight, polyester bedspread, fluorescent light, greenish walls, pink lipstick on middle-aged teeth, scotch straight from the bottle; ecstasy that, for half a second, colors the surroundings. You think of a woman lolling over the jukebox at a bar, of a cowboyish man paying for the next song, of fingers that cross the line between the waist and what lies below.

But it is none of these things. It’s a guy who looks like all your friends’ fathers. It’s a single weekend at an agreeable bed and breakfast in Santa Fe. It’s your father lifting your mother’s suitcase into the car, telling her to enjoy her solo time in New Mexico, reminding her that she is one of those Women Who Run with the Wolves.

You who sense what your father will not know for some months yet, you of the so-called “vivid imagination” have many questions. You want to know if she tells him about her children; if he has children; if they are nice; if his wife is at home with his children. You want to know who pays for the room, and if they order wine at dinner.

Months later, your father cannot believe it. He cannot sleep. He leaves the adulteress in their bed and paces the hall. Downstairs, you hear his footsteps. You, however, are not surprised by the woman who was once asked if she regretted having children and did not respond. You are not surprised by the woman who in later years will claim that she was always lonely, even when her children were four small warm bundles in the bedroom they all insisted on sharing.

3.
The groom, the bride, the groom’s mother, and the mother of the bride find themselves at the old carousel. There is no long line of children shrieking out their cravings and frustrations. The empty carousel whirls to the melancholy sound of its own cheerful music. The groom’s mother, a woman who has made her share of rhubarb pies, suggests they take a ride. The mother of the bride, who resists joviality, hangs back; but already the groom has bought tickets, and here they are stepping onto the carousel, and the bride straddles a black horse, and the groom selects a chestnut, and the groom’s mother finds a pony, and the mother of the bride must mount the unicorn. The bride looks at ease, as though she is still a child, and still capable of delight; she strokes the horse’s frightening glass eyes; she discovers that the mane is real horse hair; she has no difficulty being happy; she hisses something delightful to the groom. The mother of the bride sighs. It’s awkward, adults sitting on these creatures built for children. None of this is right, none of it at all. Slowly, the carousel begins. The mother of the bride recalls something: the bride, age four, clinging to the pole of a carousel, a frozen white stallion rearing under her. But now this carousel accelerates, and the ocean breeze blows in, and the mother of the bride stops thinking about anything except the brass ring, reaching out again and again with her half-century arm—all is well! All is well! The carousel whirls, life is a joyful and colorful endeavor, it is not impossible to achieve the sensation of flight, bless these young people and bless their mothers, all’s well, and where is that blessed brass ring, because the mother of the bride is starting to believe. Jubilation, the bride has been saying lately, and the bride’s use of this word has irritated her mother; now she wants to say Jubilation too.

But it is not she who gets the brass ring.

4.
In this version, I like my mother and my mother likes me. We walk together, her arm around my waist and mine around hers, and she is not embarrassed; we walk together, leaving the city. My mother is no longer brittle and no longer skinny; she reminds me of a buttery corn muffin, the likes of which you never would have found in the bran-infested kitchen of my childhood. “Don’t drink orange juice,” my mother said back then. “It’s an empty drink.” I didn’t understand, and I didn’t drink orange juice.

My mother who is no longer brittle leads me into a field. Thousands of miniature orange flowers grow in this field. Our eyes are no longer bloodshot. My mother sighs with joy. She sits. She instructs me to place my head in her lap. All my headaches vanish. “Never call me Mother,” she says. “Only call me Momma, or some other nice thing.”

This mother of mine has things to tell me about marriage. I say “Oh!” to everything she says because everything is a revelation. She bestows upon me certain facts that bear repeating, such as: On the wedding day, you must adorn your bald head with waxy white yucca blossoms so the rain will not melt you and your husband, and There is no fight that cannot be resolved by boiling cloves and orange peels in water on the stove.

She says to me, “What a beautiful, fat girl you are, my daughter.” I say: “I am not fat. Look at this skinny hip.” She says: “Darling child, what I mean to say is that you are fat with life.”

And then I notice how all this time her fingers have been working, and she has woven me a garment from the miniature orange flowers, and caterpillars are crawling all over this garment, and my fat, wise mother is laughing, laughing, and she is laughing and saying, “Where is the groom, where is the beautiful, fat groom, ah my daughter is ready, my daughter is ready!”

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Helen Phillips teaches creative writing and literature at Brooklyn College, where she also received her MFA in fiction. Her work has appeared in The L Magazine, The Brooklyn Review, The Yale Literary Magazine, and on the Hotel St. George Press website. Her short plays have been performed as part of the Little Theatre series at Tonic and Dixon Place. Originally from Colorado, she currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband, artist Adam Thompson.