Mom has never really wanted to elevate herself, though the situation with money is a continual stress. If she didn’t have to worry about bills, then things would be easier for her. If we don’t do this, we may lose everything. If we do, my mother will never have to worry about money again.
Maybe then she wouldn’t want for anything.
I suppose she would have liked to fall in love. I hope for her sake she still will.
She’s cheerful about our lot in life, even as she struggles. Grandma wasn’t cheerful so much as she was determined.
Eve is a dreamer.
I’m a planner.
I never planned to stay here. I’ve always wanted to leave. I wanted to go to Paris. To London. I wanted to see New York City. I’ve been saving and trying to arrange to get to university in another country. I have some money and I have a collection of scholarships and aid awards, and a few different options for school. I’m older for a university student, but it’s taken time for me to piece all of this together.
I want to be a scientist, a medical researcher. I want to matter far more than a peasant in a near-forgotten country. I want to change things. To make life better for other people.
The churn of humanity overwhelms and comforts me in equal measure. We are, by turns, expendable and infinitely precious all at once. But I had thought that if I could change something for the better…
It doesn’t matter now.
In my mind I see a picture of my own closed fist. Holding onto everything I’ve ever wanted. Everything I was so close to having.
I imagine myself letting it go.
“I’ll do it,” I say.
I stand up from the dinner table, planting my hands firmly on the surface. Eve is still wailing and neither she nor my mom seem to have really heard what I said.
“I’ll do it.” The wailing stops. My mom looks at me. “I’ll marry him instead.”
“Lilith…” My mom looks like she pities me for a moment and I can’t figure out why that would be.
“It isn’t like he knows Eve. Why should he care?”
Eve exchanges a look with my mother. “He has seen me,” she says. “In photos.”
Oh. It’s about Eve being prettier than me. They aren’t wrong. She’s redheaded with bouncy curls and vibrant green eyes. She looks a lot like his attempted-wife who ran away from him, actually. I saw her picture splashed all over the news afterward.
Eve is curvy and tall, and I’ve heard that King Lucian is six-five. I would look ridiculous with him. I’m plain. There’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t consider beauty a virtue, nor do I care overmuch about my looks.
I make myself as presentable as possible in every situation. But my blond hair is straight and fine and best served in a ponytail so it isn’t just hanging lank around my face. My style is best described as: woman saving money to try to get to university out of the country.
Meaning: thrifted, and not in a trendy way.
I’m short. I’m petite with bony wrists, ankles and knees—I would never have really noticed that but Eve had a particular affinity for calling out the various prominent bones on my body when were children, to the degree where she once spent a summer calling me Knobby instead of Lilith—and I’m certainly not what you’d ever call a siren.
“I know I’m not as pretty as Eve,” I say, because I’m nothing if not realistic about who I am.
Eve doesn’t lord her beauty over me. She’s always teased me the way a sister should. My mom and sister aren’t trying to be mean in the veiled observation that I’m not the physical prize Eve would be. These are just facts.
But I’m not wounded. I know others might be, but I’ve never valued physical beauty.
“If he’s just planning to kill you what does it matter if you’re prettier than me?” I point this out, the ultimate pragmatism, I think.
“He didn’t choose me for my brains or personality, Lil, which means he may have an opinion on you going in my place.” She bites her bottom lip. “You’re very pretty. But we don’t look alike.”
A testament to how much Eve and I have matured is that she isn’t actually trying to tease me; she’s framing it in practicality. She isn’t wrong; even if we were equal in beauty we aren’t the same, and men have types. I’ve heard.
Eve and I aren’t the same type.
