I Am the Mother of This Eggshell
Sabrina Orah Mark’s monthly column, Happily, focuses on fairy tales and motherhood.
When my grandfather was dying, he pointed into the gray hospital air and said, “Buildings.”
“Drawn in light pencil,” he said. “All around me.”
“Are they yours?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “They’re mine.” Now he is dead and his children are fighting over these buildings. I tell my mother I am writing about inheritance and fairy tales. “Well,” she says, “soon there will be no inheritance.” I imagine an eraser rubbing all the pencil drawings out at the exact moment my grandfather takes his last breath. An inheritance of rubber dust, as soft as the sawdust lining the twelve coffins in the Brothers Grimm’s “The Twelve Brothers.” That fairy tale begins with a king and a queen and their twelve sons. They are happy until a daughter is born with a gold star on her forehead. The king wants her to inherit the kingdom and so he orders twelve coffins made. A coffin for each son, filled with wood shavings and each fitted with a small pillow. He orders all his sons dead,
