Curses and Blessings: 3. Little Orphan Annie or Cinderella<br><i>Sans</i> a Benefactor

Mrs. H.'s most sinister action cast herself forever in my mind, as the evil stepmother in a most Cinderella-like story – but without the happy-ending. This evil matriarch also had a daughter who was old enough to marry. The prince in this case was a young minister who travelled some distance every Saturday to have tea with my grandmother and her chaperones. The trouble was that Mrs. H. didn’t see it that way. She wanted him to woo her daughter, not her maid so she banned Annie from the weekly socials, forcing the young minister to seek out the copper-haired eighteen year-old elsewhere on the farm. I suppose it was probably my grandmother’s sweet and modest nature that entranced the young minister, but ultimately, it may have been what spoiled their chance of a future together. They moved too slowly.

For several weeks after Mrs. H. realized the minister was not interested in her daughter, the visits continued, then he suddenly stopped coming. Grandma had seen Mrs. H. having a heated discussion with him, and she had seen him leave, appearing to be upset by their conversation. Then, not only did Mrs. H. refuse to tell Annie what had transpired, she worked to wipe out any courage the young girl might summons to go to him directly for an explanation.

“He didn’t come to see you,” she’d scoff. “You must think awfully highly of yourself, if you imagine that he was interested in you!” She’d sneer, knowing that young Annie had no “delusions” about her worth. “He talked to you only because he felt sorry for you.” Mrs. H. insisted as she played with Grandma’s psyche and ground down her self-esteem until she could not imagine why anyone would value her.

It took years for my grandmother to trust her instincts again (and to know that he really had been coming to see her). By the time that I was old enough to hear these stories, Grandma seemed to have reached a state of equilibrium about it all. I suppose she must have eventually forgiven 'Ma and Pa' for their treatment of her; she didn’t seem to harbour any resentment. When the subject occasionally came up, Grandma would usually laugh and shake her head in disbelief. Still, I wondered if she ever imagined how her life might have been if she had married the smitten minister – or had not been shipped to Canada in the first place.

Bio IV