The Black Cinderella

Marjorie Freeman
5 min readJan 9, 2021
Photo by Bash Mutumba on Pexels

My mom and I are a lot alike: hard to get to know, but the people who stick around somehow continue to love us anyway.

I love my mom so, so much. For us to be so much alike, we don’t ever talk that much. I tend to confide more in my dad, as he’s more of the conversationalist. If a topic doesn’t interest my mom she’s not going to pretend to be interested; that’s just her. The older I get the more I appreciate her candidness.

But, I often can’t help but wonder — is she truly happy?

It’s an issue I’ve been pondering on a great deal, because it’s a thought that’s crossed my mind about myself once, or twice (or a million times) in the past year. Maybe it’s because we’re so similar that it’s scary to sit and think about what she may be thinking, because to pick her brain would mean unveiling bits of me, layer by layer. And as much as I love my mom, to be a reflection of her means to quite possibly feel unfulfilled.

And women like my mother are too magnificent to feel so incomplete, in my honest opinion.

Before I sat down to write this, I was watching her grin almost enchanted-like at The Dressmaker, a comedy drama starring one of our favorites, the lovely, Kate Winslet, and the handsome, Liam Hemsworth (Thor’s other half). My grandma (her mother), passed away earlier this year from liver failure and left us all — especially her and I, the more emotional of our household — with a huge void.

My grandma was my movie-partner-in-crime. One of my fondest memories of her was me peeking out the corner of my eye to her slowly rocking in my dad’s big recliner, gleaming over at whatever was playing on the TV screen across the room, with her high cheekbones and sunken in leathery brown skin, and mini snow white afro, soft as a dandelion. I miss her more than words can describe, as I know my mother does, ten times as much, if not more.

So, that’s why I sit and stare at my own mother now, too. Not only are she and my grandma basically twins in the physical sense, but unlike me and my own mother, they’re nothing alike in the emotional sense. That’s why I sit and watch her every move, trying to feel her out, as if it’s possible to stare at her long enough to read her mind. In my grandma’s eyes, I saw contentment and tranquility. My mom’s eyes paint quite a different story.

My mom won’t typically sit and look at a shoot-em-cut-em-up-and-kill-em-dead kind of films like me, my little sister, and dad usually do. But anything sappy, romantic, and about the come up of a woman, down-trodden by life, she’ll happily sit and enjoy. The Dressmaker is your typical whimsical, tale of a woman coming into her own, Kate Winslet-esque movie. If you’re a Kate Winslet fan like us, you know to expect nothing less than a beautiful wardrobe, class, elegance, and grace — all of which is everything my mother is and (I think) fails to realize she is, all at the same time.

I wish I could build her one of the big beautiful houses she always sits and watches wealthy people purchase on HGTV; or hire a professional chef, like Bobby Flay, to cook up all of her favorite dishes. I wish I could buy her all the classiest dresses like the actresses wear on Young and the Restless. One day (with A LOT of hard work) maybe I will be able to. But if/until that day comes, I wish I could jump inside her brain and help her feel good, without all the materialistic things. I wish we could work together to help each other feel better.

I wish she knew that I want to understand her mind, and trust that as a young myself, I might comprehend a thing or two about what she may be going through.

I don’t know much about my mother besides the stories my father tells. I don’t know if she could rewind time would she go back and do some things differently, like having me and my sister, or even meeting my dad. I know that she loves us, but sometimes those woulda, shoulda, coulda’s can leave you feeling a little down sometimes; I can see the longing in her eyes.

A scene came up on The Dressmaker, where Liam Hemsworth was kissing Kate Winslet on the neck so tenderly, and her body language responding in such a realistic way, their chemistry almost felt genuine. I jokingly whispered to myself —

“Well, that gave me a little tingle.” Low enough I hope she’d miss it, but loud enough I secretly hoped she didn’t.

My heart fluttered a bit in anticipation as she turned to look at me, when a wide amused grin spread across her face. She replied:

“Did it make you moist?” She busted out laughing and so did I, more so out of shock that we had been thinking the same thing.

That woman never ceases to surprise me.

I’m not a mother yet. Not sure if I ever will be, who knows what the future holds. But I know a lot changes when you have kids and have to work to feed multiple mouths and pay a mortgage. Of course she does have my dad, who is her rock and would literally do anything for her. Nevertheless, I can imagine that taking on the role of mother and wife can leave you just as mentally exhausted as it does physically, and when other people fail to realize the true weight of that kind of role and responsibility, you can seem selfish for seeming removed or detached, simply for being tired. But to me, that’s the life of a parent — of a woman. You do what you gotta do to keep your queendom thriving, even at the risk of sacrificing some of the jewels from your crown.

I just hope she doesn’t decide to up and leave one day in search of her glass slipper, because in my mind, she’s already a queen.

Hopefully we can sit and enjoy many more movies together; scene by scene, more and more coming to understand my own personal starlet — my mother.

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Marjorie Freeman

Life‘s unplanned truths are what make it beautiful and worth living. But sometimes it gets stressful and you just need to vent. That’s what I write about.