Once upon a time, approximately now, there was a hard-working, highly principled man who was Lord Mayor of the megalopolis. The Lord Mayor lived, but spent very little quality time, with his wife, Queenie, and their prepubescent daughter, whom the media had affectionately dubbed The Princess. Queenie, who had once earned a juris doctor degree, had upon her husband’s election to his high post retired from her voracious practice at the legal clinic and devoted herself to philanthropic and occasionally quixotic endeavors. Having observed that the people do not tolerate professional first ladies, Queenie now focused her considerable energy upon only two targets: raising The Princess to be a bright, assertive young lady and raising the hopes of the homeless women who flowed back and forth through the megalopolis, a tide of tearful crones.
While her husband labored ferociously in eighteen-hour days with his administrators, lawyers, accountants, and other civic officials to restore lost order to the megalopolis, Queenie home-schooled their daughter and tried to teach her the correct values: justice, prudence, fortitude, and temperance, also faith, hope, and charity. Like that great prince of another land and another time, The Princess was cherished, protected, and isolated from exposure to the tribulations and terrors of the “real world” outside the guarded doors and barred windows of the mayoral mansion. Even the girl’s television viewing and time on the Internet were closely monitored by her mother. The Princess was thus innocent and idealistic, and they intended to keep her that way.
Time came for the girl’s thirteenth birthday. Time came also for her first bleeding. While the Lord Mayor issued a proud media release announcing the former, the latter was of course kept strictly private. It’s doubtful, in fact, that the father even knew of the event when it happened.
As a special birthday treat, The Princess was scheduled to promenade through the great park that anchored the heart of the megalopolis, and her father remembered to send squads of police officers and trash handlers before her to make her way safe. Early in the morning, Queenie took the girl aside, saying, “Daughter, today you are a woman. As a special treat, you may invite whomever you wish to accompany you in the park, and we will honor you and your guests at a banquet in which you will be officially introduced, via the media, to the people.”
The Princess kept silent and pondered these things in her heart.
Now it just so happened that, on the very same day when they went into the great park, thirteen crazy old ladies were also there with their shopping carts and their many fears and their few hopes. As soon as they spied Queenie and The Princess setting foot upon the freshly scoured pathway, these thirteen crazy old women called out their greetings. They also commented on both the girl’s pure beauty and the vicissitudes of worldly life.
The Princess stopped and stared. She knew from overhearing her mother’s phone conversations that homeless women existed. But they had never been flesh and blood creatures, had never appeared as more than remotely controlled images and subjects of occasional human interest stories and grant proposals.
“Mama,” she finally said, “I’ve seen old people on TV. I’ve watched the news and seen hunger and death. But who are these women? Why did nobody ever tell me that they were actually living out here beneath overpasses and behind bushes, in boxes and doorways, through all the seasons of cold and heat? Mama,” she said, “why are these women calling me to bring beauty back to a wretched world?”
Queenie appeared to be listening. “I do as much as I can to help homeless women,” she replied. “You know I do. You’ve helped me gather goods and organize services to distribute the goods to them. But I fail to see what concern beauty can be to such as they.”
“Well,” said The Princess, “you said I could choose some friends to accompany us through the park and attend my banquet. I choose these thirteen old women.”
What could Queenie say to her daughter’s demand? Could she deny it and thus deny all the idealistic education she’d been giving the girl? Could she say, No, these are ignorant old women, they stink, they have no manners, they’ve been homeless so long they’ve become savages? Could Queenie say, I’ve been telling you to pity the poor and work to better their condition, but you most certainly may not invite them into our home?
The thirteen crazy old ladies were ushered into the mayoral mansion, and the mayoral public relations firm was ordered to create the proper story, spinning verbal webs of compassion and bountiful civic spirit. The thirteen crazy old ladies were given hot baths and proper clothes and firm instructions on how to behave. The thirteen crazy old ladies were soon clean, sober, and respectable. If they wondered if they’d died and gone to heaven, in their hearts they knew it was really a one-night stand.
Thanks to skillful management, the banquet was a great success. Until midnight.
The first crazy old lady suddenly stood up. “Yo! Listen up! The girls ’n’ me, we wanna thank ya fer this here terrific dinner. But we gotta few things we gotta tell ya.” She turned to the parents of The Princess. “You bin teachin’ this girl a lotta stuff about life. But you know it’s all hooey. Life is garbage. Real life is fulla terror. Ya never know when some punk is gonna come up behind ya with a gun in his hand and rape on his mean, stupid, little hip-hop mind.” Then the crazy old lady walked straight up to The Princess, leaned across the banquet table, and stared her in the eye. “Wake up, girlie. You’d never survive out there.”
And before anyone else could move, before the mayor could open his cell phone, before Queenie could blow her little golden whistle, before any of the civic officials could gather their wits about them, even before the cameraman from Channel 2 could decide where to point his minicam, in the blink of an eye, the other crazy old ladies began springing up and yelling:
“Rape!”
“Terrorism!”
“Gang wars!”
“Drug deals!”
“Police violence!”
“Random shootings!”
“Graft and corruption!”
“Kids with guns in schools!”
“Toxic waste all over the streets!”
“Poverty with never a hope of relief!”
“Morality and ethics straight down the sewer!”
“Women and children starving, beaten, and abandoned!”
Chaos. Disorderly conduct. The ideals that had always sheltered The Princess dissolved under these grim words from the real world. Something died just then.
Or woke up.
The thirteenth crazy old lady, the oldest old lady the girl had ever seen, the one who hadn’t spoken a word as long as anyone could remember, this oldest crazy old lady slowly pushed herself to her feet. She laid her linen napkin on the table beside her dessert spoon. She took a last dainty sip from the goblet before her, then set the goblet on the damask tablecloth. She gestured. Her lips moved, but no one heard the secret words she whispered. She gestured again and uttered one more long-silent word.
Order. Complete silence. Movements made as if under water, then stillness. It was as if everyone in the palatial banquet room had been asleep for a hundred years, as if all the guests had only now opened their eyes, had only just now emerged from life-shattering night visioning, had only at this very minute begun to see and hear and feel. Perfect order, perfect silence, perfect stillness.
The thirteenth crazy old lady stepped to the middle of the room. Actually, she seemed to glide through the room, and two or three who were there remembered later that the air had glittered around her.
“Time is come,” said the thirteenth crazy old lady, her voice as soft as fairy wings in pellucid air. “Time long ago foretold is now awakened. Time out of mind now returns to mind, and you awaken to what is true.”
The thirteenth crazy old lady reached out and rainbows grew in her hands. She gestured, and the rainbows took the measure of all in that room. “At last I may pronounce the original blessing.” She motioned to The Princess, and the girl smiled and stretched.
“Tamed, hidden, and asleep, beauty has been among you and you never knew it. Beauty, I say to you now, Awake and move among your people. Beauty, I charge you: Awake and come with your former blessings to these latter days. Beauty, awaken all who can see you.”
And with a final gnomic gesture, the thirteenth crazy old lady led her twelve scattered sisters out of the banquet room. The air glowed where they walked, the scent of violets and roses moved with them, and the shadows of ancient trees made a doorway for them to pass under. Great cats and majestic dragons went beside them and doves and owls flew above them as they returned to the world.