Vasilisa the Beautiful Sets the Record Straight

by Mikki Aronoff


On her death bed, Mother handed me a doll. Keep her well-fed. She will keep you safe from Baba Yaga.

A modest meal, a crust of kolach, a spoonful of shchi sets the doll in motion. But everyday a rising creep of needs. I grip and pound the mortar and pestle, grind gristle till dawn. My hands callus as I hoist cauldrons crowded with chicken feet, render pig fat over coals that glow like Baba’s pupils.

Did you think I do nothing? My brow’s a fixed furrow of worry and planning. I trudge to the market, haggle with the butcher, fend off his blood-soaked fingers. I mix and stir and scrape and sever and slice, light fires and bake to spoon-feed her tiny mouth, fill her bottomless abyss.

For this, the doll does what she must to keep me from becoming Baba’s basket of bones. She carries out the simpler tediums. A stick of wood can only do so much. She weeds the vegetable beds, separates bad corn kernels from good, poppy seeds from soil. She turns her ear to my troubles, whispers advice into mine. She is The Mute Keeper of Secrets, the Guardian of My Well-Being. Part-time.

My tongue, too, safeguards secrets and lies. I know what the grandfathers have done. I, too, must hoodwink and bribe, shade my intent. This my doll knows. We are complicit. It is all that we share.

Muscle and grease streak her chin as she waits for the honey cake I shovel into that greedy gape. I stifle my gags, suffer her glassy stare, recall my mother’s words, may leeks sprout from her navel.

My thighs thicken like tree trunks from my labors while Miss Clothespin stays thin. She thrives on the marrow I fry, the milk I daily drain from our cow, on the kudos and thanks she keeps pinned to her frock. But it’s my hands that carry burns, my arms that congeal like sausages. I feed the dogs and pick up their shit, doubled over like a dandelion limp from a drought. I juggle the accounts, sweep mice from the cellar. In the forest, it is I who oils the hinge, ribbons the birch, fattens the witch’s cat. I carry the skull that carries the light. I hold the towel, the comb that can magic a river or woods.

All this I do, and more.

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"Vasilisa the Beautiful Sets the Record Straight" was previously published in Qwerty (June 2022).

Mikki Aronoff chases words in New Mexico. She has work in Flash Boulevard, New World Writing, MacQueen’s Quinterly, ThimbleLit, The Phare, Bending Genres, The Ekphrastic Review, The Fortnightly Review, Milk Candy Review, Gone Lawn, Mslexia, The Citron Review, Atlas and Alice, 100 word story, trampset, jmww, The Offing, and elsewhere. Her stories and poems have received Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best American Short Stories, and Best Microfiction nominations.