Free How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales by KATE BERNHEIMER

The Old Dinosaur
    An old dinosaur lived in a big city, and one evening he sat in his room all alone, thinking how he had first lost his wife, then his two children, then little by little all of his relatives, and then his last friend, a small child who had walked with him daily through the park blocks until that very evening. The old dinosaur was alone and forsaken. He was sad at heart—yes, that is the saying.

    Hardest of all to bear, of course, was the loss of his two daughters, and the grieving for that never had ceased. Of course, as was reasonable, he blamed humans for his misfortunes. He was sitting quietly, deep in thought about this, when all at once he heard bells ringing from the white church down the street. He was surprised to find that he had stayed up all night in the armchair by the small fireplace. (Usually he climbed into bed in his giant pajamas on which were printed pandas and rainbows.)

    The old dinosaur lit a lamp in the window. He left through the window, by flying. He was in no other way striking—he was pretty much an ordinary dinosaur guy.

    When he arrived at the church it was lighted—a strange and diffuse glow filled the space. There were no candles burning. It was crowded, the pews overflowing. When the old dinosaur came to his usual row, it was occupied; so was the row in front of it; and so was the row in front of that one; and so on, and so on, to the front of the room. There, he turned around and stared at all of the humans who stood and stared back at him. They all held photographs: the photographs were of his relatives, the ones mentioned before, who had died.

    The scene wasn’t striking, but it had a strong feeling. The people were dressed in beautiful vintage clothing—the fabrics elegant, dusty, and dark. Their faces were pale. No one spoke and no one sang, yet the church was filled with a murmur—like bees, who also were gone from the planet. He thought of them then.

    A woman—elderly, very stoop-shouldered—began to walk toward him slowly. As she got closer he saw that she was, in fact, a dinosaur too—and not only that, she was his beloved great aunt. She was dressed, now, in the manner of humans. She wore a black bonnet with lacy white trim. Her pale green dinosaur’s face peeked out at him. In her hands, she held a photograph of herself torn out of a children’s history book.

    â€œLook at that altar,” she said, taking his arm. “You will see your two daughters.” And he did: he saw one hanging from gallows, the other tied to a wheel. “You see,” said his great aunt. “That would have happened to them, if they had lived. The innocent children.” Her eyes misted over. They stood there for a long time.

    The old dinosaur flew home—this was difficult, as he was trembling—and as soon as he got through the window he kneeled on the hard, wooden floor. “I have seen mercy,” he thought. He could not think of anything to do besides think about mercy. On the third day, he lay down and died.

    He was the last dinosaur. My story is done.

Pink Horse Tale
    A long time ago, I was very poor and often traded my body for cigarettes, Chelada, or food (these are listed in order of preference).

    I had two children—both daughters—and together we lived in a motel on the coast. It was a knotty-pine kitchenette cabin, and had come furnished with a teapot, a few chipped flowered plates, some utensils, and bedding. The cabin overlooked a paved parking lot and beyond it, the beach.

    If a man came to visit, I sent my youngest girl out to find driftwood and starfish and shells. (Her sister went to elementary school, so often was gone.) There was no market for these trinkets among the occasional tourists, but they were precious to my young girls, truly their only possessions. We carefully washed them and kept them along the edge of the porch rail outside, and on the white windowsills inside, which