Chapter 17
WASH YOUR HANDS.
Look, your hands are clean. They are clean.
Keep telling yourself your hands are clean.
You cannot hold the newborn princess with bloody hands, the newborn princess named Snow White.
You have seen what blood looks like on snow; you will not do this to her.
Your hands must be clean. Your hands are clean.
They are clean. When you hold the young princess Snow White for the first time, just days after her birth, your hands are raw from scrubbing (like a washerwoman’s hands), but you are certain you cannot dirty her.
You are certain of this until you see her lips—her lips, as red as the blood you’ve spilled, as red as the blood pumped by the hearts her mother eats.
You congratulate the queen. You hand the child back to her nursemaids.
The ruined child. The child marked by blood, before she was even conceived, because of you.