Billy got up one morning, went out to the kitchen, and found a strange woman burning the porridge. Being interested in natural phenomena, Billy noticed at once that she had black hair, green eyes, a white face, and red lips. He also noticed that the strange woman’s legs were both the same length.
“Where’s my mum?” asked Billy.
“She ran away I’m your stepmother you must call me Mum now she was never your real mum anyway,” the strange woman said without any punctuation, and shook her fist at Billy. Then she walked across the kitchen and smiled at herself in a mirror.
“That’s curious,” Billy thought to himself. “There was no mirror in the kitchen before.” He caught a tiny glimpse of just a bit of his stepmother’s reflection in the mirror, and was so scared at what he saw, his feet started turning to stone. Somehow, Billy lifted and turned his cold, heavy feet and felt them begin to warm up.
His father was sitting with his mouth open, staring at the beautiful stranger with black hair, white face, and red lips. From where he sat, he couldn’t see the mirror.
Billy called his stepmother Mum, not because he was scared of her fist, but because his real mum had said he must always be polite to grownups. Billy was pretty bright for his age, and he wasn’t fooled. He knew the strange woman in the kitchen wasn’t his real mum.
His real mum never burnt the porridge, she always used punctuation in her speech, and she would never have run away and left him and his dad. Billy had seen his real mother’s reflection in the mirror in her bedroom, and it never started turning him to stone. It always showed her as what she was: pretty with bright blue eyes, an oval face, and curly brown hair.
Billy wanted to ask his father what had happened to his real mum, but he was eating his burnt porridge with cream, brown sugar, and gusto.
“Mighty good porridge!” he told Billy.
Billy knew at once that something was wrong. His father turned to smile at his stepmother, and Billy tipped his own burnt porridge on to his plate. His father ate it without noticing. “Sure is mighty good porridge!” He banged his spoon on the table to show he meant what he said, whistled “Home On the Range”, and leaned against the back of his chair lackadaisically.
“No whistling at the table sit up straight!”said Billy’s stepmother.
“I wasn’t whistling,” Billy started to say, but saw his father looking at him, so he changed it halfway and said, “I beg your pardon.” He put his spoon in his empty plate, sat up straight, pulled in his tummy, pulled back his shoulders, held up his head, and asked politely if he might leave the table.
As he walked outside, his feet felt lighter again.