Story: There Was an Old Woman...

“There was an old woman called nothing-at-all,

Who rejoiced in a dwelling exceedingly small;

A man stretched his mouth to its utmost extent,

And down at one gulp house and old woman went.”

Working at the local bakery in a small town, each customer colors the environment in their own unique way. When you see the familiar faces nearly everyday, you develop expectations for how the brief exchange of goods and words will unfold. You learn that the delicately structured gentleman with glasses and a strong nose always wants a loaf of walnut rye and notice that when he started buying two cardamom buns once a week with a special twinkle in his eye, something changed in his routine. The third week of buying buns, he expressed that he had won partial custody of his daughter and was buying them for her to have after picking her up from school. Through these brief and consistently structured frequent interactions, you are allowed a glimpse into the lives of others in a uniquely distanced, yet intimate way.

I had only been working at the bakery for a few days when Margareta first came in. She was frail and had an air of tired wisdom, but she also carried with her a sense of stability. There was a weariness in her eyes that and a strained airiness to her voice that struck a chord in me. After she left, I asked one of the other shopkeepers -- who had been there for years – to tell me a little bit about the woman. She told me that Margareta had grown up in the village, not far from the bakery, and was rumored to have been extremely beautiful and charming. Her charisma captured the hearts of all those who knew her and she was pursued by many, yet she joined a convent and moved away when she was nineteen. She reappeared in the village thirty years later when her mother passed away. No one knows for certain when she left the convent and what else happened in the years she was gone, but she was unmarried and took her mother’s place as her ill father’s caretaker. She tended to him and came to the bakery to buy bread each week, giving updates on his condition. A few years later, her father joined his wife across the channel. Margareta continued to live alone in her parents’ home, yet she appeared to grow more sullen with grief. Rumors started to spread that she had begun to see a man from the village -- a widower, Mr. Lindberg. He was intimidating with robust features and cutting tone.

Summer faded to autumn and I was, by then, familiar with the regulars and the local gossip. It was announced that Margareta and Mr. Robert Lindberg were to be married. Their wedding was modest and honored the conservative traditions. They combined estates and seemed content. However, the following winter, we started seeing Margareta less frequently. She never removed her cloak or scarf upon entering and her energy seemed to be fading with each visit. Once, I thought I noticed darkness grazing her left temple, but I wrote it off as my eyes playing tricks with the shadow of her cloak over her head. February was bitter and it didn’t begin warming up until mid-March. Margareta continued to wear thick layers and long garments, although her cheeks looked more hollowed than usual and her eyes were dark and sunken. Another time, she rolled up her sleeve for a moment and I noticed what surely was a bruise on her forearm. She abruptly pulled her sleeve down as she marked my gaze and then scurried out the door. In small talk with my coworkers, Margareta came up from time to time and others mentioned similar encounters and noticed her distancing behavior. 

Later that summer, as the Lindbergs approached their first anniversary, Margareta stopped coming to the bakery. During the first week, we assumed they had gone on a second honeymoon vacation or something of the like. After a few more weeks of her absence, our concerns about her heightened. We asked a few other customers who knew the Lindbergs and they remarked that they had seen Robert, but didn’t remember seeing Margareta. 

Curious as I was, I stopped by her parents’ former estate to bring her a loaf of olive bread and to see if she was okay. The garden was overgrown with weeds and the ivy, which Margareta usually kept tidy, was starting to look heavy and untended. I knocked on the door and it opened without force (I suppose it wasn’t latched). I called out her name and she didn’t answer. The interior was dusty and smelled stale and rancid. Despite my better knowledge, I entered the house and peeked into the bedroom. Margareta was curled contorted on the floor, where she had been beaten unconscious by her husband. I hurriedly called a number for help and Margareta was hospitalized. When she regained consciousness, she tried to explain to the authorities that she had been beaten, but once her husband was notified where she was, he came immediately and convinced the authorities that she was dumb and clumsy, and had merely had a fainting spell. The officers chose to believe him, since he was capable of a more rational recounting of events than his poor wife. They were released. Less than three weeks later, Margareta’s obituary appeared in the paper.

Author’s Note. When I started this assignment, I wasn’t intending to write something so dark or ‘real.’ I was attracted to this nursery rhyme via a smash-the-patriarchy-esque theme, but I wasn’t quite expecting to delve into deeper issues such as domestic violence and the erasure of the female narrative. In hindsight, I suppose my retelling of the nursery rhyme is an evocation of the societal toll which folk stories of this nature normalize and enforce.

Bibliography. This story is based on an excerpt from the nursery rhyme "There was an old woman" in The Nursery Rhyme Book, edited by Andrew Lang.

This illustrates another stanza of the nursery rhyme. Source: Mama Lisa