Queen and Slave

My sister and I used to play a game we called Queen and Slave.  It was very simple.  When it was her turn, she would be the Queen and I would be her slave.  And then I would be Queen, and she would be my slave.  We would dress up in my grandmother's beautiful long dresses stolen out of the long wardrobe in the attic.  Then we would scurry down the stairs and play in Uncle Matt's room with its floor length mirror, oriental rug and Art Deco folding screens.  He had a divan and a triangular pillow covered in lilac satin.  His dresser was painted with vines.  His room had a certain smell of old things and mystery.  So this was our playground.

Uncle Matts himself was usually out in the fields, either with the cows or running the tractor or maybe walking down to Winter's Run to take a dip on a hot day.  Grandmother would be weeding the pansies or making creamed chicken with grapes or picking strawberries or maybe if it was evening, sitting in the high-ceilinged living room drinking a highball and smoking a filtered Kool.  I think the highball meant whiskey and ice with water.

Aunt Helen would be in her rooms humming tunelessly and poring over her geneology research.  Occasionally she would wander out and try to engage us in conversation, which was never easy because she was deaf.  It was a strange house.

We didn't pay much attention to our parents when we visited Grandma's house.  It was as if they faded into the atmosphere and came under the spell of the fairies.  The house was big enough to contain all the fears and hopes of humans, blending them together with a kind spoon and adding a drop of magic.

So Sally and I played our game.  I remember one dress I liked in particular.  It was dark green with a nipped in waist and tailored panels, floor length in some kind of heavy material people don't wear anymore.  It was silky and cool to the skin.

When I was the Queen, I always pretended I had a lover who was going to climb in the window, and Sally (as my slave) was supposed to keep my secret and let him in without anybody knowing.  And then when I was the slave, I would pretend I had a lover who would climb in the window and I would ask the Queen to please not hurt me and keep the secret.

Sally laughed about this in later years, saying, "It wasn't fair - even when I was the queen you had a lover."

I was thinking about this game the other day, though - and the whole paradigm of queen and slave.  Am I still playing out these roles?  And do I have to choose between them?  I don't especially want to be either one.  A slave has no freedom, and a queen has no comrades.  It's all unfair.

So perhaps I shall create a new game.  And perhaps I don't need to have a secret lover climbing in the window, although I have the equivalent of that now.  Maybe such romance is also a remnant of childhood, created by me and my sister as a buffer to a world in which we had no power.  I suspect that house of secrets had something to do with it.