Façade
Even as a baby, she was beautiful. She smiled and giggled and flirted with people, and she was just the prettiest, blondest little thing you could imagine. She looked like what people think babies ought to look like: rosy, chubby, dimpled. Her hair never darkened much as she got older; it turned into that nice honey color that the boys' did. And she was always sweet-natured, even as a little girl; it was impossible to be angry with her for long. I just couldn't stand to hear her cry.
Tyndareus didn't like that I didn't punish her. He said it was unfair, and that I was playing favorites and expecting him to pick up the slack. Don't mistake me, I love my husband, but really, I knew very well that he thrashed the boys, and that he used to belt Clytemnestra on the hand when she'd done something she shouldn't. Yes, I know that children don't learn any other way, but was it so wrong of me to want to spare Helen that?
We used to quarrel about it all the time. I was spoiling her because I allowed her to get away with things that I did not allow her sister to do. She was manipulating me because she knew that all she had to do was bat her eyelashes or whip up some tears. Well, of course she faked things from time to time. She was always a performer; she was so good at making people smile, or getting attention, that you could almost forget that she wasn't really book-smart, the way her sister and father were. Even the boys had enough learning to make them dangerous; Helen could never remember dates or names, her sewing always fell to pieces, and her spelling was abysmal. At the time, it just seemed cute.
For my part, I thought he was unkind to hurt her brothers and sister, and he needn't pretend I didn't know it happened. I'm sure the children knew we fought, and it bothered them.
Awful as this sounds, I was almost relieved when the boys started to get in trouble, because it meant we could focus on something else for a change. In fact, given that we were the parents of fractious twin boys, we focused on almost nothing else while they were teenagers; I regret that now. Then, of course, Timandra was born, and after that there followed the awful flap with Theseus. The following spring, after the boys had brought her back and wreaked a nice amount of havoc in the process, I found myself pregnant again.
I was getting on in years, being then in my late thirties, and it was a difficult pregnancy. It was morning, and I was lying in bed, when I heard the familiar sounds of feet on the stairs; I was half-asleep, and it took me a while to realize that someone was fumbling at my door. Helen pranced in, and the sunlight flooded my room and turned her hair to spun gold.
"Mummy," she said quietly, sitting on my bed, "is it very wrong of me to hit a slave?"
"If you did so without reason. It's one thing if she is disobedient or incompetent, but quite another if she is tired or sick or you are in a bad mood."
"Oh," she said, mulling this over. I knew that something was coming, and could only wait for it. "I…well, this morning, I slapped Aethra, and Clytie was angry with me."
"You must keep in mind that Aethra wasn't born to slavery, as old Doris or dear Kleito was. She was a princess once in Troezen, just as you are here at Sparta." I don't know if anyone had ever told Helen that, or if we had just assumed that she knew.
Helen wrinkled her nose. "Yes, but she's a slave now. She has to do what I say." She was so extraordinarily self-assured that the words died on my lips. It was the truth, but I saw something in her then, something remote that I could not touch, and did not think I liked. There was almost a sense, there, that the world and everything in it was put there to serve her: a god's sense of entitlement, without a god's sense of duty.
She was so beautiful that everyone used to say, in jest, that she was really the daughter of some god who had crept into my bed. I never quite knew whether to believe it, but didn't Father Zeus borrow the likeness of Amphitryon when he got Heracles on Alcmene? Couldn't he have done the same with me, if he wished?
But why, why, did my daughter—our daughter—have all of the surface, and none of the substance?