65 ILANA MASAD The Frog Prince • magine, if you please, you are a little girl born in an old city on a river, gas light in her home and war in the air. Night after night, your parents, doting fools, promise you the moon, tracing its shape on the windowpane when the sky is clear of clouds and planes. Then the war is lost, the city occupied, and the shame so great that even you, only a stupid little girl, can feel it. It clings to the backs of men’s throats when they drink to forget; it trickles down women’s thighs after fucking soldiers for favors; it sticks to the hands of ignorant children as they wave hello to the invaders. And your parents? The night sky might as well no longer exist to them. And you—you are merely an afterthought, a mouth to feed in a confusing economy where people prosper but money is near worthless. Have you put yourself in the little girl’s shoes? Have you? Imagine, then, a formative decision: you will take the moon that no one will give you; you will take it between your goddamn teeth if you have to. You grow yourself up. You move away from home. You study medicine, hoping that one of your textbooks will show you how to get the shame off your skin, how to carve it out of the tissue if need be. Imagine the tremblings of a young woman living on her own for the first time, beginning to notice the world around her. You read the newspapers, listen to the gabs in line at the grocer’s, witness the old men exchanging bundles of money for three loaves of bread. You study as hard as you possibly can. You will find the cure—for yourself, for everyone else. Plucky little thing you’ve become. Hair bunned, heels risen, brighteyed , breasted, you are not a common sight in the halls of learning. The men have three ways of reminding you of your rarity. One, they ask you out. If you accede, they treat you like a little lady, no longer a colleague; if you refuse, they turn to tactics two or three. Two, they openly insult your intellect during lessons, whether you speak or remain silent. Three, they leave notes in your bag, in your books, in the pockets of your coat, i 66 scrawls slicked with shame that emphasize that you are only worth your virginal womb. When the time comes, you specialize in dermatology. Your studies are interrupted often as one teaching doctor after another is fired, driven out, illegalized. The newspapers explain, the gabs murmur, the old men shake their hungry fists at one another in disagreement over whys and wherefores, but it is getting harder to listen now—the shame drips in your ears. You begin to feel you’ve fallen down a well, nearly drowning in its damp desperation. But then, one day, you lift your head up and see a poster tacked to the wall in the women’s boarding house where you room. The image calls to you. It is a well mouth, a ladder up and out. New, freshly printed, its colors dry and warm. Its words promise protection , and behind them, a happy family in their own little world: the mother is aproned, with a baby in her arms; a little boy, straight-backed, stands in front of her, his face eye level with the baby’s; the father’s arms encircle them both. And there is one more figure standing beside them, looking out: a little girl, blond-curled, red-cheeked with excitement. She is vitality itself, and she will help you out of the well. You will no longer need to wrestle the moon down all by yourself. Are you still picturing yourself in these moments? It is important you do. Imagine, I beg you, the elation you feel the first time a vital little girl like that, born inside the shame-filled world, calls you Frau Doktor. Imagine the pride, the satisfaction, the tenderness. This is who you are now, Frau Doktor to them all, a district full of girls...