when rodger and hammerstein’s cinderella starring brandy and whitney houston debuted in 1997 it was not the first film depicting a black woman in love and wedded in luxury but it was as far as my sisters and i were concerned so we crowded around a cumbersome television set with the vhs humming in time to whitney’s masterful runs and soaring vocal acrobatics and set ourselves ablaze with each musical number and dance sequence and glimpse of brandy’s heart-shaped face shrouded in the saccharine coyness that seems to decorate every disney damsel and the kind we’d learn to mock as teenagers but right then right there in our own little corner brandy was the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things yet unseen which is to say we understood marriage as a matter of faith an entity that echoed in the homes of white people with family dogs and customized christmas stockings that hung on a mantel like sunday dresses hung on a clothesline or like mama hung up on telemarketers or like brandy hung onto a prince as he whisked her across the dancefloor of the grand ballroom lined with envious women who wanted nothing more than to be a housemaid and something about being black and poor and woman and worthy of love we deemed more miraculous than four white mice becoming four white horses or a plain yellow pumpkin becoming a golden carriage and before we knew it we believed that love and marriage could coexist and that we had a place in that miracle so yes our little hearts fluttered at the sight of a black bride in the form of aunties and cousins and second cousins not yet removed and yes we’d stand as close to them as possible in the wedding photos hoping whatever fairy dust whitney had sashayed off her spindly body onto that bride would entangle itself in our lace skirts and our skin and never come out and yes when trusted with the sacred task of adorning the aisle with petals only fit to ride in the train of that bride’s dress we’d rise to the occasion with rounded chins lifted emerging from the last of a stubborn baby fat and jutted towards the anchor of an altar our hands young and gloved and focused and when the crowd would swoon with approval – “throw them flowers, baby,”– we’d pretend for a moment that the cause for occasion was us and that our floral headbands gave way to sprawling lace veils white and dishonest like a jaded stepmother but as regal as we wanted to be as lauded as we wanted to be as chosen as we wanted to be