Them Shoes

Posted online by C. E. Murphy

My grandma was a fool, for she kept them dancing shoes. A fool she, but I, I, I, I was the bigger fool, for I was the one who put them on.

I used ta when I was a kid, and called myself Cinderelly like they did in that old cartoon. I’d put them on and I’d dance around the house and my grandma she would say no, child, no, you don’t wear them shoes, you don’t ever wear them shoes. Why do you keep them grandma, I’d say back, why do you keep them if they ain’t for wearin? And I’d dance and I’d waltz and I’d step out pretty just like I never knew how to do if I weren’t wearin them shoes.

They sparkled, them shoes, sparkled like diamonds or cut glass or starlight, til when I wore them there weren’t much else in the world worth lookin at. I could see my little-girl feet all squooshed up against the toes right through the tops of em, and when I took em off from all the dancing there were red lines across my ankles where the grown-up-lady shoes, too big for my little feet, had pressed so they didn’t fall off.

I was still a slip of a thing with no boobs or hips when the shoes disappeared. I went one day to find them in their hiding place, in their box at the top at the back of grandma’s closet, and they weren’t there no more. I looked high and I looked low and then I went to grandma and said grandma where are them shoes? I can’t find them, I said, where did them shoes go?

Them shoes aren’t for wearing, said grandma, I done told you that your whole life and now I mean it, them shoes aren’t for wearing, and so I done what you said I oughta, because why’s a woman to keep the shoes if they ain’t for wearin? I ain’t keepin em no more, and they’re gone, girl, gone. Gone for good, and there’ll be no more dancing in them shoes.

Oh how I pitched a fit and oh how I cried. Threw myself on the floor and beat it with my fists until splinters dug up and cut me, kicked it with my feet until they were as red as the shoes ever did make them. And grandma she stood over me and said that ain’t no way for an almost-lady to act, girl, get yourself up off the floor and behave yourself. And in time I did, for even the most dedicated of tantrums can’t last forever, and in a little more time I began to forget about them shoes.

I got other shoes, not ever quite so good, and the dancing shoes lingered at the back of my mind making themselves a comparison to any others I bought, but good sense grew up in my mind and I said to myself what would a girl want with glass shoes anyway, they’d cut her feet all up and hurt like hell. So these new shoes I got were better, with patent leather and high heels, and pretty soon I was near-enough to being a grown-up lady myself.

Now in a proper story this would be where grandma died and how when she died she left me a tatty ol box and when I opened it there lay the shoes, but that ain’t how things goed. My grandma lived to be a hundred and five and she was only sixty-three when she took them shoes away from me, so you can see now that that ain’t how things go.

Instead it went like this. I was mostly an a-dult, but that never stopped any boys or any girls from stealin a skinny-dip in the old man river on a slothful summer day. Well, not a skinny-dip, because even at mostly-seventeen or mostly-eighteen and I ain’t tellin you which even if I do remember myself, but because even then a girl could get the idea into her head that nakedness was one thing, but if you really wanted to make a boy crazy, it was better to go on and dive in in the white summer dress you was wearin with nothin beneath it. That way when you came to land again that boy would be lookin so hard tryin to see what he couldn’t quite see, and you’d know you had his un-di-vided attention.

And don’t it make a girl feel sexy, too, knowin her white dress is clingin to the curves she grew up to have, knowin it sticks to her breasts so you can see her nipples real clear, knowin it follows her waist and hips until walkin makes the skirt loosen up from her bottom so there’s just a hint of dimple there to make a boy’s eyes stay right there? It does, and if you ain’t never tried it I suggest that you should straight away, before you lose the chance.

So that’s what I was doin, walkin out of the water and up the river shore when I saw the box stickin out of the mud. Now what happened next weren’t grandma’s fault, for how was she ever to know that the river would keep eatin away at the banks as the world got warmer, until one day the box she buried would be stuck out there for everybody to see? But I was a curious thing, so I went to look, and then I recognized it, and then I knelt down in the mud in my white dress and I opened up that box and inside, covered in filth and grime and disgustingness, were them shoes.

I shrieked like a child at Christmas and flung my hands right into the air, them shoes held tight, and I forgot all about my boy and I went runnin right back down to the river and dove back in to wash them shoes until they sparkled and sparkled and sparkled, better than sunlight on the water.

My boy came after me and when he saw what I was doin even he said them were the prettiest shoes he ever saw, and he says won’t you put them on and dance for me, Dahlia? You and me will go down to the dock so they don’t get dirty again and we’ll dance together, and I saw in his eyes he had a dance in mind and more. And I looked up the river at where the sun was startin to set, and I thought now wouldn’t that be pretty and perfect. So I took his hand and said let’s go to the dock, and that boy looked fit to burst as we walked back to the riverbank in our bare feet and walked all the long way up to the lonely ol dock that used to be where the rich folk would pull up their fancy boats, back in the day that they had such things. Ain’t nobody came there no more except young couples like me and him, lookin for a little privacy to do the wicked things our mamas and papas and grandmas tol us we shouldn’t.

I wasn’t half dry by the time we got there, my dress still all wet and clingy, and that was as it should be. I put on them shoes and they fit, they fit like they never did before, and I spun myself around feelin like a dandelion on the wind. My boy came up to me and kissed me, kissed my lips and my throat and the tops of my breasts, and I got all hot and liquidy inside, ready for all kinds of things I hadn’t never been ready for before. There were ties on the back of my dress and he untied them and pushed the bodice down, and then my boy looked as star-struck as I did when I found them shoes. He made a sound like I ain’t never heard a boy make before, and he touched my nipples, and that was when the sun went down and I started walkin.

It was my feet what done it, not my head. They started walkin one step after another, back up toward the old road, and my boy said what the hell! and runned after me. I said I don’t know, I can’t help that I’m walkin, and he said that was bullshit and I oughta come right back down to the dock with him and finish what I started.

And I didn’t because I couldn’t, I just kept walkin, and my boy who’d been so sweet a minute ago hit me and called me a bare-titted harlot, and tears fell down my face as I walked away from him, step after step after step. I heard his shouts comin after me, sayin he was sorry and he didn’t mean it if I would just come back, but my feet were walkin and I could not make them stop.

I did cover up, I pulled my bodice right back up and held it. Why I didn’t put my arms back through the sleeves and try to tie the back I do not know, except I couldn’t think to do that much, not when I was railin at my feet to stop takin me away from my boy and everythin that lay with him.

And I walked until my feet were blistered in them shoes, walked myself all the way to the first big town, the name of which you would know but I will not tell you, for fear that someday you might come lookin for what I found there.

Men and boys they catcalled and whistled and hooted as I walked through the town holdin my dress around me. Every step was beginnin to be real agony, blisters burstin and red skin rubbin too hard against the sharp clear shoes, but for some reason I held my head high and walked as steady as I could, not showin anybody the pain or the tears I was keepin back. I was sick through and through, tremblin and sweatin from tryin to keep my feet from walkin forward, every muscle exhausted and every bone weak from failin, and all I could think, when I thought of anythin beyond tryin not to take that next step, was that grandma had tol me, don’t wear them shoes. You don’t never ever ever wear them shoes.

I walked right through town and to the door of a place that didn’t look like good girls would go there. I put my hands on the doorframe and tried to stop myself, I did, I held myself at the door while my feet kept on walkin until my arms were too tired to hold me and I went inside anyway, like them shoes had planned to all along. The only bit of sense I had left was to catch up my bodice again and hold it against myself, like I had any modesty left to protect.

The place didn’t look so seedy from the inside, no tall stage with poles and cheap seats around its edges the way you see on tv. It just had a dance floor, big and broad and wide, with a pool of light shinin down from above right in the middle, and one long curved couch at the edge of the floor. I walked to the light and turned to the couch, and finally them shoes stopped walkin.

There was a man on that couch, but even through darkness I could see there was somethin wrong with him. He might’ve been the most handsome man I ever did see, but them good looks shivered over his bones like they was a lie. All of a sudden I wanted my feet to be walkin again, to walk me out of there, to walk me to the end of the world, I didn’t care so long as they didn’t stop right there.

The man, he got up and came to me in my pool of light, and I didn’t want him to but I couldn’t move. I just stood there watchin as he walked to me, and when he got to me he walked round behind me and gathered up the ties of my bodice. He didn’t hardly touch me, maybe not at all, but I felt a brush of coolness against my spine and it sent a shock right through me, like the way my boy had touched me, only better and more horrible. He helped me put my arms back through the strappy sleeves, and then tied me up all tight and proper again, the way a bodice oughta be laced, so it shows off your curves. He took my hair and he tied it up around itself so my shoulders were left all bare, and then he put his mouth by my ear and he whispered, “Dance.”

And I did.

I danced and I waltzed and I stepped out pretty like I never could do if I weren’t wearin them shoes. I told stories what I didn’t know with my dances, and I slipped in and out of the pool of light while I did. It changed and grew dimmer and finally disappeared, and that was when I knew it was moonlight, but I didn’t stop dancing.

The man watched me from his couch, watched me like he’d been waitin all his life for me to come, and I danced until burst blisters turned red and then bled. I danced until I was wet as I was with the river, with my white dress stuck to my body to show off my nipples and hips like it’d done for my boy, and I danced until my legs were numb and my throat was dry from heavin for air. Them shoes cut into my feet and I kept dancin, and when I looked down them shoes were red with my blood.

That was when I knew I was going to die. But I still kept on dancin, while inside I was sick and scared and thinkin all the time of my grandma sayin don’t never wear those shoes, and now understandin why and wonderin why she never tol me all of it, and thinkin of my boy what I left on the riverside with a broken promise, and how bad I would hate to be dead in the mornin and have his last thought of me bein such angry ones.

And then mornin came, and my feet stopped dancing.

I do not remember the day, for with the dawn I slept and I slept until my feet and them shoes woke me with the need to dance again. It hurt so bad I screamed while I danced, screamed until I had nothin left to scream with, and the man watched me dance while I sobbed. Nobody, not one single soul, came to hear what my fussin was about, and when the sun rose again, I tried to crawl to the door, but my body would not let me go. Too weak, too sick, too tired, maybe all them things, but I had a right will to get there, for I wanted to live more than anything.

But them shoes were determined to stay, and they would not come off my feet and they weighed me down until I dragged my own weight and an anchor and maybe all the world behind me as I tried and tried to get to that door. Then my hands were bloody too, and my white dress smeared with rusty stains, and in time even my want to survive fell under the trap of exhaustion, and I did not wake again until I was dancing for the third night.

Dancing like a rag doll, barely able to put my feet on the floor with the pain. There was no strength left in my body, but my feet would not stop their twitching, not even when the last of my will left me and I fell to the floor.

I must have looked a right sight in the moonlight, streaked and stained with blood, grey from weariness and sick with dying. But the man came to me like a lover and took one of my raw fingers between his lips and suckled it. Horrible feelin, like blood was drainin away, and worse somehow it was almost sexy, like my boy kissing the tops of my breasts. He did that to each of my fingers and I sobbed, beggin him to do it to my feet, my bloody messy feet, but he did not, and I knew why. Them shoes would not come off until I was dead, for that was how the story goed. Even still my feet were floppin, tappin, tryin to find a way to make me dance, until I twitched like a fish that ain’t yet been clubbed to death.

It came real clear then, that it was better to be clubbed and not know what was goin on than to gasp and shudder and drown in the air, so I did what I had to do. I turned my head to the side and gave the man my throat, that big thick vein there that’s the end of your life if it’s cut.

Funny thing was the cold was welcome, real welcome, after the heat and pain of dancin in them shoes. It couldna started in my feet, cause they were too far away from my throat for blood to come away from there first, but to me it felt like it, a coolin in my poor feet as he drank my blood away. Then my hands, poor scabby fingers, they started coolin down too, and it felt so good I wanted to say thank you, even if he was the devil himself and had got me into this mess. Well, him and grandma, and me myself for not listenin when she said don’t ever put on them shoes. So I took up what strength I had left and touched his hair, and that was about the last thing I remember for a while.

Even if you ain’t been dancin in shoes bent on killin you, wakin up to a man lickin your toes is an oddity. Even if you ain’t mostly-seventeen or mostly-eighteen and never had that done to you it’s a strange thing to wake up to. But if you wake up to it after havin your feet shredded in crystal slippers, and you’re nothin but sensitive and desperate for healin, it’s a whole different kind of peculiar. ’specially if the man doin it seems to know a bit of what he’s about, and he holds your ankle real solid so you can’t twitch as much as you like. The strangest thing of all is how it starts to feel better, even if that don’t make no sense, but maybe it’s because the shoes are gone, them damned shoes are off, and you’re startin to be clean, and you thought you was dead but you’re still livin, and then somehow his tongue is touching you in places your boy wanted to explore, and your fingers are in his hair and all you really know is that livin feels good. It’s only later, lots later, that you ain’t sure no more that livin is what you’re doin’, but it don’t matter, because you done gone back home to be with your grandma and to raise up your little girl.

I was a better mama than grandma was to me, for I put them shoes in a box and put the box in concrete and threw ‘em all down into the bottom of the river and never made no mention of them to my girl. She done grew up and moved on herself, went upstream to that town I won’t tell the name of, and me and grandma got older, until the day she turned a hundred and five and I thought that was enough, and drove a stake through the ol bitch’s heart in thanks for letting me dance in them shoes.