The Shoes

My mother kept them in the cupboard, the one with the glass front door. I’d watch them out of the corner of my eye when I went into the long dining room to set the table for dinner. It was a simple task, fork on the left, knife on the right except for father. He sat at the head of the table and had his cutlery the other way around. It was the only time I was allowed to be in the room by myself. Five minutes of borrowed time if I could set the table fast enough. Just me and the cutlery, then me and the shoes.

They were beautiful. Ballet shoes, the ones with the blocks in the toes for point dancing. I looked at them, hot palms pressed against the mahogany frame of the door. They sat on a red velvet cushion, positioned to catch the lamp light from every angle. Hundreds of tiny, perfectly cut glass crystals were twinkling at me, set into silver leather with glittery ribbons, feigning grandeur. We weren’t allowed to touch the shoes, my sister and I. Mother’s special shoes. I breathed out too hard and my sigh fogged up the pane. Stepping back I wiped it clear leaving smudgy prints streaked across the surface. I wished that I could erase the glass as easy as my breath. I wanted to reach in and take them. It is a sin to want to covet something that isn’t yours. Father Michael told me that in church. In confession I admitted my wants. He told me I had sinned and gave me a penance of three Hail Mary’s. I knelt in a pew, gloved hands clasped, bare knees aching against the cold stone. I said my prayers and asked for atonement but my sin was waiting for me at home. I reached up and used the edge of my sleeve to rub away my prints. I pressed hard, removing the mark on my soul.

She kept the key in a matchbox on her dresser. It was little, matching the brass lock on the cabinet. Every night when I came to kiss mother before bed I would find her sitting at the dressing table, gently pulling the brush through her hair. When I walked over she would lower the brush and wait, watching her own reflection, eerie in the candlelight. It was the way my dolls sat on my bureau, porcelain smooth and perfect, their glass eyes staring. I’d lean forward and brush my lips against her cheek. Her skin was delicate, like tissue paper. I wondered if I kissed too hard would I tear it? I wasn’t allowed to hug her, thirteen was too old for hugs she said. Each time, she waited until I was leaving before picking up the key, and slipping it back into the matchbox. It was always there, out of reach, just like the shoes, just like my mother.

In class we wore leotards and tights. They were black, everything was black. We were shadow copies of the gouache ballet dancers who arabesqued in pink silk within the frames that hung in the draughty hall. We danced in bare feet and won black soles for our pains as if the floor had been coated with soot. When we were given the chance to practice in the soft shoes with ribbons that tied at the calf, those were black too.

It was a new dance, long, with many steps and jumps to remember. Madame told us the story first. She said we were inching along the path of a red admiral butterfly and showed us a drawing of one in a picture book; ‘Insect in watercolour’. It was perched on a branch with spread wings splashed with vibrant colours; tangerine orange, peacock blue and apple green. I asked my teacher why we couldn’t dress like one with swathes of satin attached to our arms. I wanted to float when I danced, to make the picture come alive. She told me I was fanciful and snapped the book shut locking the colour in the pages. Melting back I became a shadow again. I danced in black like everyone else.

My sister Phillipa and I played games sometimes. We liked to pretend that we were faeries. On nice warm days we’d go outside into the garden without our shoes and run through the dappled sunlight in our petticoats with arms spread, hands upturned as if we were flying. I liked the feel of the grass between my toes, the blades tickled and broke beneath me as I ran, painting my soles with chlorophyll. It’s the sign of a true woodland sprite, I said, to have green feet. We spent time comparing our faerie markings as we sat under the biggest tree, staining the backs of our dresses too. Mother scolded us afterwards, but we craved the attention she unwittingly fed us.

During Christmas at my ballet school there was a pageant. Each year Madame would write a new dance. We sat on the newly varnished floor of the hall. It smelt of wax and polish and my arms ached just thinking about the effort required by the janitor to do the whole floor. The hall was a giant rectangle. It must have taken him all day, most likely last Sunday, when there were no feet to mess up his work. No shoes. I sat up and shifted position, crossing my legs, and lifting my palms from the floor. I rearranged my skirts across my knees letting my hands fall limp in my lap and sparing them the echo of hard work which was seeping into my bones.

I listened attentively because at the time it didn’t occur to me that I had another choice. Madame told us about the play.. It’s called ‘A Tale of the Woodland’, she said and raised her voice dramatically. I waited patiently as she listed the roles in order of most important to least. Tabitha Warwick squeaked excitedly as she became the faerie princess. I was to be a reed. I didn’t want to be a reed. I was chosen, Madame informed, because I was willowy and tall. I wanted to complain that reeds weren’t made of willow but I didn’t. If it was any consolation, she offered, I would also be understudy to Tabitha. I nodded demurely, it wasn’t.

Sometimes I caught my mother dancing. I was supposed to be asleep, tucked up in bed. But, sneaking downstairs in my night gown and slippers, I would pad my way across the carpet in the hall and hide under the dining table, concealed by the cloth in the darkness. And sometimes, I caught her, like a bird watcher spying a golden eagle. She would enter the room noiselessly. I’d only know she was there when the oil lamp in the cabinet’s alcove burst into life and I could suddenly see my hands clasped around my knees, barely daring to breathe lest she discover me. If I crawled towards the end of the table I could watch her safely from behind the edge of the heavy cloth. She’d hold the shoes, cradling them in her arms. And how, in that moment, did I envy them and their ability to make my mother see diamonds. To her, I would always be glass. I’d watch her put them on and dance in her nightgown across the parquet. She was a beautiful dancer. In those precious minutes of stolen time I saw my mother’s spirit, ghost like in the white dress and I loved her.

Everyone but me crowded the box. It was made of plain wood and by itself was nothing spectacular but they weren’t looking at it or at the girl upon whose rose coloured lap it lay, they were looking inside. Crinkly brown paper and string was spread about Tabitha’s middle as she sat like she was wearing a pauper’s tutu. I bit my lip to keep from laughing at the thought of Tabitha dancing in paper. I watched on the sidelines. Tabitha bent closer to the box and slipped her scrawny hands inside it. She had pointed fingers, like bird claws, bony and long. The girls gasped as she drew them out into the open. Resting on her upturned palms were a pair of pointed dancing shoes. There were gushes of ‘beautiful’ and ‘exquisite’ but to me they were nothing special. They were made of a silk almost the exact colour of a mossy bank and, Tabitha hastily explained, matched her Faerie Queen costume. I wondered if they had green soles as well but couldn’t stomach giving her the satisfaction of knowing I was interested. I watched Tabitha’s hands as she held out the shoes so that the others could run their fingers lightly across the shimmering fabric. I thought of mother’s shoes in the cabinet at home and what noises the girls would make if they caught sight of them. I thought of how they’d sparkle and gleam and trample Tabitha Warwick’s shoes back down into the moss from whence they came.

Phillipa has never cared for dancing. The forbidden shoes in the dining room cabinet meant nothing to her. She said they were like thousands of tiny spider eyes staring back at her. Vulgar, she said. When she was four years old my sister liked to sit on the veranda in the sunshine and watch people pass by the wrought iron gate that led onto the street. I watched her from the living room window. Phillipa had always been angelic looking, all blonde curls, button bright blue eyes and a round, cherubic face with dimples and delicate rosy cheeks the exact colour of a blushing apple. That is how father described them. I asked him what could cause a piece of fruit to blush and, if that was the case, then weren’t the scarlet apples we bought from Alexander’s wagon almost dying with embarrassment? He laughed and told me that the oranges whispered secrets to them in the dark. I never looked at a fruit bowl the same way again.

On warm days in high summer, the well to do ladies would drift past our garden gate like sailing ships on the horizon, resplendent in fine white gowns and hats with plumes of ostrich feathers. Sometimes they would turn when they caught a glimpse of the round child sitting on the veranda and send her a smile through the strands of ivy that dripped from the trellis. I’d watch my sister’s reaction, as she clapped her hands together and stomped her little feet against the wooden steps. It was a secret game, one she would never share with me. I offered to sit beside her but never once did she accept. It was her idyll. I shall never know what she was dreaming up as she viewed the world beyond our garden.

My mother was the one who smashed Phillipa’s paradise. She opened the front door and stepped out into the afternoon haze, the hard heels of her shoes making hollow sounds against the boards. I had goose bumps when I looked at her. She was beautiful but frozen, like a snowflake. Her flawless ivory skin was stretched over high cheekbones and her golden curls were piled high. Descending the steps in a mist of lilac taffeta she stood before her child, casting a shadow over the game. She was about to darken my sister’s world forever. In her lace covered hands she held a pair of tiny ballet shoes. I watched Phillipa’s chubby fingers grip the edge of the step tighter, imagining splinters in the folds of plump baby skin. I wanted to jump out and defend her but something held me in my place.

Mother knelt down and grasped one of Phillipa’s ankles, attempting to force her foot into the shoe. My sister screamed and screamed until eventually my father came outside to see what was the matter. Mother hurled the shoe down into the dust and snapped at father to bring Phillipa inside. He picked her up, cradling her in his arms and took her indoors. She was never allowed to sit on the porch again.

My toes bled the first time. The stockings provided no relief against the crippling chaffing of my flesh against the blocks stuffed into the ends of the shoes. My bones were pressed right to the ends of my toes, any minute they were going to snap off or break right through the skin. I repeated the steps, ending in a dizzying spin and held my pose. A bead of sweat ran down my forehead and my vision blurred as I fought to stay still. My arms shook. Madame, pacing around us all, told me to keep my head up. She steadied my hands and corrected the way I was bending my fingers. I glanced around the room, noting my companions shared my struggles. Only Tabitha looked serene, the corners of her lips turned upwards into an angelic smile which Madame reflected as she past.

Nobody said that I pushed her, but everyone was thinking it, tittering away behind their hands as if I were an exhibit at an art gallery. It was no secret that Tabitha and I weren’t the best of friends but as her understudy I was required to shadow her and learn the same steps she danced for the pageant. Tabitha was wearing her new shoes, attempting to break them in. I was being perfectly civil as we held hands and paraded the section of dance we were learning around the floor, zigzagging other couples as we stepped. She pulled tongues at me and I was about to reciprocate when she froze, a sudden look of agony squashing her features. She let go of my hands, shrieking in pain, clawing at the ribbons tied to her left calf. The muscles in her leg had cramped. And then she was falling, her legs a tangle of ribbon and shoe. I tried to catch her, I really did, but my arms were too slow. They had always been my weakness, Madame was forever correcting my posture. There was more screaming, Tabitha had fallen awkwardly on her ankle and I heard a crack that was not the sound of her knee colliding with the varnished floor. But I didn’t push her, I didn’t!

My heart was racing. I couldn’t believe what I was doing. I’d planned it, somehow I had planned the whole thing; eavesdropping on mother’s conversation with father about visiting Aunty Janet before the pageant. I was standing in the dining room in front of the cabinet, key in hand, lock before me. I knew then why I wanted them, I wasn’t a piece of glass. I could dance, I could really dance and with the shoes I could make her see me sparkle. I married the key to the lock and turned it, it twisted smoothly under my fingers like I’d always imagined. I caught my reflection in the glass of the door as I opened it and paused for a second to regard myself. I straightened up. I didn’t look thirteen. But I wasn’t myself, I was somewhere else, locked away and unable to get out. This girl, the one who stood tall before me in green silk and sequins, was a mystery. She was a thief. Her hair was fixed up in an elaborate style, all curly and ash blonde and her face was painted with makeup. She opened the door and she reached in and she stole my mother’s shoes.

They reacted as I thought they would when I brought them out of my bag. All at once I was a magnet, pulling my peers towards me with unstoppable force. They fussed over the shoes and me when I tied them to my feet and did a few steps of the first dance to demonstrate. The shoes caught the light and I twinkled as if I had dipped my feet in ground diamonds. Any doubts I’d had regarding my criminal doings dissolved like a chalk picture in the rain. These were not the sort of shoes one kept in a cupboard. They wanted to dance, and so did I.

But glass was never made for dancing. It had been hot in the hall and the stage could not escape it, under the harsh glare of the lights. We were all being boiled, breath was dry and limbs were moist. I slipped and fell, cracking my spine on the edge of the stage as I went, tumbling like a rag doll down onto the ground before the audience. A fallen angel, a broken faerie, and the sky had fallen with me. I lay in the shadows surrounded by thousands of stars.

A crowd had gathered around me, people pushing others back. I could see father consulting a man with a black bag. His expression was strained, the lines in his brow deep and creased. I shut my eyes. There were arms around me, white porcelain arms. She smelt of peppermint I noticed, I had never been close enough before. I drifted in and out of consciousness and cried when anyone tried to move me. I held onto the golden skirts of her dress, feeling the cool silk against my cheek, breathing her in, locking her in my lungs forever. Her perfume stung my throat. My mother was leaning over me, clutching me to her like I were the shoes, holding me tight. My forehead felt wet, was she crying?

In the haze of the fever that followed my injury I dreamt that father dismantled the cabinet. He took an axe from the tool shed at my mother’s behest and swept into the house, swinging at the mahogany. I heard acutely the splintering of the wood, watched bits fly off and smash beneath my father’s fury. He reduced it to firewood as I writhed upstairs in my own private fire, tossing and turning, the sheets soaked with sweat. Phillipa told me later that mother never left my side and would sooth my burning cheeks with a cold washcloth.

I was well enough to come downstairs for my birthday party the next summer. I had a new dress and hat and father carried me out into the garden whispering to me to keep my eyes closed. I was almost bubbling over with excitement but I kept my eyes squeezed tight. I could hear bees buzzing as I travelled, the swallows were singing and a light breeze played with the loose strands of my hair. Father set me down onto a rug and said I could look. My face split into a grin at the scene, mother – with Phillipa coiled cat like in her lap - had set up a picnic on the lawn with strawberries and cakes and all manner of delicious birthday treats. Father sat beside me and mother passed me a box. I thanked her and pulled off the coloured wrapping before removing the lid and gazing inside. I sat and stared, unable to find the words. Reaching in, I stroked my hand over the silver leather. They were different, all but a few of the glass crystals had gone leaving just a strip around the edge where the shoe met the skin. But they were still beautiful. Leaning forward I kissed mother’s cheek and she smiled sadly. For the first time I noticed the fine lines in her skin. I replaced the lid, shutting the shoes away in the dark and put the box to one side. For now, I had everything I wanted.