“It doesn’t fit,” she says, and suddenly the shoe feels tight. It’s always been tight, but I hadn’t noticed until now.
This is my favorite pair of shoes. They’re a discomfort I’ve grown comfortable with, and I was always taught that beauty is pain. Maybe not by my mother, who is now telling me the shoes are too tight. At least, not directly. But her stiff bun, which is almost as high as she is falutin, says otherwise. Her untamed, natural curls are restrained by a band meant to keep them on the straight and narrow.
Because natural is bad. We aspire to greater.
My mother’s long cardigan joins the conversation. The thickness of the fabric cloaks the thickness of the body that bears it. Natural curves are naturally condemned as a call to lustful men, and the cardigan ensures that call is canceled. It not only covers the curves, but also the reflection in the mirror when my mother stands alone.
No men are there to lust. Yet all her passion for her beauty is smothered and hushed by a fabric that says, “Those hips are doing too much.”
She can’t help the message she silently sends, as it was projected onto her by the community she grew up in. She is simply a chasm for ideas echoed since the beginning of time.
That same community taught me these shoes fit, and if they don’t, I should make them fit. They’re red-bottom heels, and I didn’t always wear them. They were given to me by my grandparents. My grandparents received them from their parents, and their parents received them as a gift from the original designer.
According to my grandfather, the designer was a very wealthy man. I guess he could afford to throw money away; legend has it he told them to consider the shoes already paid off.
When I first received the shoes, I made the mistake of asking why the soles were red. My grandfather pontificated that the red was a sign they were bought at a hefty price. When I tried the shoes on, I asked my grandmother why they were tight. She said they’re tight because tight is right, and once I broke them in, walking would come easy.
They wouldn’t hurt anymore.
“It doesn’t fit,” my mother says, and suddenly I know that my grandmother lied to me.
The shoes never stopped hurting; I just became numb to the pain. I overlooked it, because pain is only problematic if it’s not supposed to be there. I was taught that the shoes are supposed to be tight.
The higher the heel, the closer to God, but I’ve never been good at walking in high heels. More money, more problems. The expensive red bottoms are supposed to make me feel free, but the price paid for them has become its own burden. Or if not the price, maybe the people. Or the people watchers.
My walking has become heavy labor under the eyes of the watchers, because I’m not just wearing these shoes. I’m trying to prove that I deserve to wear them, even though I can’t afford them. Neither can the watchers, but they must wear them better than I do. Either that or they live in houses made of tempered glass, capable of withstanding their stony disposition.
The cloud of witnesses is clouding my vision and making it hard to walk straight. Or walk at all.
I’m afraid someone will see me wobble.
My grandfather always emphasized that a famous designer put his blood, sweat, and tears into these shoes, so I should be grateful I have a pair. They’re in because he’s famous, but I’m beginning to think he’s infamous. The blood, sweat, and tears that made it possible for me to walk in these shoes negate the blood, sweat, and tears they draw from me every day.
“It doesn’t fit.”
A thought I’ve had before when my heel started to bleed, but the watchers encouraged me to self-soothe without removing the shoe. To speak words of life to my dying heels as I circumvent their circulation. So I do, until I am bandaged in holy adages wrapped so tight I can barely breathe. Restriction is my religion.
Nothing says freedom like wearing the nine circles of hell around your heels as ankle monitors. “It’s okay,” the watchers say, “they only flare up when you misstep.”
My heels are always on fire.
I feel like Cinderella if she put on the glass slipper, but the transformation never came. Still, they tell me I have to wear the shoes to be the fairest. Otherwise, how would we be the fairest, see?
I will be the fairest, see.
But I know a secret.
“It doesn’t fit.”
I looked it up, and the man who allegedly designed and paid for the shoes wasn’t even a shoemaker. He was a woodworker, working stubborn, hard materials into something beautiful.
He was also a potter. He spent his days shaping jars out of ordinary clay, jars that would hold everything he deemed useful and worthy. To my grandparents’ credit, the tales of his riches were not exaggerated.
He must’ve been a close family friend. Only a very good friend would freely share his wealth. I don’t think anyone’s paid him back for that yet. I guess they wear the shoes, but they’re not his shoes. A price was paid, maybe not for red bottoms. But wouldn’t it be strange to make an investment people can’t see? So it must be the shoes, red and bold and loudly proclaiming the purchase was successful.
Otherwise, what is the proof?
The peace.
“It doesn’t fit.” My mother is right, so I take off the shoes and decide to just be. The relief that rushes through my heels feels like a cool breeze.
I weep.
We were gifted generational wealth and have squandered it on shoes.
Finally able to see the flesh of my feet, I think the shoes have given me insight in lieu of injury.
“It doesn’t fit” anyone.
The shoe is artificial and can only beget artificiality. Anyone who claims otherwise is just as fake, perhaps unintentionally so. Cinderella’s life didn’t change when she put on the shoes; that’s why the transformation is delayed. It changed when the shoe came off, and the prince who offered peace came to find her in her rags.
In telling me that the shoes are too tight, I think my mother has also unlocked something for herself. I watch as she silently slips off her matching pair.
Together, we exit the stained glass greenhouse that has stunted our growth. As we walk barefoot through the flowered wild grass, uninhibited by walls, we realize that it is better to be outside. Grass blades gently brush against the backs of our heels, softer than the double-edged sword the watchers fashioned into a shoehorn.
As the flowers flutter in the wind, I make a mental note to take my cue from the lilies, letting go the urge to labor and spin.
So I take off the “church”, but keep the Christ. Because unlike the shoe, He always fits.