“I’d like a pair of tennis shoes, please.”
“OK.” The salesgirl moved
from behind the cash register. “I’m Abby. Let’s go this way.”
Christine followed, Abby’s perfume reminding her of a scent Megan’s
girlfriends sometimes wore. They reached the women’s section, a
wall containing hundreds of small shelves, a different style of tennis
shoe resting on each one.
“So, what kind do you want?”
“I’m not sure.” The volume of
choices intimidated her. Things had certainly changed since she
was a girl. Back then, almost everyone wore the same kind of
tennis shoes--black with white laces, sometimes high-tops, sometimes
low, all with white rubber soles and tips over the toes. “I haven’t had
a pair in a long time.”
Abby was too cute to wear so much
makeup, and it didn’t make her look any older--it just made her look
like a young girl trying to appear grown up. Christine couldn’t
remember a time when she wanted to be older. Her girlfriends had
been like that, wearing bras before they needed to, filling empty B
cups with toilet paper. In the school bathrooms, putting on
makeup their mothers wouldn’t let them wear, chewing Bazooka bubblegum
to mask the smell of Lucky Strikes on their breath--all at a time
when she wanted nothing more than to ride her bike and play catch with
her dad in his backyard.
Her mother had divorced him when
Christine was twelve, unusual for the time. In the sixties, broken
homes were still rare, but today’s kids were used to it. Half of
the ones she saw in this mall were probably living with only one
parent. She wondered if Abby’s were divorced.
“What’s wrong, Chrissy?”
Wearing a stained apron covered with faded strawberries, her dad stood
on the opposite side of the Formica kitchen table, dishtowel in one
hand, the other on his hip.
“Nothing.” Avoiding his eyes, she
handed him the last of the silverware, then walked quickly into the
living room. He could always tell when she was lying.
Leaning against the plaid couch,
she picked up her jacks and started to play, bouncing the rubber ball
against the polished hardwood. Her period had just started.
Last night it was light, but today she’d been running to the bathroom
every few minutes, wiping up small drops of blood, pulling off long
strips of toilet paper, folding them over a dozen times and placing
them in her underwear. She’d already washed out three pairs with
hand-soap, hiding them under her bed, hoping her dad wouldn’t
notice.
She’d known it was time--past
time, really. All her friends had already started, some almost a
year ago, but she’d managed to convince herself that it wasn’t going to
happen to her. Stuffed animals and tree-forts and the Three
Stooges--she was going to stay a kid forever. She’d play by
herself if she had to, and that’s what she’d been doing more and more
over the last year. All her girlfriends wanted to do lately was
talk about boys and clothes.
Now everything was going to change.
After finishing the dishes, he
sat in the leather chair and lit a cigar. He watched her play for
a while, not saying anything, and although she didn’t look at him, she
could feel his eyes on her. Tossing the jacks again, she planned her
move, then noticed it--a red spot on her shorts. Keeping her
thighs close together, she jumped up, ran for the bathroom, and slammed
the door.
“Honey?” Her dad’s footsteps approached. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m OK.”
“Are you sick?”
“My tummy hurts a little, that’s all.”
Unbuttoning her shorts and
sliding them down her legs, trying not to get more blood on the white
fabric, she pulled off her underwear and threw the soaked toilet paper
into the toilet. What should she do now? If she washed her
shorts, she wouldn’t have anything to wear when she got out, but if she
didn’t, he’d notice, too. Dumb dumb dumb. She should have gone
upstairs, said she was going to take a bath, let her clothes soak for a
while, but in the small bathroom off the kitchen, she was stuck, and
she couldn’t stay here forever. Throwing the underwear and shorts in
the sink, she shoved in the rubber stopper and turned on the water,
staring at herself in the mirror. A few strands of hair had escaped
from her barrettes. She was a kid. This wasn’t fair.
“Are you alright in there?” The glass doorknob turned. “C’mon, honey. Unlock the door.”
“I’ll be out in a few minutes.” She reached for the soap.
“Would you like to help me frost your cake?”
“In a minute, Daddy.”
Watching blood drip down her legs, she started to cry. They were going
to celebrate her thirteenth birthday that night.
“I can’t believe how many kinds of tennis shoes there are.”
“They don’t call them tennis
shoes anymore.” Abby smiled, a silver retainer shining over
perfectly white teeth. “Unless you’re actually gonna play tennis.”
“No.” Christine reached for a
blue and white high top with sparkly silver laces. “I’m going to start
jogging.”
“You do anything else, like aerobics and stuff?”
“No. I just want to run.”
“That’s a cross-trainer.”
Abby took the shoe and returned it to its perch. “You need
something just for running. You gonna do it on a track or sidewalk?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it.”
“How about this?” Reaching
for a higher shelf, Abby pulled down a red shoe with gray stripes,
thick white soles, the smell of rubber, nothing over the toe.
“These are cool. They have thicker insoles for running on hard
stuff. My mom’s got a pair.”
Christine took the shoe, staring
at Abby. A black stone set in silver hung from each ear, but
unlike so many girls these days, Abby didn’t have her eyebrow or nose
pierced. Megan wore six earrings now, two of them on her upper
ears, where it was dangerous because the piercing went through
cartilage. Christine had given in on that one, but she’d drawn the line
at tongue piercing. For most kids, it was probably nothing but a
fashion statement, but Christine had read about what they were really
for.
“Do they come in another color?” She handed back the shoe.
“Like what?”
“How about yellow?”
They celebrated her birthday that
night, just the two of them. After the ordeal in the bathroom, she
finally had to tell her dad what the problem was. He called her
mother and asked for advice, then went to the drugstore. Chrissy
refused to go with him. When he got back, he handed her a brown
paper bag. She took it to the bathroom, opened the first package,
read the instructions, then read them again. Hands shaking, she
took out the white belt, tore the paper off the pad and tried to
position it over the hooks, dropped it twice, finally got it fastened,
then slid the entire thing up her legs. The elastic twisted as
she pulled it over skinned knees to her waist. She smoothed it out with
her thumbs. Finally, she slipped on a clean pair of underwear,
the seams stretching over the uncomfortable mess.
When she came out, she felt bulky
and awkward in shorts that now seemed too tight, and the belt chafed
her skin. She was sure her dad could see it. Supportive and
understanding as usual, he tried to talk about it, but she didn’t want
to. He let it drop.
Later that evening, they sat at
the kitchen table again. Half a dozen boxes wrapped in yellow
tissue paper rested on the kitchen counter. Last night, when she
got out of bed to get a glass of water, she’d heard Frank Sinatra
playing softly on the radio in her dad’s room. Through the
partially opened door, she could see him wrapping presents. She
didn’t care about them now.
“Make a wish.” He slid the cake in front of her.
“I wish you and mom would get back together.”
“I’m sorry, honey.” He
cleared his throat, leaned back in his chair, folded his arms across
his chest. “Besides, you’re supposed to wish for something for
yourself.”
“That is for myself.”
“Wish for something else.”
The kitchen smelled like matches,
gray smoke curling toward the ceiling. Her dad had gone a little
overboard--yellow streamers with yellow balloons along the top of the
kitchen cabinets, a two-layered chocolate cake with yellow frosting
he’d dyed with food coloring. He’d even let her paint the walls of her
room yellow a couple of months ago. They’d done it together one hot
summer evening after a game of Monopoly. Yellow was her favorite color,
and chocolate was her favorite cake, and birthdays used to be her
favorite part of the year. Thirteen yellow candles dripped onto the
yellow frosting.
“I wish this never happened.” She took a deep breath and blew them out.
“Want to try them on?” Abby
returned the shoe to the shelf beside all the others. “What size
do you wear?”
“Eight.” No--that wasn’t
right. Megan wore a size eight. “I’m sorry. Do you
have them in a nine?”
“I’ll look.” Spinning on
the heels of clunky black lace-up boots, Abby headed for the doorway at
the rear. “Back in a sec.”
Christine watched Abby as she
disappeared through the curtain. A short dark skirt, tight
t-shirt over small shoulders, nicely shaped legs, strong calves and
wide hips. She was built like Megan, healthy looking, not the gaunt
super-model look that so many young girls tried to emulate. Most
looked like they were at death’s door. Thank God Megan hadn’t
fallen into that trap. Megan hadn’t had much of a problem with her
period either. It happened when both Christine and her husband were
home, and they’d managed to get through it together, one of the few
experiences they’d all shared over the last couple of years.
Feeling the strap tugging at her
shoulder as she waited for Abby to return, she set her purse on the
carpeted floor and dropped into a chair. A corner of the manila
envelope poked out the top of the unzipped bag. She shoved it
back inside. A moment later, Abby reappeared through the curtain.
“Last pair of nines.”
Setting a box on the floor, Abby pushed aside the white tissue paper,
removed one of the shoes, and started to lace it. “A lot of girls
into yellow must be running this year.”
Christine kicked off her leather heels. “What do you think of them?”
“They’re cool.” She eased
the shoe onto Christine’s left foot. “Yellow’s not my color, but
like my mom says, it’s not about looks. They just gotta feel
good.”
“I’ve always liked yellow.”
“Great, then.” Abby unwrapped the
second shoe, laced it, slipped it onto Christine’s right foot, and
pulled both sets of laces tight. “How do they feel?”
Placing her hands on the arms of
the chair, she pushed herself up, bounced on the balls of her feet,
then put weight on each leg, first the left then the right. She
walked to a mirror on the floor a few feet away to get a better
look. The shoes were out of place with her blue pinstripe blazer
and skirt, but they felt wonderful. She could run in these. She
could run a long way. She could run in them forever. A tag
hanging from one of the eyelets indicated they had fluid-cushioned
insoles to absorb damaging impact.
Her dad died two days after her 13th birthday.
Late Monday afternoon, she had
given up on her homework and was sitting on her bed reading the new
Nancy Drew mystery her dad had given her on the weekend. Her
mother was busy making dinner. The sun shining through branches
of the huge willow outside her window made weird shadows on her freshly
painted walls.
While she was gone for the
weekend, her mother had redone her room, and Chrissy could still make
out the faint odor of paint over the smell of meatloaf and mashed
potatoes coming through her doorway. She had pink walls now, a
boarder of roses around the ceiling, white woodwork, and a lace trimmed
comforter on her bed. It was ugly. She missed her yellow
room at her dad’s place.
The phone rang.
She looked up from her book,
wondering if it might be him. She’d been thinking about the
weekend, about how hard it had been, and what a good job he’d done with
it all, even if he’d overdone it with the yellow stuff. For a
lawyer, he could be kind of silly sometimes. She hoped she hadn’t
hurt his feelings, but she was pretty sure she had. Looking at
the alarm clock sitting on her new white wicker nightstand, she
realized it couldn’t be him since he wouldn’t be home from work yet, so
she went back to her book.
She’d discovered Nancy Drew about
a year ago through the book club at school. At first, she’d liked
her, mainly because Nancy lived alone with her father, but she’d
decided Nancy was just a little too smart and just a little too
pretty. Nancy was the kind of girl who would love a pink bedroom,
the kind of girl who never had trouble doing her math
homework. Bess was funny, but she reminded Chrissy too much
of her own friends lately--boy crazy. George was definitely her
favorite now. George was a tomboy, the kind of friend you could
actually play with.
Nancy was just about to solve The Mystery of The Haunted Showboat
when Chrissy’s mother walked into the room, tears on her cheeks,
dabbing a crumpled tissue at her nose, then sat beside her on the bed
and told her the news.
At first it was like she didn’t even hear it. Her mother said it again, slowly.
And then Chrissy screamed,
dropped her book, and slapped her mother in the face. Her mother
didn’t move, just sat there staring. She slapped her again, this
time leaving a bright red handprint on her cheek. Her mother leaned
forward to hug her, but Chrissy shoved her away. Without saying
another word, her mother rubbed her check, then left, closing the door.
Chrissy spent the next hour
destroying her room. She yanked the drawers out of the nightstand
and dresser, grabbed an ice-skate and used the blade to make deep
scratches in the freshly painted plaster, ripped down the rose
wallpaper border, tore the arms and legs off Betty, a stuffed white
bear her mother gave her last Christmas, scribbled all over the new
comforter with crayons before throwing it out the window, and then
finally exhausted, collapsed on the bed.
When she woke up, she noticed her
new book had somehow managed to survive, and even more amazing, her
door was still closed, which meant her mother hadn’t even come back to
check on her. She carefully placed the book on a corner of the
empty nightstand, then rubbing her sore eyes, got out of bed, kicked a
broken drawer into what was left of Betty, and headed for the living
room.
Still crying, her mother sat on the couch, but Chrissy didn’t say a
word as she made her way toward the front door. On a woven matt
beside the hall tree sat the yellow tennis shoes her father had given
her for her birthday.
“I’m so sorry sweetie.” Her mother got to her feet.
Chrissy reached for the shoes and slipped them on.
“Where are you going?” Her mother walked toward her, arms extended.
“I hate you!” She grabbed the
laces and yanked the knots tight, pulled on her jacket, and stormed out
the door.
Then she started to run.
It was dark but that didn’t
matter. Nothing mattered. She ran past the lighted windows
of neighbors’ houses with oak trees in their yards perfect for
climbing, to the end of the block, down main street with all the shops
closed for the night, past the school yard where she used to play
dodge-ball with friends, onto the dirt road leading to the farms
outside of town, then beyond the huge field of beans in neat rows
beside the old rusted barn, until finally, out of breath, she fell onto
a patch of long grass, rolled onto her back, and stared into the black
sky.
Against her mother’s protests,
she wore the yellow tennis shoes at her dad’s funeral, and then she
wore them every single day after that, running everywhere she could, as
fast as she could. They wore out before she had the chance to
outgrow them, but when her mother tried to throw them away, Chrissy
rescued them from the trash, placed them in a shoebox tied with a
yellow ribbon, and tucked them safely away in the back of her closet.
“I think you’re gonna like
them.” Abby slipped the shoebox into a plastic bag. “If you
don’t, you can bring them back.”
“I don’t think I’ll be returning
them.” She opened her purse to look for her wallet. It had
settled to the bottom and lay hidden below the nine-by-twelve manila
envelope. Inside that envelope were the signed and notarized
papers she would be filing at city hall shortly. She withdrew the
wallet and opened her checkbook.
“One pair of size nine running
shoes. Anything else?” Abby slid a lock of hair behind her
ear. “Like water repellent or something?”
Did she need anything else? She
reached for the pen attached to a long silver chain. Did Megan need
anything? She read the total in lighted numbers on the
small black screen, wrote the date on a check, glanced once more at the
manila envelope, then sighed and set down the pen.
“Do you have another pair in size eight?”
Thanks for Visiting!