Silver Slippers

There’s a pair of glittery shoes sitting in my closet, tucked underneath my folded winter coat and scarves, light bouncing off the silver tips peeking out of the mountains of cloth. They remind me of when I would clean under couch cushions and find half-hidden quarters saying hello from the darkness. Those quarters were the best surprises because they meant I finally had enough to do my laundry.

Those shoes are not happy surprises. They look like Dorothy’s silver slippers after years and years of wear, if they were Dorothy’s only Sunday shoes, bought on sale from Payless. They have dimples and wrinkles where my toes use to scrunch, rips down the sides, and splotches where most of the glitter that used to reflect rainbows has been rubbed away.

There are smudges that won’t go away, where, if I look closely, I can see myself slipping them on once again and wondering what it would be like to have more than two pairs of shoes. One for church, one for school. The girls in my church and school had different pairs all the time. My best friend would actually match her shoes to her outfits—what is that like?

I would wear every pair of school shoes into nothing, the rips all the way down my off-brand chucks, the white rubber parts flapping against where the seam should have been, and I didn’t mind, because Mom and Dad were working so hard, and if I just asked, I probably would be able to go to the cheapest shoe store and buy another pair of shoes to destroy. On some Saturday, in some dimension when Dad wasn’t sleeping and recovering from the night shift and Mom wasn’t behind on grading papers, where I wasn’t afraid to ask for favors. We would get another pair I would love and love and then look down to discover one day that they were just dirty laces without aglets looped through my toes, pretending to be shoes so that I could walk into school without teachers giving me the eye.

Of course, they probably gave me the eye, anyway. The softer kind, the pitiful kind. I just never noticed.

I have a different pair of Sunday shoes, now. Bought them last year. They’re black.

I don’t know why I haven’t thrown the ripped Dorothy shoes away yet. Part of me still loves the glitter.