The Girl With the Golden Shoes

by Colin Channer

  “Asif,” she said sweetly, “you see where the fellow with my basket gone? Tell me and I catch him for you.”

  “Catch him for me?” the butcher said, with mischief. “He ain’t have nothing for me. He have something for you?”

  “He might.”

  He leaned across the shank, which was lying on the counter, and quickly looked Estrella up and down.

  “So you might have something for me too?”

  “If you see anything you could use,” she told him in a flirty voice that made him blush, “then tell me. Maybe we could talk.”

  Charmed, he cupped his mouth and shouted so everyone could hear: “If anybody find a basket in this market, please let this young lady know, because it look as if it might have been misplaced.”

  He said it in a language that she didn’t understand and she tried to read the message in the lines above his brow.

  “Is what you tell them?” she asked him in Sancoche, as she heard what sounded like the thing he’d said relayed from stall to stall.

  “I tell them not to help the professor to hide.”

  “Professor? That’s a name?”

  “That’s what we call him.”

  She said the word inside her head. She liked the sound of it. “So what that really mean?”

  “I ain’t exactly sure myself. But is a thing they call a man of great knowledge. And that is what he is, in truth. Don’t matter how you see him there. He is a bright fellow. One o’ the brightest you will ever meet. Sometimes he will straighten out and you will see him here in the market dress nicely in his shirt and trousers and a shine-up shoes. And if he come here three or four days straight like that, people will come and ask him for advice—to read letters and write letters and things like that. Because as simple as you see him now, that man went away to study doctor. And he pass all the white man exam and was supposed to come back home. But then he make a bad, bad choice. Instead o’ coming home, he say he want to stay a little longer. Why? To specialize. Now, some people say is pride cause him to fall. And I agree. Because when a little man get opportunity to reach far, he must be grateful and know when he suppose to stop. But who knows? He must be see them white boys specializing and say he must reach there too. But puss and dog ain’t have the same luck. A man must know when to satisfy. He couldn’t satisfy. He go on and on till he burn out his brain. And it ain’t lie or joke I telling you. Is my brother.”

  Estrella glanced across her shoulder out of instinct, looking for proof in other eyes. Was he telling her the truth? In the stall beside him, another butcher peered at her and raised his brows.

  “You have to watch how you approach him,” warned Asif. “He don’t mean no harm, but is a mad fellow after all. But mark me—if he catch you with the nub, is like somebody beat you with a pickax stick.”

  On knees and elbows now, Estrella made her way along the aisle. Although she was in many ways mature, she was still an adolescent, young enough to make decisions on a dare. Through her dress, which had begun to cling with perspiration, the butchers watched her body shifting shape, marveling at the way her muscles bunched then breathed into a slither, the rhythmic crest and falling of her curves.

  At the end of the aisle, she slipped beneath the burlap skirting of an empty stall and scouted up and down the broader corridor that striped the selling floor in two.

  Her position made her think about the stories she’d heard from men who’d hunted savage boars along the high volcanic slopes. The boars were most dangerous when cornered. So stealth—not bravery—was the best approach.

  Which is why I like to fish, she thought. With fish you always have the upper hand. If he going to overpower you, you let him go.

  She was shocked by this admission. Her chin was pressing on her folded arms, and she turned her head so that her arms were flat against her face. What did it mean that all her thoughts of fishing hadn’t frozen into hate?

  You have to harden your heart, she told herself. Otherwise, you might go back. And things ain’t looking too bright. A day ain’t pass and look at you. Flat on you face. Bamboozled by a fellow who ain’t have all his brain. People taking you for joke. If you know what you was doing, you would reach Seville already. But you ain’t really know what you doing. You ain’t have no blasted use. When you see that man come out the sea, you shoulda run and shut you mouth.

  Her mind began to squall with all the things that had occurred because she’d spoken to the diver. Thoughts leaped up and disappeared like waves. Trying to explain herself to Big Tuck and her grandmother. Dreaming of escape at night. Scaling fish alone. Sleeping in the old canoe. Hearing people whispering. The cliff. The bus. The reservation. Her own grandmother asking her to leave. And what was her grandmother thinking now? And what had she been thinking then? Did she really think she’d cursed the fish?

  You can’t curse anything, Estrella thought. Only God and the orishas could do that. Everybody know that. If is one thing I sure of, is that. Maybe all o’ this is punishment. ’Cause I was thinking like a liar and a thief and then—bam!—my basket gone. I ain’t even know if what I think I might remember is true. As I think about it now, I ain’t even sure if Big Tuck even have a younger brother in this place, or if this is even the place where I come that time. I was only four or five. But what happen already happen. If I lose that basket I lose everything except my money and my knife. My only toy. My best books. My blanket. My only change o’ clothes. If I lose them things what I going do? ’Cause I can’t go back. Knowing them, they wouldn’t even take me. And to go back to let them put me out again would be a disgrace.

  As she often did when she found herself in situations where she’d lost control, Estrella felt the absence of her mother.

  Her name was Edwina. Estrella didn’t know that she’d died.

  What she look like? How old she be? What kind o’ work she do? What kind o’ mood she have? Quiet…bossy…jokey…tough? She have a husband? Other children? Or is me alone?

  Whenever she’d asked these questions, her grandmother would answer with evasion or a grunt. Some things were not discussed.

  Like why she move from Trinidad to Cuba. Or if she had a trade when she was young. Or why she move from Cuba to San Carlos. Or who her husband was before she meet Big Tuck.

  The absence of her mother, in and of itself, didn’t make Estrella feel alone. Relations in the cove were so close. All children more or less belonged to all adults—which didn’t mean they were bathed in love. They were supervised and overseen, disciplined and watched, but when it came to close attention, children were ignored. They had no special place. There was no myth of them as warm, big-hearted beings. They were simply small adults. They worked.

  The communal role of parents was encouraged by the fact that certain kinds of incest were allowed. It wasn’t uncommon for cousins or half-siblings to marry, mate—or even fall in love. And marriage was a matter of the common law.

  If you cooked a man’s food and washed his clothes, and if he slept with you and didn’t try to leave in secret in the morning, and this went on for what was understood to be awhile, then you were known as man and wife.

  This idea also ruled the ownership of land. If you found a beach and built a shack on it, and went to sea from it, and fixed your nets on it, and beached your boat on it, there was a common understanding that the beach belonged to you.

  However, people didn’t move, didn’t branch away to live alone—for in the deepest part of their collective understanding, they could only see themselves as part of something vaguely known as “one.”

  To be a fragment or a fraction was the greatest fear. So exile was the harshest form of retribution—the punishment reserved for those whose thoughts and actions undermined the fundamental meaning of their lives.

  When she’d thought of all these things, Estrella rolled away from underneath the skirting and began to move with purpose down the aisles. Her steps were heavy. From a distance, even with the sound of other voices, you could hear the thudding of he
r heels against the floor.

  Her face was blank, but tight with concentration, like a gambler who’s taken full account of what he’s lost and what he’s going to lose unless he sinks this ball or draws this card; who can’t quit, because quitting means it’s over; who can’t just walk away, because walking is what losers do.

  When you lose like that it’s not the same as losing fair and square. Losing fair and square will sharpen you, will give you edge, will make you the kind of person who’ll win again. But when you walk away you don’t just lose the game, you lose a little bit of nerve; and when that starts to happen, then your gambling days are done; they’ll look at you and call your bluff and you’ll look at them and worry, then you’ll always lose; and winning is for winners, and losing isn’t nice.

  As she walked, Estrella slipped a hand into the pocket with the blade.

  “Where’s the fellow with my things?” she asked Asif when she’d covered all the aisles.

  “I have no idea,” he said with a laugh. “When I see you lying down I think you gone to cry.”

  She put her hands on the counter, slowly but with force, and glared at him from way beneath her brows.

  “I look like a person that cry easy?”

  “I ain’t say nothing like that.”

  “Because you see I black you think I fool?”

  “I never say you was no fool,” he said carefully.

  “Well, you talking the way I talk to idiot people.”

  Her glare began to affect him, and he raised his hands to shoulder height and told her, “Look, I ain’t want no fuss with you. Better you just go you way.”

  “Well, I ain’t want none either,” she answered, in a louder voice. “I just want my things. I just want to go.” She spoke quietly again. “I asking you another time, sir. You see the fellow with my things?”

  “It ain’t necessary to come to this,” he told her in a voice that made aggressive use of overdone restraint. “Just wait a little while and don’t make no fuss and everything will be okay. If you make a fuss, things mightn’t go the way you want them. And I want things to work for you. Nobody here ain’t thief.”

  “You ain’t really know who you playing with,” she answered, backing off. She spread her arms and spun around. “I will break up this place until somebody talk to me.” She leaned down on his counter now as people shuffled down the aisle. “It ain’t funny. It ain’t funny at all. You ain’t know where I coming from or where I going. You ain’t know me from Adam. You ain’t know me at all. You ain’t know what I will do.” She sprung back and straightened up and pointed now. “I will mash up everything in this goddamn place until I get my things, Asif. You hear me? Not because you see me black so. I ain’t no simpleton. I ain’t have no mother supervising me. I ain’t no goddamn child.”

  From a nearby stall, Estrella grabbed a hairy coconut and smashed it on the floor. The juice erupted in a silver fizz. A woman shrieked as jagged fragments zoomed.

  “Take time,” said Asif. “Take time.”

  “I can’t take what I ain’t have. I want to go ’bout my business, and here you is interfering with my life. I laugh already. I give you that, Asif. I give that to all o’ you. And I ain’t going laugh no more. I ain’t come here to turn into nobody clown. I give you entertainment. I give you a show. So, coolie man, gimme my damn things now.”

  “Who she calling, coolie?” someone shouted over mutterings in a language that Estrella didn’t understand. “What? She want somebody cut her ass?”

  “I will mash somebody skull,” Estrella answered. Her neck was taut. She felt she’d break it if she turned to look. “You watching me? You follow? Just like how you see that coconut? I’ll mash a skull like that. You don’t know where I coming from and you don’t know where I going. Don’t push me no more.”

  She sensed someone approaching from behind and turned around to see a hefty woman in a sari stealing sideward down the aisle.

  “If you trouble one, you trouble all,” the woman warned. “You can’t come here and break up people things like this and think you could just go.”

  “Same way you shouldn’t let you people take my things and don’t say nothing. So is even. One for one.”

  As Estrella grabbed another coconut, a butcher with a turban rushed her from the side, and she took his arm and drew her knife and turned him off her ass.

  “Stop it,” said Asif after his compadre’s head and back collided with the floor. “Everybody stop.”

  The groaning man was barely moving. But they saw no sign of blood.

  When Estrella backed away, aware now of the danger to her life, Asif came from behind his counter with her basket in his hand. One leg was withered, and he had a limp that made him waddle like a seal.

  “Take it and go,” he said. “Take it and go. It ain’t have to come to this. Just take you things and go.”

  “Where you get it from?” she asked him as her heart began to pound. Another person lunged toward her. Asif leaned in and used his arms and chest to block the blow.

  “Spare you life,” he told Estrella. He gave a sign and two men hauled off the one who’d attacked her, no doubt for a smack-up down the aisle. “Listen what I say and go. Don’t turn back. Run. Don’t walk. That man you throw down is the most ignorant man I ever see. And the fellow I had to rough up was his son. Listen what I tell you. Go! Pick up you life in you hand and go! And learn to take a joke!”

  V.

  Estrella ran out of the market and stampeded past the rusty bull that had been sung to sleep outside the bar.

  Knees pumping almost navel high, she took a bend that led her through an alleyway with doors that opened straight into the street, and swerved around a group of men in undershirts who’d set up stools around a table on the cobbles for their game of dominoes.

  Emerging from the alleyway, she squinted as she headed down a path that led her past the finger-pointing tower of the spired clock, and slanted in a wheeling semicircle round a little park where children played a game of cricket with a two-by-four, then veered off by the courthouse with its large, imposing columns and its curving marble stairs and took the road by which the bus had brought her into town.

  Raised with clannish people, she knew of all that could occur. So although she didn’t hear the sound of feet behind her, or get the sense that all the people who were laughing as she ran were going to gather in a mob, she sprinted, as she’d later tell her children, “like I heard a rumor that a rich old auntie came to visit from abroad.”

  As she came upon the steep ascent, she cursed and tensed her middle, hunching forward, giving greater power to her legs, which labored with the challenge of the slope; and for half a mile she grunted onward till the band of muscles in her middle, which resembled little squares, began to soften like a chocolate bar.

  Tired and hungry, she began to walk. They ain’t coming, she thought, and put her hands against her hips. She glanced across her shoulder down the steeply rising road, which disappeared around a bend into the bush.

  They have better things to do, she told herself. But a coward man keep sound bones, as them old people say. I ain’t able for anybody to gimme a chop or a cuff right now. But anyways, is a good thing it happen, in a way, ’cause you had to get out o’ that damn place. You was only loitering and wasting time when you have important things to do. You have to get to town. And town way, way far away. And you have to get there before night come. ’Cause by 7:30 all them big stores going be closed. And that is the first place you have to go—a store where they sell shoes. ’Cause ain’t nobody giving any sensible job where you ain’t have to wear no shoes. And you have to get a job before tomorrow. ’Cause you ain’t have a soul in town.

  As she spiraled up the lonely road Estrella fantasized about her coming life, and saw an older version of herself creating stares and whispers of excitement when her driver brought her to Salan’s, the island’s most elite department store—two floors, a wooden escalator, a soda fountain, and a cafeteria with a balco
ny that overlooked the Queens.

  Smiling with a puckered mouth as if she held a secret, Estrella saw herself among the aisles, wearing yellow satin pumps—fancy shoes that had the bag and dress to match, her husband’s black fedora as an accent on her head, and behind her, waiting, a clerk whose arms were filled with boxes, calling her “Madame.”

  The main cross-island road was seven miles away, and Estrella worked toward it at a slow but steady pace. From time to time, small herds of goats would trickle down the road or drip in ones and twos out of the dark encroaching woods, which at certain points would form a roof of shade.

  Later, after she’d noticed that the goats were coming down the mountain in a heavy stream—groups of ten and twelve—she came upon a clump of leaning huts. To her mind they were the poorest homes she’d ever seen. They were made of cracked, ill-fitting timbers that had not been planed, and between some of the timbers there were spaces large enough to slip a hand.

  The shaggy huts were built on stilts to keep them level. With their brown walls and dry roofs they looked like herds of animals reduced to skin and bone by drought. In their shadows lingered clouds of little children, their heads as round and dark as lice.

  As she looked, an old negrita standing in the shadow of a doorway wiped her hands against her dress, which was a flour sack, and asked her with a mouth that had collapsed against its gums, “You hungry, sweetheart? You want a little something?”

  And in a moment of illumination, Estrella knew that these were not the poorest homes she’d ever seen. Her people in the cove had homes like these.

  Looking at the dirt she hadn’t dusted from her clothes, her hands entangled in her fraying hair, feeling dust transforming into mud along her sweaty feet and shins, glancing as she passed the old negrita, Estrella held her basket and began to run again, her breathing dry and cracked with effort, like someone waking from nightmarish dreams.

  She was at a height now where the intermittent grunts and groans of vehicles on the main cross-island road began to filter through the net of soft translucent sounds that caught and held the chirrups of the woods.