Friends. Forever.

 

You can have my seat, and gathered his things and stood to his feet.

Her hips bound in a cheap polyester skirt and balancing on ridiculous heels, the young woman hurriedly accepted his offer.

A grunt of thanks.

No eye contact.

A prim middle-aged woman next to her with a look of disdain on her face. Mumbled something under her breath. Something cutting, I assume. Those shoes were her choice.

He wasn’t looking for gratitude, just her relief, and seemed satisfied with no applause. He just looked down, and held the pole in front of her; steadied his groceries between his feet and didn’t change his face until he left.

He was wearing a leather backpack and swinging from it was a worn, golden locket in the shape of a heart that read “Friends”.

“Forever” is far from here.

It’s home is a thin gold chain.

Whose home is a metal decorated hook.

Whose home is a modern printed black and white wallpapered wall.

That stands in a pretty house.

Behind a pretty lawn.

That lays in the bad part of town, with the badly cracked sidewalks that are hard to walk on unless your shoes have rubber bottoms and the soles are thick.

But a young woman braves them in her patent leather stilts. It takes her forever and her ankles hurt everyday.

But the pain is worth the power. She has learned this lesson three times.

The first time she’d learned it was when her mother caught her snooping through her closet and wobbling up and down the length of the bed in too-big slingback black lace covered stilettos. She opened the door with such surprising vigor that the young girl clattered to the floor immediately. She fell cleanly out of her mother’s heels, her bare feet slapping to the hardwood floor, the shoes remaining upright as if impervious to her adolescent clumsiness.

She sheepishly peeked up at her mother. Her hands were on her hips and her face looked amused.

What were you doing in my shoes, girl.

I….I dunno.

Her mother smiled. You don’t know, huh.

Of course she knew.

You wanted to see what it was like? Being a grown up?

Being grown.

Being a grown sexy woman.

C’mon. I’ll help you up. With a smile. And then picked her up with her toned arms and pulled her to her full height.

The young girl stepped back into the pumps. She nearly tumbled to the ground again.

You have to balance on your toes. Stand on your tippy toes.

Up up, like this?

See what it does to your calves? Now you have young woman legs.

The young girl looked and saw her young woman legs. Attention getting legs.

And your butt too. Now walk like so,so,so.

Grown woman hips. Stick it out here and there.

Walk and stop and swing! Yaaas! Like to music!

Boom, boom, boom. Like she was on a catwalk. Hardness in her legs. Tingling pride in her chest.

Turn some music on!

Yes!

They danced around and fell and swayed and walked like sexy girls, louder and louder, until her mom’s husband came to the bedroom door.

You guys are going to break the house down! As he leaned in the doorway and smiled. When he was happy he talked so wide that all of his teeth showed.

Oh, the house will be fine! And her mother sambaed towards him.

You samba! What! And then he awkwardly moved his hips and beckoned to her with his hands. She reached him and they moved together, this way and that, him catching her hip when she swayed too far, her delicate hands on his chest whenever she laughed.

Her mother was on her tiptoes.

Just enough to tip into him while they danced.

He always smelled like good cologne and cinnamon and was the handsomest man around.

This is the way grown women dance. Up up on their toes.

She learned the lesson the second time while underneath her stepfather.

Legs wrapped around him.

You are so much like her. Like your mother. So much. And touched the toe of her pumps.

She put her finger to his mouth because she hated to talk about their past and his eyes became glassy and now he was on top of her. He breathed into her neck and she pulled him in with her hands. She flexed her thighs and pointed her feet.

I love you. And then he kissed her and ran his hand down her calf and fingered the tip of her mother’s stiletto heel.

She was so like her mother. She even very carefully smelled like her. She even very carefully balanced in her shoes. She even very carefully walked on her tiptoes and practiced her samba and how to lean forward just enough to tip.

I leave you him. She had said with death on her breath. She knew that her daughter would know exactly what she meant.

He truly had loved her mother, which is why when she died he fell in love with her daughter, which is why her smell made him soft and her heels made him weak.

And she had truly loved her mother, which is why she honored her last wish, which is why she both used him and made him happy.

Their’s was a calm, manipulative relationship, much like the one he’d had with her mother, with less love and more demands.

A good heel will get you anything you want, sweetie. It’s rich man kryptonite.

Dresses. Parties. A new car for her to drive with her friends.

A new house and then a newer house with a gate all around the neighborhood. A hairdresser? A personal trainer? A look. A touch. A wink. A kiss. A surrender. On and on like that it went until it could go no longer.

Not even your mother needed this much.

But she was not her mother. She was her legacy.

Rich man kryptonite.

Yes she was.

But he wasn’t rich anymore.

The day he left he stole her mother’s locket, the one her and her daughter had gotten together at the same time she’d bought her first pair of heels.

Don’t we look like ladies, honey? With our heels and our jewelry?

Beautiful.

Sexy.

He snapped the locket off of it’s chain, slid it onto a piece of string, and tied it on itself, and later to his keys, and later to the zipper of the bag he carried around after he realized he couldn’t afford a car in the city.

He didn’t take much else with him. Left her the house and the bills and the clothes.

He shed a tear because he loved her.

Took a cab to the train.

Took the train to Chicago.

Got a cheap motel, and was gone forever.

When she came home for the day he wasn’t there, and that was it.

No dad, no lover.

No power.

No income. No shopping. No money. No gas, no car, no food, no home, nowhere to go.

No power.

No home. No skills.

No way to reach him.

No power.

No hope.

And so when a man with a white Cadillac offered her room and board

she had no choice.

I like your shoes, they are sexy, he said, and she got in. Her and her shoes and her “Forever”.

Third lesson.

Pain was worth her only power.

Sometimes that’s the way it goes.

But maybe.

Could she have stole away and come to find him?

Yes, she loved him too?

Maybe it was her on the train that day, having finally escaped to herself

And she had come to the city and was on her way to find him

To apologize to him

To say that she loved him and to remind him of her mother again.

Maybe her attempts to reach out had failed and that’s why she wouldn’t look up.

Maybe

if it were her,

she would have seen him, and the swinging zipper pull locket that matched the one around her neck.

Maybe if their eyes had met they would have reunited.

Yes, maybe if he had seen her face.

But he only saw her shoes.

You can have my seat he said, and stood for the rest of the ride

And did not cry until he left.