The Girl With the Golden Shoes

by Colin Channer

  With long strides he overtook her. His voice was soft but stiff in tone; his shoulders taut and hunched.

  “I’m not trying to bamboozle, you,” she reassured him. “But time going fast.”

  “We can do it very quickly,” he insisted. “Why start and stop like this? Why tomorrow? We’re here right now.”

  This is what I can’t take, she thought. Now everything gone and spoil. I have to work out where I going sleep and all he want to do is fuck. If he could wait awhile I might give him a little thing. But I have to see where I laying my head tonight. It have a few place down by the waterfront that them sailors use. I wonder how much for those? It can’t be too much. And I only need it for the night. But anything you spend to get a room, she told herself, is taking money from you shoes. Now what going happen with that?

  “Simón,” she asked, “how much for the English ones again?”

  “I really don’t care anymore. I hope you get to where you’re going safely. I’m gone.”

  “Listen, Simón,” Estrella bluffed. “Since you ride me on that horse and my feet get to relax, I could march with Mr. Hitler army from Tokyo to Japan and ain’t care. You hear me? So don’t talk to me ’bout how you going ride away and leave me. Everything have its time. And every time have its thing. And this is not the time for no more thing. You understand?”

  “I have a thing,” he said, and took her by the arm. “Does it have a time as well?”

  “I ain’t know,” she answered as she tried to pull away. She was separated from her basket. If she didn’t have it then she couldn’t run away.

  “Simón,” she reasoned, feeling the heavy body of the horse against her back, “you was going somewhere. Wherever you was going you have to get there. You ain’t have no time for this. I tell you tomorrow. Then let it be tomorrow, nuh. Why so much of a haste?”

  “If we’re going to fuck, let’s fuck,” he muttered. “Are we going to fuck?”

  “I ain’t like that kind o’ language, Simón. I really ain’t like it at all. A nice man like you shouldn’t say those things, Simón. They ain’t suit a gentleman like you.”

  His breath was hot against her face. The horse was firm against her back. A presence like a wall. She was about to bite the rider, then remembered that he’d talked about a gun.

  If you take the knife and stab him you could get away, she thought. But what going happen after that? All his family is police. They going lock you up. You is a outcast. Ain’t nobody coming to talk for you. And even so, what you grandmother and Big Tuck could do? I born unlucky. I born fucking unlucky to rass. Lemme rub my thighs and see. I still a little wetty. I could turn my mind to something else.

  “Come,” she said abruptly. “Since you have to fuck me, let’s fuck. But don’t take too damn long.”

  She reached under her skirt and tugged away her bloomers and grumbled as he kissed her on the neck.

  “But can you just pretend?”

  “Simón, pretend that what?”

  “That…that you like this. That you like me.”

  “But after this I won’t like you no more. Because everything have to be how you want it. You don’t give me any consideration. I really have to get to town. I tell you we can do this tomorrow. But your tomorrow have to come and mash up my today. I wish I could say I ain’t like you, Simón. If it was so, this wouldn’t be so bad.”

  “Look…I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t confuse me. Just be fast.”

  She stomped across the grass toward the tree.

  “Maybe we should lie down in the grass,” he told her sweetly. “I want to lie on you and touch you. I don’t want to be like any beast.”

  “Look, I wash my hair today and all sort o’ things on that ground, and I don’t have no more change o’ clothes. I ain’t doing this because I want to do this, Simón. Is because this is how it have to be. Push it in. Do it now so we can go.”

  “Don’t be savage.”

  She was resisting his control and he was worried that she was about to change her mind again—slam it like a door. And in the anonymity of the darkness, in the isolated wildness of the bush, with the feel and taste of her as distinct as a sharp voice egging him on, he accepted that he didn’t have the nerve to pry her open, even though he felt a coiled emotion that he thought might be the urge. The discordant echo of his clashing feelings rang and hummed along his bones, feeding back distortion to his moral core, amplifying everything till all he could hear inside his head was one gigantic, primal roar of shame.

  “Don’t insult me, Simón, or I going stop right now.”

  “Can’t you just be nice?”

  “To who?”

  “Stop talking. You’re making this worse.”

  As she leaned against the tree, she thought, Look at what I come to. I really born unlucky. Look. I have the proof.

  She didn’t fight him when he hooked one of her thighs beneath the knee, and the truth is that he didn’t hold her in a forceful way.

  They proceeded with the strained cooperation of a pair of office clerks. She did what she could but nothing more, moving every now and then; and when he tried to kiss her, she would turn so that his lips would skid across her cheeks. When he dipped and tried to put her knee across his shoulder, she didn’t let her body help him with the weight, and she grumbled when he sucked his teeth and clamped her thigh against his ribs. Her resistance was unnerving, and he found himself existing in a dim suspended state of neither pleasure nor disgust, suffering through a kind of stultifying rote, wishing he could come…in and out…out and in…like sorting bags of mail.

  Twenty minutes later, when he still wasn’t done, she reached into her pocket for her knife and pressed the point behind his ear.

  “Simón, is either I put down my leg or you finish right now.”

  “One more. Don’t kill me. Two more. Please wait.”

  “Stop it, Simón. Stop it. You ain’t feeling how I dry?”

  The danger of the knife against him brought the rider’s feelings to an edge, so when she shouted that she’d slit his throat, he felt the vertigo of falling and the urge to give her anything she wanted in the world.

  “You want the shoes, my love?”

  “Just finish.”

  “Reach around the back into my wallet. It have ten or twenty pounds.”

  It was a little after midnight when they rode into Seville, which was dark and unreflective like a glass of port. Under blackout orders, all lights were off, all curtains drawn, and the smoke that blew from Black Well dimmed the glitter of the moon.

  The balance of the journey had been passed in silence. Their lips were sealed by shame. When they’d gotten on the horse again, he’d let her sit behind him so he wouldn’t have to face the fact that she was there.

  Estrella wasn’t sure if she’d been raped. She’d been overpowered, she knew, but not with anything she knew as force; after all, she’d been the one to pull the knife.

  Maybe I just worthless in truth, she told herself. I like to say I unlucky. But maybe I just worthless in truth. So you have a knife and he ain’t beat you. He ain’t put no gun to you. He ain’t put you on no ground. And then he give you money and you take it. That ain’t sound like rape when you put it like that. That sound like whore to me.

  Maybe I ain’t really know myself in truth. Maybe them people at the cove know me better than I really know myself. Maybe them old people see things in me I ain’t really see. Them dirty parts. Them nasty parts. Them worthless parts.

  If I never take the money, I wonder if I’d feel a different way? I ain’t know. I ain’t know. But I can’t give it back. It ain’t make no sense. If I give it back I going feel like nothing never come from it. Like I ain’t get nothing for my pain. ’Cause what I feeling right now is pain. Which one carry more shame? A damn prostitute or a careless girl that get rape? I ain’t really know …

  She spent the balance of the journey in deep deliberation. Either way, the people of the cove would say she’d gotten all t
hat she deserved, and her name would be a watermark for years to come. Continue on your ways and end up like Estrella. Go on. Continue. You will see.

  When they’d come across the iron bridge that led into the town, Estrella felt a gradual lightening of her mood, and she consoled herself by saying that everything between the cove and town had been sacrificial acts, and she paid homage to all the powers that she knew…God, the orishas, the abstract unseen…and told herself that she was not alone, that Vashti and Joseph and the woman with the red bandanna would be sad if they knew what had happened…that she was beautiful and precious…that she’d be missed if she were taken from this world.

  “I’m sorry,” said the rider when he helped her off the horse before the statue of Horatio Nelson. Behind her was the lapping harbor. Across the street, behind him, were rows of old buildings on Nelson Square.

  “I have it in my heart to forgive you,” she said, “but I ain’t going lie—it going be harder to forgive myself.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “I ain’t ask you for nothing,” she said blankly, scooping sand over the fragile memories, hiding them like turtle eggs. “I have twenty extra pounds. I ask for a ride and you gimme a ride. At the time, I just ain’t know the price.”

  “I hope you get your shoes,” he said. “I hope they’re strong. I hope they fit you good.”

  “And I hope you get what you deserve. I get my share tonight.”

  He touched her hand, and for reasons that she didn’t fully comprehend, she drew him close and kissed him quickly, hoping that he’d do something to make her think that what she thought of him was wrong—unsure of what she’d take as proof.

  She squinted hard to watch him mount the horse, but she didn’t watch him ride away.

  It began to drizzle, and she made her way across the street into the square. In the dark, she picked her way along a cobbled path that sprayed out from the fountain, taking shelter on a bench beneath a tree.

  When the rain began to really pour, she dashed into the portal of a colonnaded building on the square.

  Nelson Square, the oldest part of the town, was a collection of fine buildings, some in marble, some in coral stone, constructed in the 1600s—in San Carlos, a period of excess at the height of Spanish rule. Many of them had columns, stained glass, and Moorish courtyards, evoking larger, grander squares in Old Havana.

  One side of the square was open to the sea; two sides were closed and the third was dominated by a large brick building with a grand archway that opened on the Queens, the boulevard that rose along the row of former mansions to the governor’s gate, the address of Salan’s and La Sala de Amor—the emporium and restaurant of her dreams.

  In her blue skirt and green-striped blouse damp with man smell, sweat, and rain, Estrella Thompson found a spot beside the high stone steps of the court. Before she fell asleep she took her brassiere from her pocket and tickled her nose, grateful that her day was done.

  IX.

  “Get up, you.”

  “What the devil is she doing here?”

  “She’s sleeping. Take your time.”

  At a little after 4:00 in the morning, while drifting in a dream in which she toured the battlefields of Europe in a pair of English shoes, accompanied by Tuck and her grandmother, Estrella felt a pair of hands against her limbs and sat up to be blinded by a light. In the glare, she saw what looked like effigies…or ghosts…ghosts with heads like turtle shells. They were home guards, Carlitos on patrol.

  They were dressed like English soldiers—but not like those in India or Egypt, who sported khaki drill and light slouch hats to keep their bodies cool. These fellows were colonials in an unimportant place, and as such were issued surplus kit from World War I—heavy olive wool designed to hold the body’s heat.

  So they were Carlitos, but Carlitos of a special kind—local whites—irregulars who’d volunteered for duty as they’d been raised to do. But their impulse wasn’t bravery or valor, a matter of character. It was hormonal, part of an old, established cycle of blood…the belief that it was better to stop a bullet than to give the people with the most to gain a taste of what it meant to organize and kill with guns.

  “Hands up. Don’t move. Are you deaf? I said don’t move.”

  Estrella dipped and cowered with an arm above her brows to save her pupils from the light. When her eyes adjusted she observed that there were three.

  “Declare your business,” said the one who held the lantern. Another rubbed a billy club against his palm. The third one held a bolt action rifle with the muzzle pointing down.

  Declare your business, she repeated to herself. What he really mean to say by that?

  Although she spoke English, it was sometimes hard for her to understand official speech. The gun was frightening in itself, but it also made her think of Simón; and she stood stiffly, a nervous grin across her face, trying to look polite, wondering if her understanding was correct.

  “Bloody insubordinate,” the lantern bearer said. “She’s trying to be difficult, and I’m running out of patience and time. I’m tired and I’m hot. The shift is almost done. Just make it simple. Lock her up.”

  “But I ain’t do nothing wrong,” Estrella said in disbelief. “Lock me up for what?”

  “Well, declare your bloody business then,” the lantern bearer said.

  “But what you mean by that?”

  The one who held the rifle leaned toward the lantern bearer’s ear and said, “According to the proper regulations, you’re supposed to ask her name and age and where she lives.”

  The lantern bearer shouted, “Who the hell put you in charge?” “It’s not about being in charge. It’s about correct procedure. Is this how you’d interrogate a spy?”

  “Which she is—obviously. Another German in disguise.”

  The one with the billy club began to laugh.

  Now that is what you call a boof, Estrella thought. When he tell him that is like he stun him with a uppercut. Which part of me could be a spy? I thought it ain’t have nobody who could boof like me. But I meet my match tonight.

  “Are you mocking me, you little shit?” the lantern bearer asked.

  The one who held the rifle stepped in front of Estrella to cut him off.

  “Little darling,” said the rifle holder, “what’s your name? We’re out on duty. There’s a curfew going on. Do you understand me? Okay. Let me say it in Sancoche.”

  When she’d heard his explanation, she was irritated with herself. For her, the war was an important thing, and from what the rifleman had told her, she’d wasted their time.

  “You’re not allowed to sleep out here,” he added. “Everybody must be off the street. If you want, we can give you a ride.”

  “I live real far from here, sir.”

  “How far?” the lantern bearer asked in English, stepping forward as he tugged the rifle holder to the rear.

  “Way up in a far place, sir?”

  The one with the billy club began to whisper to the rifleman, who sucked his teeth and tramped away.

  “And what’s that far place called?”

  He brought the lantern close against her face so she could feel and smell the heat.

  Carefully, she said, “That kind o’ place, sir, ain’t have no name.”

  “If you don’t have a place to go,” he told her in a change of voice, “I could arrange for you to have one for the night. I think a night would help you get over whatever’s put you in this mood. What do you think? I could make that happen. Is that what you want?”

  The subtlety had missed her, and she shrugged and said, “Okay.”

  He took her answer for a taunt and led her down the steps across the square, which had been puddled by the rain.

  On the street, adjacent to the statue where Simón had left her, was a car, which in daylight would reveal itself to be a white-walled Buick Century—silver, with a running board and bug-eyed headlamps on its elongated nose.

  With the plush interior pressi
ng on her back, Estrella felt relieved. Not a horse. Not a truck. But a fucking motorcar. On top o’ that, a bed to sleep.

  The lantern bearer sat behind the wheel and asked the one with the billy club to sit beside him. The rifle holder sat beside Estrella in the back. Someone pressed a button and a motor whirred the iron roof away, and Estrella sank with deep amazement in the toffee-colored seat.

  When they’d driven up and down the foreshore road, completing their patrol, she sat up suddenly and turned toward the rifleman and introduced herself in formal English: “I’m sorry. I’m Estrella. Nice to meet you. I didn’t catch your name?”

  He nodded, lit a cigarette, and stuck it in his young, impassive face.

  The driver tossed his head and ordered, “Stub that bloody light!”

  The rifle holder answered, “Go to hell,” and clamped the gun between his knees.

  “You don’t listen. That’s your problem.”

  “Daddy, I’m a grown man with a family, for Jesus’ sake. I’m not a child anymore.”

  The father tapped the shoulder of his younger son, who rode beside him.

  “Your brother told me he’s a grown man. What do you think of that? The words were his, not mine. A grown man who can’t do a bloody thing. You would think a grown man raised by good parents would have his own car by now. It’s his turn to do transportation on patrol and he shows up in his father-in-law’s big American car, which he can’t even drive because the steering wheel is on the other bloody side. You would think a grown man would be able to prevent his wife from running around like a common whore. You would think a grown man would stop having bastard tadpole children all over this bloody island without any practical means for their support. You would think a grown man who had strings pulled so he could get into Cambridge would have paid attention and come back to this place with some damn respect. So he fails at everything and you pull more strings, and he gets appointed head of one of the island’s finest schools. But does he hold on to the job? No! He goes off to be some kind of artist, like a bloody fag. You would think a grown man would realize that you can’t build a business or a future or respectability from painting like a fairy, or writing stupid books. Paint a house, for God’s sake. Or be whatever you call the people who serve the books in the library…those ill-tempered spinsters. You would think a grown man would, by now, have taken stock—”