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Goucher College Fiction Workshop

All Print Rights Reserved.

Ruby Shoes

Laura Bogart

Maureen stood by the mall bathrooms, eyeing the tiles. At least ten minutes had passed, she supposed, since she’d drifted apart from Jenny McPhearson and the girls from school. There were no flush-sounds coming from the door behind her, the door with the little skirted girl-figure on it. Knowing she was alone, she rose up on her tiptoes, inspecting the purpled filth that had gathered between the tiles. She traced the deep grime-black coating the cracks between light copper-colored tiles with her finger. On other days, non-Halloween type days, Granny would have yanked her back swiftly, the old arthritic fingers clamping down on the held hand, their gnarled-up plumpness pressing like a vise.

“ Don’t you touch that, Maureen, you don’t know who’s been up against that wall. You don’t know who’s been touching at it.”

Granny would pull her closer then, her head often bumping a hip swaddled in some kind of soft warm fabric, worn long as a skirt or a coat making swish-sliding sounds on the floor with its draping tail.

But Maureen stood alone now in the narrow hallway lit with a yellow so sickly bright it looked almost green. She stood near the bathrooms, her back turned from the doors toward the wall, her finger trailing over the lines along each block. Maureen watched the soot-specks crumble, coming loose under her nail and sliding inside, muddying the white half-moon at the top. She wondered, always wondered if some paint-maker ever studied the leaves near their deaths, how bursting with orange they were, but also purple with the shadows cast as they curled up into themselves.

Maureen’s eyes lowered to a faint ruby-reddish light-gleam reflected from a rhinestone, one coming un-glued near the tip of her shoe. Granny had been so happy to find them, piled in a bin at the back of the dollar store. She’d been wearing her flat-soled black slipper-looking shoes with the small satin-y rosebuds stitched in front. Those flowers were a peachy-pink matched by her ankle-length dress with the twirly-swirly bottom that lifted as though she were dancing, though she stood still, smiling, calling Maureen over to look at the ruby shoes—they were perfect for her costume. Maureen had been wearing then ever since she went to stay at Jenny’s, even to bed, so Jenny’s mom wouldn’t take them. Sure it was uncomfortable, to have her feet cased in their weight while under the covers, but still, they stayed on.

Mrs. McPhearson, Jenny’s mom, had clicked a few photos of her before they’d departed for the mall earlier that evening, standing pigeon toed with her fingers slipping in-out under the ribbon tied ‘round the waist of her Dorothy dress. These they’d give to Granny.

Jenny stood, shimmied her bottom half, slapped at the stuffed tail tacked onto her yellow footie pyjamas. Her blonde hair, teased up wildly and sprayed into a lion’s mane, was streaked yellow-gold with a make-up wand. Jenny’s eyes were a lucid blue, but itchy-looking, and vaguely reddish, under the thickly pressed eyeliner rimming them. Maureen tried to grin at her; a classmate and neighbor though they’d barely spoken. After all, she too had known the quick, hot, drilling pain of the pencil-tip bearing down on her skin.

Mrs. McPhearson had drawn the freckles on roughly, all the while cooing, “ Aw, don’t you worry now dumplin’, she just fell, that’s all.”

But it was not supposed to be like this. Just weeks earlier, Granny said she’d smooth on the powder, just this Halloween, just this once, said she’d smooth on the powder. After Maureen had seen the movie that first time, and oh, how Dorothy’s face seemed like a halo, soft white undulating out at the camera; craning her feet on tip-toe trying to reach Granny’s make-up on the dresser when she knocked over the powder box with a single swipe. It came down thudding, the box top tumbling, then rolling across the carpet, thick powder-clumps splintering to bits. Granny hadn’t been mad, though, she just clucked and laughed and cleaned it all up.

Not at all like Jenny’s mom, who didn’t laugh, but made braying horse-sounds when she snorted, her mouth open, exposing her yellowed teeth. Jenny’s mom had stopped to gossip with the few other mothers near the Macy’s, where a thin saleslady in a gauzy witch outfit that you could almost see through bent over, tottering in her high heels, and dropped a mini-Snickers into Maureen’s plastic pumpkin basket. Mrs. McPhearson had told the girls they could walk as far as the Wockenfuss, three stores down the aisle. That hadn’t been too long ago, either; for all Maureen knew, she was still there, braying and snorting.

Usually the same bunch of kids came for trick-or-treat at the White Oak Mall’s Halloween Haunt, but Maureen toddled on alone. Jenny joined up with Marianne Carstachio, her hair in loose caramel-colored curls under a cone-shaped princess cap. They held hands walking with one girl’s leg crossing the other’s. Jenny’s over Marianne’s then Marianne’s over Jenny’s. Such a curious way to walk. When Maureen took a step towards them, or, actually more like half a step, they only moved away quicker.

So she ambled under the long gray arches with the cobwebs draped between them, her eyes on her feet as the small squat heels clicked a path along the tile. “Now those are a real red,” Granny said, “A real bright, real pretty red. Maybe if things go right, if we have the time this week, I’ll get you a lovely lipstick to match it.” This she had said the night before Maureen was called into the principal’s office and Miss Everline, the secretary, sat with her lips so tightly together they seemed sucked inside her face. This she said while scraping the crackling black remnants of their fried egg supper from the pan. “It’ll go so well with your hair too,” then in gentle sing-song, “ such wavy, soft auburn hair, so, so pretty.” She cooed a few more lines but Maureen couldn’t hear her; the sharp hiss of faucet water slapping the hot pan filled the kitchen like static.

Maureen had been wearing her ruby slippers for three days now.

She’d shuffled off away from them, the laughing skipping girls, startled into looking up every now and then by a loud howl from the speakers lined up between the stores. Ghost moans trailed off shrilly, followed by cackles. An old woman cackling with an oooooo-ra-loooooh-ra-loooooh sound in the background.

Skull-heads glowed on little sticks, circle-shapes streaking the dark. Small voices were shrieking, too, high squeaky little noises like bat-cries in the air around her. The only lights on were those in the storefronts, they rippled over the floor tile. Long lines of spiderweb shadow lay across the slanted green-yellow.

Granny’s hip must look like that now, a jagged crack spiraling out, lifting the bone up in some spots while collapsing it in others. Bone-dust breaking off into her blood, clumping near her lung. That’s all those doctors saw in their x-rays. That’s all.

Her pace had quickened once she turned the quick right corner to the bathrooms. The ground floor was shaped like the Sombrero on that little stuffed dog Granny won for her one night at Bingo, a long bottom with a curve that turned into a box-shape at the top. She walked straight until she saw the sign for “Restrooms”, even though she didn’t have to go, but stopped there anyway, away from the noise and the pretend spookiness, to stand with the color and the grime. A vague copper red collected around each tile’s edge. And she’d been standing there for a while now, picking out the colors, remembering the day she went to visit granny.

When she’d stepped out of the wide hospital hallway, so scathingly white Maureen’s eyes ached leaving it, Granny had been hunched over a mirror muttering (and yes, Maureen could swear she heard it, the s-word at least) and cursing attempting to knot a cherry colored scarf. The scarf had been pulled under her ear-tips, covering the whole of her head; only a few full salt-and-pepper strands came out, curling at her shoulders.

She blinked at the grime, but the cool purpled brown lingered under her eyes.

“ You really shouldn’t be standing there.”

Maureen turned her head slowly, coolly, collectedly, strangely calm though the voice belonged to a man she didn’t know. A tall shadow in search of a wall, standing at the opened end of the hallway in a black suit, his left arm extended with a bouquet of balloons, bobbing up against each other as they floated from his hand, which held their strings in a fist. He was so thin he looked almost flat.

“ You really shouldn’t be standing there alone, Dorothy. It’s not very safe. These suburban malls are just crawling with the kind that might like to hurt you.”

Why was that man holding the balloons? Miss Kitty, the blue Afro-wigged clown lady with the bright green music note painted on her cheek, she was the one who always sold the balloons. Every Halloween Haunt she’d lay costume over costume, quite stupidly, a vampire cape tied over the neck of her white felt jumpsuit with the aquamarine cuffs on the pant legs. Or a witch hat piled on her clown wig. “ Howdy there, chil’ren,” she’d intone slowly, mouthing the words as though the weight of her own lips pained her. “ Oh, what a scary, scary costume that is, kiddo,” smacking on her own fat coated face paint.

“ Where’s Miss Kitty?” Maureen asked, side-stepping just a little closer to him, though she couldn’t think why.

“ Oh, I’m a friend of hers,” he said. His voice was murmuring in its softness, but still deep. “ She took a night off.”

“ So you’re a good friend, then?”

“ Yes, Dorothy, I’m a good, good friend.”

Maureen nodded. She didn’t raise her head again immediately, but kept her gaze low, fixed on the rhinestones, lipstick red.

“ You seem like you maybe need a friend too. You can come to me, if you want to. I can tell that you’d like to.”

Looking up, she could tell that he was smiling without even seeing him, without seeing his cheeks ease back as the lips curled upward at their corners. His face was too shadowed, too distant for her to see, but she knew.

“ Sweetie,” he said again, cooing, “ I don’t know who helped you out with your costume, but the movie Dorothy didn’t have freckles. Or, if she did, they weren’t as big as golf balls.”

A palm held to her bare mouth, squelching the giggles, Maureen walked over to him. He turned his face sideways, still standing straight, with his free hand tugging his necktie a little bit looser. His eyes, icy indigo, did not blink. The man’s mouth, shaped fat like two slugs nestled above each other, looked very, very pink. Looked pink like petals doused in a rain torrent looked pink. He licked his lips, glossing them thinly with saliva. For a moment, well, with the way he looked at her, she felt pretty as the un-freckled Dorothy, the movie one.

But the skin of his hands, the meaty, fleshy parts rimming the palms that were supposed to be vaguely red or perhaps even blue-purple from all the veins crossing over each other underneath, was the same starched color as his shirt. White. In his lapel pocket, the edge of a small scythe gleamed. She supposed it was plastic, like the ones all the other people dressed as Death were holding. But pocket-sized—it must’ve been a party favor.

“ M-mister, why, why do you have that thing in y-your p-pocket?”

“ Oh, simple, my dear, I’d much rather carry balloons than a bigger one of these.”

Laying his half-balled fingers across his hip, he pressed down, cracking the knuckles with a terrible loudness. At the thundering of bone-balls jerked up sharply in their sockets, Maureen flinched.

“ Sorry about that, but sometimes you just have to, you know,” he spoke even slower than he had before. Something in the way he said things, how he drawled out the very ends of words so that following him was like exercise, made Maureen feel tired.

“ Well, this is quite the night to be out alone.”

Maureen stepped back, her cheeks heating. Oh, she’d been so stupid. If Granny got home, she would kill her for talking to a stranger.

“ Aren’t, aren’t you even gonna, uh, ask me my name?”

“ No, I don’t need to. You’re Dorothy, that’s all you need to be.” Easing up the tips of his fingers, the man let a balloon go. A balloon in the form of a girl-skunk in a sexy dress, some love interest on a cartoon show for kids younger than Maureen. The girl-skunk drifted towards an arch in delicate little swivels before she struck the ceiling with a rude bump. She bounced between the arches, then finally lodged in a large faux-cobweb. Maureen shivered, watching the helium-puffed skunk tail bob helplessly among the thick white strings.

“ Oh, oh, mister, I-.”

“ Sssh,” the man hushed her, “Good Lord, this is no way to treat a friend, let me tell you Dorothy. Whoever told you to behave this way?”

“ Uh, my granny said, uh, about, uh-”

“ Well, your grandmother sounds like a real saint, true blue,” the man said. “ But I think, I think that if she ever met me, she’d like me a lot.”

“ W-w-why? Why w-would she?”

“ Most people who make it to Grandma age do, that’s all I can tell you.”

“ Hey, mister, I like your shoes,” Maureen mumbled, feeling really very sleepy. She remembered once hearing Granny complaining to some lady from the third floor about young men wearing pants baggy as parachutes, that boys didn’t know how to dress anymore.

“ Well, thank you my dear. I must say, I really do like your shoes as well. Now please stop with that tapping, you’ll scuff them and they’re beautiful.”

“ That’s exactly what my Granny would say,” she muttered wistfully.

When she sat beside her in the long hospital bed, that sheeted slab, Granny simply stared at her without words. She didn’t seem to see that Maureen was wearing her Halloween shoes early. Those eyes, auburn and green like fall leaves crushed inside an emerald, was now mud-dull and watering. She’d said nothing, rubbing her small sloped nose-tip with a knuckle, her lush-lipped movie star mouth covered by her palm. The only words she’d uttered came when a young nurse marveled at how she and her granddaughter looked so very much alike.

“ She looks more like her mother did,” Granny’s mouth moved so slowly, her voice so wispy and hollow. “ She looks much more like her mother than she does me.”

Maureen shivered, struck suddenly cold. She looked back at the man.

“ I do like your costume,” the man continued, “ Nice to see somebody be something sweet instead of scary.”

“ I’m not scared,” she said, eyelids thickening as she stared at the balloon strings looped around the man’s hand. They all darted skyward as he shrugged, but none came loose from his grip.

“ I guess you shouldn’t be,” he snickered, “ You can always click your heels three times, huh?” The play-sounds of trick-or-treaters swelled behind them. “ Say, why don’t we move this little talk of ours upstairs? That’s not a question, by the way.”

Maureen looked to the tile for a moment, then back to the man, sliding her fingers under the ribbon around her waist, tugging at it from the inside. Oh, she was so tired; she wanted to sit down. She didn’t feel so pretty anymore.

“ You have many friends at school?”

“ No,” she mouthed the word, a teardrop lodging in her socket. “Granny says the other girls just don’t have any taste.”

“ That’s unfortunate. Granny’s out of commission, huh?” But the last phrase was spoken from something like knowing, not at all a question. “ Come along,” he said, “ I’ll take you up to the food court.”

He turned, and trance-like, Maureen followed him out to the escalator. The hand holding the balloons was so pale it glowed bright as the skull-sticks. The steady thud-thud-thud of balloons weaving through each other lulled her even sleepier. She heard nothing else as she moved along beside him, didn’t even feel her ruby heels striking the tile. By the time she looked down at her feet again, they were rising. At the base of the escalator were two gravestones, flat and cardboard, placed parallel to each other. Thud-thud-thud, the sound was sickening, too soft, almost too gentle to be heard, to be real, and yet it was. For a brief moment she wished she could claw all the balloons away from him, run away with them and find a safe spot for hiding.

But the food court started right at the escalator’s end. This whole floor was empty. Halloween Haunt worked in phases, while the bottom floor was busy, the top one prepared, and while the top floor was busy, the bottom cleaned up. The food court had been remodeled and all the tiles were a sickly blank gray. They gave her nothing to scan, nothing to puzzle over. He led her into the long, long rows of squat metal tables placed in the center, surrounded by the darkened outlines of the soon-to-blaring neon store-signs.

“ Is ‘The Wizard of Oz’ your favorite movie, Dorothy dear?”

“ No, no, no, I, I l-like Lion King better.”

He pulled out a chair for her and she took a seat, resting her head on the tabletop. The man fastened his balloons to her chair. He’d taken a step back. The man knelt at her feet, his fingertips stroking the skin under her socks. She stared down over his shoulders, past the white hair plastered against his scalp, outlining the shape of his skull. All she saw of his lowered eyes were slits of deep shadow; his whole head now seemed like a skull. His whole body seemed tensed, pained, and too long to be crouched so. His hands cupped her ankles, fingers bearing down in circle-motions, over and over again. His thumbs slipped between shoe and sock, tracing the curved line of her arches. She bristled, tearing up. Nothing tickled. His touch was so arctic it pained her. Her pulse actually slowed though as her chest heaved out, taking breath in slow to calm her. Lips twitching, she shut her eyes.

“ Please, please mister, not now. Please, please.”

“ Please, what? Come on, tell me.” His voice kept quickening, cracking at the “me.”
“ Please, please, don’t, please.”

“ Don’t what?”
“ Don’t kill me, mister, please.” Maureen yelped with the fear she knew she should’ve had all along. The clumped dots of freckle melted as her face flushed; she felt the thickness of the coal-dark make-up trickle to her chin, dampened by the tears.

“ Oh, oh, Dorothy, dear, you don’t have to be the one who dies here.”

“ H-h-uh?”

“ I can just leave you here—I can go see her. Your choice.”

Her head fell back, rolling to the side as she sniffled, inhaling a chunky flow of mucus.

“ Listen, please, just go away,” she murmured, mostly to herself, “ she’ll be all right, she’ll be alright.”

“ For a while.” She heard the sound of a string snapping, ever-echoing in her ears, oh and then that thud-thud-thud. Maureen shuddered again, this time feeling nauseous, laying her eyes down on the backs of her hands, humming, unable to bear the continuous thudding.

“ Oh, Dorothy, dear,” the man said, “ I really did need this. I’m sorry, you know, for what I’m going to have to do to you. I just came here tonight, to see—I’m so sorry.”

“ Huh?” As she felt the weight of his hands ease off her ankles, her skin numbed where he’d touched her. She couldn’t feel her feet. But her head thunked back down on the table. She succumbed as if some how he’d drugged her. She dreamt colors, autumn colors, swirling russet-hued purples and leaf-brown oranges. She dreamt of square shapes without end.

And then, after a long while, or else a brief moment, a single blink’s-worth of time, she felt warmth around her neck, the weight of hands clasping her shoulders. Gasping, rasping, Maureen came to, raising her gaze toward a chipped yellow tooth. She started, her hand darting back behind her to grip the chair. Glancing around quickly, she saw that she was still in the food-court, still perched on the chair he’d placed her on.

When Mrs. McPhearson shook her wakeful, she found herself shoeless, the soles of her feet tingling with the chill. With her wrist gripped too-tightly she was yanked down the hallway. Her footsoles slapped the floor squares quite painfully but she being was pulled too fast to even wince. Suddenly the cursive tube lettering lit a glaring, garish lemon color, the underside of which hued each floor tile yellow. Sputtering, clucking, making all kinds of dull dumb sounds Mrs. McPhearson grumbled something about Maureen having lost her shoes, about meeting Jenny in the car. Maureen looked up to the arches anxiously, though the spaces between them were blank. But still, she swore she heard it, that thud-thud-thud.