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The Red Satin Slipper

By Jen Zeni

I can feel the waves lapping at my red toenails, trying to pull them back into the sea. The sand is soft and grainy as I squeeze it between my toes, and I can feel it sticking there. The sun is shining down, bringing color to my face and my bare arms, legs, stomach. It feels like the warm patchwork quilt my mother sewed for me when I was a child, and which I still sleep under at night. I could feel her hands pulling it tight around me, protecting me from the bogeyman in my closet. All around me I can see the people in orange and green bathing suits sitting in the shade of their big blue umbrellas. Behind them I can see the green rolling hills flecked with pink and yellow.

My mother had made a fuss about me walking down there alone.

"Be sure you have on enough sunscreen," she said. I assured her that I'd be careful. "That bathing suit is so skimpy you'll be sure to burn. In my day we were at least decently covered!" I continued spreading the boysenberry jelly on my sandwich. My mother stood in the doorway and glared at me, unable to think of any other complaints to make. "Make sure you are home in time for dinner, Nana Baragry is coming over tonight," she said." I could feel the dark eyes I had inherited on the back of my neck as I sealed the sandwich in one of the Ziplock bags we had brought from home for the friends we were staying with; they don't sell them here. I had to consciously concentrate on what my hands were doing, on feeling the yellow and blue strips on the bag snap together to form green. I wouldn't blow up at her; I wouldn't give her a reason to make me stay home. I placed the sandwich in my large black woven handbag, on top of my wallet and the VW bug key chain. "And be sure you take some fruit," my mother called as I opened the door and walked out through the pink and orange Columbines and the purple Pansies in the garden.

The beach stretched out invitingly before me. It was low tide and I could see the dark rocks jutting far out towards the horizon, out of the golden sand that, in just a couple hours time, would be covered in salty blue water once again. There were children climbing around the uncovered stones, playing hide and seek and searching for ugly sea monsters in the small puddles of water left in the crevices of the rock while their parents chatted, keeping one protective eye on them at all times. I walked onto the warm sand and felt it give way beneath my bare feet. There was a spot a little ways down the beach where the purple and green spots that were the bathers were more spread out, and I made towards it.

When I was only a few steps from the spot I had marked as mine, one of the red satin shoes I had removed upon arriving at the beach slipped out of my hand. Before I could bend down to pick it up, a little boy with bright orange hair and freckles all over his slightly turned up nose and sunburnt back laughingly scooped it up and ran with it towards the sparkling water.

If you had had your shiny new slipper stolen from you how would you feel? Would you be angry with the little boy who had stolen it, or perhaps scared that the shoe may be ruined in the icy cold water? She felt all these things, but more than that her eye had been caught by a tall, well-built young man the child had passed, and she was torn between the impulse to run and retrieve the shoe, and her need to appear elegant and graceful before the beautiful apparition.

The green hills surrounded them, watching the girl as she struggled to decide what to do. The deep green grass bent slightly in the gentle breeze and the large violet thistles swayed on their thick prickly stalks as if to get a better look at the red shoe clutched in the little boy's hand. A white Yorky barked from around the curve of the stone path, tugging hard on the red leash that bound it to the strong wrist of it's master. The air was crisp and clean and carried with it the smell of salt and cockles. On the path the man and dog unhurriedly rounded the corner on their way home from a day at the sea.

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