My Dainty Little Shoes by Michael Zarocostas

      My mom must have thought I was a girl for a few years. She wasn't crazy or senile or wishing for a little girl. She already had two of the XX chromosome variety. No, she just had this Sicilian mother sensibility that little boys should have Lord Fauntleroy haircuts and white linen suit jackets with matching knickers and dainty shoes. All of the necessary, foppish accoutrements until a boy was old enough to marry and move out of the house. Or be beaten to a fruity pulp by a gang of kids out of juvie.

     The Shoes were the primary target. What were they like? I have nightmares about them, but they're those vague paintings in your mind that you try to forget. I'm pretty sure they were like Saddlelocks, at least that's what we called them. Except they were worse than Saddlelocks. Saddelocks were white leather with brown flaps on the sides, like saddles, and white laces. Sure, they were effeminate, but they had some amount of boyly dark color and most kids wore them to church on Sunday. So you couldn't really get beaten up over just Saddlelocks unless you wore them on a Monday. It was Kid Law.

     The Shoes, however, were the worst Sunday gliders a boy could ever have. They were all white with a strap and a buckle, but, worst of all, they had the dreaded daffodil design. On the top of the foot, between the toe and the strap, there was an ornate carving of a flower. No kidding. I wish it were a lie. Liberace wouldn't have been caught dead in these shoes. But there I was, wearing them like some bratty English heir who wanted more Gobstoppers from Willy Wonka. I hated those shoes with a passion, but not as much as Obediah Butterworth hated them.

     Forget the Biblical name, Obediah Butterworth was a seven-year-old professional bully. There was no Christian mercy in his black heart. He was taking "playground contracts" out on other kids long before Lucca Brazzi learned how to crack knuckles. For the steep price of movie theater candy, Obediah would do any dirty job. Knock a kid off a swing? Your standard two boxes of Hot Tamales. Hang a kid upside down from the monkey bars? Three boxes of Milk Duds and a Twizzler. Purple Nurple on the slide in front of everyone? Well, that would have cost you an arm and a leg. A giant Hershey's milk chocolate bar. No nuts. If you gave Obediah the one with nuts by accident, well, you'd get a Purple Nurple, too, and a Dear Grandma Letter on top of that, just to teach you a lesson.

     One Friday, my mom made me wear The Shoes to school for some special Friday chapel we had. We had some ceremony on a stage, and my mom, in her infinite ignorance of kiddom, thought I'd be happy in my fancy Liberace loafers. I managed to skate through the day pretty clean until I saw Obediah in the buttery. He was standing in the lunch line, drooling over a green slime of lima beans in a plastic tray when he turned his eyes on me. Oh, God, not those evil yellow eyes. Don't look at him. Hide the shoes. I tried to put one foot over the other, but that only displayed one shoe more prominently. I tried to levitate, to turn my feet backwards, to tap dance. None of this seemed to work, surprisingly. Instead, it was like waving string in front of a tense cat.

     Obediah was glued to my tap dance, his head bobbing up and down. He put down his tray and plodded to the end of the line. My feet were pitter-patting away until I looked up and came face to face with those smirking yellow eyes. And I knew my dance repertoire, my shoes, my glorious seven years on the playground of kiddom, they were all coming to a mangled end. A purple, twisted nipple. A bloody nose. A wedgie that would leave my Spiderman Underoos deep in the little abyss of my crack. Go ahead, Obie, do your worst. I'm ready to die.

     "Nice shoes," Obediah said. "Uh," this caught me off-guard, "uhh, really?" "No, nerd turd." Those were the last words I heard for some time, because Obediah then began a Mexican hat-dance like some tequila trollop in Tijuana. Only there was no sombrero. No, Obediah was dancing on The Shoes. On my feet. I tried to avoid him, but he was wearing big, heavy Dingos. You know, those little miniature cowboy boots that moms buy so their sons can grow up to be a redneck shitkicker "just like his daddy, God rescue him from Death Row." I looked for a teacher, but everyone knew they were all smoking in the boiler room behind the kitchen. It was no use. I took my beating until Obediah must have gotten tired or bored, teasing his prey like a cat with a dead mouse. He preened his matted hair away from his yellow eyes and hunched over on his knees, breathing deeply. Heavily. Wait, what was this? Thank you, God! An asthma attack! It was over. Well, that wasn't so bad. My toes were a little sore, but my Underoos were intact. In fact, they were still clean. And that counts for a lot in kiddom. Bonus bravery points. Another kid even shook my hand as I moved back into the lunch line.

     "Wait a minute," Obie said between hits of his asthma Puffer, "I'm not done with you ... fag." When I heard that word and all the other kids go "ooh," I felt like someone dipped my ears in boiling candle wax. I must have transformed into someone else. Spiderman or Captain Caveman or the Tasmanian Devil. That was it. Because Obediah's eyes became huge yellow saucers when he saw my face. I didn't know what "fag" meant, but I knew it was time to put The Shoes into action. Just as Obediah tried to pocket his Puffer, my dainty white silver-buckled shoe kicked up from the floor and planted a carved daffodil in the most fertile part of his pants. He doubled over and grabbed his zipper, howling, "You hit my pee-pee." Well, yes, I did. His yellow eyes glared at me, his grimy fist cocked back, but I was too fast for him. I was feral. I was the Tasmanian Devil. I battered his matted head with a flurry of punches and slaps and yapping poodlebites until Missus Shackleford, the head buttery cook, yanked me off the floor by the collar. "Boy, what in thee whirl is the matter witch you? You gunn crazy?" I futilely kicked my legs in the air, then finally whimpered and looked down at the floor. Obediah had fallen like a giant thirty-nine inch redwood.

     I stayed after school for an hour that day. But I wore The Shoes every Friday for the rest of the year.