Them shoes was the next casualty after the fire at Mount Hope Grocery. Yellow-ass pumps, too narrow just at the front of where the toe start up. Not the kinda footwear you need to got on when you standing all day. And if she ain’t chose the outfit she did, she wouldna needed to wear them yellow shoes; she coulda put on the black flats. She wouldna jammed her feet in the yellows and got that headache, he wouldna had to go for no Tylenol at no store, and them boys wouldna run into him at that time. The store mighta still got torched but at least Nat coulda survived. You could start another store, but you couldn’t start no other him.
So the first moment Darlene had alone with them shoes, back in her room the day after the cops drank all the coffee and then showed her that driftwood, she gripped the heel and the toe of the first one and tried to rip it apart, but the thickness wouldn’t tear. The more it ain’t rip, the harder she pulling—that damn leather ain’t so much as stretch. Them durable-ass shoes got Darlene so mad she bit down on the side of one and be chomping on it like a dog attacking a squeeze toy. Her teeth sliding and her jaw cramping, but my girl ain’t hardly made mark the first on them leather uppers.
She knew she done something ridiculous—you couldn’t hold no shoes responsible for nothing, shoes ain’t got no intentions. But shoes also can’t talk back, they helpless, and what’s helpless always gon take the biggest part of the rage. After she bit the one shoe, Darlene threw both of em at the wall, stomped on em, kicked em. She stopped to think for a second ’bout how to destroy em better, then she found a scissors in the next room, and with those bad boys she hacked and snipped and dug into every last one of the stitches that’s holding the parts of the shoes together, poking the point in, twisting real hard. Then she pulled the leather off the sole and cut it into funky-shaped bits that landed all over, on the windowsill and under the end tables and shit, and she gone to the garage and got a hammer from a toolbox. She beat them heels with that hammer till the li’l layers of wood done come unstuck and be falling around her, spinning under the work shelves and into spare tires where wasn’t nobody ever gonna see em again. If pumps could talk, them poor ladies woulda been yelling, Darlene, have mercy! What we do? For God’s sake, tell us what the hell we did!
The blouse went next, and that gone into the grill out in the backyard, lighter fluid all over everything, up in a orange flame, like a miniature of the tragedy, like payback, though Darlene ain’t understand or care that she just making them shoes and that blouse the next motherfucking thing down on the chain of pain. The fire made a loud-ass wind sound and the beauty of them jittering blue and yellow flames pulled her closer almost against her will.
Her son ran out there wondering what going on, and she hollered, Stay back, Eddie! He stood there watching slack-mouthed while them evil-smelling synthetics done burnt a black hairdo of smoke up over them live oaks back there, driving all the grackles away. Goddamn shoes!
Ma? Eddie asked, tryna make his voice like a hand that gonna stroke her shoulder blade and make it all okay, like he had a chance in hell of doing that.
She ain’t never took her eyes off that grill. She twisting her fingers together and twirling her wedding ring around like she putting a spell on somebody. Darlene glared at that fire, tryna give it the same intensity it’s giving her, then she squeezed a whole bunch more fluid onto it. Holy Mother of God, that shit made a gigantic flare that lit up everything in the yard and flashed back from every window in the house and from the neighbor windows too.
Darlene shouting, Goddamn yellow goddamn blouse!
She made a vow never to match colors no more. She boycotted Tylenol and all other pain relievers. Way down below her everyday thoughts, she said to herself that she ain’t deserve no pain relief no more. Pain relief? Relief from pain? Oh no, she deserved more pain, the kinda pain she had inflicted on the man she loved, the man who was her life, the kinda punishing hell heat that had surrounded his body and burnt him up into a tree stump that got married. She deserved more pain than you could put in a human body. She deserved the kinda pain that filled up the sky and turnt into the weather. Like that big red storm on Jupiter. A storm the size of Jupiter itself. Her mind screamed real loud, like she need to get the attention of a motherfucker on another planet, or somebody who might or might not be in heaven, and them screams ain’t never stopped.
After all that waiting, with everybody except her wondering if he had got away and still alive somewhere, they told her they had found something and showed her that piece of driftwood with her matching wedding ring on it.
Then people start coming by the house with all the hope they once had ’bout the husband being alive drained out they faces, and they all saying the same damn word—Sorry. So sorry. I’m sorry. So so sorry. Sorry sorry sorry.
You’re not sorry, she said to them in her head. You didn’t do it. Me, I’m sorry. I had the migraine. I wore the shoes. If you’re so sorry, do something about it, she thought, and couldn’t keep herself from thinking. But you can’t do anything about it. What can sorry do? Sorry doesn’t pull anybody’s husband out of the grave alive.
Most the time she spent resenting relatives and friends, but she couldn’t let nobody know that. She wasn’t no horrible person, she just couldn’t help feeling everything, including the wrong emotions. When she had to deal with anybody, she made sure not to show no emotion of no kind. They wouldn’t like to know that her house felt invaded, that when she peeled all them carrots and cucumbers and whatnot to put out for LaVerne and Puma and Bethella and Fremont and the rest, she thinking ’bout stripping their skin, thinking ’bout chasing everybody out and stabbing her wrists with the peeler.