Archive for May 2nd, 2005
seashell shoes
They washed ashore, more than a hundred pairs of shoes separated from their mate. Made from mollusks, these mother-of-pearl foot coverings were intricately decorated–adorned with red coral and phosphorescent algae. Many were shaped like ballerina slippers with seaweed ribbons that tied around the ankle. They shimmered in the morning sun and had not yet been buried in the soft beach sand. The ocean’s tongue attempted to collect such a secret back into its womb but had failed. Middle-aged women had already arrived, calling out to their husbands in a greedy panic to help in the gathering. Soon the tourists would be arriving; soon the remaining seashell shoes would be whisked back into the sea.
We happened to be there that morning. Having awakened chilled by the seaside breeze; my father suggested a morning stroll along the ocean.
He had grown closely acquainted with his solitude, offering silence instead of the lively father I once knew. Days into his visit, we found ourselves soft stepping and feeding each other courtesies. I hesitated when speaking to him openly about what had happened, and he too spoke with caution, avoiding the issue that had brought him here. Still, the stabbing disappointment reflected in his eyes, I was no longer the daughter he knew and understood.
He walked several feet ahead of me in the sand dunes while I strolled along the lapping tides. I left him to his thoughts, and walked toward the crouched ladies digging into the sand with their frantic fingers. As the distance lengthened between him and I, as the women’s voices became louder, I came across a shoe. It was the softest hue of pink like the inside of a conch shell, striped like the fin of a lionfish with the delicate green of river moss. Taking off my left sandal, I tried it on. My heel slipped into its pearly curve. A perfect fit.
Holding onto the shoe, I combed the beach floor looking for the matching pair. I became one of them, upturning the beached seaweed and pods, digging through the sand and cursing the incoming waves for reclaiming the shoes. Having spied a piece of seashell chard, I bent down upon my knees allowing the cold seawater to soak into my jeans and the wet sand to collect under my fingernails. It was another shoe; a large one with green stripes like the one I kept beside me.
It was then that I heard her heavy sobs, or was it the waves, the celebratory shouts from the women in the distance? I couldn’t tell only that it was coming from behind, in the ocean, moments after the crescendo of the breaking tide. I refused to turn around; instead, I looked for my father who had become a speck in the horizon.
Her sobbing became a string of words in what first sounded like Latin, and then she spoke, “Those are my shoes!”
Having pulled the other shoe from the sand, I rose up, pretending not to hear –avoiding the curiosity of turning around. The voice was not human. She repeated, “Those are my shoes. Please, those are mine!”
I told myself, it was probably one of the ladies who had seen me digging and thought that she was the rightful owner of such a treasure. But, she spoke again this time louder. Fierce.
“Give me back my shoes!”
The pitch of her voice was one that I’d never heard. One that danced between the audible and a sound not meant for the human ear. As I compared the two shoes, I became aware of the cold Pacific breeze; I noticed that my heart was responding with fear. The shoes matched.
I looked at the other women who were now in the parking lot; emptying armloads of shoes into their cars. For once, luck had found me. “Bravely,” I thought, “you will turn around and tell her that these shoes are yours and not hers. You will tell her you found them first.”
Instead, I returned to the sand dunes where he sat waiting. The tourists were arriving, and the rainbow umbrellas were set for a busy summer afternoon. Her voice had almost faded into the thunderous roar of the ocean, but I could still hear her. I showed him my shoes, which he examined with amazement and then asked, “Where did you find these?”
I pointed to where I found them adding that the women who were gone had taken armfuls of them. His look of disappointment deepened, “Did you tell her you were taking her shoes?”
“Who?”
He pointed at the ghostlike, barely recognizable image. She stood in the ocean, waist deep in the white foam, disappearing and reappearing with each passing wave.
There was no response that would please him; no excuse that could justify why I couldn’t turn around and face her.
We watched as she crawled out of the tide and beached herself–clawing through the sand with her fingers, looking to see if I had left the shoes behind. Shortly, the children in the neon swimsuits would gather to poke at her scaly black tail. The husbands would pull out cameras to document the event. Maybe, she would make the evening news.
“Do you know how difficult it is to stare into a mermaid’s face?” I asked as the tourists began to gather, as the little ones ran to grab their parent’s hand.
