“Red shoes belong to whores,” she said. So I got
white.
I hadn’t wanted white shoes. I had wanted
red.
What’s a whore I asked. “Not a nice person,” was the response.
My little brain could not register whore, but nice,
it knew. I wanted to be nice, so I got
white.
They argued again, nothing new, but tonight
it was about me. They argued about red shoes and whores.
She said something about him knowing all about both.
(Daddy knew whores and not nice people, not me I thought. I got white.)
I lamented over not having red shoes, I saw them
everywhere. I pointed to them and thought they all couldn’t
be whores – little girls in pig tails, skinny girls in braces, and
older girls with French manicures in white.
My father saw my hunger and, one afternoon, fed it.
I walked out of the store with my new red shoes on. I asked him,
my head cocked sideways, my pony tail tipping long and swaying,
Does this make me your whore?
Author Bio:
Sonya Groves is a teacher of English and History in San Antonio. She has published a short story in the Abydos Education Journal and been a conference presenter at the East Carolina University Multi-Cultural Literature Review Conference. Currently she is pursuing her Master’s degree in English at Our Lady of the Lake University.
white.
I hadn’t wanted white shoes. I had wanted
red.
What’s a whore I asked. “Not a nice person,” was the response.
My little brain could not register whore, but nice,
it knew. I wanted to be nice, so I got
white.
They argued again, nothing new, but tonight
it was about me. They argued about red shoes and whores.
She said something about him knowing all about both.
(Daddy knew whores and not nice people, not me I thought. I got white.)
I lamented over not having red shoes, I saw them
everywhere. I pointed to them and thought they all couldn’t
be whores – little girls in pig tails, skinny girls in braces, and
older girls with French manicures in white.
My father saw my hunger and, one afternoon, fed it.
I walked out of the store with my new red shoes on. I asked him,
my head cocked sideways, my pony tail tipping long and swaying,
Does this make me your whore?
Author Bio:
Sonya Groves is a teacher of English and History in San Antonio. She has published a short story in the Abydos Education Journal and been a conference presenter at the East Carolina University Multi-Cultural Literature Review Conference. Currently she is pursuing her Master’s degree in English at Our Lady of the Lake University.
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