Mary Janes (2020-2021)
Growing up they told me that the moon was made of cheese and I thought Clifford was really that big and really that red. I wore black Mary Jane shoes and chunky colored headbands that when I see pictures of today, I can't help but roll my eyes. The innocence of childhood felt like an inconvenience, an obstacle, a formality. I didn't want to be a child, no, I wasn't a child! I wanted to wield a debit card and go to college and drive a car. How silly I was. If I could be that young again and hanging out my window, wishing on a shooting star one last time. Well, I'd wish for every day of my life to feel the way Christmas mornings and family birthday parties once did. Do you remember the time when you used to wake up in the morning, excited? Alive, awake, alert, enthusiastic.
I remember how it felt to be nine years old, size seven feet in a pair of worn, black Mary Janes rooted stubbornly on the seat of a husky mahogany chair, my hands waving manically to signal to my loved ones that the time had come upon us, once again. I am a doe-eyed child buzzing with elation at the thought of gifts, cake, and a song just for them. My grandmother, off-key as she is, always begins the birthday hymn. The mismatched and botched harmonies resonate through the dining room, bouncing off of dark log walls back to my small ears. The vanilla and strawberry ice cream cake sits untouched on the table, dripping slowly down the side of an eggshell-colored dish like warm molasses into small pools of pink and white swirls. Presents wrapped delicately in shiny holographic paper with red velvet bows sit waiting, begging to feel my fingers slide over their creases and tear them open. The feeling of anticipation sits heavy in my chest, my hands itching to see what treasures such beautiful paper could shield from the world. The smell of burning candles lingers in the air and my hands are sticky with ice cream as I excitedly tear open gift after gift stumbling upon the most underwhelming part of the pile: the lone envelope, sitting in solitude. It won't be a barbie doll whose hair I can brush and braid. No, it'll just be a flimsy little bill. The sunshine yellow envelope is adorned with my name in careful calligraphy and the twenty flutters down from the lips of the envelope to the hardwood of the table. With a passing, polite smile, I thank them, knowing that it will feed my mother's gas tank.
Growing up they told me that I'd have a gas tank of my own one day. I guess nine-year-old me just never believed that I could really ever be that old. Twenty-year-old me now knows that I will simply keep getting older and maybe one day I'll have to lift a few twenties from sunshine-colored envelopes to keep gas in my car too. I get why she did it now. Like I said, I'm getting older and my black Mary Janes are no longer a size seven. In fact, my Mary Janes are even more worn than they once were and larger, with more room for scuff marks. There's a collection of small scuffs from ex-lovers. There's a hole over the big toe left behind by a girl I went to high school with. A mark left behind from my mother. I know I've scuffed hers too even if I'd decline to voice it. Some days I display these scuffed shoes proudly when I walk, and other days I don't go out because of them.
If you were to check your parent's closet, I'm sure you'd find a few pairs of scuffed shoes, no matter how much it would surprise you. It's the moment you realize that Mom and Dad are human too. It is the moment when the excitement of being young has long since moved out, the hunger for life with it. Emptiness is homeless and fear moves in. This anxiety has become an unruly tenant of my mind, not paying rent and just breaking all of the furniture. And the fear creeps up my throat like bile. What good are Mary Janes if they're all scuffed up? What good am I, if I'm all scuffed up?
