His Shoes

His Shoes

by Eileen

At four, she pulls on her ballet slippers sewn from pink satin and stands behind the door, listening to Mummy speak in terse hisses with a shadow whose face she can no longer remember even though he roughly wrenched her away when she tried to hold it in her hands. Instead, his shoes: black and polished with hard soles that sound like an open palm on a blushing cheek.

At six, when her father leaves them, she asks Mummy if the man with the fancy shoes will come and be her new daddy. "Leenie," Sophia breathes, "you should hope not."