The product of a creative non-fiction class

Stiletto

She’s in the other room yelling about something. Mariam, my oldest sister, is always yelling about something. This morning it is about church. She barges in the room I share with Ruth. First, she pulls back the sheets from Ruth’s twin bed, then mine. “You better get up now, we’re going to church.”

Ruth rolls over and yawns the words, “We don’t even believe in God, Mariam.” She reaches for the blue comforter with cartoon moons and clouds. Mariam jerks on the end of it and spits, “Get up.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, I’m not going.”

Mariam pulls her tan arm back. Her manicured fingernails flash in the June morning light

when she smacks her open palm against Ruth’s freckled cheek. She then snaps her head in my

direction.

“Yeah, I’m going Mar,” I say and kick my legs off the bed. Ruth fights the tears that well in her blue eyes. I don’t look at her.

After church, I remember that Mom wanted me to clean the house today. She was “sick of this house looking like a pit from hell.”

I start with the shoes scattered across the foyer when I hear Mariam yelling. It’s about her outfit or her make-up. I don’t care which. I know she’s going out tonight, and like every night she goes out, Ruth and I count down the minutes until she leaves. I think she’s demanding to borrow Ruth’s red halter-top.

She’s been cruel to Ruth all day.

I’m stacking the shoes next to the stairs. With four girls in the house, the shoes accumulate quickly across the scratched wood floor. I’m not paying attention to which shoes go where. I just want them to take up as little space as possible because Mom doesn’t own a shoe rack. That is a luxury she’d say “Only people like your father who’re richer than God have.” I pile Mariam’s red stiletto heals on top of flip-flops when she stomps down the stairs. She’s wearing Ruth’s halter. I expect her to walk past and ignore me. She usually leaves me alone.

“Squid, what are you doing with my shoes?” She spews my nickname. No one in my family calls me Sarah.

“I’m putting them up so that we can actually walk through here.”

“Those are my forty dollar stilettos!” She’s huffing and whining, and before I can tell her that I’m not hurting them she’s stomping to the kitchen where the phone is. “I’m calling Mom. All you guys do is try to ruin everything!”

I can’t take her shouting anymore. My hand still on her shoe, I’m feeling my blood burn hot in

my cheeks. Maybe it’s guilt for not even looking at Ruth this morning, for not standing up for

myself. Maybe not. This heat in my arms is more likely rage. And my fist clamps the leather

straps of her forty fucking dollar shoe. She’s got the phone and still shrieking at me. I quit

listening. I don’t make a sound when I hurl the shoe at her head.

I missed and I’m disappointed until I hear her start to cry. Probably the shock. Not of the shoe whizzing past her head, but that I threw it.

“You’re gonna get it,” she says and dials the number to Mom’s work.