Alligator Shoes

As soon as she slipped the shoe on her foot Mrs. Simpson knew that she was as good as the women she saw buying Aigners and Life Strides at Parks-Belk and Miller-Rhoads. "Look at my beautiful golden lilies," she said to herself. "Golden lilies" was a phrase she had Alligator Shoes by Judy K. Miller learned from the novel she was reading. The only thing that she had gotten out of the book was that it was about communism and Chinese women who bound their feet to make them small. Mrs. Simpson's feet were size nine and one half but the alligator shoes made them 14 look three sizes smaller. She especially liked the cut of the shoe-high enough to help hide the beginnings of the blue cords that rolled along the top of her feet and climbed up the sides of her legs, and yet curvy enough to keep the shoes from looking like they had been made for old women. She slipped off the shoe and held it close in front of her face. The way that the store lights were tinted, the shoe did indeed look golden. "Could I help you with that ma'am?" A woman in a white pant suit had walked up beside Mrs. Simpson and was looking down at her naked foot, then up at the shoe in her hand. "Yes, you could," Mrs. Simpson said. "You could help me find this shoe's mate." She dropped the shoe into the woman's palm. "I've searched all over this table and it's nowhere to be found." "We just put out one of each. Saves confusion. You know what I mean. Keeps ladies from fighting over the same Fair. You just take a seat over there and '11 be right back." The woman brought back two brown and white boxes and set them on the floor as she squatted beside Mrs. Simpson's feet. "I brought the next size up, too," she said. "Just in case. These shoes run a little small." "I've never wore a size ten in my life. My Herman says my feet are the biggest thing about me, but I've never had to go to a size ten." She pushed her foot down into the shoe. It was much tighter than the one she had found out on the table. "Are you sure you gave me the right one?" "Yes, Ma'am. It says nine and a half right here on the box." "Let me see that." She read the numbers and words stamped on the end of the box. "It doesn't say one thing about where these shoes were made. They're not any of those foreign-made affairs, are they?" "No ma'am. American all the way. Both soles and uppers." "Yes, I see." She handed the box back to the woman and bent over to pull the shoe off her foot. "If there's one thing I can't stand-" She straightened up and caught her breath, then went on talking, "-it's to buy a new pair of shoes and get home and find out they were made in Hong Kong or Taiwan or some other god-forsaken place." She rubbed her finger down one side of the shoe feeling of the ridges. "I may not be able to buy the best, but I don't have to buy the cheapest neither. These are good shoes?" "Yes ma'am. The top of our line." Mrs. Simpson scratched her fingernail along the lines of the grain. "Well, I do like them well enough, but are you sure they're good shoes? ' "Honey, you don't have to take my word for it. Just ask that girl over there." She motioned toward the clerk who was filing her fingernails, her hand Eropped up on the cash register. "She ought a pair way back in the spring before they were marked down and she says they're the most comfortable things she's ever had on." "Is that so! I never was one to go buying off a bargain table, but I never did like to pass up a good...