Beauty

BeautyECF

#shortstory, #vagrancy, #doingnothing, #dancing

Esther Brown wore uncomfortable shoes. Perhaps they were dancing shoes, the kind of shoes that girls admire in shop windows, whilst dreaming of dancing halls and first dates. Flapper shoes with mid height heels and ribbons around the ankles, unable to warm her feet up in winter, but so nice for parties. Or maybe they were sturdy, leather, flat sole shoes. Shoes that ripped her tights up when she wore them for the first time, then, with the passing of seasons, worn out, scratched, patched shoes, stretched to the shape of her feet. Esther Brown wore beautiful shoes

Esther Brown’s shoes were either too small, or too big for her feet. They tore her heels and sore her toes to bleed. She got them as a present from a friend. She gently polished them before going to the movies and plays. She took them off when lying down with a lover, or a one-night stand. The feet that throbbed after dancing all night were now shivering with excitement. Years passed by and Esther Brown’s shoes hardened the soles of her feet. They grew corns on her toes and, step after step, deformed her bones into bunions.

Esther Brown’s beautiful experiment was achieving herself: black, eager, proud, idle, and free of pursuing an unbounded intimacy. At her time, a girl like her(1)—the kind of girl that would not hesitate to smash things up—must always stay ready to run. With shoes like hers, that was painful. But that didn’t keep her from rambling down the streets of Harlem. Wandering, dancing, drifting, spilling, loving, fleeing; sometimes doing nothing, but always Esther Brown on the move, drawing the everyday choreography of the possible.

[1] From the 1880s to the 1920s in the USA, a number of policies such as the ‘Wayward Minor Law’ or the ‘vagrancy clauses of the Tenement House Law’ made young black women living in cities extremely vulnerable to criminalization. Many of these laws were not based on an accomplished criminal act, but on the subjective presumption of a potential criminal future.

Inspired by Esther Brown’s story in Hartman, S. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, 2019.