Scuff Marks on her Soul

“Quit banging your feet on the pew! ” my sister scoffed her flaming red hair and freckles dancing at me with a mix of indignation and love.

Sometimes it feels like she is the oldest. She isn’t.

I was ten years old sitting and swinging my feet in the second row church pew at the local Catholic Church. Choir practice, something we did it every Saturday morning.

“Most girls get to go to ballet classes but we have to go to choir practice,” I whispered while rolling my eyes.

Yvette Muse, the choir director, looks sharply at me.

She had a very dignified way of speaking, like everything that come out of her mouth was deemed important by God. Her bright red lips against her dark Indian skin was so pretty, and her fingers did a little dance with the music. She had a kind of grace. I noticed it. Her and her high heel sneaker shoes.

I look down at mine. My patent penny loafers are worn, adorned with white ribbon socks with scuff marks on the soles.

My sister puts her hand on my knee to stop me from distracting the choir.

“We always sing the same songs,” I murmur, clicking my shoes together at he scuff marks along the side.

These shoes have walked some miles for ten.

Thats when Mrs. Muse nods at me, “your up!” It was my turn to sing! I always did a double take and looked behind me dramatically. She’d roll her eyes at me, her with those eyes and those sneakers. So I’d Shrug my shoulders and say,“ I don’t know! I’m not Laura Teasdale!”

Laura, she was uncommonly short and brash, had curly hair, and a joke that came out of either side of her mouth, but boy could she sing. Each line, each word came out of her mouth with ease and confidence.

And when she wasn’t there, I was my girl Friday.

I could never quite be Laura.

So I scuff on up to the podium, an awkward girl of ten.

She made my sister sing beside me knowing I had terror.

For some reason breathing in seemed like a responsibility of sorts. Still I mumble the word with my eyes laced to the ground.

Somewhere, somehow I learned to stay small inside when everything else inside was big….at church, at home…

“Mom, she’s doing it again..pulling at my hair!”

Mom didn’t respond. She knew better not to.

Instead I heard my dads heavy footsteps pound down the stairs.

“Don’t make me come down there.” He’d shout before the thunder. But he always came down those steps, his weight on the narrow wooden stairs, enough to scare two girls into stiffened forms.

“What’s the problem down here?” There always has to be a problem, hence the thunder.

“Nothing..” I’d say, like a dog with its tail between its legs til he’d give me the look.

“She pulled at my hair again!” His eyes scan between both of us in this silent space between us.

I couldn’t help but notice that he always had a sort of smirk behind those angry eyes, like he was about to give you a wink on the way out the door. It felt different when he has the wooden spoon, that’s what he called it.

“Don’t make me get out the wooden spoon!”

It always struck me as so formal but there was nothing formal about it, when he’d force you to put your hands out and smack it across your open palms. I don’t recall making any sound. Yeah, It was like there was picture with no sound.

When it was my turn I screamed with extra terror from which you were guaranteed to be hit harder, the threat of which was kept.

“Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about! I don’t wanna hear a peep outa you!”

Sometimes I cry when it wasn’t my turn because just watching it felt hard. So I covered my ears so no could see. And I covered my eyes so no one could hear, the sound of a little girls trust breaking.

Don’t ask me why scuff marks had my attention, because for most of my life, I’ve always been looking down. Mostly to make sure the ground was underneath me when nothing else clearly was.

Some times you never know where these beat up shoes have traveled.

The tears that were never spent.

The songs that were never sung.

Most days I wonder about Laura. What was it like in her home?
Why it was so easy for her to sing when for me there was no sound outpouring. Just a picture with no sound. The sound of the heart breaking.

And a little girl with scuff marks on her soul.