Free Leaving Mother Lake by Yang Erche Namu, Christine Mathieu

me, because he now closed his bag and leaned it against the wall, and he settled himself near the fireplace to roll a leaf of tobacco.
    My father lit his cigarette and blew a few rings.
    I laughed. I knew there had to be something for me and that he was teasing me. And I was right. Zhemi laughed, too, and pushed his cigarette to the corner of his mouth and again reached for his knapsack. And then he handed me the shoes.
    Red corduroy shoes with black dots and a black binding. With white rubber soles. And fluffy pink cotton lining. Pink, soft, fluffy cotton.
    They were the most beautiful shoes I had ever seen. And they were the only shoes I’d ever owned.
    As I stood with my shoes in my hands, rapt, speechless, my mother dragged a small chair near the cooking stove. She told me to sit, and as I stood rooted to the ground, she pushed me down gently onto the chair before she ladled warm water into the blue enamel bowl for me to wash my feet. As I had never worn shoes before, my feet were very cracked from running over icy mud and snow, and it was hard to scrub the dirt away, and when at last my feet were clean, my skin had turned unnaturally white and soft and wrinkled.
    My Ama’s eyes misted over. “They’re just like your uncle’s feet,” she said.
    Of course, I knew what she meant to say, that my feet were like Zhemi’s and that she so loved my father. And this was the sweetest thing my mother could have told me. These were the sweetest, the most loving words my mother was ever to say to me. To this day, when I recall my Ama saying this, about my feet being just like my father’s feet, my heart aches, and I wish I had not wasted a lifetime of tears in my first three years, when I cried not knowing why.
    I put my feet inside the shoes and wiggled my toes and closed my eyes.
    My feet, hot and soft from the foot bath, soaked in the soft warmth of the shoes. This was the most comforting, melting feeling. Well, for a while. Because my soles and my ankles were so cracked from the cold and so raw from all the scrubbing, they began to itch, and itch, and itch, and soon I could not stop scratching.
    “Best to take them off,” my Ama said. “That way you won’t be itchy anymore, and you won’t get them dirty. You can save them for the New Year festival. Put them away and come and have your dinner.”
    Now, the pork soup really did smell good, but I was so excited about my shoes, I could hardly eat anything. I barely swallowed a few mouthfuls before I ran out of the door, with my shoes in my hands, to show off to my friends. But Ama was right, I should not get the shoes dirty, and the little girls had to wash their hands before I let them touch them. And when they had squeezed their hands into my shoes and they had felt the warmth of the lining and they had put their noses to the white rubber soles, and we had agreed on who would get to borrow them and this time put them on their feet — after I had worn them at New Year — I went home to sleep.
    That evening, and every night after it, when I climbed into bed, I put my shoes under the pillow. Then, as I curled up against Zhema, I fell asleep dreaming of the coming New Year, of chicken stew and thick slices of ham, and of the tap-tapping of my pretty little red shoes as I skipped onto the icy red earth, from courtyard to courtyard, and wished everyone a long and healthy life.
    ONE MORNING I WOKEUP TO FIND my mother busy sweeping the dirt in the courtyard. My mouth immediately began to water. My Ama was sweeping away the dirt of the old year so that we could welcome the new one, and that meant New Year was only six days from now. On the twenty-ninth of the month, my Ama would cut slices of salted pork, and she would prepare rice and the flat bread we call
baba.
On the thirtieth, she would kill a chicken and Dujema would bring us goat meat. Then, on New Year’s Eve, my Ama would invite the dog into the house for a human meal of rice and
baba
and vegetables and chicken and