High-top Serenade, by Serena Simpson

When you’re a little kid growing up in urban America, especially a little kid growing up in public housing in urban America, hardly anything gains you more clout on school grounds than the right pair of kicks. Wait, don’t picture generic commercial images of “the cool kids” wearing cool clothes and cool shoes. I mean that, in under-resourced urban communities, footwear can be a very accurate tell for one’s social pecking order. Living in the projects is one thing, looking like a broke ass motherfucker is an entirely different thing.

The funky kids in dirty, raggedy, ill-fitting clothes, who need their hair cut or combed, who hoard the free toothpaste on annual school dental exam days, who have perfect attendance chiefly because of the free school breakfasts and lunches—even on choke sandwich days, and who always have bogus and busted shoes, are at least worthy of empathy. If it’s obvious that there is no one willing or able to take care of you, you typically get a pass on showing up to school in whack shit. But if by all accounts, you are a cared for, not starving, clean, neat, well-groomed, fake-shoe-wearing, broke-ass-looking lame with at least one reliable parent at home who is mentally-well, earns some type of reasonable income, is not strung out on anything, and—who intentionally sends you to school looking  whack—well then, you are a laughable target, worthy of ridicule.

By the time I was eleven years old in 1990, living in Chicago’s Cabrini Green housing project, I understood this truth well. My father, however, refused to acknowledge it. He was one of those people dead-set on believing the lies they told their children like, “brand names don’t matter” or “a gym shoe is a gym shoe” or “you can’t tell the difference between real and synthetic bubblegum colored leather” or “your feet will grow out of those shoes before getting my money’s worth of wear out of them.” He wouldn't even budge on a pair of White Girls (aka Keds). What was worse, he didn’t care enough to know how to spell Adidas, much less to be able to distinguish them from the four-strip imitations that he bought for me.

Thanks to my father’s willful ignorance and lack of even the teeniest effort to give a damn about my adolescent dignity, I had never owned a pair of shoes that cost more than $19.99. In response to my very clear-headed implorements about how Payless shoes were directly linked to my status as one of the “broke kids,” said status excluding me from any hope of ever ascending the social ladder, he’d level some nonsensical logic about how overpriced shoes had yet to advance one’s options in life, as opposed to say,  straight A’s. As far as my father was concerned, the only people at school with whom I needed clout were my teachers. “Teachers,” he assured me, “give zero shits about shoes.” For someone who had grown up in the projects, he seemed to understand surprisingly little about the social dynamics of stuntin’, especially in the hood. The truth of how much better one’s life could be if one simply looked like they could afford better was completely lost on my father.

He acted as if going to school in fly shit wasn’t a clear indication that your family was doing better than others, that your family loved you enough to make you look like you were worth every penny that fly shit costs, like somebody with a job, who could afford nice things was willing to spend money on you, like you didn’t wear second hand or second string anything, because you were a first rate kind of G who didn’t need a hand out or a hand up. No, my father refused to understand anything at all that made sense. And so, after years of donning nothing but discount wear, my name was synonymous with Payless’ Pro Wings and XJ900s, and cemented among the cloutless.

And then a miracle occurred.

My aunt called one afternoon to say that I should come and try on a pair of shoes, some big clunky things she had wasted money on that I could have if I wanted. She offered them with the same indifference as she would first pick through any of the half-decent clothes donated to the neighborhood church where she worked. I had no idea what awaited me. Thanks to my aunt’s dedication to fashion trends, my spoiled teenage cousin’s unexpected growth spurt, and the neighborhood booster’s strict no-return policy, my broke-looking ass was about to be introduced to the come up of my young life.

My aunt, like almost all of my father’s family, also lived in Cabrini. She lived in a 19-story, red brick high rise building behind the identical one we lived in, separated by a few hundred yards of patchy concrete and asphalt and the narrow expanse of warring gang factions. It took longer to get downstairs after an interminable wait for the elevator than to walk from my building to hers. Her kitchen was to the immediate right of the front door, so upon entered her apartment I was directly in front of her large round wooden dining table. There, nestled atop a plastic Jewel’s grocery bag in the middle of the table, flocked by a seafoam green plastic tumbler of Kool-aid and an ashtray full of Virginia Slim Menthol butts, were a pair of shoes that I imagined to be the first discernible symbols of my value.

I couldn’t show how stunned or excited I was for fear that she’d rethink how easily she was altering the course of my life. I tried to play it cool, though I thought I would throw up or crap my pants or both. My neck and face were instantly hot, my mouth dry, my stomach suffering through a series of back flips. I could barely speak but managed a half truth about not feeling well and an ardent thank you. She plopped the shoes into the grocery bag and sent me out the door.

Somehow, I managed to contain myself all the way from my aunt’s kitchen, across half a block of Cabrini’s broken-glass-sprinkled blacktop, through the remnants of a mangled ghost of a playground, up seven pissy flights of stairs, unperturbed by the broken elevator, back home. I had the Jewel’s plastic bag wrapped tightly enough around my wrist to cut off circulation to my hand. My shivering arm clutched them close. They were extremely expensive. I was alone. I did not want to get caught slippin’. Because I was now the owner of a brand-new pair of the just-released Reebok women’s “Pump ‘em Ups,” the original Reebok Pump for girls, or as Reebok named them, the Women’s AXT. The. Best. Damned. Hand-me-down. Of. My. Life.

I carefully lifted them out of the bag one at a time. I had never seen anything so magnificent up close. No other girl at my school had a pair of Pumps yet. Hardly any girl anywhere had a pair of Pumps yet. My Pumps were not only exclusive, but also shaaarrrp! They were gleaming white as the snow of early-morning, un-tread sidewalks I’d spied from my seventh-floor window. They were accented a juicy shade of Laffy-Taffy pink and the same bright turquoise hue as the earrings my stepmother forbade me to touch. Their thick laces were expertly woven, leaving just enough hangover to eliminate any need for tying or the possibility of dragging on the ground. Not one crack, crinkle, or crease marred their smooth leather surface. They were fresher than Doug E.’s beatbox in “Self-Destruction” and tighter than Salt N Pepa’s bodysuits.

This was a little before a young Shaquille O'Neal got his Reebok deal and began endorsing the Shaq Attaq, but the Reebok Pump was already well established at the top of the shoe game and would stay there for the better part of the decade. Horace Grant was wearing Pumps in ‘90. John Paxson was wearing Pumps while he swished all those three-pointers through the net. Dennis Rodman, still a Detroit Piston, still wearing booty shorts on the court, was blocking shots wearing Pumps. Dominique Wilkins, the Human Highlight Reel wore Pumps up and down the lane. And it wasn’t just the ballers’ baller shoe of choice, celebrities were rocking them too. Decades later, when a now iconic, rightly dubbed, “so 90’s” photo re-appeared all over the Internet, courtesy of Chance the Rapper’s homage sweatshirt, there they were. In the photo screen printed on Chance’s shirt, Macaulay Culkin poses with MJ and MJ—Michael Jackson is wearing his “I’m Bad” leather biker jacket and a neon button-down, his hair is in a Leisure Curl and Michael Jordan is in an Air Jordan tank and shorts  set and what might have been the prototype for the Air Jordan VII Bordeauxs (the J’s everyone loved so much that they were re-released and instantly sold out 23 years later, via a one-hour-only special drawing and general internet wonder). In that photo, that perfect encapsulation of 90’s pop everything, Macaulay is wearing Pumps! A true harbinger of kid culture, Macauly knew what was up. And I was ahead of Macauly’s trendsetting when I got my Pumps! Chance wasn’t even born yet.

Sneaker heads were not yet officially a thing in 1990, but by the time they were, anyone who knew anything about shoes pointed back to my Pumps as the hottest hot shit dropped for girls up to that point in my life. Filas and Diadoras were so rooted in the East as to not even exist on our radar that early in Chicago, at least not in Cabrini. And local competitors had no hope of outshining my Pumps, based on the value gained in their sheer newness alone. The L.A. Gear-glitz girls and the few, the proud, Nike Air Jordanaires were all going to get one-upped. I felt chosen. In love. Sitting in the tiny bedroom that I shared with both my older and younger brothers, in possession of the high-top (technically a mid-top, made before anybody gave a damn about cross-trainers) that all other high-tops could only hope to someday measure up to, I needed a reality check—some confirmation that this was not all just some elaborate daydream.

Eager to make it real, I put on my best pair of clean socks and slid my feet into the Pumps. My toes spread and sank in their extra layer of plush inner cushioning. “A gym shoe is a gym shoe,” my ass. My flat arches and weak ankles had never before felt so fully supported. I had never before understood that there was so much more to how a shoe could feel than whether or not your toes fit too near the edge of the toe box. An insole had never before felt like a foot hug. Reebok was right. No two feet were the same. Nope, not mine. I could feel that for the first time. But those differences didn’t matter anymore. Both of my feet would surely now be better feet for even having tried on these shoes. And they were mine?  To keep? Really, these were my shoes? Me, the Pro-Wing queen?

It had never occurred to me to consider whether things that had been out of reach were actually better than what I’d always had, and not just perceived as better. I’d never considered whether there was more to gain than respect and inclusion with a shoe upgrade. I had long imagined what it might feel like to have shoes others envied rather than derided, but I thought the feels of my imagined gratification would be all about my pride. Who knew that this brand-new heel to toe massage was a thing shoes even did, at least for people like me? I’d assumed that I was the problem. I thought all shoes were not designed for thin, narrow, long, flat feet like mine. I had accepted subpar comfort in a gym shoe as part of the natural order of my reality.  It was one of the more minor of my many crosses to bear in life. And now I was experiencing a revelation. Jesus did indeed love me. There were better things I could have. And these Pumps, this fortune, this blessing— this was what grace was.

I reached down and gently straightened the gorgeous, extra-wide, extra-tall tongue, running my fingers across the raised, horizontal ridges of the state-of-the-art air release pad. I took in a deep, sharp breath, and held it. I placed my hand over the cleverly crafted 3D miniature basketball built into the tongue—enjoying its contrasting pebbled texture as I breathed out.

I waited, then took another deep breath, slowly this time.

I paused, exhaled, and then squeezed.

“Shh, Shh, Shh,” the shoe whispered as air ushered in to embrace my Payless weary foot.

I squeezed again.

The. Shoe. Tightened.

It worked.

They really did pump up!

My father had walked into the room by then. He rolled his eyes at my elation, but let me revel in it nonetheless. He looked my Pumps over with a skeptical eye. Eyebrow raised, mouth twisted, “kind of… bright, aren’t they?” he sneered. My father was entirely incapable of appreciating anything fly. The last thing he’d thought was stylish was the waist-length maroon leather Members Only jacket he’d gotten at least five years before. He was the kind of person who creased his Wrangler jeans with enough heavy starch to give them a slight iridescent sheen, always tucked in his pressed t-shirts, and looked down his nose in disdain at warm-up suits. I stared at him, dumbstruck by the audacity of his ignorance. He finally turned and walked out of the room shaking his head. “Make sure you do your homework.”

Now I can’t remember what floral pastel polyester or alternating color patchwork cotton outfit from my K-mart exclusive wardrobe I chose to wear with my Pumps the next morning. But I do remember how carefully and lightly I placed every step, sure not to bend or flex too much, least I crease my Pumps on the way to school. My eyes were focused on the ground the entire trip. Something I had been taught to never ever do, especially when out alone. For that two-and-a-half block walk nothing was wrong with Cabrini. Everything was right in my world. The Cabrini Green of my childhood was neither the desolate, treacherous hellhole of the 1992 horror film Candyman nor the hokey, struggle-hard, laugh harder, dy-no-mite city-within-but-apart-from-a-city where urban blight could be righted in 30 minutes max, depicted in the 70’s sitcom Good Times. It was just home, maybe brutal, but beautiful too.

I walked the long way around the block, eschewing a breezy trek across a grassy field where no one ever organized sports games, even though it was wide-open common ground between two large elementary schools. The field was typically a welcome shortcut, except on days when there was gunfire and we knew to stay close to buildings we could duck into if the need arose. The day was lovely and quiet and happy. Still, I decided to dodge the field because that particular morning, I feared the mud and grass in my hood far more than friendly fire, no matter what the news reports said. My Pumps took me from Vice Lord to GD territory without any consideration of the boundaries. I had always admired cement stamps, one of those overlooked and underappreciated urban delights. I was especially fond of the heart-shaped ones that decorated the sidewalks between my building and my school, the company name centered in the logo, was long worn off or is long erased in my memory, perhaps both. As I strolled that morning in my Pumps, I counted the heart stamps. I can’t recall now how many I passed, but I do remember imagining that they might mark a trail of love, a path back home you had to be small enough to notice and careful enough to follow.

That first morning wearing my Pumps, I stood in front of school waiting for the nine o’clock bell, pretending not to have a care in the world; all the while, the anticipation of praises leaked from every pore on my body. Every one of my muscles was tense and my palms moist. I didn’t take my usual place, camouflaged among the mundane, wedged somewhere in the middle of the lazy line along the school gate, hoping to disappear more than to blend in. That first day wearing my Pumps, I posted boldly near the front stairs where everyone would see me plainly.   

I had never before made myself visible on purpose. I knew how to be out of sight, in hopes that would also make me out of mind. My schoolmates’ attention had never been kind. I was a nerdy kid—not simply a smart kid, but a weird smart kid, one who tried way too hard at everything academic, because I wasn’t good at anything else. I was too uncoordinated to jump double-dutch, turned rope doublehandedly, couldn’t skate or dance and had zero hand-eye coordination. I was one of the tallest girls in my grade and also one of the most undeveloped—the thickest things on my body were my sideburns. I had finally gotten a perm the year before, only to rock stiff granny hairstyles produced through the pairing of Luster’s Pink Oil Lotion and pink sponge curlers. I was a know-it-all who took offense to people being called “retarded” on account of my little brother being on the spectrum, decades before that term meant anything to the general public. I waited every morning and afternoon for the short bus to pick him up and drop him off. I had three large, ugly, painful tumors covering my left arm from shoulder to elbow, resulting from a rare neurological disorder that no one had ever heard of or could pronounce. It was widely rumored that the disorder was fake, and that I was in truth, an alien—a lame ass alien, always rocking some whack, cheap shit.

That first morning wearing my Pumps was perhaps the first time I had ever hoped someone would notice something I was wearing. It was the first time I had looked forward to being seen, the first time I imaged myself worthy of attention. And so, slowly, they gathered, flocking around me like buzzards, a mix of malice and awe in their grinning faces.

“Daaaaaang, she got the Pump ‘em Ups”

“Her? She got em?”

 “Foreal?”

“Le’ me see.”

“So. She still ain’t cute. Skinny ass.”

“She came all the way up.”

“Awwww, shit!”

I don’t know who started singing first, but the voice was like a rallying call, setting off a chain reaction. In a matter of minutes nearly every boy in my sixth-grade class had formed a circle around me and was performing an impromptu Kool & the Gang cover, complete with choreography. They rejoiced, “Yahoo! It’s a celebration. Ceeelll-e-brate good times, come on! Let’s celebrate... We gonna celebrate your party with you.”

Before long, every kid in front of the school joined in the singing and clapping. They were so fucking coordinated. Bastards. They mocked my triumph with more fervor than they had ever ridiculed my footwear failure, but their taunting didn’t dull my shine. Skip them. For the first time in my life, I was feeling myself. I was impressed enough with my Pumps and with myself that I suddenly didn’t give a shit who else was. The profundity of self-validating clarity aside, I still knew they were playing me and that I needed to muster a convincing show of respectable agitation. I was a weird alien nerd, but not a punk. I put on my best “just try me and see what happens, Bitch” face. I was a thorny wall of resistance, unphased by their satirical onslaught, I’m sure. I even threw a few truly earnest middle fingers for good measure. But inside, I was singing right along with them. It was a celebration, and I, in my fresh ass, comfortable ass Pumps, did indeed have a party going on.

Serena Simpson is a Chicago native who writes character driven narratives infused with introspection and cultural criticism. Her work is often concerned with exploring memory, place, and the overlap, interstices, and interplay between them. She was awarded the Chicago Guild Literary Complex’s 2018 Leon Forrest Prose Award in nonfiction and was named a 2019 Tin House Scholar.