The Girl With the Golden Shoes by Colin Channer Read Free Book Online

with the blade.
    “Where’s the fellow with my things?” she asked Asif when she’d covered all the aisles.
    “I have no idea,” he said with a laugh. “When I see you lying down I think you gone to cry.”
    She put her hands on the counter, slowly but with force, and glared at him from way beneath her brows.
    “I look like a person that cry easy?”
    “I ain’t say nothing like that.”
    “Because you see I black you think I fool?”
    “I never say you was no fool,” he said carefully.
    “Well, you talking the way I talk to idiot people.”
    Her glare began to affect him, and he raised his hands to shoulder height and told her, “Look, I ain’t want no fuss with you. Better you just go you way.”
    “Well, I ain’t want none either,” she answered, in a louder voice. “I just want my things. I just want to go.” She spoke quietly again. “I asking you another time, sir. You see the fellow with my things?”
    “It ain’t necessary to come to this,” he told her in a voice that made aggressive use of overdone restraint. “Just wait a little while and don’t make no fuss and everything will be okay. If you make a fuss, things mightn’t go the way you want them. And I want things to work for you. Nobody here ain’t thief.”
    “You ain’t really know who you playing with,” she answered, backing off. She spread her arms and spun around. “I will break up this place until somebody talk to me.” She leaned down on his counter now as people shuffled down the aisle. “It ain’t funny. It ain’t funny at all. You ain’t know where I coming from or where I going. You ain’t know me from Adam. You ain’t know me at all. You ain’t know what I will do.” She sprung back and straightened up and pointed now. “I will mash up everything in this goddamn place until I get my things, Asif. You hear me? Not because you see me black so. I ain’t no simpleton. I ain’t have no mother supervising me. I ain’t no goddamn child.”
    From a nearby stall, Estrella grabbed a hairy coconut and smashed it on the floor. The juice erupted in a silver fizz. A woman shrieked as jagged fragments zoomed.
    “Take time,” said Asif. “Take time.”
    “I can’t take what I ain’t have. I want to go ’bout my business, and here you is interfering with my life. I laugh already. I give you that, Asif. I give that to all o’ you. And I ain’t going laugh no more. I ain’t come here to turn into nobody clown. I give you entertainment. I give you a show. So, coolie man, gimme my damn things now.”
    “Who she calling, coolie?” someone shouted over mutterings in a language that Estrella didn’t understand. “What? She want somebody cut her ass?”
    “I will mash somebody skull,” Estrella answered. Her neck was taut. She felt she’d break it if she turned to look. “You watching me? You follow? Just like how you see that coconut? I’ll mash a skull like that. You don’t know where I coming from and you don’t know where I going. Don’t push me no more.”
    She sensed someone approaching from behind and turned around to see a hefty woman in a sari stealing sideward down the aisle.
    “If you trouble one, you trouble all,” the woman warned. “You can’t come here and break up people things like this and think you could just go.”
    “Same way you shouldn’t let you people take my things and don’t say nothing. So is even. One for one.”
    As Estrella grabbed another coconut, a butcher with a turban rushed her from the side, and she took his arm and drew her knife and turned him off her ass.
    “Stop it,” said Asif after his compadre’s head and back collided with the floor. “Everybody stop.”
    The groaning man was barely moving. But they saw no sign of blood.
    When Estrella backed away, aware now of the danger to her life, Asif came from behind his counter with her basket in his hand. One leg was withered, and he had a limp that made him waddle like a seal.
    “Take it and go,” he said.