In Grandma's Attic (4 page)

7

Little Gray Shoes

The winter I was six years old, I had diphtheria. After a few weeks, when I began to feel a little better, Grandma brought the button basket to my bed. Most everything in Grandma’s house had a story, but the button basket was full of them!

The basket contained buttons—all sizes, shapes, colors, and kinds. There were so many things to do with them that it was hard to know how to start. Should I sort out all the round buttons? Or string the red buttons all together? Or maybe see how many different shapes there were? I seemed never to get to the end of the possibilities.

On this day, as I dug to the bottom of the basket, my fingers felt a shape I hadn’t noticed before. I brought the button out and looked at it curiously. It was a small silver-gray triangle. It had no holes through it, nor did it have a hook on the back. There seemed to be no way to sew it onto anything.

“Grandma,” I called. “Here’s a button I never saw before. Where did it come from?”

Grandma came to look. She turned the button over in her hand thoughtfully.

“Why, this was one of my shoe buttons,” she replied.

“Shoe button?” I asked. “Did you wear shoes with buttons on them? How did the button stay on?”

“Oh, yes,” said Grandma, “my shoes had buttons all the way up the side. The little hook that held this button came off long ago. I guess this is the only one that hasn’t been lost.”

Grandma continued to turn the button over in her hand. Her eye had the faraway look of a story, so I settled back on the pillows and waited.

They were the most beautiful shoes I had ever seen. We only had one new pair a year, and it was very important to make a good choice. Ma took me into town in September to shop for my new shoes. The first pair the man brought out was this wonderful set of gray shoes with silver triangle buttons. They were soft doeskin, and to me, there had never been anything so lovely.

“Oh, Ma,” I said. “These are the ones I want. I don’t even want to look at any others.”

“Well, try them on,” said Ma. “We’ll see.”

The man put the shoes on my feet and buttoned them up with a tiny buttonhook. I held my feet straight out in front of me and admired those shoes. Oh, such beauty!

“Stand up,” said Ma. “See if they are going to be too short.”

Too short! Of course they weren’t. They couldn’t be. But when I stood on the floor, my toes touched the ends of the shoes.

“Do they pinch?” asked the man.

“Oh, no, they don’t pinch! They are just fine!” I hastened to reassure them. But Ma was doubtful. “Remember,” she said, “you have to wear these all year. It doesn’t look like there is much room to grow. Do you have them in the next size?” she asked.

He didn’t. All he had in the next size was a pair of black shoes with shiny patent leather toes and small round buttons. The thought of leaving those wonderful gray shoes was more than I could stand.

“These are just fine, Ma,” I protested. “These fit just fine. They don’t hurt a bit.”

A little twinge told me that the shoes really were too small and that I should tell Ma that my toes touched the end. But my desire to have a beautiful pair of shoes to show Sarah Jane and the other girls won out, and I said nothing.

Ma paid for the shoes, and they were wrapped for me to carry home in triumph. I wore them to church the following Sunday and modestly accepted the admiration of my friends.

For a few weeks, the shoes felt only a little tight. Then, as my feet continued to grow, the shoes really began to pinch. Of course I could say nothing to Ma. I could not admit that I had stretched the truth to get them, and anyway, there was no money to replace them. Finally I found that I could only wear the shoes when I was sitting down so that I could curl my toes up inside. On Sunday morning, I would pull my boots on over my heavy stockings and carefully conceal my shoes under my cape until we got to church. Then I would sit through the long service with my poor feet aching in those beautiful shoes.

The day came, as I knew it would, when I could not get the shoes on at all. Ma had to be told. With much sobbing, I admitted that I had been deceitful about the shoes. Now it was only early in December, and I had no shoes to wear for the remainder of the winter.

Ma was sorry, not only that the shoes no longer fit, but also that her little girl had deceived her. Oh, what I would have given for those homely black shoes that would fit! But that was impossible. We didn’t have enough money for more shoes. The only solution was a pair of my older brother’s outgrown shoes.

Pa tried his best to shine them up for me, but they were boys’ shoes! And they had metal toes! I would never leave the house again. I would just stay home until it was time to go barefoot in the spring. But of course I didn’t. Although I cried huge tears over them, I wore Roy’s shoes to church. I did my best to tuck my feet under the bench so no one would see, but such things are not easy to hide.

When Christmas came, I was delighted to see among my gifts a new rag doll that Ma had made and wrapped in a knitted shawl. But when I pulled back the shawl, what should look up at me but two gray shoe-button eyes! I looked quickly at Ma, but she acted as though nothing was wrong. I looked again at the doll. Her smiling mouth was not really laughing at me, I decided. In fact, she looked quite sympathetic. I touched the little buttons and thought how foolish I had been. This little doll would remind me to think twice before I did a deceitful thing like that again!

My gray-eyed Emily was my companion until I was too old for dolls. There were others, even one with a china head, but none so dear as Emily with her kind smile and shoe-button eyes.

Grandma dropped the button into the basket and went back to her work. I dozed off thinking of the gray shoes and Grandma—a little girl just like me.

8

Nellie and the Buttons

“Look, Grandma,” I said. “Here are six buttons just alike, and they look like they’ve been chewed. What were these on?”

I had been in bed a long time recovering from diphtheria, and Grandma had given me the button basket to keep me company. Since the basket was full of buttons of all shapes and sizes, I never ran out of entertainment.

Grandma had been working by the window, but now she came to the bed where the buttons were spread out.

“Those were my coat buttons, and they
were
chewed,” she said. “Since I was the only girl in our family until I was almost grown up, I never had to wear hand-me-down dresses as some of my friends did. Ma made all our clothes, even Pa’s and the boys’. But if I did have my own dresses, my coats were nearly always cut down from the boys’ coats when they were outgrown.”

I settled back to hear the story.

This particular winter, Reuben needed a new coat but Roy did not, so Ma decided to make my winter coat out of Reuben’s old one. He was growing so quickly that he had worn it only one year, and the wool was still good.

Ma took it apart carefully, cleaned and brushed the pieces, and soon there was a nice new coat for me. I liked the coat very much, but I did want new buttons on it. Ma thought not. These were good buttons and would look fine just as they had on Reuben’s coat.

“But, Ma,” I protested, “everyone will know this was Reuben’s coat with those old buttons on it. Why can’t I just have some pretty new ones? They don’t cost much.”

Pa was sympathetic and offered to go to town for buttons, but Ma would not hear of it. We didn’t need to spend money for something that wasn’t necessary.

When Ma had her mind made up, there was no point in wasting time trying to change it. So I resigned myself to the old buttons and became anxious for the weather to turn cold so I could wear the coat.

When it did get cold, though, we discovered something that no one had counted on.

Reuben was the oldest boy, and ever since he had been small, he had followed Pa about the farm and tried to help.

He was personally acquainted with every animal on the place, and they were all close friends. Whenever Reuben went to the barn or field, the horses, cows, pigs, and sheep came to be talked to and rubbed. Reuben had named each one and seemed to have time to give them all attention. Pa had grumbled about farm animals not being pets, but no one thought seriously of stopping Reuben, for he did have a way with animals. His special friend was Nellie, a horse he had raised from a colt.

One evening Ma said to me, “Mabel, put on your coat and run out to the barn. Ask Pa to bring some eggs when he comes in.”

I hurried quickly across the frosty yard to deliver the message. I, too, had been a frequent visitor to the barn, but I wasn’t old enough yet to help with the animals, and they never paid much attention to me. This evening, however, was different. Just outside the barn door stood Nellie. Before I could enter, she banged her head against my stomach, and I sat down hard.

Reuben came running when he heard me scream, and he led Nellie away from the door. When he had picked me up and brushed me off, he said to Pa, “Whatever got into that horse? She’s never done that before.”

“I guess Mabel startled her, running up like that,” replied Pa. “I don’t think Nellie meant to hurt her.”

Nevertheless, when I went to the barn the next morning, I was careful to walk a long way around Nellie. I needn’t have bothered. She didn’t even notice me.

The following Sunday, Reuben hitched Nellie to the buggy for our trip to church. Of course I was wearing my new coat, and as I walked in front of the horse to get in the buggy, Nellie reached out again and butted me with her head. This time, before Pa could reach me, Nellie was chewing on one of my coat buttons.

“Now what did she do that for?” asked Ma. “What’s the matter with that horse, anyway? Mabel, have you been teasing her?”

No, I had not. In fact, I had been going out of my way to stay away from her. There seemed to be no reason for a gentle horse to suddenly begin knocking a little girl around.

The odd thing was that Nellie didn’t do it every time she saw me. Most of the time she paid no attention to me at all. But then, after several encounters when the horse had managed to chew my coat buttons before someone could rescue me, Reuben came up with the answer.

“Ma,” he said, “Nellie only goes after Mabel when she has that coat on. I think Nellie remembers those buttons when they were on my coat. I trained her to shake the front of my coat to get sugar. I think that’s what she wants. She isn’t knocking Mabel down to be mean.”

Ma was doubtful, though. “I know you think that horse is pretty smart,” she told Reuben, “but she isn’t smart enough to remember buttons.”

However, when Nellie continued to make life miserable for me whenever I wore that coat, Ma began to change her mind. Finally one day she said to Pa, “I believe Reuben is right about that coat. Maybe I’d better change the buttons and see if Nellie will leave Mabel alone.”

So my wish came true after all. Pa and I made the trip to town and picked out new buttons for my coat. And sure enough, Nellie didn’t do any more than look at me when I walked past her. The old buttons went into Ma’s sewing basket, and Reuben bragged to his friends about the smart horse he had.

Grandma returned to her work, and I examined the buttons closely, trying to imagine Grandma as a little girl having her buttons chewed by a smart horse!