There’s nothing like a pair of high heel shoes to a young girl or woman. The arch and height; the sleekness that they bring. Making a female taller and sexier… more appealing and alluring.
 
The tip of one’s toes touching the essence of earth. The extending heel bringing out a woman's curves and back side... Ooh Wee the men might think, look at those legs and those thighs when an unsuspecting saint or sinner passes by.
 
And they don’t care if you know the Lord or the streets just want to see those ankles in the air with at least the strap of those shoes holding on to your feet.
 
As a child Theresa would sneak and put on my mother’s heels and church hats. She liked looking sexy even though the attire was considered righteous.
 
Theresa could peer out her window and see the loose women, the ones her mother labeled as bad people, strutting up and down the street in their high heel shoes.
 
Church was okay to Theresa but too restricting; she didn’t understand how not wanting to go meant she would end up like those women on the streets.
 
Her mother, Kathryn, and their reverend warned of hell, fire and damnation for even listening to secular music of wearing pants.
 
There was no way they even understood the high heels they wore. At 16 Theresa was not allowed on the phone after 9p.m. and both she and her younger sisters would be at church if their mother wasn’t at work.
 
This night she got lucky; they would miss the last night of revival services because her mother took a double shift at the hospital. The young girl would have the house all to herself; she turned the radio on as soon as she saw her mother go up the street.
 
Theresa gyrated across the living room floor like she was on BET (an urban Black Entertainment Television channel) because in her borrowed high heel shoes she felt on top of the world. She would eventually find her way in those same streets she thought her mother knew nothing about.
 
She’d learn of love, jealousy, sex, relationship and life all while wearing a pair of high heel shoes. She would also learn the difference between the two.