nothing fits

by Chachee Valentine

No tap shoes until you show me that you’ll stick with it.

Deep down, I knew that one day a pair of black shoes with toe plates and heel taps would be mine. There was something about the sound of tap - its percussion, its rhythm - that resonated. At night in bed, I tapped my hands on the mattress, creating a hollow, echoing beat. I didn’t only want to make music. I wanted to be a musical instrument.

Piano chords played from an old suitcase record player balanced on a three-legged chair in the corner. Experienced dancers lined up in rows, facing the mirror. I stood in the back, catching glimpses of myself when I thought no one was looking.

The instructor saw me.

The rest of you, don’t stop! Where are your shoes?

I looked down at the green-and-orange striped tube socks I wore – stolen from one of my brothers – and wondered how the thick stripes were sewn into them.

I don’t have any.

You don’t …? How do you expect to learn tap without tap shoes?

God, please don’t let me go to jail. Please don’t let me be eaten by a shark.

How could I tell her my father refused to buy me tap shoes until I proved I’d stick with it? I said nothing. She placed her arm loosely around my shoulders.

Come with me. Keep going, girls - Shim! Sham! Shimmy!

She opened a narrow closet to a pile of worn, scuffed tap shoes that smelled like rotten leather.

Here. Try these.

Too small.

These.

Too big.

And these?

Nothing fits.

Well, you’ll just have to pretend you can hear yourself. Take your place.

She sighed, long and thin.

For the rest of the lesson, I practiced the shuffle - a forward brush, a backward brush – while the room filled with the sound of metal striking wood. Rhythm catching, carrying the padded thud of my feet against the floor.

Photo of Chachee Valentine

BIO: Chachee Valentine (they/them) writes creative nonfiction, poetry, fiction, and screenplays. Their work appears or is forthcoming in Stonecoast Review, Talon Review, Litbreak Magazine, Sheepshead Review and elsewhere. They are a 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee and a future MFA candidate in Creative Nonfiction at the University of Montana ’26.