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In the end, she will be remembered for her shoes.

When Ms. Dorothy finally died after ninety-four years of living in the faded blue house where she was born, the grandson came to clean out her things.  He found stacked boxes along every wall, copious colors and styles, sandals, slippers, wedges, slingbacks, clogs---eight hundred fifty-six pairs in all.  Here were the gaudy pink satin pumps she bought for her ninetieth birthday, there the Greenbelts she wore in her wedding.  Sometimes, I would come over in the cool summer evenings for iced-tea and pimento cheese and we would play the game.  Those yellow plastic sandals?  "Oh," she would reply, "I wore those the day Kennedy died."  The workman boots?  "Ration-free in 1944, for my factory job."  Black ballet flats?  "Audrey's Sabrina made them popular.  Robert, the baby, was born that year."  Gold metallic wedges?  "The height of fashion in the '80s, my dear."  She never faltered in the game.  Never.  And sometimes, if she was feeling particularly well, we would even try them on as she told their stories.

"Have you ever seen such a mess?" he asked me over the hedge as he carried boxes to the dumpster.  It was sweltering.  He mopped at his fat red face with a bandana.  "Forty years we've been giving her money for bills.  Come to find out she wasted it all on shoes."

Inside, I took down the stained brown box.  Weeks ago she gave it to me, said she wanted me to have it.  "Because you know, dear," she told me, her cornflower blue eyes searching mine.  "You understand."  Within, crumbling ankle-strap Mary Janes and a yellowed page: "St. Michael's – Dispersion of Deceased's Property: Wedding band.  For husband; Heart-shaped locket.  For daughter Helen; Women's shoes, black.  For daughter Dorothy."