4. Chapter Four
Chapter Four
Then
Because Theo and I were close in age and my brother Brock was five years older than me, Theo was the one I usually spent my time with. As we grew older and started school, we began to receive the message that Brock had gotten from the very beginning of the store: that our contribution was vital to keeping roofs over our heads and food on our tables. When Brock got old enough to start running the cash register—according to our parents, not child labor laws—Theo and I were pulled out of the stockroom and given menial tasks like straightening shelves and sweeping floors and standing next to Brock while he rang people up, finagling shoe boxes into thin plastic bags that ripped about half the time.
The adults generally seemed to regard Theo and I as one entity. We were nearly always given the exact same tasks and then left to our own devices to complete them. Over the years, we created our own world within the shoe shop, one that only the two of us knew existed. We had routines for our chores and would perform them seamlessly, side-by-side. Sometimes we made games out of it. Some of the games, like the one where we competed to end up with the dirtiest cloth after dusting, went over well with our parents. Others—namely what we called “bin throw”, where one of us would sit in a giant plastic bin while the other slung it across the floor as hard as they could—did not.
It was usually on the heels of one of these incidents where I had been acting “unladylike” that my mother would step in and separate us. If she deemed that I was being too loud or too noisy or too active, she’d make me sit in the time-out chair behind the counter. Very rarely was it used by either of the boys.
“Theo was doing it too,” I complained one day. He had been shushed and reminded to walk when we were caught having a race through the sandal aisle; I, on the other hand, was currently swinging my feet so wildly that the front legs of the time-out chair kept rising a few millimeters off the ground.
My mother didn’t even look up from the price gun she was using to tag a shipment of socks. “Boys can’t always control themselves, but you can.”
I didn’t think that was true. Theo was in second grade and I was in first, but since our school was so small, first and second graders were combined into one class that year. Under the watchful eye of our strict gray-haired teacher, Mrs. Everett, Theo seemed perfectly capable of sitting quietly at his desk and walking calmly down the hallway, only to let his energy explode once he stepped foot outside for recess. But I knew from experience that arguing would get me nowhere with my mother, so I slouched low in the chair and spent the next ten minutes glaring at her back.
When I turned nine, my parents decided that I was old enough to walk two blocks to the bus stop by myself, and those unsupervised few minutes before my bus rolled up was the most freedom I ever experienced in my childhood. Every day, when I turned the corner at the end of our street and knew that my mother couldn’t see me, I did all the unladylike things I could think of. I sprinted. I did cartwheels. After it rained, I jumped in puddles and plucked earthworms off the sidewalk to deposit back in the grass.
Theo lived in the same neighborhood as us but came to the bus stop from the opposite direction. I almost always beat him there. Sometimes, I’d be about to climb on when a shout would come from behind me, and there would be Theo, running down the hill with his backpack banging against his back and one of his shoes untied. The bus driver, Ms. Pam, always sighed in irritation, but she never left Theo behind.
Toward the end of that school year, when we were starting to get a bit too comfortable, there was one day where Ms. Pam had had enough of the chaos happening on her bus. She pulled over onto the side of the road, got up, and did the clapping thing teachers did when they wanted everyone’s attention— clap-clap-clapclapclap . Only about half of the bus clapped back. I did, but Theo was shuffling through his backpack for a multiplication table and ignored her.
Ms. Pam clapped again. Again, she was ignored by Theo and the rambunctious kindergarteners across the aisle from us and the fifth graders two rows back who were busy testing out new curse words.
Losing patience, she gave up on the clapping and simply roared, “Be quiet right now! ”
Everybody turned silent. Theo’s hand stilled in his backpack, and he grimaced at me.
“I am not going to listen to another second of this,” Ms. Pam carried on, voice still raised louder than we’d ever heard it. She moved down the aisle to make sure everyone could hear her. “Starting right now until we get to school, I don’t want to hear a sound. No talking. None. Understood?”
“You’re talking.” I meant to mutter it, but it rang out clearly in the dead silence surrounding us. Ms. Pam was standing about three rows up, and I felt my eyes widen in realization at the exact moment hers widened in disbelief.
Ms. Pam wasn't a large woman, but she did have the air of somebody who should not be messed with. When she beckoned me toward her with a crook of her finger, it was like all the air got sucked from the bus. I stood up, taking my backpack with me, feeling everybody's eyes on my back as I moved behind Ms. Pam down the aisle. She motioned for me to sit in the empty seat right behind hers, which was where she made kids sit when they got in trouble. It was my very first time sitting there, and it felt a lot like being in the time-out chair at the store, with one key difference: this time, I felt bad about what I had done.
We got to school and I stayed put. Everybody knew that if you were in the seat behind Ms. Pam, you would be the last one to get off. The other kids shuffled down the aisle, still silent. When Theo walked by, he slipped out of line and sat down beside me.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
“Waiting for you.”
“You’re gonna get in trouble.”
“No, I won’t.”
Ms. Pam suddenly appeared, twisting around the barrier behind the driver’s seat so she could see us. “Quiet. Theo, I don’t know what you’re doing there.”
“Just waiting for Nina.”
“Well, hush while you do it.”
Once everybody else was off the bus, Ms. Pam came and stood over us. “I was going to go buy some new sneakers today.” Her tone was conversational, but her gaze was sharp on me. I slunk down in the seat. “Do I need to tell your mama you were being sassy on my bus, Nina Sullivan?”
“No ma’am,” I said quickly.
She turned to Theo, propping a fist on her hip. “What about you?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
I thought that was kind of sassy, even though it was true, but Ms. Pam just looked at him. “Go to class,” she told us after a long moment. “I don’t want either of you sitting up here again, hear me?”
“Yes ma’am,” we chorused in the most deferential tone we could manage. Ms. Pam stepped to the side and held out her arm, motioning for us to get up and go.
I followed Theo off the bus. By then, the other students had gone inside; the only people on the sidewalk were our principal and the art teacher. They were talking to each other and didn’t seem to notice us.
The bus doors whooshed shut, and I heard the rumble of the engine as Ms. Pam drove away. I felt laughter bubbling up my throat and glanced over at Theo. He was already grinning at me.
“I didn’t mean to!” I shrieked. “It just came out!”
Theo started cackling, and so did I. We doubled over, arms banded over our midsections, gasping for air. It wasn’t even that funny. It was the high, I think, of getting off easy and having Theo, ever-present, ever-dependable Theo, there beside me.
“Hey,” called a male voice. Still giggling, I looked up to find the principal glaring in our direction. “You're late! Go to class!”
That sent us into a fresh burst of laughter, and we hurried inside, trying not to get yelled at again. We reached the cafeteria, where Theo would eat breakfast—I wasn’t allowed to eat school food—and I waved goodbye to him.
“Wait,” he said, one foot in the cafeteria and one in the hall. “Sassy.”
I stopped. “What?”
“That’s your new nickname.” Theo beamed, proud of himself. “I’m gonna call you Sassy.”
“No you aren’t,” I argued, putting my hands on my hips.
“Don’t be sassy, Sassy.”
Behind Theo, through the doors that were still propped open, I could see the principal walking toward the building and knew that I needed to go. Still, I stuttered out, “Well, I’m gonna call you—I’m gonna call you—”
But Theo had caught sight of the principal, too, and he was hurrying into the cafeteria, leaving me alone in the hall. “Love you so much, Sassy!” he called, disappearing before I could respond.
All the way to my classroom, I tried in vain to come up with a nickname for him.
I never did come up with one. Theo, as promised, called me Sassy for about a week before dropping the second syllable. I lost interest in fighting it pretty quickly, especially after I realized how good it felt to have a nickname that only one person used. It was just a silly nickname with a silly backstory, but unlike the store and our time and our space and our families, it was something that existed between Theo and I alone. Something just for us.
I really liked that.