She has a hard time finishing her sentences.
Leka helps her out. “Sister.” He takes my hand. “This is my sister.”
The smile comes roaring back. “Of course. Let me show you a few selections. My name is Nina, by the way.”
She gets silence in return.
“He’s Leka and I’m Bitsy. Or, actually, Elithabeth, but Leka calls me Bit or Bitsy, don’t you?”
He nods slowly. “Yeah, I do.”
“You can call me Bitsy,” I tell her because the longer name is hard to say and I wanna be nice.
We ride up an elevator that looks like it’s all gold but that Nina says is brass because a gold elevator would be ob-nock-sushlee expensive. I file that away. Gold, silver, brass. Brass is nice. Obnocksush, even.
At the very top floor we get out and Nina takes us all the way into the back, her spikes making clickety-clack noises on the floor. Unlike Leka’s boots that, despite being heavy, make no sound at all. My tennies squeak if I twist them just right against the floor.
I do that a few times until Nina shoots me an angry look, one that changes to a smile when she gazes at Leka again.
“What were you thinking?” she asks.
“How about that?” He points to a white statute with hands but no head wearing a black dress. The skirt is poufy and the lace around the bottom looks like I could tear it just by blowing on it.
“I don’t know,” Nina and I say at the same time. We share equal expressions of surprise.
“Okay, how about that?” He shifts his finger, and this time, I see a dress that looks like a long T-shirt, but instead of having a kitty or bunny on the front, it’s got lots of stripes.
“I like that one,” I say.
Nina grabs one and holds it up to me. “Looks like a four will work.”
“I’m seven,” I correct her.
“It’s the dress size, not your age, dear,” she says.
“We’ll take it.” Leka reaches inside his front pocket where he keeps his money.
“Let’s go over to the register.” Her long fingernails point to a desk.
“Can she put this on?”
“You mean try it on?”
“No, um, wear it out.”
“Of course.” Nina directs us to a small hallway with little stalls that have a curtain closure. She plucks a pair of scissors off a shelf, clips a white tag off my dress and then hangs it in the first room. “Go ahead and change. I’ll ring this up.”
Leka gives me a nod and I scuttle inside. As the two move away, I hear Nina say, “Your sister doesn’t look like you.”
Leka doesn’t reply. He never does when people say that. It doesn’t matter what we look like on the outside, he says. Our insides match.
* * *
After Macy’s, we hop on the subway. We get off at a stop called Farfield. Leka is tense. One hand is curled tight around the shopping bag holding my T-shirt and jeans, and the other grips my left hand.
My right is busy holding my new toy against my chest. He saw the white bunny before I did and had the money for it slapped on the counter before Nina was done wrapping up my old clothes.
I can’t stop petting her. She’s soft and so cute. I drop a kiss on her nose. When Leka is gone at night, I can sleep in his bed with my bunny. It’ll be almost perfect.
“I’m going to name her Carrots,” I announce.
“I like it,” he says, but he doesn’t sound happy. We stop at the top of the moving stairs and he pulls me out of the way.
Crouching down, he puts both hands around my shoulders and gives me a serious look. “We’re going to Marjory’s.”
I recognize that name. “Where you work,” I supply.
“Yeah, that’s right. Where I work. These folks don’t know about us. No one does.”
I nod solemnly. When Leka took me to school, he said we had to pretend we were a family or they wouldn’t let him sign all my papers. It wasn’t hard because that’s what we are. I remind him of that. “It’s you and me.”
“Right. But I didn’t find you on a street or—”
I cut him off. “I knooooow,” I say. “We’ve been together always.” I place my own hand—the one not holding Carrots—on his shoulder. “Just you and me.”
He takes a deep breath and then blows it out before pushing to his feet. “We’re going to be okay. This is the right thing to do.”
The way he says it, though, it seems like he’s talking to himself rather than to me.
We don’t walk long. Six and a half blocks at the most. Two blocks left of the stop and then four blocks straight. We stop in front a brick storefront with a green door and a green and white striped shade pulled out over the sidewalk. There are chairs and tables under the shade. Marjory’s is a restaurant. Leka works at a good place. That makes me happy for some reason—probably because I like food.