“Don’t be silly,” she says. “Last time I was dirt poor. I got us what we needed. Walter is working two jobs. We have money now.” She holds up her wallet, which hangs on a piece of twine around her neck. “This is legit. We’ll buy some things. I haven’t bought anything for my baby in forever.”
It’s Nancy and she’s doing her best; if she gets caught, I’ll disappear out a side door.
When Nancy “shops” alone, at any store that ends in –mart, she waits outside until just the right family comes along; then strikes up a conversation with one of them, appearing to be a member instead of a rotten robber. She grabs a cart and follows them down an aisle or two before peeling off and loading up.
When I’m with her, she introduces me to one of the greeters as we pass by, which she thinks makes her seem more normal and friendly, and makes them less likely to alert store detectives. Back in the days when I was in on it, we agreed that if she were caught, I would be horrified and she would weep with apology and hand everything back. I would run out of the store in tears screaming how I hated her, and the store detective would feel sorry for her and we’d get away with whatever she had stashed under my clothes. These days she’s on her own.
It’s been a risky profession, but she’s never spent a night in jail, for that at least, so I guess you could say her skill set fits this particular chosen vocation.
She says, “Pick out a couple of tops you like.”
I don’t say I’m a girl who gets “tops I like” at Nordstrom’s, but I can snag a couple of tank tops to work out in and no one will even notice, so I say okay and head to sportswear.
When I catch back up with Nancy, she’s standing outside a dressing room fighting with a store employee over whether or not the skirt she just tried on was ripped before she went in there. All evidence says truth lies with the employee, but my money is on Nancy. She’ll cry and threaten and debate and intimidate until this minimum wage indentured servant figures a way to give it to her at the drastically reduced price she was willing to pay in the first place.
Which is exactly what happens.
In the parking lot she transfers some items from a hiding spot any store clerk would really have to be dedicated to find, into the oversized bag that holds the torn skirt.
I never get a good answer, but I have to ask yet one more time. “Nancy, why do you do this shit? You said you had money.”
She looks truly consternated. “I don’t know, baby. I do have money . . . it’s just . . . it’s so easy. It seems like such a waste.”
“If they catch you, you could go to jail.”
She stuffs the bag into the back of her ratty car. “Hasn’t happened yet.”
“Chances increase every time,” I say.
“So I spend a couple of days in the hoosegow,” she says, nodding toward the backseat. “Whaddaya think all that is worth? I mean really worth. What I paid for those blouses of yours would cover the cost of the material and whatever they pay those poor China ladies or Vietnams. You think the people what own that store wear this shit? I’m just evenin’ up . . . puttin’ a little balance back in the world.”
Like I said, no good answer. I guess if I’d lived with the Howards full-time from birth this wouldn’t seem so normal, but it is what it is, as they say.
“Let’s get a coffee.”
She glances at her wallet.
“You can buy with your savings. There’s a Starbucks a block over.”
“They don’t like me too much there,” she says.
“Why not?”
“Look at me, Annie,” she says, holding her arms out crucifixion style. “Nobody wants me in their place.”
Sometimes she worries about her appearance—and maybe her hygiene—and sometimes she couldn’t care less. She’s a full-sized lady, as they say, but no bigger than a lot of people since she’s been with Walter, but this must be one of those days. It might help if she were a little pickier about the clothes she steals. “Tough,” I say. “We’re going to Starbucks. It’s on me.”
The Starbucks employees don’t even blink when we come in. That’s just how Nancy feels when she goes anywhere. There are times I want to skin her alive; she makes promises I know way better than to believe, and she whines and snarls and judges her way through life. But if you could see the look on her face when we walk through the door, the trepidation that says, “Please don’t look at me and if you do, please don’t turn away,” well, you’d buy Nancy a coffee, too.
“You got a boyfriend yet?”
“Nope. No boyfriend.”
“Baby, you’re a catch. What are you waitin’ for?”
“Nancy, I’m seventeen. I have plenty of time to get a boyfriend.” What I don’t say is if I did have a boyfriend, I wouldn’t tell her because she’d be telling me how to keep him, and that conversation is gross.
“I had my way with the best-lookin’ boy in my class when I was fifteen,” she says.
“Nancy, that can’t be. You dropped out after sixth grade. You’d have been twelve.”
“You always think you’re so smart. I was fifteen when I got out of sixth.”
Jeez. “That would have made him twelve.”
“Okay,” she says. “I get my times mixed up. But . . . Annie, I don’t want you to be alone, is all. It hurts so much. . . .”
I know most seventeen-year-olds have already gone through their first half-dozen boyfriends, and there were a couple of guys I was pretty excited about in eighth grade, but neither of them made it into high school, and I’ve read enough to know if you grew up like I did, there’s a pretty good chance your
