She looked at the shelves, then curled her fingers around the straps of her dad’s backpack.
“I want this one. It was Daddy’s. It still smells like him.” She paused. “He called me Alice-bug.”
I bit my lip. “I remember.”
She ran her fingers over a torn patch on the side. “I think he’d want me to keep it.”
That was the end of that.
I knew the backpack might be an issue at school. Kids can be mean.
I just didn’t know how ugly it would get.
For the first couple of months, it was only looks.
Kids would stare when she got out of the car.
Then they started whispering.
Then a boy laughed one day and pointed at the bag.
Every afternoon, I would ask, “How was school?” and every afternoon she would shrug and say, “Fine.”
But it all took a turn for the worse when she started second grade.
One day, she stood in the kitchen doorway and said, “Mom? A girl pointed at my backpack today and asked why I was carrying a trash bag.” She frowned and hung her head. “She said my parents must be poor.”
“Who said that?”
She shrugged. “Just a girl.”
“Nothing.”
The next morning I went to the school.
I told her teacher and the counselor about the comments. I told them Alice had lost her father. I told them the bag mattered.
