We went to the shoe store at two o'clock. Abuela drove. I sat in the middle of Gordo's bench seat in my grandfather's jacket, which she'd put on me in the parking lot because my coat zipper wouldn't close, and the cuffs came down past my fingertips and it smelled like her truck and like something older underneath that might have been him. I had my old shoes on. Abuela had re-taped the left one herself before we left, neatly, three times around, with tape from her glove box. "One more trip," she'd said to the shoe, like it was a bus. "Then you retire."
Sadie came. I didn't think she would. She'd stayed in our room all through lunch with the door shut, and when Abuela knocked and said we were going out, Sadie said through the door that she didn't want to. Then, when we were halfway down the outside stairs, the door opened and she came out in her old purple sneakers, the size twos, which pinched her so badly she walked like a duck, and she didn't say anything, and she climbed into Gordo and sat by the window and held my hand on the seat between us, under the big brown cuff of the jacket, where Abuela couldn't see. Her new shoes were all still upstairs, in the boxes, on top of the refrigerator. She'd put them back herself.
The store at NorthTown had a wall of boots, floor to ceiling. A young man with a lanyard and a lot of earrings came over and asked if we needed help, and Abuela held up the cardboard with my feet drawn on it and said, "Yes. These feet," and he looked at the cardboard and then at her and then, to his credit, said, "Okay, cool," and went and got the metal measuring thing and sat me down.
Eight and a half. Abuela said, "Nine. She grows like a weed," and he brought nines.
I looked at prices. I couldn't stop myself. Every box he brought out, I turned it over in my lap and found the sticker on the end before I even looked at the boot. Abuela watched me do it three times. The fourth time she reached over and put her hand flat on the end of the box, over the sticker, and left it there.
"Mija," she said. "Your father's paying. Don't insult him."
So I stopped looking. I tried on six pairs. I picked brown leather boots with a waterproof lining and a thick lugged sole and a red stripe of stitching around the top that I just liked, for no reason. I walked up and down the aisle in them. They were heavy and warm and they didn't pinch anywhere and when I stamped my foot on the store carpet it felt like stamping on solid ground. Then Abuela made me pick sneakers too, plain black ones, real ones, and a pack of wool socks, and when the young man rang it up, Abuela paid with a debit card from the Moses Lake credit union, and kept the receipt, and folded it once, and put it in the inside pocket of her jacket, which I was still wearing, so she had to reach into the jacket on me to do it, which made Sadie laugh for the first time all day.
I wore the boots out of the store. The young man asked if I wanted a bag for my old shoes, and I said no, and I started to put them in the trash can by the door, and Abuela said, "Wait," and took them out of my hands, the gray canvas sneakers with the smile in the toe, and carried them out to the truck, and put them on the dashboard of Gordo, both of them, side by side, facing the windshield, like they were looking at the road.
"What are you going to do with them?" I said.
"Keep them," she said. "Monday, I'm taking them to the Social Security office. I'm going to put them on the lady's desk."
She did, too. I'll tell you that now. But I'm getting ahead of things.