"My collar is a professional relationship," Ruth said. "Your cardigan is a garment that has already done its job by existing. Different contracts." She put a granola bar in the backpack and then a second one, because mall food was a tax she preferred to postpone. "Bus passes are in the side pocket. If we get separated, you do not go with anyone who says they know me unless they know the name of the dentist I work for and the fact that he is afraid of his own cat. You go to the customer service desk and you stay there like you grew out of the floor. Say it back."
"Customer service. Dr. Patel. The cat's name is Biscuit and he is a coward."
"The cat is a tyrant, but close enough." Ruth's mouth softened. She held Aaliyah's face for a second between both hands, a habit from years when the girl had been smaller and the world had been larger in a worse way. "Your mama would tell you to sit up straight on the bus. I am telling you to keep your backpack in your lap. Both can be true."
Aaliyah swallowed oatmeal and the other thing, the one that did not fit in a spoon. "What if the shoes are all gone in my size?"
"Then we learn something about Saturday and we try next week. Disappointment is not a fire. You don't have to run from it." Ruth kissed her forehead, brief. "I love you. Go brush. And Aaliyah — if you see something in that mall you want to touch, you ask yourself whose it is before you put your hand on it. Public doesn't always mean welcome. I wish it did. Wishing is not a plan."
Aaliyah brushed her teeth and looked at herself in the mirror that had a chip at the corner from a dropped hairbrush two winters ago. The braids were right. The cardigan was the color of a lemon that had thought about being a school bus and settled for being a fruit. She looked ten. She felt, in the private room behind her ribs, older than the mirror was willing to confirm and younger than the piece she had been practicing, which is an ordinary way for a musical child to feel and still a lonely one.
On the bus she sat by the window with the backpack in her lap as instructed. Ruth took the aisle, knee out just enough to discourage the crowding and not enough to invite a conversation about the knee. The city unrolled in Saturday pieces: a barbershop with the gate half up, a church marquee advertising a fish fry with one letter missing so that it promised a fish fr, a boy on a corner with a backpack bigger than Aaliyah's and no adult in sight. The sky was a high blue with thin clouds, the kind of sky that makes a mall's glass ceiling seem like an imitation of something the bus was already giving away for free.