Sable Monroe

My younger brother attended Alvernia Prep too, though he was much younger than me. Six years younger. While I was upstairs trying to survive arithmetic, spelling tests, and the social politics of prep school life, he was still down in the little children’s section somewhere, probably in kindergarten or pre-kindergarten.

Every morning before school, we would both get lunch money.

The problem was, because he was small, I was expected to hold his money too.

This arrangement sounded sensible to the adults.

It was not sensible in practice.

Around lunchtime almost every day, my brother would appear dramatically at my classroom door like a tiny union representative demanding payment.

Still sucking his thumb.

Still emotionally unconcerned about embarrassment.

“Me want patty. Me want juice.”

The whole class would burst out laughing.

The teacher would sigh because they already knew what time it was. Meanwhile I would have to stop whatever lesson we were doing, take his little hand, and walk him downstairs to the cafeteria like a nine-year-old administrative assistant trying to manage a very small and emotionally unstable client.

He almost always wanted a patty and juice.

Ironically, I hated patties from Alvernia Prep because the flaky yellow crust reminded me too much of Sister Alma Roberts’ sore on her head. Once I made that mental connection as a child, I could never eat another patty from that school again. My brother, however, had no such issue. He remained fully committed to the patty lifestyle.

Downstairs in the cafeteria, all his little classmates would already be there too, running around and making noise while I stood in line holding his hand, bought his lunch for him, handed over the goods, and then returned upstairs to my own class like somebody’s exhausted single mother at age nine.

At the time, everybody thought he was funny.

And to be fair, he was funny.

He was also cute enough that adults rarely took his behavior seriously. Even when he got into little fights in his class or disrupted things, it was treated more like entertainment than concern. He was little. Adorable. Thumb permanently in mouth. Adults would laugh things off.

Looking back now as an adult, I understand something I could not fully understand then.

He was reenacting what he saw at home.

Children do not invent violence out of thin air.

They absorb atmosphere.

And although he was still small enough to trail behind me asking for patty and juice with his thumb in his mouth, something heavier was already brewing underneath that cuteness. Something adults around us either did not recognize or did not want to recognize because it was easier to laugh at a charming little boy than to ask why he was acting that way in the first place.

But at Alvernia Prep, during those lunch breaks, he was simply my little brother: tiny, disruptive, loud, thumb in mouth, and absolutely determined to get his patty on time.

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