Iggy and Me

“I’m not Sam,” my sister said all matter-of-factly. “There’s no one here called that name at all.”

Dad started looking under the table and in the cereal boxes and in the bin. “There’s a Sam around here somewhere,” he said. “I know she was here a minute ago.” He made a big show of it, checking in his armpits, looking in her hair like a monkey at the zoo, calling, “Sa-am, Sa-am!”

My sister giggled. “She’s not here,” she said. “Sam’s not here.”

Mum said that there used to be a little girl in the family called Sam. She said, “I’ll be a little tiny bit annoyed if somebody has gone and lost Sam because I was starting to quite like her, thank you very much.”

My sister shrugged. She said, “I don’t know where she is.”

“So who are you?” Dad said.

And I said, “What’s your name?”

She looked at us and smiled, like it was about time somebody asked.

“My name’s called Iggy,” she said. She looked so proud of herself that she made me think of a peacock with its tail all fanned out behind.

Mum laughed and my little sister told her not to, so she pretended to drink her tea instead, but I could see she was still smiling. Dad said Iggy sounded like a piglet, or a puppet of a piglet, or a knitted egg-cup with a piglet’s nose.

“Or a girl,” my sister said, and she frowned at him. “Because it’s my name and I am one.”

“What, a piglet?” said Dad.

“No, silly, a girl.”

“It doesn’t sound like the one we bought,” Mum said. “The little girl we bought was definitely a Sam.”

My sister shook her head and pointed at herself and said, “Well, this one is defilately an Iggy.”

“I like it,” I said. “It suits you.”

My sister said, “Good,” and then, “Of course it suits me, it’s my name.” Then she said, “You didn’t buy me really, anyway, did you?”

My cereal spluttered when I poured the milk on it. My sister said, “Please can I have some?” so I passed her a bowl and a spoon and the box and the milk, and she said “Thank you, Flo.”

I looked behind me, both sides, and I said, “There’s no one called Flo around here.” I was just joking.

Mum and Dad’s mouths opened and laughed, but my sister’s mouth stayed all closed and deadly serious. She was not pleased.

After that we didn’t want her to be cross because when my sister gets cross she can be very boring and we all have to listen. So we played the Iggy game all breakfast to avoid it. We said, “Pass the butter please, Iggy” and “Drink your juice, Iggy” and “Stop kicking me, Iggy” and “Put your chin over the bowl, Iggy” and “Ow, Iggy!” and “Iggy, behave!”

In fact, we played it all day because we thought that maybe if we said Iggy enough she would get tired of it and want to change back. That was the idea anyway.

When we were getting dressed I remembered to call her Iggy.

When she refused to help me tidy up the snowflakes on my bed I called her Iggy, even though she was annoying me and I might easily have forgotten.

When she asked me to do her name in bubble writing on a sign for her door I remembered to write Iggy so I didn’t have to do it again.

Mum and Dad remembered to use her new name too. They said, “Iggy this” and “Iggy that.”

They said, “Iggy, eat your lunch by half past or there’s no pudding.”

They said, “Iggy, don’t cheat at Snap.”

They said, “Iggy, when did you last clean your teeth?”

They said, “Iggy, Flo is trying to read. Stop jumping up and down on the sofa.”

Even when my sister came down from her room with a box we didn’t say anything. In the box she’d packed all the things she could find with SAM written on them. Socks and pencils and a plastic cup and a key ring and some Post-it notes and a green teddy bear and a purse, and a tiny car licence plate from California that our Auntie Kate had sent her, and a painting that I did when she was born that said her name in my writing before I was very good at doing it. My sister loved that painting.

“This is for Sam,” she said.

Dad said, “Where do you want me to put it, Iggy?”

My sister shrugged, “In the rubbish.”

Mum said, “Don’t you think Sam will come back for it?”

My sister shook her head. “Nuh-uh,” she said. “No way.”

I said, “I thought you liked that painting.”

She said, “I do. Can you do another one for Iggy?” And I said I would.

My mum and dad put the box in the cupboard under the stairs when she wasn’t looking, just in case. And they said, “Goodnight, Iggy.”

And, “Sleep tight, Iggy.”

And, “Mind the bugs don’t bite, Iggy.”

And I said, “See you in the morning, Iggy. We can make more snowflakes.”

We didn’t go wrong at all. We thought we were being so clever. We nudged each other and winked at each other all day long.

When we woke up next morning we said, “Is Sam back yet?”

My sister said, “Nope.”

And the morning after that she said, “Nope.”

And the morning after that she said, “Who’s Sam?”

We soon worked out who was in charge. It was definitely Iggy. Because Iggy’s her name and it’s been her name since the morning she said so. The Iggy game turned into something real and after a while we all got used to it.

Iggy has a new plastic cup and some pencils with her name on, but no key ring yet or Post-its, and definitely no licence plate from California. Mum sewed IGGY on to a teddy and I did a new painting for her which was much, much better than the first one.

I can’t imagine calling her anything else. It’s always Iggy and me now.