Dime (10 page)

L.A. was unhappy because Dime going to school meant Dime worked less. Then again, L.A. was happy because it meant she was always going to earn more me than Dime. L.A. was thinking she would earn enough eventually to square up with her Daddy. She was certain he would take her down south and marry her, the two of them quitting the life and living large with every room of their house as fancy as Daddy's bedroom. L.A. was planning on having her Daddy's babies. He told her that, just like he told each of them the lies they wanted to hear.
Daddy never told me anything about his lies. I figured out that part on my own.
L.A. was smart in some ways, but she was foolish, too, so she had her heart set on down south. She worked her tail off to bring me home to Daddy and make her dream come true.

Now Brandy, on the other hand. Brandy didn't care that Dime was staying in school. Brandy had no interest in school. She wasn't trying to bring home the most of me and piss off L.A. by doing so. Brandy just wanted her couch and her food and her Daddy to always take care of her. That was all Brandy wanted. With what she went through after her grandmother died and before her Daddy scooped her up, she didn't want more than that: no trouble with L.A. No trouble with Dime. Peace. Well, actually, Brandy did want a phone, and after Daddy once promised a trip to Disney World, she realized she wanted that, too. L.A. already earned a phone, even though she did not have a lot of minutes. Just enough minutes so that their Daddy could check up on her and the others. He said if Brandy brought home a certain amount of me, she would get a phone and a trip to Disney World. She was working on it: working hard.
That's how Money would present himself. I am hoping if I compose the note just right, the squares will be outraged.

*  *  *

Things happen differently when you are in the life, even if you stay in school. The days and nights run into each other, and you only notice time passing by how the decorations and the light changes and by what's on TV. Red balloons and chocolate-box covers stapled to the hallway bulletin boards at school. Pastel heart-shaped candies on the coffee table.
BE MINE, VALENTINE, I LOVE YOU.
L.A. put them there. It began to stay light longer as the last traces of blackened snow finally melted. Kohl's commercials began showing women with diamond necklaces and fancy handbags: Mother's Day. Little American flags appeared in bunches at the corner newsstands: Memorial Day. Then it was warm and buggy, and it didn't get dark until you had turned five tricks, and there were more squads out, and George got into two shoving matches with a pimp from downtown, trying to move in on our track with his girls who looked like boys and boys dressed like girls. I'd seen that on HBO here and there, but I thought those were people made up for TV. Noticing a few of them not much older than I was bothered me, but everything was jumbled and spinning, and I couldn't slow it all down or think, and then it was the first day of June. A hot day. I turned fourteen.

“Guess what?” I said to Daddy when he was holding me.

He was surprised to hear me begin a conversation. “Huh?”

“It's my birth—”

His phone rang. He didn't have a song for his ring tone, like L.A. had, changing it just about every week. He just used the ascending notes that came programmed in already. He held it to his ear and unwrapped himself from my body, standing up and motioning for me to get up too. “Uh-huh,” he said into the phone, and I had to take my clothes and leave.

I tried again on the way to the track. “Brandy.” I stayed so quiet most of the time, I gave Brandy the heebie-jeebies. That's what she said once when she was doing my hair, but she said it like she thought I was funny, not aggravating.

Now she looked at me. “What?”

“It's my birthday today.”

Brandy shook her head. “I tried to run you off the first night I laid eyes on you, Dime.”

I remembered her serving herself the last of the rice, just after Daddy had asked if I wanted more.

“You should have went away right then.” Brandy sighed. “Now you already growing up.”

I wanted to ask her why it was okay for her to be there but not me. But I never did talk much.

Brandy sighed again. “I would have made you a cake.”

*  *  *

I kept my head down and worked hard for Daddy's money, and he had no cause to beat me again. He wouldn't take us unless we made quota five days in a row. He took L.A. the most and then Brandy and then me. When he took me I was usually woozy tired, but I still wanted him so much I didn't care. He told me he loved me the best. He told me L.A. had to be kept happy and Brandy didn't turn him on like I do, plus neither of them were as smart as I was. He told me how I was so mature and how he had such big plans for me and he kissed me long, so long and held me tight after, and I wanted him to keep his arms wrapped around me forever.

Time passed, but with the fuzz and the silhouette it was hard to keep track, and it didn't matter anyway. I was with Daddy, and I wasn't going anywhere, so none of it mattered.

*  *  *

It was the last week of school. Trevor and Dawn didn't think I had worked up to potential.

“Didn't you used to be smart?” Trevor asked, raising his eyebrows at the grade on my last math test.
If one pizza palace makes ten thousand dollars in four days, and there are twenty pizza palaces, then how much does the entire franchise make in thirty-one days?

I shrugged.

“She used to be smart in English, that Dominican girl told me,” Dawn said. I hadn't known her and Trevor until the beginning of the school year. Dawn had moved here from Pennsylvania, and Trevor and I just never noticed each other. “Didn't you win the spelling bee in fourth grade?”

I had. A few days before that first baby after Vonna went home to its own family. Janelle took other babies, lots of them. It got hard to sleep with her crying every night after one left and before the next one came. I didn't win a spelling bee again.

Trevor drummed my head a few beats with his rolled-up test. “You're smart at reading.”

“Too bad your English grades suck,” Dawn told me. All of our grades sucked.

“At least we're passing.” Dawn chewed her gum. “Look. One point away from a C.” I looked at the red
71
and the red
D
scrawled across the top of her paper, matching mine.

I thought of that gold
D
on Daddy's tooth.

“What are you smiling about?”

The scar splitting his eyebrow.

“What's the matter with you?” Trevor asked.

“I'm tired.”

“You must be partying too much.”

Dawn rolled her eyes. It was good they had no idea what I was. It was essential. But then again, I didn't like them making fun of me.

Trevor was set to work for his father installing carpets. Dawn was going to babysit her nieces for the summer. “We're doing basketball camp at the Y on Thursdays,” she said. “You should sign up too.”

“Maybe,” I lied.

“What do you have going on, anyway?” Trevor asked.

I shrugged. “Reading, mostly.” But I wasn't sure how I was going to read with no more school library; just the public ones, which would take away from my work hours if I wanted to go check out books.

IT WAS A steamy, slow night, almost dark, but not just yet. Brandy and I were walking the track up and down, up and down. She was telling me about her grandmother. “She had a picture of John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Junior and some lady on the living room wall.”

“Who was the lady?”

Brandy shrugged. “I don't know. Some black lady.”

“How long did you live with her?”

“And she had this crazy money. Silver dollar. Two-dollar bill. Bicentennial quarter.” Brandy looked at me. “You know them?”

I shook my head.

“Dime, you looking fine,” someone called out to me. At first I thought it was Whippet, because he was always chasing me or Brandy. But it wasn't. It was Stone. I hadn't seen him coming. He stepped up from the street he was crossing onto the curb.

“Turn around,” Brandy whispered, but by now she didn't have to tell me. We spun and walked back down toward room eleven. It was just a run-down house. It didn't even have eleven rooms in it, but ours was next to an old kitchen and the number on the door said
II
.

“Get over here, bitch,” Stone called. “I got something for you.” He was up on our side now, taking fast steps with his short legs. I could almost feel him catching up to us.

“What do he want?” Brandy asked.

“I don't know.” We walked faster. I wished L.A. would turn up. Stone was less likely to bother us if she was around.

“Dime!” Stone called. “You better stop and face me when I'm talking to you.”

If Daddy saw him calling to us, even if our backs were turned, he might think we were associating with Stone, and then there would be a price to pay.

I was walking so fast, I was almost running. Brandy was keeping pace next to me. “Damn.” I heard her stop.

When I turned around, she was skip-hopping because her thonged sandals had broken a strap. “Come on,” I hissed. “Forget the sandal.”

Stone was catching up to us. A car slowed down with two johns inside. I ran to it, pulling Brandy with me. We jumped in without even naming a price. When I looked back, Stone was holding Brandy's shoe.

*  *  *

“Daddy not going to like this,” L.A. said, shaking her head.

He took our coins as the sun came up and was out so fast we didn't have time to say anything to him. Now it was hot, late afternoon, but L.A. was making mashed potatoes anyway. Even with the windows open and the fans on, I was sweating at the small of my back and down my little cleavage. I kept adding ice to my water. Sometimes I would drink it, and sometimes I would drip it onto my skin.

“We have to tell him, L.A.,” I made myself say. “Or else he's going to make up some other story when he sees Stone has her shoe.”

“Leave it, I said.” L.A. pointed the wooden spoon at me. “Stone ain't even going to remember any damn shoe, much less show it off to Daddy.”

I looked at Brandy. She was crossing her arms, fingers up in her pits, in that way she did when she was feeling nervous.

“It wasn't even Brandy he was trying to talk to,” I tried for the third time. “It was me.” I had to speak up. I didn't want Daddy to hear about it and think we kept something a secret from him. He wouldn't like that.

“Well, if you didn't open your mouth to Stone, then what is you so worried for?”

“That girl, Shine,” Brandy answered for me. “She said Stone been talking about Dime. He want to take Dime from Daddy.”

“Please.” L.A. sliced some butter off the stick into her pot. “Dime barely even making nothing for Daddy. What do he think he going to do with her?” She frowned. “Anyway, pimps don't be discussing they plans for a ho. They just do what they do. That bitch, Shine, a liar.”

“I still think we should tell Daddy what happened.” I looked at Brandy even though I was arguing with L.A. “People saw him chasing us down. Probably Whippet or George saw. Somebody is going to say it all wrong to Daddy.”

L.A. pursed her lips at Brandy. “Stone trying to take you from Daddy with his junk?” She was thinking Stone was going to offer Brandy drugs for free. Except nothing is for free. L.A. was suspecting that Stone was going to make Brandy pick up again, get addicted, and then choose him over Daddy. I never thought of that.

“I been clean for over a year,” Brandy said. She hadn't had any of those nightmares again in all this time. “Everybody know what Daddy did for me. Everybody know I'm not trying to use.”

“Then why he chase you?”

“He was chasing me,” I repeat.

“Dime right,” Brandy said. “We should tell Daddy.”

“You not telling,” L.A. said. She dipped her finger in the hot potatoes and then licked it. “It's my say-so, and I'm saying he don't want to hear your petty shit. Leave it.”

*  *  *

It was late July, and the days were getting hotter and hotter. The nights weren't much better. I sweated all the time, and the dates smelled fouler than ever. I wished so badly there was a way I could shower during work, but Daddy wouldn't let us leave the track with all those johns wandering around in the heat, ready to pay money to be hot in a way that felt good to them. At home I showered after L.A. and Brandy since they had seniority, and the water was freezing by the time it got to me. That should have felt good, and in the first second it did, but then I would begin to shiver and shake, and before I could get as clean as I wanted, I would be too cold, and I'd have to step out onto the tile. So each day I felt hotter and then colder and then dirtier and dirtier, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Every few weeks, after I earned my quota, Daddy would take me. His room had an air conditioner, which was like a taste of heaven. But his smell wasn't so good anymore, and I would be so tired. A few times I would say, “Could you just rest with me tonight?” Because even though at first I wanted him
like that
all the time, now I was so worn out. All I really wanted, maybe all I ever really wanted, was that being held tight to someone whose body was still and solid, who loved just being cuddled up to me, without wanting anything more. “Please?” I tried a few times. The first time he was quiet a split second and then he did things to me he thought I would like before he did things he liked, but I was hot and tired, so I guess I wasn't very good. He didn't hold me after, but sent me back to the alcove.

The second time I asked, he punched me with his fist in my belly, and I thought I would vomit from the pain. Then he told me he was sorry and that he hated to hurt me, but if I didn't appreciate being with him like that, it was a damn shame. He didn't send me back to the alcove, though. He spooned me close, instead. I tried to imagine the smell of barbecue potato chips, and I wondered for the first time ever,
Where is she? Where is that woman who rocked me in her lap and tickle-scraped my shoulder, whispering, “Goodnight stars, Goodnight air, Goodnight noises everywhere”?