Dime (2 page)

Daddy smacked Lollipop on the top of her head. Lollipop went statue. Then Daddy smacked Brandy on the top of her head. Two times. For the second time, he used his fist. Brandy kept her mouth shut, but she fell down hard and had to keep the pain tears back. The cut above her eye began seeping blood again. Even so, she stood right back up.

Daddy took Lollipop's chin and eyed the handprints. “Better cover that shit up.” He moved her head left and then right so he could examine both cheeks. “Before you get back to work.” He grabbed the beer and the cash I was holding out for him and disappeared into his room. I waited for the lava inside my stomach to cool down, but a second later he poked his head out again. “Lollipop, you learn money yet?”

She looked at me, panicked.

“She started off well,” I answered.

“She better learn fast.” He tilted his head at me. “Get us some dinner.” Brandy cooked better than I did. But it was my turn.

“Am I cooking for L.A.?”

“Nah,” he answered. “She out the night.”

That's what I thought. She wouldn't come back until noon the next day, which was good. It was Brandy's turn with Daddy after work, so Brandy would be happy. And I wouldn't have to pretend with him and be terrified he would read my mind.
I have nobody. I have nothing.
I could burrow into the sleeping bag instead and try to sleep all day, instead of being awake, hurting with the burn in my belly and everything else.

*  *  *

So time is passing and I'm not closer to figuring out the note than I was six weeks ago. I can't write it as any of them. Not Lollipop, not Brandy, not L.A. But I also can't write it as myself, because my own voice can't possibly accomplish what has to get accomplished. What I mean is that I'm not young and stupid and baby pretty and compelling like Lollipop, in that way that might make some people somewhere take notice and be upset enough to do something. And I'm not chill and sometimes funny like Brandy in a way that might make some people somewhere pay attention and listen enough to do something. And I'm not cruel and half-insane like L.A. in a way that might disturb some people somewhere just enough to stand up and do something. I'm just serious and boring. In a way nobody ever notices. Or listens to. Or cares much about.

Still, despite everything, despite my plan, I'm not actually suicidal. I don't want to die yet, because there are things I have been hoping to do. Like fly in a plane and also a hot-air balloon. I would give anything to be in the audience of
Wendy Williams
. Or any live talk show. There's that man, John Edward, who can talk to people in your life who have passed. I would love to be in his audience, but I have heard they are sold out for years in advance. I'm not even mentioning
Oprah
, because that ship has sailed, but I would give just about anything to meet Oprah.

Also I want to swim in an ocean and meet an elephant. In the wild in India or Africa. But if I never get overseas, maybe at a zoo somewhere, or at one of those preservations. I have loved elephants ever since I was small, way before I knew there was a book called
The Color Purple
with Shug living inside it, loving elephants. When I first got to that part near the end, I could hardly believe it. Especially since Shug is the sort of person I wish I could be, even though Celie is the one I'm more like.

But before I opened the pages of their story and after years of liking elephants all on my own, I saw something astonishing on TV where I was working. I got to see the whole thing because I was tied up and by myself. This female, more than fifty years old, had lived every kind of way all over the world. In the wild, then a zoo, then a circus, then a traveling road show, and all that. She had been loved a little but mostly neglected and abused and sold about a million times. Then finally some rescue people found her and took her to a preservation just for elephants. On her first night there, she was in a cage meant to help her transition to her new life and to the other worn-out elephants living it up in their retirement. Well, this other female was walking back from the fields or the forest or whatever it was and spotted the caged one from far away. And I swear those two elephants recognized each other. The caged female started making all kinds of noise and trying to pry the metal bars apart, and the other one started running and trumpeting, and the two of them nearly tore that cage to pieces trying to get to each other. And when the people finally had the sense to open up the gate, those elephants draped their trunks all over each other and stood so close, you thought they were going to sink right down to the ground in a big-eared pile. But they stayed upright, entwined, touching each other all over with the tips of their trunks, patting and feeling and checking, and looking and massaging, as if they never wanted to let go. That was something incredible. You just knew those two had been close once a long time ago. You just knew they had given up hope of ever seeing each other again. You just knew they had never been so happy to see anybody ever in their entire lives.

The first time I read about Celie reuniting with her sister, Nettie, in
The Color Purple
, about the two of them falling into an overjoyed heap right there on the porch, I thought of those elephants. And to be honest, I cried.

I also want to be pregnant and give birth to my own baby, but that's never going to happen, even if I don't kill myself. But if it did, I would name a boy August and a girl June. And if I had my own child, I would take care of it better than any mother ever did in the history of motherkind.

What I tell myself is that I know I'm doing the right thing. And that I am brave. It requires courage to betray the people closest to you and then take your own life before they kill you themselves.

FOR SOME REASON I was just remembering a teacher I had when I was in kindergarten. Ms. McClenny was light brown with freckles all over her face and arms. She smelled like Murphy Oil Soap, which was what Janelle used to wash the floors each month. I loved the smell of Murphy. Three other girls and a boy got pulled out two times a week with me to visit Ms. McClenny's room in the school basement. She sat us in a circle of red chairs that fit our behinds perfectly and handed us each a hardcover copy of whatever she had picked out:
Corduroy
the very first day, and later on,
James and the Giant Peach
or
The Mouse and the Motorcycle
or
Dinosaurs Before Dark
. When we finished our turn reading aloud, Ms. McClenny let us choose a lemon drop from her bowl.
To refresh your voice.

When that boy, Shawn, started crying at the end of every pull-out period and begging to stay and read some more and the rest of us didn't cry but begged, too, Ms. McClenny convinced somebody important to increase our pull-out class to three times a week. After that, every Friday we moved from the circle of chairs to the green and blue and orange square patched rug where we could sit or lie down or
stand on your heads if the spirit moves you.
On Fridays we listened while she read aloud. By the end of the school year, Ms. McClenny had read to us every page of
Peter Pan
.

In first grade we were back to twice a week. Sometimes we didn't stay in the basement room but instead walked up the stairs to the school library. Ms. McClenny showed us the different sections and how to browse.
You can pull any book off the shelf and look at it for as long as you like.
She explained there were libraries everywhere and that we should ask our parents to take us to the ones near where we lived.
When you're a teenager,
she had said,
you can get your own library card.

I had her for pull-out during second and third grade too. I remember sitting on my hands in that red chair, listening so hard to
Number the Stars
that my fingers fell asleep.

And now that reminds me of another book I read last year about a girl who lived when millions of Jewish people and others were murdered by Nazis. Somehow I skipped a lot of it, but one thing that caught my attention was that Death is the narrator. Remembering that makes me think Sex could narrate my note. After all, just like Death, Sex happens to everybody.

It is tiring to be me,
is how Sex could begin
. I am incredibly busy all the time without ever a rest. Sometimes I am busy in a way that feels extremely good. That is when two young people are in love, and I come around and help them out. That is some good stuff. It's okay with older people in love, but older people are just not as attractive.
Janelle stole HBO off the neighbor's cable, and HBO didn't care if certain characters were unattractive or fat or practically grandparents—everybody had sex on HBO.
So I prefer young people, because their bodies are still beautiful. Don't get me wrong: It's cool when it's two people not in love, but it's not as good as it can be. I am never my best self so much as when two young people in love invite me around.

Sex would just be warming up.
But sometimes is not most of the time. Most of the time, I am busy with making money for somebody. This is my job, and honestly, it is just not any fun at all. Yes, it's true that there's some good feeling when I'm chilling with whatever man hit me up for company. But often even then, I have to deal with his bad mood or his ignorance or his general nastiness. Even if the dude is pleasant to pass the time with, the girl is a whole other story. You see,
Sex would explain,
when it's for moneymaking, the girl rarely enjoys herself. And most of the time, she does not want me around at all. It's hard work, because of how the girl acts like she likes me, when she would rather eat a cockroach-stuffed rat than party with me.

And while I'm complaining . . .
Sex would be on a roll now.
I never ask Violence to be in my company. I deeply dislike it when he comes by, but family is family. I wouldn't have chosen Violence for a cousin, but what can I do? I don't invite him. He just shows up.

Sex would have a lot to say.
Another hard part of my job is that I am forced to do things I really shouldn't have to. For instance, I have to work with children.
Sex would sigh as he wrote this part.
I am not fit for work with a human body that is too small to do what I need it to do or a human brain that is too young to understand me.
Sex would write with his teeth gritted.
But somehow, the powers that be tell me I have to add children to my job description. I do not appreciate the extra stress.
After Sex introduces himself like that, he would get to the point of the note.

Anyway,
he would continue writing,
this is not about me so much as it is about a situation.
Maybe he would begin a new paragraph here.
There are a lot of people involved, including one
child. Three children, depending on whether you think of a fourteen-
and sixteen-year-old as children. If you consider how old each of them was when her story began, then we are thinking about four children. Since three of them had not reached the age of ten when I was forced to meet them, and the other was not quite fourteen.

L.A. used to tell Brandy everything, and Brandy never promised to keep quiet. So I know more of L.A.'s story than I want to and plenty of Brandy's. And Lollipop's is coming out a little more every day.

There are four females living in a stable in Newark, New Jersey.
They have a Daddy and a clean place to sleep and food and clothes. You could say they are being taken care of real nice.
Sex would pause here.
Or. You could say the secrets they are keeping are like a poison eating their souls from the inside out.

I will tell you about it.

I MET L.A. last winter. I'd had a fight with Janelle, and she kicked me out into the freezing cold
. After all I done for you when you was small and now you going to do me like that? You going to do this baby like that?
Walking up and down Chancellor, I imagined I could still smell her gin and Coke and hear her indignance. She hadn't given me a minute to grab a book. I couldn't go to school without my coat or knapsack—Trevor and Dawn would ask questions I didn't want to answer—so now I would fail both tests and baby Sienna might not get her medicine, either. She was tiny and cute as a million buttons.

“You okay?” some girl said to me. I'd seen her pass across the street before. I remembered noticing that I liked her high boots. They were tall and brown with a tassel on each zipper. “I asked if you okay?” I think I'd seen those boots go by a few times since lunchtime. Since not eating any lunch.

I nodded. A bus cruised past, lumbering and loud.

“You been out here crying all day.” She had straight hair with a golden stripe down the side and golden Spanish-colored skin mixed up with black features.

“I'm fine. Thank you.”

“Hmm.” She raised her eyebrows. “You uppity.” That seemed like an old-fashioned word. “Here.” She took off her coat. A white down vest edged in white fur. She held it out to me. “Put it on.”

In nothing but an old hoodie and worn-thin jeans, I was so cold it felt like I wasn't wearing any clothes at all. Not even underwear. But I had my pride. “I have to catch the bus.” Mist came out of my mouth, white and thick, like the fur on the coat. I was shivering, and my teeth were chattering.

“You not catching no bus, girl,” she said. “You watching them buses go by.” She shook her vest at me impatiently. “You even have any money?”

Embarrassed, I kept my eyes on her tassels but held up my dime so that she could see it.

She sighed. “Just take the damn coat.”

So I took it. It wasn't the warmest ever, but it helped. The fur was soft beneath my fingertips.