Dime (3 page)

“I'll come back by here with some food later,” she told me.

She came back forty-five minutes later with a cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke. I ate it all in about a minute, standing up because there wasn't anywhere to sit down. “Thank you.”

“Where you staying tonight?” She had her arms crossed over herself. The mist was coming out of her mouth too.

I shrugged. I could probably go home by now. It had been hours. Most likely Janelle had forgotten about me. Even though this was the first time she had ever shouted me out the door.
I have two tests today.
I rarely talked, much less spoke up, so it wasn't easy.
I already went to Rite Aid for Sienna's nose spray Tuesday.
That errand made me miss a quiz plus homework.
Can you send Jywon?
He never went to school anyway. She had bounced the wailing, feverish Sienna on her shoulder, disgusted.
Jywon nothing but a boy. I am not sending him for no medicine. You see this baby burning up. What is the matter with your brain?
I had been surprised. Jywon wasn't a boy. He was sixteen.
Soon as I start asking you to do for me, you going to give me attitude? Selfish. You the most selfish female I ever kept
.
Get out and keep out. You overstayed your welcome.

She had started mixing gin in with her Coke a few months before, after they took Vonna to move back in with her mother. I'd never seen Janelle drink much besides a beer now and then, but the day Vonna left, Janelle sat motionless at the kitchen table for close to four hours and then stood up, walked out the door, and went to buy as many of those blue bottles as she must have had cash for. That was when she started getting mean, saying things and slapping my face for the first time. After Vonna's mother got arrested again and Vonna returned to us four days later, I'd hoped that Janelle would go back to her regular self. But she kept that Booth's gin and bought more when the bottles ran out.

“All right then,” this girl said to me now. “I'll take back the coat. I'm L.A. You ever need anything, you come back around here.”

I slipped off the coat and handed it to her.

“What's your name?”

I wasn't trying to be rude. I just didn't like to talk. So I didn't answer.

*  *  *

Janelle let me back in and even made a plate for me, but I couldn't get warm. Vonna and then Jywon used up all the hot water, so I couldn't take a hot bath or shower. I shivered in my bed that night and two more. Then we argued again because Janelle wanted me to skip school to watch Sienna at home while she went to tussle with Medicaid about Jywon's eyeglasses.
I'm trying to graduate eighth grade,
I started to explain. She put her hands on her hips and shot her head forward.
I'm trying to take care of all y'all kids! You big enough to help, but you think school more important than fever and a boy about to go blind?
Jywon was only farsighted; he wasn't going blind. I didn't even think she was going to Medicaid; I think she wanted to sit at the kitchen table, looking out the window and drinking her gin and Coke. But she yelled and whacked my head with her fist, and Sienna was screaming again, and I couldn't take it. It was too late to go to school. So I went back to the street and walked all the way up and all the way back, over and over to keep warm.

L.A. showed up with another cheeseburger after a few hours. She had on the same white down vest with the fur. She asked some questions but then forgot about me, maybe because I didn't say much. She chewed french fries and walked along, talking and talking. “. . . fighting with my aunt all the time. Kicked out every minute. Her men always trying to get with me.” She shook her head and took another fry.

I sneezed. Then I sneezed again. I had nowhere to wipe my nose. I used my hoodie sleeve. I wanted her to offer me that coat again.

“You sick,” L.A. informed me.

I was. I wanted to go home and crawl back to bed, but Janelle took my sheets for Sienna. She said she would get money from welfare for new sheets, but I had a feeling it would be a while, and then what about a blanket? I was skinny, and I got cold fast.

“You should come by me. My boyfriend cool. We got heat. You not warm enough where you at, is you?”

“I can't leave,” I coughed. “They'll put me as a runaway.”

“You think anybody care? That lady ain't going to notice you missing until next Christmas.”

It was strange. It was nine or ten years since I'd been living with Janelle, but I knew what L.A. said was true. I'd been there the longest, but Janelle liked me the least. Not when I first came, and I was small. But by the time a few years had passed, after Vonna had moved from a crib to a bed and when Ms. McClenny let me bring home
Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory
and I asked for us to read it together, Janelle called me a show-off and told me not to bring any books around anymore.

Foster mothers can be complicated. A lot of them don't like you when you get older. Denise and Jenny both told me that, even before Denise went home to her aunt and before Jenny left Janelle's for a group home. It wasn't just Janelle, they told me. It was all of them.
You going to see,
they'd both said, at different times.
Soon as you get a little bigger, you going to see.
They were each only at Janelle's for a few months, but they were older than Jywon, practically grown, and they knew things. They were right: Even before Janelle began drinking, she stopped being nice to me. The drinking just made the not nice turn into nasty.

“You coming or not?” L.A. asked.

I followed her home. It's no use wishing I hadn't. Because I did.

*  *  *

“This her,” L.A. said. “Dime girl.”

Her boyfriend was tall and dark and looked like a cross between Chris Brown and Kanye. A perfect cross. He smiled down at me. “Hello, Beautiful.” Nobody ever called me beautiful in my entire life. I was so surprised it took me a minute. And then I sneezed when I was trying to say hi back.

He had a gold letter
D
on his front tooth. “God bless you,” he told me.

For the first time I heard the meaning behind those words. I felt like God had just blessed me. And I wasn't even sure I believed in God. My legs and belly felt shaky in front of his brown eyes, which angled downward a little at the outside edges. He had a scar cutting his right eyebrow in half. It's hard to describe, but he looked like a gangster puppy dog.

“Get this girl some hot food,” he told L.A. She turned on the stove and pulled out a bowl and a spoon. “Sit down, Dime,” he told me. “Make yourself at home.” He was pointing to the couch. I sat on it. It was black and felt like the way I imagined real leather would feel. Opposite the couch, mounted up on the wall, was a huge TV. Huge. I sneezed again.

He settled into a thick, brick-colored armchair across from me. He put his feet up on the glass coffee table. He was wearing some kind of soft-skinned slippers. They looked so warm. “L.A. been telling me about you.”

I wasn't sure what that meant.

“She been saying you in a bad situation where you been staying.”

I hadn't told L.A. anything about Janelle calling me selfish so much lately or keeping me out of school for babysitting or errands while she drank and hit me and twice threatened to cut me or me having to slap away Jywon all the time. So I wasn't too sure how she knew it was a bad situation. But then again, I guess a thirteen-year-old girl sitting at a bus stop in the cold with no coat for hours is probably a pretty good tip-off something's not right.

I shrugged.

“When I talk to you,” he said softly, “you got to answer me.”

I stayed quiet. He slid his slippers off the table, leaned forward, and put his hands on my cheeks. Almost like he was going to kiss me. And also like he was a little bit angry. I was scared of him being angry, but at the same time his hands felt so good and his eyes felt so good, I didn't want him to let me go.

“You understand?” he asked.

I started to nod, but his hands got just a little bit firmer on my cheeks. They were so big. And warm. I wanted them to stay on my face forever. “Yes,” I said. “I understand.” I didn't want to disappoint him. He was looking at me like he saw me. Like he really wanted to hear my voice. Like I mattered.

“Soup.” L.A. brought it to the coffee table and set it down in front of me.

He let go of my face. I wanted to ask him to put his hands back. But instead I picked up the spoon and ate. He watched. Only I didn't feel watched: I felt seen.

“She going to be good,” he said to L.A. I didn't know what he meant. “You did good.”

L.A. beamed. She had nice teeth just like his. Big and white and straight. She looked like a little girl when she beamed like that. I only ever saw her light up with him.

THAT ONE DIDN'T know me yet,
Sex would write about me in the note.
What I mean is, she knew about me because she read books and watched HBO. And she heard people talk. But she hadn't met me face-to-face. L.A., though. Well.
Sex would pause his writing fingers for a second.
L.A. knew me from a tiny little girl. Practically a baby. I was not happy to meet her that first time or all those times after. No sir. But her father and uncles and my nasty cousin in tight with them forced the issue. It bothers me to this day.

L.A. didn't share much with me after those first two cold afternoons pacing Chancellor, but it seemed like she had shared her whole life with Brandy. And Brandy could be loquacious.

It made it easier for the one with the gold
D
on his tooth, though. He took one look at L.A. all those years ago, and he could tell she was going to be cake. “Hey, Beautiful,” he said to her. “What you crying for? What? You got to repeat the eighth grade again? Well, how many times you done the eighth grade? Twice? Twice already? Nah. You not stupid. They just ain't teaching you right. Wipe those tears, Beautiful. Here. Use my scarf. That's all right. We'll wash it when we get home. Sure, baby. You come home with me. You can use my phone and call your mama to tell her you ain't lost. You ain't got a mama? All right then. You call your
aunt
then. Sure, baby. I don't care if you don't go to school. . . .”
I didn't understand it back when Brandy used to tell me. I don't think Brandy understood it either. But I've grown up since.
It's not hard to sweet-talk a girl looking to feel special. Not hard at all.

HE SAID I should call Janelle. He tapped the speaker on his phone and handed it to me.

“I'm staying with a friend,” I told her.

“Where at?” I could hear the gluey Booth's in her voice.

L.A. and her boyfriend both shook their heads.

“Over by the McDonald's on Clinton,” I lied. He smiled at me with all those straight teeth and the gold letter
D
glittering. He was the best-looking man I'd ever seen.

“You don't got no clothes.”

It was true. “L.A. is the same size as I am,” I lied again, glancing at him for the smile. L.A. was taller and more curvy. Janelle would never know.

“Her mother going to get you to school?” The way she spoke, I could almost smell the alcohol.

“Yeah.” Even though I didn't need anybody to get me to school, because I liked school.

“All right,” Janelle said. “Come on home in a couple days.”

I gave the phone back to him, trying to pretend I didn't care that Janelle didn't even ask to speak to any mother. Trying not to worry about whether L.A. would lend me clothes and if so, how foolish I might look in them.

“You know how to cook?” he asked me as he tapped off the phone.

“I can do some.”

“You going to help L.A.,” he said. “We having company tonight.”

We roasted a chicken and made rice and green beans.

“That back burner gets stuck on.” L.A. showed me. “You got to keep a eye on it.”

I did the rice, keeping my eye on the back burner, turning the dial this way and that, until I got the feel of how it was broken but could still be made to work at the same time.

I met Brandy that night. They said she was L.A.'s cousin. I didn't understand how that could be, since she was white. Which was different all on its own. She skipped me serving the beans. I wasn't going to say anything, but Daddy did.

“You forgot Dime,” he told her. She spooned beans onto my plate silently.

Later she took the last of the rice just after Daddy asked if I wanted seconds. I hadn't even answered him yet, but he picked up her plate, tilted it, and used his knife to slide her rice onto mine. I never had a father or an uncle before—Janelle's men moved in and out and she barely let them talk to us kids—so I thought he was doing what fathers and uncles did. Just looking out for me. Taking care of me. I liked that. It felt good.

THAT ONE WITH the gold
D
played the girl they call L.A. per
fect,
Sex would explain. Brandy was a good storyteller. She told me L.A.'s story as if she had been right there, watching the whole thing. Sex would know just how to tell it again.
“Her?” D acted like the other female was nothing. “Satin? That there
ain't nobody. She ain't nobody important. Here. Take her sweater. It look better on you. You look like a queen now. What? Nah. She won't care. I bought that sweater. That's mine. Not hers. She leaving soon, anyway. She won't even know it's gone. Turn around now. Whoooo. Beautiful. You look beautiful.” That's what these dudes do. They play the girls like nobody's business. “What? I'm not worried about nothing. Nothing. Just the rent. I'm a little behind, but don't you worry. Help? How you going to help? That's real sweet of you, Beautiful. I'll think about it.”