Begging for Change Read online

  “I just wanna see her. Dag,” she says, giving him the finger.

  I seen her before. She’s friends with Shiketa.

  “Hey, Raspberry,” she says, getting up in my face. Trying to sound like we best friends. “Tell your mother to chill and lay off Shiketa.”

  Zora and me don’t say a word.

  Weave Girl bangs her fist on the roof of the car. “You hear me, girl?”

  “Everybody saw what Shiketa did,” I say, checking out the girl’s faded silver tongue ring when she opens her mouth to tell me off again.

  “Your mother was always picking on her. So she got what she got,” the girl says, ducking when a bottle smashes against the tire and glass flies everywhere.

  Zora opens the door wide. “Daddy!” she yells. “Let’s go!”

  Something else hits the car, hard. Dr. Mitchell runs over to us. “Shut the windows. Lock the doors. Now!” he says, pulling open the trunk and heading back for my place with a big, black bat. “You hit her . . . with a pipe. And now you’re threatening me and my kids?” he says running after them.

  It feels so good having Dr. Mitchell take up for me—like a real father should. But I can’t think on that too long. Zora’s dialing 911 on her dad’s cell, trying to get us some help. “My dad’s a cop. I mean, a doctor,” she says, “and he needs help.” She looks back at me and asks what my address is.

  Kids are running all over the place. Some are laughing. Others cussing, saying what they gonna do to Dr. Mitchell if he touches them with that thing.

  “Get ’em, Dr. Mitchell!” I yell. “Make ’em pay for what happened to Momma!”

  Zora’s blue eyes look clear and cold when she looks back at me. “It should be your father out here taking up for you and your mother. Not mine.”

  She’s right. Her father should be home watching TV maybe, or doing bills, not out here ready to bust somebody’s head open. “If the cops see your father with that bat, he’s gonna get in trouble,” I say, looking over at her dad.

  Zora rolls down the window and begs her dad to get back in the car. I call him too. I tell him I don’t need my stuff right now. I can get it later. Good thing, too. ’Cause ain’t no way we’re getting into my place tonight. Three big boys are chasing Dr. Mitchell back to the car.

  “Get the windows up. Put your seat belts on,” he says, throwing the bat in the backseat with me, slamming the door shut.

  Dr. Mitchell’s ride makes a fast, crooked line up our street, rolling over the curb and running over a plastic trash can. The car is smooth and fast, and flies through the next three red lights like it’s got wings instead of tires.

  I lie across the backseat—with Dr. Mitchell’s jacket covering my face—hoping the car never stops.

  “Your family is cursed,” Ja’nae says, throwing the basketball at the hoop. Making a face when it bounces off the rim and rolls into the bushes. Her short, fat arms look funny. But she makes the shot the next time.

  It’s four days after Shiketa jacked Momma up. Momma’s still in the hospital, so I don’t want to hear all this stuff Ja’nae is talking. Zora knows that, I guess. She says for Ja’nae to be quiet and play. She’s over by the fence polishing her toes. Ain’t mentioned nothing yet ’bout missing no money.

  We at our girl Mai’s house. She ain’t here. “She made a run with her dad to the market,” her mother said, “for more chicken backs and collards.”

  Zora, Ja’nae, and me came to get Mai so we could go by the hospital and see Momma. She’s supposed to be getting a CAT scan this morning, so Dr. Mitchell said I shouldn’t come down until noon. I wanted to go to the hospital by myself. But Ja’nae asked me what I wanted to do that for. “It’ll be more fun with friends,” she said. Like we was going to the movies or something.

  Ja’nae dribbles the basketball, walking my way. When she does, I smell baby powder. “I mean it,” she says, wiping sweat off her forehead with a sweet-smelling cotton ball. “Everything bad happens to you and your mom. Everything.”

  I smack the basketball out her hand. Run it up to the basket. Sink it in. “Now who’s cursed?” I say, strutting my stuff like them NBA players do.

  I shoulda kept my mouth shut. Now Zora is naming all the bad stuff that’s happened to me and Momma over the last few years. “Your father went on dope. Then you two moved in with friends till they kicked y’all out,” she says, putting down the polish. “You were homeless for a while, then you moved into the projects and were robbed,” she says, wiggling her toes so they can dry faster. “Seems like a curse to me.”

  I tell her she don’t need to talk. Her family got problems, too. But when I go to bust on her, all I can say is her parents are divorced and her mother’s always at their place butting in her dad’s business. That’s it. Nothing.

  Ja’nae puts her two cents in. I yell at ’em both to shut up. Then I pick up my stuff and start to leave.

  Mai’s mom comes over and puts her arm around me. “Why are you two being so mean?” she says, pointing to them.

  Zora looks up from her nails. “We didn’t mean—”

  “Make yourselves useful,” her mom says. “Go help Mai and her dad with the bags. I just heard the car pull up to the front of the house.”

  Zora ain’t trying to go help nobody do nothing, even though Mrs. Kim tells her again to get moving. But before Mrs. Kim can put her in check, Mai shows up. “Hey,” she says, picking up the basketball and shooting.

  Mrs. Kim’s soft hands feel sweaty holding mine. “All the bags in?” she asks Mai.

  Mai smacks the ball to the ground over and over again. “Dad’s bringing ’em.”

  Her mom goes off, saying how lazy and inconsiderate Mai is. She gives Mai the same tired speech my mom gives me. “You only think about yourself. We should stop doing for you all together and then see how you like it.”

  Ja’nae ain’t like the rest of us. She likes cleaning and helping out. Before Mai’s mom even started speechifying, Ja’nae was in the kitchen unpacking food.

  Mai’s mom is the color of chocolate chips. She’s African American. Her dad is Korean. Ja’nae likes to get him to talk the way they do in his country. So with the screen door open you can hear him saying the Korean names of the fruits, vegetables, and meat they’re unpacking in there. Ja’nae repeats after him.

  Mai’s mom pushes open the door and goes inside. “Ungrateful,” she says, talking about Mai.

  I look at my watch and tell Zora and ’em that it’s time to leave. “Momma should be back from getting her CAT scan now.”

  Mai picks up the ball and lays up another shot. When her sleeve rolls back, Zora and me go nuts.

  “Oh my God. Oh my God,” Zora says running over to Mai. “When did you do it?” she says, staring at the tattoo on Mai’s arm.

  In red and black swirls as tall as my baby finger, Mai’s tattoo says 100% BLACK.

  “I got it yesterday,” she says, putting down the ball. Letting us get a good look at her arm. “Don’t touch it. It still hurts.”

  The tattoo drilled into her skin is swelled up like wet paint after a rain. Mai blows on it, like she’s trying to cool hot tea.

  “My father went off when he saw it,” she says, holding the ball still with her foot. “He says I branded myself, like a slave. Like he know something about that.”

  Zora’s making a face, like she’s looking at something disgusting. “My dad would kill me if I did that. He says it’s not sanitary.”

  “My grandfather would cut my arm off and beat me over the head with it,” Ja’nae says, walking up to us. “Anyhow, what you wrote on your arm ain’t even true.”

  What’d Ja’nae say that for? Now she and Mai going at it. And Zora’s putting in her two cents. Only I don’t care about no stupid tattoo. I want to see my mother. Now! I tell ’em that too. But ain’t nobody listening.

  Mai gets up in Ja’nae’s face. “You don’t need to be talking about anybody else,” she says, pointing to her hair. “That mess in your head ain’t real neither.” Sh
e’s talking about Ja’nae’s new braids. “And neither are those blue contacts you got on, Zora.”

  Mai’s eyes fix on me like she’s trying to find something fake about me too. So I curl up my fingers to hide the nails I glued on at Zora’s last night. Then Ja’nae says something else, and the three of ’em go at it again.

  “Stop it!” I yell. They stare at me. I cover my face with my hands. “Please stop.” I say, wishing somebody would have told that to Shiketa the day she went after Momma with that pipe.

  I smell him even before I set foot in Momma’s room. He smells like stale corn chips and wet hair. I can’t go in, not with my father there. So I lie to Mrs. Kim. Tell her I need to go to the gift shop to buy something special for my mother. Mrs. Kim goes into Momma’s room all by herself. I go over to the stairwell across from the nurse’s station, sit down, and hope my father’s gone by the time I get back.

  I wish my girls were here. But Mrs. Kim made Zora and Ja’nae go home and Mai stay in the house. “Raspberry needs peace and quiet at a time like this, not cackling hens pecking her to pieces,” she said.

  I sit on the top step. Check to see if anybody’s coming before I pull off my sneakers and empty money into my lap. I take more cash out my pockets, lay all the bills down in a straight, neat row and count ’em—twice.

  I got a hundred bucks on me. Woulda had more if I’d kept the money for the class trip. But I turned it in ’cause Dr. Mitchell’s been real good to me, letting me stay at his place, buying me whatever I need. Somebody else woulda found my father and made him take care of me. Then where would I be? Living on the streets again. Begging for change.

  Mrs. Kim comes to look for me after I’ve been gone half an hour. I follow her to the room. Ask her if she gonna stay till Momma comes. She says she won’t leave me. I’m glad, ’cause when I get to the room, it’s not just Daddy there. There’s another man, too. He’s lying on Momma’s bed with all his clothes on. Even his shoes.

  I stand statue still when Daddy walks over to me, kisses my cheek and roughs up my face with his scratchy red beard. I lift my shoulder up and rub his kiss away.

  The man on the bed opens one eye and stares up at me. Daddy introduces us. Tells the guy that he better leave before Momma comes back.

  “Virginia never could stand no riffraff,” Daddy says, walking over to his friend. “She gonna go out her mind when she sees me here. Two bums might make her have a stroke,” he says laughing, like that’s funny.

  Mrs. Kim puts her big, warm arms around my shoulder.

  “James,” the man says with sleep in his voice. “You sure?”

  Daddy paces the room. His light brown eyes jerk back and forth. His fingers pick at his face and arms, like he’s pinching himself. “Yeah, I’m sure she ain’t gonna want to see your sorry butt when she gets back,” he says.

  The man is outta the bed now, sitting down in a chair by the door. “I ain’t talking about that,” he says, pulling open a small dresser drawer. “There’s plenty of clean washcloths here,” he says holding one up. “Sure you don’t want to take a hot shower?”

  Daddy makes a sucking noise with his tongue. Then he takes ten sugar packs and empties ’em one by one into a cup of steaming hot tea. Snatches the washcloth out the guy’s hand and goes into the bathroom. After a while, we hear the toilet flush. The shower going. A few minutes later, the room starts smelling like Ivory soap and cabbage.

  The man is walking around the room, drinking Daddy’s tea, asking us if we mind him taking a shower too. “Been a long time since we cleaned up good.”

  He don’t wait for us to answer. He starts telling us how him and Daddy been friends since high school. “Who woulda thought,” he says, shaking his head, “that we would end up on the streets together.” He drinks up the last of the tea. Spoons out the thick, wet sugar from the bottom of the cup and eats it. “But it’s all good,” he says. “Somebody gotta have your back out there. To be your eyes while you sleep. To make sure you don’t end up cut to pieces or dead as a doorknob.”

  “That’s enough,” Mrs. Kim says, pointing at the man. “The girl is only fourteen and her mother’s in the hospital. Hurt. She doesn’t need to hear all of this.”

  Daddy comes out the bathroom wearing the same old clothes. The dirt is gone from his face and hair, and the yellow crud caked between his teeth is not so bad now. Ill, I think. He used Momma’s toothbrush.

  “Now you looking like somebody,” the man says, slapping Daddy five. “In fact, you two look just alike,” he says pointing from Daddy to me. “The red hair and the freckles. She yours, all right,” he laughs.

  I turn my back to that man.

  “If you going to take a shower, do it now,” Daddy says to his friend. “I made a mess. But there’s plenty of hot water left.”

  I’m watching the man walk to the bathroom. Listening to him and Daddy make jokes, feeling my head tingle and my body get warm all over. I go to tell Mrs. Kim that something ain’t right with me, but it’s like cotton is stuffed deep down in my throat so the words don’t even come out. Next thing I know, I’m lying on the floor and Daddy is patting my face. Saying for Mrs. Kim to call the nurse. Putting his lips close to my ears and saying everything will be okay. Then Momma comes in and tells him to take his mangy hands off me. And by the time I’m back on my feet, Daddy’s gone. Like usual.

  Three weeks have gone by since Momma got knocked in the head and I passed out in the hospital. But kids are still talking about it. Teachers that don’t hardly know me ask how Momma’s doing. Some even took up a collection. They called a television station and told ’em about it too. Cash is still coming in from all over town. Last count, we had almost $5,000.

  “Don’t act like your Momma gonna use all that moola to pay bills,” Sato says to me. “We know she headed to Jack’s Crazy Cars to get a new ride.”

  Sato’s a tall bowlegged boy who gets smart with me all the time. But I still like him—too much, really.

  I tell Sato to mind his own business, even though Momma and me do got the worst-looking ride you ever seen. But inside, I’m smiling big time. ’Cause we ain’t never had this much cash before. And with Momma still out of work, that money’s gonna help us pay bills and eat real good for a long time.

  It’s burning up out here. Eighty-nine degrees, and it’s only April. So I roll my can of pop over my forehead to cool off.

  Sato asks me how much of the money Momma gave to me. “Maybe she ain’t give me nothing,” I say, taking a swig of Pepsi.

  Sato bust out laughing. “I know your momma ain’t that cheap,” he says. “Shoot. Even my broke-down mom would give me a few bucks.”

  I don’t tell Sato that Momma gave me six hundred dollars. That she said it was to make up for all the hard times we been through. And for the time she pitched my money out the window like it was trash.

  “Give me a taste?” Sato says, reaching for my pop.

  I shake my head no. “I don’t want your germs.”

  He takes my arms and wraps ’em around me tight, so it’s like I’m hugging my own self. He says he ain’t letting go till I give him a sip.

  I bend my wrist back as far as I can. Laugh when the pop spills and bubbles out over his arm and onto the ground.

  “Oh no you didn’t,” he says, snatching the can out my hand and running.

  I chase that boy two whole blocks before I catch him. By then, half my pop is down his throat.

  We both breathing hard, like there ain’t enough air out here to go around. “Fifty. Fifty cents,” I say, sitting on the steps of a big white church that used to be a movie theater. Trying to make him pay me for the pop.

  Sato looks at me with those big, pretty brown eyes of his. I turn away. Stare at a pink daisy growing outta a crack in the side of the step.

  For a while, he and me are quiet. We watch people walk up and down the street. Check out a man hosing down his pavement.

  “Here,” Sato says, pulling change out his pocket.

  “Ten cents?! Yo
u cheap dog,” I say, smacking his arm. Chasing after him again.

  I like Sato. I ain’t sure he likes me the same way. One minute he’s nice, the next minute he’s treating me mean. Ja’nae says that’s how some boys are. “They don’t know how to show what they feel.”

  When we get to the end of the block, Sato and me sit on the hood of a rusty green convertible with the headlights busted out and all four tires missing.

  “Looks like your momma’s ride,” Sato says, pushing me.

  “Least she got one,” I say, taking my hair and pushing it out my face. “Your momma’s walking, ain’t she? Or is that her I see over there thumbing a ride?”

  Sato looks across the street, then slaps me five. “You got me,” he says, moving closer. When he turns around and looks at the mess in the car we’re sitting on, I lean over, close my eyes, and sniff his cologne.

  “Somebody’s living in here,” he says, pointing to the chicken bones, hamburger buns smeared with mustard, and bags of newspaper and cans.

  He’s right. This here’s somebody’s house.

  “How they stay dry?” he says. “Ain’t no windows or roof.”

  He’s looking at me, like I should know just ’cause me and Momma used to be homeless too. “Why you asking me?” I say, as nasty as I can.

  “I . . . well . . . sorry,” Sato says, playing with the baby hair over his lip.

  I never talk about the times when me and Momma lived out on the street. I don’t like remembering those days. But I tell Sato that the people who live here probably hang out in the stores during the day, to keep cool. Sleep in the car late at night—not in the homeless shelters or on the street. You can get hurt there.

  Sato is looking at me like he feels sorry for me. I stare down at my feet and chew on my lip.

  “I saw your dad . . . on the corner downtown,” he says, shoving his hands down in his pockets. “He ain’t recognize me, though.”

  I don’t want to look at Sato or hear him say something smart about my father, so I start walking. Taking giant steps so he can’t keep up. But his legs are twice as long as mine and, ten steps later, he’s walking right alongside me. Not talking. Not mouthing off, just walking so close that every once in a while his sweaty arm touches mine. When it do, I get cool all over and chill bumps pop up on my arms.