Dime (18 page)

L.A. looked at Lollipop. “Where your family?”

“Just Uncle Ray as long as I can remember.”

I flipped my spoon over and over, stopping every now and then to sift Special K.

“This messed up,” Brandy muttered.

“She fucked already?” L.A. asked Daddy.

I daydreamed about shoving the spoon handle in L.A.'s eye.

“Or just do what she do in front of the computer by herself?”

“Don't make me tell you shut up again.” He said it with his full. Then he nodded my way. “Why you not eating?”

I slid some cereal into my mouth and chewed. I made myself keep chewing. Daddy winked at me, and when I faked a smile back at him, the fists unclenched and became smoldering spikes.

Lollipop was nodding. “Yes.” She spoke earnestly, but with a little bit of swagger, as if it was important to her that we were impressed. “I was so good on the Internet Uncle Ray said my fans could start visiting me in person as soon as I turned eleven.”

Brandy bugged her eyes at Daddy. “This is messed up,” she said. “This is serious messed up.”

“Don't make me tell you again neither.” He texted something and spoke next to Lollipop. “You talk too much.”

“It's funny, right?” Lollipop whispered to us girls as if Daddy couldn't hear. “All the things the men like to do. Only some of them like to pet you gently. I like that, but not the rest. But Uncle Ray said it's worth the money, and I agree because then I get everything I want pink and purple.”

I forced myself to swallow, hoping the mush of milk and cereal wouldn't come spraying back up and out.

Brandy pushed her bowl into the center of the table, leaned back, and glared at Daddy.

“I'm really good at it, you know.” Lollipop smiled. “Uncle Ray taught me if you pretend the parts that hurt don't hurt and that it all feels good and you like it, they give you even more money.”

I swiveled my head at Brandy, who'd taught me the very same thing so well. She was eyeing laser beams at Daddy. “Your uncle Ray sound like a piece of work,” she said.

Even L.A. looked gray in the face. But in a second I could see it wasn't for the right reasons. “You going to give her dates?” she asked Daddy.

“Dime.” Daddy ignored her and pointed to my bowl. “Why you not eating?”

I kept my face regular and scooped more flakes into my mouth. He had always been so good at reading my mind.
You never loved me.
I couldn't let him read my mind then. I was afraid of what he might do. Put me out. Sell me.
Ho.

“You going to give Lollipop dates?” L.A. asked again.

I thought he might reach over and swat her hard, but he grinned down at his phone. “She going to make us rich.”

I swallowed back another gag.

L.A. stood from her chair, gap flashing, hands on her hips. “You going to make a ten-year-old the Bottom next, she going to earn you so much coins?”

“Sit down, bitch,” Daddy said. “I'm not making no little girl Bottom.”

“I'm not ten.” Lollipop slurped up her pink hearts and purple moon marshmallows, which she must have been saving for last. “I'm eleven.”

*  *  *

Forgive me,
Truth would request.
But I must continue. You won't like the story of the newest and youngest. However, you must hear me out and believe me. I am, after all, Truth.

BRANDY WAS HAVING her period, so maybe that's what was adding to her bad mood. L.A. was always telling her she should just go on Depo so she wouldn't bleed as often, but Brandy said Depo gave her side effects. Daddy didn't care what method we chose from the clinic as long as we didn't get pregnant and made him his money. Brandy's problem was that even though she wouldn't go on Depo, she hated doing the other things johns always insisted on if it was her time of month.

That day she decided she was furious that Lollipop got the entire second bedroom all to herself. “Perverts got to watch her sleep, too?” Brandy said, outraged. It had been like this for a few weeks. She always was more audacious with Daddy on her period, but ever since she saw me crying in the car right before we picked up Lollipop, she had been bolder than ever. “Pee and sleep?”

“Shut up,” Daddy warned. When he glanced at his new watch, I noticed an even newer ring on his finger. A thick gold band that looked real with a flat top edged in tiny diamonds. Real. All of it real. It was the first ring I ever saw him wear. It looked good. Solid and serious. How much did a ring like that cost? How many dates' worth? My insides were still fists clenched and unclenched, spikes, and lava.

“Nice, right?” Daddy asked me quietly. He had noticed my glance.

Pretend.
“It's really nice.”

“Sometimes I don't sleep,” Lollipop was explaining. “Sometimes they call in for a live show. Then I have to wake up and do stuff.”

Brandy wrinkled her nose. “That's disgusting.”

“You looking run out,” Daddy murmured to me. “Since down south.” The spikes in my belly burned. “You getting skinny.”

“I'm good,” I lied.
Don't let him read your mind.
Where would I go?

“I'm a get you a ring like this,” he whispered. “Cheer you up, Beautiful.”

I ducked my face the way I guess I always did. I tried to look shy the way I guess I always did too. He kissed my forehead and whispered again. “Brandy a complaining little bitch.” His breath was warm on my ear. “She do good to learn from you.”

I made my face do what it must have always done before when he was close, talking to me like that, like I was his beautiful best. But the searing in my belly felt nothing like the slow melt that used to feel so good.

“Her in the bedroom means you off the track, ho,” Daddy told Brandy. “Stop sweating me when I'm making life better for you.”

*  *  *

Daddy and Eagle drove us to work. Eagle drove a black Lincoln town car and Daddy still had the Escalade. He paid for two hotel rooms next to each other inside a big hotel that had bulletproof glass at the front desk and a little store with T-shirts and candy. We switched off locations—outdoor or indoor
—
depending on things only Daddy understood.

I didn't know where Eagle stayed, but now he also drove us to outcalls at indoor locations other than the main hotel: apartments and other hotels and motels. Sometimes to a room in an office building. At parties the men were louder and ruder and showed off more. It was harder to smile and pretend you enjoyed it. There was never a safe moment to allow your face to arrange itself naturally and get the disgust out. It was tiring always having to pretend without any love anywhere, and it made it hard for me to think, hard for me to make a plan, to remember that maybe I needed a plan.

I didn't like Eagle, either. Mostly I didn't like him because I was afraid of him. In the down south house, I'd seen a minute of what he could do and what he seemed to enjoy doing, and I didn't want to be alone with him in a car or anywhere. But I had no say. So far, he hadn't given me more than a glance. He never spoke to me or to any of us, unless he had to. I don't know where he lived, unless maybe it was in the town car. I couldn't tell if Daddy paid Eagle or if it was the other way around. Daddy must have been texting him and talking to him on the phone, because Eagle always knew when to pick us up and where to drive.

I saw things I'd never seen, driving around Newark. The huge courthouses with their wide lawns, like parks. So many churches built out of gray or wine-colored stones, like castles. Twice, at dusk, a pair of girl-boys walking a track for their pimp. The train station with its curved, decorated entrance. The river beneath all those bridges sparkling in a winding band. And a group of greened statues halfway up the front of a building, guarding a massive arched doorway. I'd noticed them a few times before I noticed the letters below:
FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY
. It was the main branch—the one where that librarian had said she usually worked.

I saw a lot driving to outcalls, but I would rather have stayed in the hotel room. It was comfortable with a real bed and air-conditioning and a bathroom. And a lot of the time, I could shower between tricks. And I could sit or lie down instead of walk and walk and walk. Whippet and Stone weren't around to stress me out, and I usually only had one client at a time. The hotel wasn't far from the airport, for the johns. I could hear the planes all the time. I liked hearing those planes. I liked imagining where all the people on them were going, where they were from. Imagining that distracted me from myself, from the panic of having nothing. Imagining cooled down the constant fire in my gut.

Best of all, though. Best about being indoor was that sometimes, between dates, I could read. And when I read, I could be inside my shell on a boat, far away.

*  *  *

I had cleaned
To Kill a Mockingbird
so well that you could hardly see what L.A. had done to it with her pink gum. Five pages had torn, but I taped them with the Scotch tape I smuggled into the hotel room from the bottom kitchen drawer at home. And the day I sat next to Scout in the courtroom, falling asleep and then waking to Tom Robinson being found guilty, I was so upset that I begged Eagle to send my next date elsewhere and text Daddy that I was too sick to work.

“You do not look sick,” Eagle had said.

I tried to keep back the tears, hating what Maycomb County had done to Tom Robinson, hating how unfair it all was.

But Eagle sent in my john anyway, and I knew he texted Daddy.

When I finished the book, it was back home, inside my sleeping bag with the flashlight. My head was aching from the pounding Daddy had given me for mouthing off to Eagle and trying to skip dates. My empty stomach simmered. I turned to page one and began to read it all over again. It was as good as anything by Stephen King or Suzanne Collins. Better.

*  *  *

Daddy had more money than ever. He wore a new outfit almost every day now, including shoes. He never took off that flat-topped ring, but now he had a different watch for each day, and he switched out his chain and earring almost every day too. He didn't overdo it like pimps in the movies. He never chose anything too big or wore too much at once. But everything on him was real. You didn't have to be an expert to see that.

He bought us all new work clothes too. We got to pick what we liked and not share anymore. He let us get our hair done properly. And our nails. He gave us each a fourteen-karat gold chain with the letter
D
on it, to match his tooth. Mine matched my name, too—before down south I would have thought he planned that out for me somehow. We looked better than we ever had. We smelled better.

But we still lived in the same apartment. I had it best, except for Lollipop. Because the alcove, especially with the cardboard boxes for a headboard and footboard, was a little bit private, and private meant you could read or imagine yourself anywhere else. Maybe L.A. wasn't acting as mad as Brandy those days, because she had the couch and Brandy was back on the floor, nose to nose with the box of tampons. L.A. thought the couch was the best, since she was up off the floor. I wasn't going to argue. It was better if L.A. thought she was getting more than I was. She'd be mad enough when she found out I was going to be a Bottom Bitch too. Even if it was down south.

“This such bullshit,” Brandy said. “I don't even have no phone yet.”

“Keep fussing and you not getting no phone,” Daddy told her.

“L.A. fusses all the damn time, and she got a phone.”

“L.A. Bottom Bitch, and she been got her phone, so shut up about the goddamn phone.” Then he winked at me when Brandy couldn't see, as if to say,
Don't worry. When you get down south, you going to have you own phone.
It made the heat in my stomach lurch up into my mouth, a sour, burning clump.

The first time that clump came up was when he had taken me earlier that day. He had been tender, and I tried to look at him the way I used to, and I faked flying, hoping he wouldn't be able to tell. It was harder—much harder—than pretending with dates. I was afraid of what Daddy would do if he realized. If he put me out, George and Whippet might take me for theirs. I didn't want to have to drink and stay high for George, and I didn't want to have to pick a specialty for Whippet, the way he made his girls do. I didn't want to have to be a ho anymore. But I chose it, so now that's all there was for me.

Brandy was looking at Daddy with her face twisted into an expression I'd never seen on her before. “You got enough coins to get me a stupid phone,” she said. “You just a asshole.”

Even L.A. got still.

“Brandy!” I hissed. If Daddy decided to beat her to death, I wouldn't have one friend left in the world.

She ignored me. “You a motherfucking dog.” Her voice was quiet, but her chin was up, under her twisted face, like that Russian girl's had been down south.

Daddy kicked her right in the middle of that twist. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lollipop go statue while Brandy went down. Daddy kicked her again. I looked away to see L.A. smirking.

Daddy stopped as suddenly as he had started. “Get back to work,” he told Lollipop. “Take care a her,” he told me, meaning take care of Brandy. “Come on,” he told L.A. “You going on a outcall. Overnight.”

L.A. beamed, flashing her gap the way Daddy flashed his gold
D
. She loved overnights. She liked how easy she thought they were. Truthfully, L.A. seemed to like the sex sometimes. Not on the street on a long, hot day, and not when we were down south. But there were times since we'd been indoor, or before when I'd had to do three-ways with her in the alley, when it didn't seem like she was pretending. Not that a date would know the difference. But I might.

I'd been on two overnight outcalls, and I hated them. One john tried to talk to me about normal things, like where did I grow up, and what was my favorite color. He had another girl there too. She was white, and she said she worked for herself with no daddy. She said she kept all her money and lived with her cousin in their own apartment. She said they were paying for college doing outcalls. She didn't want to three-way with me, maybe because I was black or maybe because it was obvious I had a Daddy and wasn't going to college. But the john offered her more money to cooperate, so she did. That might be the date I hated the most in all my time working.