Dime (20 page)

We weren't going toward the hotel. We weren't headed toward the track, either. It was a half hour after my start time for working. I was more nervous than my usual since-down-south nervous, except Daddy wasn't acting mad. He was acting kind. I wanted to ask where we were going, but I figured I'd find out soon enough.

“Why you don't want to eat no more?” Daddy asked as we drove along Broad.

I shrugged, then remembered to speak. “I don't know.”

“You too skinny to be pregnant, so I know it ain't that.”

He reached his hand out and rested it on my knee, heavy and familiar. It was upsetting how badly I wanted to forget what I knew and just slide into his old warmth I used to live for. And it was strange how I couldn't un-know, how the warmth was gone, replaced by that burning that made me want to swallow back sour clumps so much of the time.

We passed by the train station. “Bet you wondering where we going.”

“Yeah.”

He squeezed. “We not going nowhere. Just driving.”

I stayed quiet.

“Worried about you, Beautiful.” He turned off, away from the river.

“I'm good.” Cars and people and buildings flashed by. Men and women pushing strollers and carrying babies. Couples with the men's hands slid into their bitches' back shorts pockets.

“You crying?”

Flocks of girls with big gold earrings and small spray bottles to damp down the heat.

“No,” I said, wiping away a tear. It was like that time on the highway just before we got to the house with the upside-down seashell. Maybe cars just made me cry.

We passed an open hydrant, and the little kids' bodies running and jumping were shiny wet and sharp on my eyes, reflecting the sun. Daddy pulled over down the block from an ice cream truck and another open hydrant. “Look at me,” he said.

I pressed on my eyes to push the tears back. Then I looked at him.

“You know I don't got no feeling for Lollipop.”

It took me a minute, which actually helped.

“It ain't like she going to take your place.”

I stared at him, and when it hit me, I smiled. It wasn't a fake smile. It was real. He thought I was jealous. Of Lollipop.

He grinned back, flashing his gold
D
. “This whole time,” he said, “you been thinking that little girl something special to me?”

I started to giggle. I couldn't remember the last time I had giggled. It felt sideways somehow, a little insane. But I couldn't help it.
He thinks I'm jealous of Lollipop. He thinks I'm jealous.
I couldn't stop giggling. The word
lovesick
came to my mind.
He thinks I'm lovesick,
and I had been that for him, but now the idea was crazy.

He was still smiling. “Girl, pull yourself together.”

I nodded and snorted. I wiped my eyes with the backs of my hands and watched the shiny kids play in the stream in the middle of the street. I calmed myself down, pushing a bubble of laughter back every time the thought of being jealous of his feelings for Lollipop rose up. It was difficult not to collapse altogether.

“Now listen.” Daddy unbuckled his seat belt and turned his body toward mine. “Lollipop don't know it, but she going to start seeing dates in person.”

He could tell from my face that bothered me, but he wasn't reading my mind at all. Maybe he wasn't as good at reading my mind as I used to think. “Yeah. She going to earn ten times what you earn, but don't pay that no mind.”

I knew Lollipop wasn't a virgin, but still. Just because a little girl has had sex, doesn't make it right to make her have it again before she's grown up more.

Daddy was still talking. “My plan the same it always been for you. Few more weeks and you going down south to be Bottom.” He scooted close and put his forehead on mine. “You my best,” he murmured. “You my smartest. I'm a miss you, but I'm a come down two times every month. I'm not trying to have Lollipop in my bed.”

He kissed my mouth, and I tried so hard to kiss him back the way I used to. The laughter, the craziness from before was gone. My insides boiled. He pulled away, groaning. Did he just need sex all the time, and the groaning was real? Or did he fake it for all of us to get us to do what he wanted? “You turn me on more than any of those other bitches.”
Liar.
He pulled away, as the sweat popped out all over my body, from the scalding shame. He wrapped his thumb and finger around my slippery wrist and wagged my hand. “But you got to eat.” He let go and straightened up behind the steering wheel. “Dates don't want no skin and bones. And I need my money.”

“Okay,” I said.
You don't love me.

He put the car in drive and turned it around. “We going to get some fries right now.”

It was too hot for fries. I wanted a fire hydrant and ice cream. “Thank you, Daddy,” I said.
You never loved me.

“Then after I watch you eat, I'm a cheer you up but good.”

I choked down the fries and a Coke at McDonald's and listened to him complain about how L.A. was a pain in the ass and about how Brandy was getting too much attitude and how johns who went for Lollipop were perverts and deserved to give up every goddamn penny they paid for her.

Then he drove me home and took me into his room. Into those oily sheets. He was as gentle as he ever was and I pretended as much as I ever had, not knowing what else to do or how to make any of it end.

*  *  *

Uncle Ray had been good at keeping Lollipop babyish. L.A. thought it was a front.

“That little girl is not as dumb as she act,” L.A. said, after Lollipop nearly set the place on fire.

We warned her about the back burner not working properly, but Lollipop left it stuck on. When L.A. turned the dial for under the saucepan, flame banged out a circle with a loud
thwack
and then somehow skipped through air to a paper bag of apples resting nearby. One second the bag was just sitting there as peaceful as you please, the next second it was crackling blue and orange.

L.A. nearly hit the ceiling, she jumped so high. But she had the presence of mind to pour that saucepan water over the crisping bag, and that was enough to put the fire out. I wished she could pour water into my belly.

“Stupid fool,” she told Lollipop.

“I never cooked before,” Lollipop tried to say. Even if she forgot to turn back the dial and check the flame, it wasn't all her fault.

L.A. smacked the top of Lollipop's head. “Don't even try to mess with me,” she warned. “You could have blown us all up.”

“I always got food from out,” Lollipop explained. She was strong for such a little thing. “And I'm not a fool.”

“Stupid fool. And a liar.” L.A. smacked her hair again. “You start a fire in here, you better off dying in it than letting Daddy find out it was your fool self.”

“McDonald's,” Lollipop argued. Those tears squeezed out again, but at the same time, her face was all wall. “Taco Bell.”

“Clean up the mess,” L.A. told her. “And shut your mouth.” She refilled the saucepan and fired up the back burner again. “What is you staring at?” she asked me.

I shrugged and looked away.

Brandy raised her eyebrows in my direction from the kitchen table, where she was eating a breakfast bar. “Every night?” she mouthed silently. I could tell she didn't believe it. But Lollipop had bragged about McDonald's and all the rest before to me. She wasn't a liar. I think she really never turned on a stove before. I think she had McDonald's or Taco Bell every day of her life that she ate anything. Maybe White Castle, too. Domino's. Who knows? I didn't really care. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

*  *  *

A few weeks later school was about to begin, and I was pretty sure Daddy wasn't going to let me go back. But if I went, I wouldn't have to work as many hours. I hated the johns' bodies inside of mine. I hated the way they pushed me this way and that way, onto my knees, onto my stomach, against a wall, on all fours. I hated the ones stupid enough to think they were kind and the ones who squeezed too hard or smelled so bad or did everything rough just to make it hurt. I hated smiling and agreeing and pretending. I had to go back to school.

And then Daddy got stabbed.

I was lying on the hotel bed, halfway through my third reading of
Mockingbird
, when the door opened. I put down the book and sat up fast, expecting it to be a trick. It was L.A. She was supposed to be working a party.

“Daddy got cut. He in the hospital. Eagle out there waiting to take us home.”

My body got loud around the fire pit in my center. Shaking and pounding and whirring. It was a volcano inside of me, while we waited until Brandy's date left her room so we could go get her. When Brandy heard, her face went whiter than a piece of spearmint Chiclets. “How bad?” she asked L.A. I hadn't thought to ask that at all. “Who cut him?”

“Whippet. By his lung or something. He in the ICU.”

Brandy started sobbing. She sobbed all the way home in the back of the Lincoln town car. I was too scared to cry. Eagle and I stayed quiet.

“Shut up,” L.A. kept telling her.

If Daddy died, who would take me? Eagle? Bird? L.A.? I didn't want to imagine any of that. Maybe I could go back to Janelle. But I could never go back to Janelle.
I have nobody.
If I tried to run away, maybe I could go . . . where?
I have nowhere.

If Daddy died, I wouldn't have to be a ho anymore. Except that even if I tried not to be, I always would be.
Once a ho, always a ho.
I would get arrested for all the tricks I'd turned, for being a criminal all that time. The police might rape me the way they did Brandy. And if I tried to explain, they would never understand:
I just wanted to make him happy. He loved me—at least I thought he loved me—and he took care of me, and I wanted to stay with him, so I did what he said.
But it would come out all wrong. I would sound disgusting. They would lock me up. I wanted him to die. But I was scared of him dying.
It fit perfect underneath my powder.
Maybe Brandy and I could get that card and call that lady.

But back at home, Brandy was still falling to pieces. “He going to be okay, right, Dime?” she kept asking, her brown eyes as round and wide as open manholes beneath the scabbed cuts.

“Yeah,” I kept telling her. I knew he would. Nothing could hurt him.

“Word?” She was barely healed from the beating he had given to her two weeks ago. But all she cared about was that he was going to be okay.

“I'm sure.” I didn't know if it would be worse if he lived or died.

Me and my Daddy,
Brandy might say.
Maybe I'm not his only. But he take care of me so good. Nobody else never done nothing for me since my grandmother. My Daddy save my life every day. He got me clean, he give me food, he give me a couch to sleep, a place to stay, and clothes. He the only one who ever love me.

If he did die, maybe it would just be me, searching beneath her powder.

EAGLE DROVE L.A. to visit Daddy. After, she told us Daddy said we had to go back out to the track. I didn't believe her. I was under the impression that Daddy couldn't even talk yet. But I knew he would want us to make money, and I knew he didn't trust Eagle or even L.A. to keep things running smoothly indoor. Anyway, L.A. was the Bottom Bitch, and I had to do what she said.

“He gave up our rooms?” Brandy asked. Her face was healed enough that makeup covered what was left.

L.A. shrugged. “How do I know? All I know is we ain't supposed to be in them. We supposed to go back out to the track.”

“What about Lollipop?” Brandy asked. “Lollipop can't go out there.”

L.A. sighed and looked disgusted. “Lollipop stay working in her room.”

Lollipop bit at her pink ribbon tying up one of her pigtails. She was too old for ribbons, but Daddy said she had to wear them.

“You was supposed to start getting your first dates at the hotel this week,” L.A. informed Lollipop. Her baby face didn't shift a muscle. But L.A. looked annoyed. “Now it's going to be me taking calls for your little shows.”

Lollipop stayed a pretty blank wall. I couldn't tell what she was thinking. Was she disappointed? Relieved? She looked carefully at L.A. and shrugged. “Whatever Daddy says I'm supposed to do.”

“Oh,” L.A. added. “Also. Your Uncle Ray? He ain't never coming back.”

I saw it in a flicker when she glanced at me and Brandy. We had nothing different to tell her, and she could see that we didn't, so she looked back at L.A., who was smirking. That was when I saw Lollipop's real face. Anguish is what I saw. Then she went wall again and stepped back into her room.

*  *  *

That was Friday. I went to the track that night, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, which was Labor Day. We all stayed as far away from Whippet as we could. We didn't know what the beef was between him and Daddy, but we were scared he might try to cut us, too. I heard him call my name a few times, but I was far enough down the block to pretend I couldn't hear.

Hello,
I said to that gray brick.
It's been a while.
How have you been?
It didn't answer me back. While the dates did what they did to me, I would sneak a tap on it, just in case it would open up into Narnia. Or Number Twelve Grimmauld Place.
Welcome,
Aslan would say. Or Professor Dumbledore.
We have been waiting for you.

Eagle watched us. It was different to have another man under a Daddy instead of just having the Bottom Bitch handle things. But I guessed Daddy didn't trust L.A. Also he needed Eagle for taking calls for live, customized shows from Lollipop when L.A. was out working, which was most of the time. From what I could tell, passwords were constantly changing, and Eagle had to type different things into her computer and into his iPad every few days, setting up different pages or sites or whatever he had to do to make sure Daddy didn't get busted.