Dime

For Amy and Bill, my exceptional parents, who have always given me an abundance of love and books

The author gratefully acknowledges and warmly thanks:

Frank Albanese, Kathy Farrow, Laurie Lico Albanese, Stephen Lucas, Jessica Roland, Alexandra Rosenblum, Amy Rosenblum, Claire Rosenblum, Jim Rosenblum, William Rosenblum, and Stacy Liss, for taking the time to read the first miserable drafts and telling me they were good.

Rachel Cohn, Maria Fredericks, Carolyn Mackler, Wendy Mass, and Patricia McCormick, for giving so generously and graciously of their time, wisdom, encouragement, and connections.

Justin Chanda, for magically coaxing out the missing parts and doing so with wit, wisdom, and charm.

Sharon Freedman, for buying me that ticket in 2011 and also for the cookie.

Richard Jackson, for every bit of our history and friendship, and especially for his Winter and Spring 2014 e-mails, calls, and instruction to relax.

Heather Schroder, for her welcoming certainty, patience, and professionalism.

Jennifer Hubert Swan, for that long phone consultation about books, both real and imagined, and for her support over all these years.

The Polaris New Jersey staff and clients of 2011–2013, for allowing me in, especially a certain two (you know who you are) whose resilience, humor, and decency are beyond words. I hope I got things a little bit right.

I ain't cynical. . . . Tellin' the truth's not cynical, is it?

—Dill,
To Kill a Mockingbird

THE PROBLEM IS the note.

It has to be perfect or else my entire plan will be ruined. It has to be so perfect that its reader will have no choice but to do the right thing, see it all the way through.

I've been in a lot of dilemmas in my life, but never one as complicated as this. I've thought up more versions of the note than I can count.

There is so much that needs to be said.

WHEN I FIRST understood what I was going to do, I expected to write the note as Lollipop. But in the six weeks since then, I've had to face facts. Lollipop has lived in front of one screen or another her whole life, possesses the vocabulary of a four-year-old, can't read, and thinks a cheeseburger and a new pair of glitter panties are things to get excited about. Using her is just a poor idea.

Back in August, Daddy assigned Lollipop to me, saying,
You school her.
I must have been doing a good job hiding my insides from him, or he wouldn't have. L.A. was still the only one of us who was allowed to touch the money. If she found out, it would be the second time she'd learn about Daddy asking me to hold coins. Which would only make things worse than they already were.

Lollipop didn't know the difference between a twenty and a one. “What's that?” She held out her hands, nails trimmed neatly and painted little-girl pink. She was polite, even if she was stupid. “May I touch it, please?”

“Nobody touches the money but Daddy.”

“Listen to you,” Brandy said from the couch where she was dabbing Polysporin on the cut over her eye that was taking so long to heal. “Cat gave back your tongue?”

“You're touching the money now,” Lollipop said. She leaned her head in close to get the best look she could. Then she sniffed. At the one first. Then the twenty. “It stinks.”

“Stop,” I told her. “Money is dirty. You don't know where it's been. Don't put your nose on it.”

Brandy grunted. “That there the funniest thing I heard all week.” She didn't sound amused.

I pointed. “That's a two.” I pointed again. “That's a zero. That's twenty.”

“I know that says twenty.” Lollipop pretended to be offended. She was obviously lying. “What's that one?”

“A one next to a zero is ten. You didn't even learn any of this from TV?”

“They have numbers on
Sesame Street
all the time,” Lollipop said. “And
Little Einsteins
.
Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
They have it on a bunch of stuff. So I know them, but I never paid attention to what's more. Only I know a hundred is a lot and a thousand is even more than that. A thousand keeps me pretty in pink.”

“Do you know letters?” I asked.

Lollipop nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “TV and Uncle Ray taught me those.”

Brandy grunted again. “I bet he did.”

“Do you know how to read?”

“Some signs.” Lollipop scrunched up her face, thinking.
“Exit.”

I waited.

“
Ladies.
Um.
Ice.
”

I waited some more.

“Maybe that's all the signs I know. But I can read two books.”

That didn't seem likely. “Which ones?”

“ ‘In the great green room, there was a telephone and a red balloon . . .' ”

Some kind of a hiss or a gasp or the sound of a punctured lung came out of Brandy.

“ ‘. . . and a picture of the cow jumping over the moon.' ”

Brandy flew off the couch as much as anybody still limping can and smacked Lollipop so hard that Lollipop fell, a perfect handprint seeping onto her cheek. She didn't cry out a sound. Not a whimper, not a squeak. She just got still, like a statue knocked over. You have to respect an eleven-year-old who gets smacked like that for no good reason and keeps quiet. That Uncle Ray trained her well.

“Brandy!” I stepped between the two of them. Brandy wasn't weak, but this. This was a whole side of her I never knew existed.

Her face was twisted up again the way it had been the other day with Daddy, only now it was beat up from him, fat lip and bruised eyes.

“What was that?” Brandy asked Lollipop. Her cut seeped blood right through the shiny Polysporin. “What was that?”

Lollipop answered as plain as she could manage. She didn't move any part of herself but her mouth. “
Goodnight Moon.
”

“Get off the floor.”

“Brandy.” Those flames that were lit in my belly the day we took Lollipop rose up, flaring. Was Brandy going to turn vicious now, on top of everything with Daddy? But Lollipop was standing, calm as anything.

“Don't you ever say those words again.” Brandy smacked Lollipop's other cheek. Lollipop went down. This time tears oozed like rain dribbling down a wall.

“Daddy's going to kill you,” I told Brandy. Even saying
Daddy
made me want to slide through the floor and die, but there was nowhere to slide to and no way to die, so somehow I just kept on.

Brandy slipped around the corner to the alcove where my sleeping bag was. I heard her zipping into it.
L.A.'s going to kill you!
I wanted to shout, but the cat took back my tongue again. Anyway, probably Daddy was getting home before L.A., who was doing an outcall. So Daddy would get to Brandy first.

I hauled Lollipop up and propped her on the couch. I made sure the bills we had been studying were in my back pocket. Then I wrapped ice in a paper towel and held it to both sides of her face. She had white features and good, light-brown hair. Her skin was the color of wet sand. Mostly she seemed white, but with that color, it was confusing. She was prettier than the rest of us. Baby-faced.

“What's the other book you know?” I asked her. “Whisper.” I didn't want Brandy hearing anything else that might make her charge back out here. But it had been a long time since anybody could talk to me about any kind of book.

“ ‘Be still,' ” Lollipop whispered. “It's monsters. There's more, but I can't remember it right now.”

Somebody who smelled like barbecue potato chips used to cuddle me on her lap and read to me. I didn't remember the reader; just that salty, smoky scent and something scratchy on my left shoulder every time a page was turned. I remembered the books, though:
Goodnight Moon
and
The Snowy Day
.

“ ‘A wild ruckus,' ” Lollipop tried.

“Rumpus.” I used to love
Where the Wild Things Are
.

SIX WEEKS AGO I just assumed I would do the note as Lollipop, but in a fast few days, I changed my mind. Now I keep going back to the idea of Brandy. I could make up the parts I don't know, even though I know more than she ever meant to tell me.
A long time before Daddy, I was a little girl living with my grandmother. Every night she gave me a bath, and every morning before school she did my hair with me standing on the couch so she wouldn't have to bend and hurt her back. . . .
Brandy told me a lot. I liked hearing her stories:
I'm white but my people are black. My mother had blond hair and blue eyes and sent me to my father's mother before she died when I was a baby. My best wifey is Dime. She's street but she speaks well because she's educated. Don't even try to figure that out.

Except if I were really trying to tell it the way Brandy would, it would be:
A long time before Daddy, I was living with my grandmother. She do my bath every night. She do up my hair every morning. I'm white by my mother, but my grandmother and everybody else I'm from, black. Now I got a bunch of wifeys. One called Dime. She black but talk TV white. Don't even try.

I wouldn't have thought she would be one to give up and lay her head in the lap of the life, but sometimes people are surprising. She likes knowing how things are, how they're going to be, who's going to take care of what. Brandy doesn't enjoy the work the way L.A. sometimes does, but the truth is that she just can't picture herself without Daddy. Even with everything that's happened.

Me and my Daddy,
Brandy might say.
Maybe I'm not his only. But he take care of me so good. Nobody else ever done nothing for me since my grandma. 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.

I could use Brandy. Easily. But we've been through a lot together, especially in this past month and a half, and I don't want things to end badly. If I wrote it in her voice and she found out, she wouldn't like it at all. She would think I stole her. Or worse, that I was making fun of her.

So that leaves L.A. Only I can't get inside her head. She's too old, for one thing. Twenty-two is a whole other world from sixteen like Brandy. Or fourteen like me. Eleven like Lollipop. And even though I'm hard now, I'm not evil. I don't understand evil, which is why I don't understand L.A.

If she had come home first that day I was trying to teach Lollipop about coins, she might have nearly starved Brandy half to death for bruising Lollipop's face. She might have held back Lollipop's food too,
for bothering Brandy
she would say, slapping Lollipop's head. Daddy would never know about it, and even if he did know, L.A. was the Bottom Bitch and could keep us from eating or smack us if she wanted to.

When Daddy walked in, Brandy was pressing more ice on Lollipop's one cheek and brushing concealer on the other, trying to make the two sides match again.

He took a good long look. “What happened?” At first nobody answered, since it was hard to know who he was asking. “Dime?”

But before I could open my mouth, Brandy did. “I swatted her.” I saw her hand shaking holding that brush, but otherwise, she was cool as a cucumber. “She mouthed me, so I swatted her. She ain't going to do me like that again.”