Dime (7 page)

“You sorry?” Janelle stopped laughing. She waved her palm in my direction, as if she was waving away a gnat. “Yeah,” she said. “It all because of you.” I thought she was being sarcastic, but with the way she was acting, it was hard to tell.

*  *  *

I had the girls' room all to myself. It was strange to lie down in the dark without Vonna next to me in the other bed or Sienna or even another baby in the crib. I stared upside down at the white headboard, reaching up to trace my fingers around Vonna's stickers. Hearts and peace signs and rainbows and letters. A penguin and an umbrella and a banana bunch. It was strange to have sheets and a blanket. Even though this bed was more comfortable than the sleeping bag, my body hurt from the inside with wanting to be back at Daddy's. Wanting to be with Daddy. I couldn't stop from remembering every second we'd had. Him stroking me and kissing me and murmuring. His hands and his lips and his tongue all over my skin. His big, warm arms holding me tightly after. I traced those stickers, remembering Daddy, and that's how I got through the night.

Nobody was home the next morning. I still hadn't seen Jywon. I thought maybe he'd moved on too, like the little girls. I went to school, just like always. Nobody there knew my whole life had changed. Trevor was absent and Dawn was distracted with a makeup math test. I tried to help her study for it during lunch, but I was distracted too.

When I got back to Janelle's, she had piles of laundry to fold. Most of it was clothes that Vonna and Sienna wore. I guess they didn't need those old things where they were now. Sienna's grandmother and Vonna's mother must have wanted to buy their girls something brand-new. I guess Janelle had let the laundry pile up for a while. I folded little waffle shirts and tights and onesies and daydreamed about Daddy.

“Look who here,” I heard. It was Jywon.

I handed him a pile of clean socks.

“Where you been?”

I shrugged.

“You staying?”

I shrugged again.

Janelle appeared. “Jywon, you went to school today?”

He tossed a ball of socks onto the folded pile. “I always go,” he said. “Where else you think I go?”

“Liar,” she told him. Then she looked at me. “You got homework?”

I nodded.

“Jy, you finish up this folding. She got to do her schoolwork.” She was acting normal. Nicer than normal. It was confusing.

He raised his eyebrows. “I'm not folding no laundry,” he said, and he walked out the door.

Janelle clucked her tongue. “Boys.” She clucked again. “Can't do nothing with them.”

Jywon showed up for meals a lot, but otherwise it was hard to know where he was. Earl and Janelle spent most of their time at the kitchen table and in front of the TV. They both drank her Booth's, but Janelle drank more. She got nasty to him sometimes, loud and mouthy, and he just sat there, taking it and sipping at his glass. She got nasty to me, too, but after three days I figured out that if I just cleaned up for her after school and didn't say a word, she would mostly leave me alone. The whole time, though—at school and at Janelle's—all I really thought about was Daddy. Not being back with him made me sick. I felt feverish and I couldn't eat and the inside of my chest ached, just the way they wrote about it in books when somebody ached for someone else.

On the fifth night, I woke up to the sound of angry voices and something breaking. My first thought was
Daddy
, because he was always my first thought. Then it took me a minute to remember where I was and another minute to remember that Sienna and Vonna weren't sleeping nearby. There was another crashing sound. I followed it into the kitchen. Janelle was swaying on her feet, standing barefoot in shards of glass. Earl was saying something to her but stopped when he saw me.

“That one,” Janelle said, looking at me. Pointing. “That one think she special.” She stepped toward me and tried to slap my face, but she was so drunk, she couldn't keep her palm straight, and her fingernails scratched my cheek, while her drink sloshed over the broken bottle on the floor. “Clean that up,” she told me.

I glanced at Earl, who was frowning. When I moved past him to get something to wipe up the mess, I slipped on an empty, rolling underfoot. He caught my arm to steady me. Then he slid his palm across my chest, pressing on my small curves, and down to the middle of my legs, squeezing. It hurt, but the reason I gasped and pulled away was because Earl was everything Daddy wasn't and so soon after. And because of the way Janelle hissed, “Get away from my man.”

*  *  *

I walked all the way back in the stinging air. It was late and dark and freezing and nobody was out on the streets. Nobody was home at Daddy's, either. I didn't have a key. I waited with my fancy bag on the hard stoop, shaking, the cold making my eyeballs hurt. What if he wouldn't take me? What if I had to go back to Janelle's? He wouldn't make me go back there after he heard about Earl, would he?

He came home alone. His head was bent, counting the cash I knew L.A. and Brandy had handed him out there somewhere. I didn't say anything. I just looked up at him.

He shoved his cash inside his coat and pulled me to my feet and to his chest. I held on tight. “All right, Beautiful,” he said. “We figure it out. I'm a take care a you.” He kissed my forehead and then my mouth.
Daddy
. “I'm a take care a you.”

I WOULD WALK in from school, and he would take L.A. and Brandy to work, and then he would come back home to take me into his room.

I hadn't noticed any of it the first time, except for the slippery smoothness of the sheets. Now I knew they were black satin. He had thick white carpet and a king-size bed made of shiny black wood with a red leather headboard. There was a matching black bureau and shelves, all topped with what looked like genuine white marble. A television covered almost an entire wall. Eight speakers were mounted on all four sides, and there was an Xbox and a mini fridge. It was like a palace inside our apartment.

We always stayed in the bed. He would be so gentle, and if I got scared at something new, he would just kiss me and stroke me and tell me how special I was. Then I would try the new thing, partly because it wouldn't seem so scary anymore and partly because I loved how good I could make him feel. Once, a split second before we were about to fly, he slapped my cheek hard and then kissed me long, long, and I had already taken off, and it hurt, but it didn't. It felt good, but it didn't. And there was no time to think about it because I was flying so fast, so high. And afterward, he held me more tightly then he ever had and kissed my head and stroked my back, and we listened to each other breathing until it was time for him to go.

He was getting more tense, though. He began to tell me things while he curled himself around me.

“Owe my associate money,” he said after another week. “Rent due in eight days. And my ride shooting smoke all out the tailpipe.”

I backed my body into his as tightly as I could, and he brushed the back of my neck with his nose.

“You stay in school and do good,” Daddy whispered. “Then after you graduate, you go to college. Then you get yourself a job and you can help me out. We can be a team taking care a things.”

I loved the idea of being with him forever like that. I loved the idea that I could help him out, that we could be a team.

He pulled away and rolled onto his back. I rolled over onto my stomach and propped my chin up on my hands so I could look at his face. “Only problem is my tailpipe can't wait no eight years.”

I hated to see him so stressed.

“Rent not going to wait neither.” He rubbed his face.

“I'll get a job as soon as I turn fourteen,” I suggested. He would listen to me because I almost never spoke up, so when I did he knew it was important. “I can work after school and in summer and help out. Maybe selling clothes. Or at White Castle.”

Daddy pulled me on top of him and smiled. “You a fool,” he said. “Ain't no teenage jobs pay enough to put together nothing but a sandwich.”

I hadn't known that. I thought those jobs paid something worthwhile.

“Thing is, Beautiful,” he said, sitting us up. I scooted back to make room. “I'm a have to rent out that alcove.”

Where would I sleep if he rented out the alcove?

He knew what I was thinking. He always knew what I was thinking. “Ain't no room for you on that couch with Brandy,” he said. “And L.A. ain't going to share her room.”

I thought of Janelle, speaking with me in that new ugly way she had, waving that knife, and I thought of her man, Earl, and the way he had touched me.

“Don't worry none, Beautiful,” Daddy said. He leaned into me. “Don't worry. I'm a think a something.”

*  *  *

I lifted up my backpack, and it was light. Too light. It was empty. No textbooks, no notebooks, no finished homework. No nothing.

“Brandy?” I looked down at her body on the couch, braided with the sheets and blanket. She was out. I nudged her foot. “Brandy? Have you seen my books?”

She didn't move. I went to the small bedroom.

“L.A?” I stood over her mattress. “Have you seen my books anywhere? Did you put them somewhere?” She was too quiet.

“I need my books.”

“Damn, girl.” L.A. opened her eyes a slit. “Shut up.” I knew she'd done it. I knew by the way her mouth pressed in. By the way she was pretending to be asleep.

I told Daddy as soon as he was out of his room, sitting at the kitchen table, eating his Lucky Charms dry and sipping at his glass of cranberry juice.

“L.A. took my books.”

Daddy didn't look up from his phone. Maybe he hadn't heard me.

“L.A. took my books,” I said again.

Now he looked up. He was so beautiful. The split eyebrow made him seem tough and tender both at the same time. “What?”

“For school. My books for school. L.A. took them.”

Daddy smiled. His gold
D
flashed at me. “You know you special, right?” He spoke quietly so the others wouldn't hear.

“Yes.” My skin and the muscles underneath and the blood all through did that hot jumpy thing.

“You know I got big plans for you?”

“Yes.”

“You know I got respect for you staying in school?”

“Yes.” I felt proud.

He stood and walked up to me. He kissed me on my mouth. It was his serious, openmouthed kiss.

“You want me like that all the time, don't you, Beautiful?” He was whispering.

It was too embarrassing. I couldn't look at him. “Yes.”

“I want you, too.”

The rushing inside never calmed down when he was near me. It made me smile now.

“But truth is”—he glanced toward the couch and L.A.'s room, still whispering—“L.A. and Brandy don't never get with me unless they bring home they quota.”

I stopped smiling.

“Love you, Dime,” Daddy breathed into my ear. “Love you best. But it going to cause issues around here if I keep taking you when you not bringing me nothing.”

“When I turn fourteen, I'll get—”

“Square job ain't going to work,” Daddy murmured. “Now I'm a find a way to keep you, but I can't be with you like that if you don't start contributing to the household. It up to you. You want to do what L.A. and Brandy do, you can earn your time with me. You choose not to, I'm a take care a you anyway. Just not in my bed.”

He was still standing so near, I could smell his sugar breath and cranberries, and something else that was just his smell. I thought I would unzip right out of my skin with wanting him. Then he stepped away. He sat back down at the kitchen table and spooned cereal into his mouth.

I didn't think I could do what L.A. and Brandy did. Not with other men.

“L.A. bringing a associate by later to maybe move in, so clean up that alcove good, Beautiful.” He was speaking at a regular volume now.

Where would I stay?

“We put you on the kitchen floor, if L.A.'s associate got coins for the alcove.”

“How much is it?” I asked.

Daddy tipped his chair onto its back legs. “Couple a dates,” he told me. “But that ain't for you. You said you ain't up for that.”

I didn't want someone else in my alcove. And I didn't want to wait eight years before Daddy could take me into his bed again. How could I go eight years without him stroking me and holding me and telling me how special I was?

“Come here.”

I went to him and he thunked the chair back on all fours to pull me onto his lap, the way he had done the first time we'd been together. He kissed me long. Long.

I couldn't think straight.

“Now listen,” he whispered. “I don't want to know about no books. I don't want to hear no accusations on L.A. She your wifey. She the Bottom Bitch, and you under her. Don't speak out on her again, or I'll have to punish you. Understand?”

I didn't understand.

He pulled away. Slapped my face. It hurt, but it didn't. It felt good but it didn't. It was hard to think. I wanted to fly with him. “Answer me.”

“I understand.”

He slapped me again, then kissed me long, so long, just the way he did a few days ago tangled in those black sheets.

*  *  *

I had been hoping to reread
Macbeth
on the couch next to Daddy while he looked at his phone and the TV. So that I could keep up with class. I never did well in English anymore, like I did when I was little. But now I might not even pass. Now he had kissed me and slapped me and all I wanted to do was feel him wrapped around me in his bed. I would have to say all the books were lost. Would school ask me to pay for them? He had big plans for me. He loved me best.

*  *  *

“L.A.”

She was brushing out her hair. It was after school, and Daddy already yelled at her for being late. Brandy was waiting on the cold steps outside. “What?”