Money Hungry (10 page)

I got too much on my mind to be a thirteen-year-old. That’s what I’m thinking on the bus ride home. So I make a decision. I’m gonna stop thinking about how Ja’nae and me are mad at each other. Stop thinking about the house me and Momma ain’t gonna get, and the people who don’t want us to live there. I’m gonna forget about Momma and Dr. Mitchell, too. I’m gonna forget everything but filling up my money drawer again, and keeping Momma and me off the streets.

It’s nice out today. Don’t nobody want to be inside, not even me. So I get off the bus a few blocks early and take my time getting home. The weather done gone crazy. The temperature shot up to seventy-five even though spring is a ways off. Just like that. It’s nice enough for people to be driving around with their hatchbacks up, or sitting out playing cards, and talking trash.

The closer I get to my place, the noisier the world seems. People are talking at the top of their lungs. Laughing like jokes is funnier around here than anywhere else on earth. Blasting their car stereos like they throwing a party and want everybody else to come. But it’s all good, ’cause ’round here, there’s always somebody to look at, and somebody else’s music to listen to.

When I turn the corner, Odd Job, our neighborhood car washer, is doing his thing—making cars shine. Selling frozen Kool-Aid in cups and hawking hand fans that blow water. Soon as I walk up, he tells me to take a frozen icy. But he keeps right on wiping the windshield of somebody’s Town Car.

“Raspberry treat!” he shouts, looking my way. “What’s shaking, girl?”

I halfway smile at him, and reach my hand inside the cooler for a blue icy. I rub the cool cup on my sweaty forehead, then lick till my tongue turns blue.

Odd Job is quick on his feet. Moving from car to car. Waving one of his guys over to the car that just pulled up. Telling the woman inside she gets a free car wash, ’cause she looking so fine. Odd Job pulls out his money—a roll of bills as fat as a hoagie. When I see all that cash, my mouth starts watering. I lick my lips, and try not to look so greedy.

“Better watch it, Odd Job. Raspberry will take all your dollars,” Shoe says, walking up. Shoe reaches into the water cooler and grabs an icy, too.

“You better pay up. I ain’t running no credit union,” Odd Job says to him.

Shoe slides his hands down into his pants pocket, and comes up with a handful of change.

“I’m paying up today,” Shoe says, handing over the money. “How much I owe you?” Shoe’s acting like he’s grown.

Walking with a dip. Fingering the change in his pocket like a man.

“You owe me too much,” Odd Job says, taking the change without counting a dime of it.

“Plenty where that come from. Plenty,” Shoe says. He heads across the street to the supermarket. He got the nerve to come back later with a giant-size bag of barbecue chips. And swearing he ain’t sharing them with nobody. I want to punch him in the face. I know it’s my money he’s spending.

Odd Job’s working hard. He got sweat dripping down the side of his face, and soaking the top of his pants, right underneath where the belt is. But he don’t stop moving. He keeps washing them cars. I’m sitting here, watching him. My tongue is blue from the icy that dribbled down the front of my shirt. I can’t help but wonder how much money he makes in a day.

Odd Job must have read my mind. “You here to make some money?” he asks.

“I could use a few pennies in my pocket,” I say, remembering how I used to help him out when Momma and me first moved around here.

Odd Job throws me a wet rag. I scrub windows clean with vinegar and water. Hustling hand fans right along with him.

By the time I finish, it’s dark out. And I know I’m in trouble ’cause I missed my curfew.

On the way home, I count my money five times. I figure I can double it if I buy up pencils from the dollar store and sell ’em for twenty-five cents each. So I go to the dollar store and buy a whole bunch of pencils.

When I get home, Shoe’s grandma lays me out as soon as I put my key in the door. “Raspberry. Your mother’s going crazy calling around looking for you,” she says, leaning over in her wheelchair and hollering downstairs at me. “And look at you. Just look,” she says, frowning up her face and shaking a head full of curlers.

I look down at my chest. My white shirt has got fat black smudges on it, from me leaning against those dirty cars.

“Your momma is worried sick about you,” she says. “She got her hands full enough, and you ain’t making things no easier for her, you wild, selfish thing.” She starts backing her wheelchair into her apartment. I can hear the wheels squeaking. “Selfish, selfish, selfish. That’s what you is,” she says, slamming the door behind her.

Today, Odd Job is talking my ears off. Working me hard, too. By the time it’s dark, I got thirty dollars in my pocket, including what I made at school selling more pencils. My arms ache so bad I can hardly pick up my backpack.

The ten-minute walk from Odd Job’s corner to home seems like a hour. It’s getting nicer out every day. And everybody and their mother is out here, including Shoe, whose grandmother is hollering out the window for him to get in the house. He’s sitting on the chair Momma left in the street to hold her parking spot. There’s a bunch of boys, including Check, out there with him. One of them tries to trip me when I go by. “Punk,” I say, rolling my eyes at him. Then getting real smart I ask them why they gotta be sitting in front of our door making it hard for people to get inside. Check tells me to be quiet. Shoe throws an empty pop bottle my way. Their grandmother is still yelling for them to come inside the house.

When I step inside the building, the hallway is pitch-black. The lightbulb is out. I hold the door open with my book bag, so the streetlight will help me see better. I look back at Shoe and Check. I can see in their faces that they don’t care. I doubt they’d even pee on me if I was on fire.

I drag my hands across the hallway walls, trying to feel my way to our front door. I’m walking slow. Looking all around me. Wondering if somebody is hiding behind the steps, or by the door. Swallowing hard when I see that our front door ain’t locked, like when I left home. It’s open. And it’s pitch-black in there.

I cut on the light and push the door open wider. I call for Momma, thinking maybe she came home early. A funny noise comes out my mouth when I get inside and see what I see. Our couch is gone. The microwave is gone, and so is the television.

I’m smart enough not to go any further. I back out the door, and run upstairs to Check’s grandmother’s place to call the police. Momma shows up before they come. She goes through the apartment holding my hand. “I can’t believe this,” she says.

I pry her fingers loose and run back to check on my stash. I open the drawer and see the cans turned over every which way— empty. I look under the mattress, but they got the rest of it. Every last penny. Slowly, I go back to the other room where Momma is sitting on the floor.

Momma always knows what to do. But she’s sitting here now, crying with me, saying she don’t know if she can go on no more. And I don’t, either. “I—I keep trying to hold on. To be strong. But I’m tired, Lord!” she yells. She goes to the window and pulls it wide open. “I’m tired!” she’s screaming. “Sick and tired!”

I go to Momma and put my head on her chest. We hold each other. And we both make the same sounds when we cry; like a tired baby that’s been crying a long time, because nobody cared enough to come see about it.

Momma wipes both our faces and sits on the windowsill. Check and Shoe are still out there. So are lots of other people. They’re playing craps. Bunched up on steps in front of the boarded-up place across the way. Some girl is jiggling her butt to music coming from a car parked on the pavement. Three boys circle around her, and they take turns trying to outdance her.

“Somebody out there got our stuff, Raspberry,” Momma says, sounding mad now. Walking over to the cabinets. Pulling ’em open two at a time. She grabs boxes of cereal, bags of rice, plastic ketchup packets—anything she can get her hands on.

“You shoulda just took it all,” she says, going over to the window and throwing our food. She leans herself out the window and screams louder than anything, “You shoulda took everything!”

I hear people outside cursing. Saying we better not come down there if we know what’s good for us. I sit at the table thinking that Momma is just making it worse and worse.

She goes over to the front door and props a kitchen chair under the doorknob. “We can’t stay here no more,” she says. “Even if we get the locks fixed, they will come back again. We—we’re sitting ducks now.”

I tell her that we can’t let people run us off. But she says we can’t stay now that our place’s been hit. “And you here always alone. Sooner or later, something really bad will happen.”

Check and Shoe are still outside. I see Shoe pointing at our window when I go over to pull the shade down.

“We gotta travel light, like before,” Momma says, fingering a broken plate. “Just a few things. Only what we need.”

I look at her like she’s crazy. “Like before?” I say, feeling my heart speed up.

She turns my way, and holds my face in her hands. “Just come with me.”

“We going back to the streets?” I say, reaching into my pocket for my stash. “Not me,” I yell, walking around the room. “Not me. I got money,” I say, pulling dollars and change out my pocket. “See?” I say, pushing the money in her face. Momma pushes my hand out the way.

“We’re lucky. Spring is on the way. A few blankets to keep the evening chill off of us, and we’ll be okay,” she says, going to her bedroom, stuffing pants and work clothes in a green plastic bag. Not seeing, until it’s too late, me standing there wetting myself like a baby.

Momma peels off my wet pants, hands me a towel, and tells me to throw everything in the plastic trash bag. “I’ll hand wash them before we go.”

“Go where?” I ask, while she pulls my shirt over my head, almost pulling my face off, too.

Momma doesn’t answer. She bends down, and tells me to lift my foot up. She takes my socks off, and stuffs all the clothes into the bag.

“Why can’t we stay with somebody for a while? Maybe Ja’nae, Mai, or Zora.”

She shakes her head. Sticks her hand inside the shower and turns on the hot water. “Don’t you remember what it was like before?” Momma asks. “People getting mad ’cause we ate too much of their food. Dropping hints that they wanted us out their place.”

I look at my leg. There’s a trail of pee from my thigh to my ankle. I rub it with my hand at first. Grab a wet rag and rub it till my skin stings.

“I ain’t living on the streets no more,” I say, feeling like I gotta pee on myself all over again. “I’ll do foster care before I do that.”

Momma’s eyes let me know that she didn’t like what I just said to her. But her voice is still warm and soft, like the steam filling up the bathroom and fogging up the mirror. She pulls back the shower curtain, and hands me the soap. “
I
can take care of you,” she says, when I step into the shower.

Before I close the curtain, I ask why we can’t stay in a hotel.

“We gotta save money,” Momma says.

“I
got
money,” I say jumping out the shower, running to my room to dig in my pants pocket. I run back to the bathroom, with money balled up in my hand. “Here. Here’s a hundred and fifty dollars. We can stay someplace nice for a while,” I say, giving Momma my money.

Momma smiles at the money in her hand. She pulls back the shower curtain and says for me to get inside. “We better hold on to this,” she says, pulling the curtain closed behind me. “We don’t know what the day will bring.”

“This is all your fault!” I scream. “You threw away my money . . . made them come after us,” I say, feeling the steam. “You’re the reason we had to live in the streets the
first
time,” I cry. “If it wasn’t for you, we would still have our own place. Not be living in the projects and in the streets and being scared of doing without.”

I know it ain’t true, some of the things I’m saying. But I can’t stop the words, or the tears. So for ten more minutes I yell and scream and cry and tell Momma that I ain’t never gonna be like her when I grow up. I’m gonna have money. I’m gonna take care of my children. I’m gonna keep them safe.

It don’t take no time for the water to go cold, and for the steam to disappear from the bathroom. When I step out the shower, Momma is there. Helping to wipe me down. Reminding me to brush my teeth. Telling me everything will be all right.

On the news, they call it breaking and entering. But I don’t remind my mother of that. She already knows that what we’re doing is wrong. I watch out for the neighbors when Momma takes a screwdriver and breaks out the glass window to the kitchen door at the house in Pecan Landings.

It’s the middle of the night. We got a key chain flashlight shining on the floor in front of our feet, so we can see where we’re going. I’m holding Momma’s arm tight. We drop our bags. Get on our knees to dig pillows and a blanket out one of the biggest of the bags. Momma covers me up and kisses me good night. She’s snoring almost as soon as she rolls over, taking most of the cover with her.

I can’t sleep. I try, but it’s too quiet. At night, I’m used to hearing radios thumping, dogs fighting, or somebody cussing somebody out. But here in Pecan Landings, it’s like everything is dead. I get up and crawl over to the window to look outside. Nobody is hanging out on the street corners, or sitting out on their front steps. Nothing is moving.

I go back over to Momma, and tell her to give me some of the covers. She sits up, quick. Looks around like she don’t know where she is. Shakes her head and smiles at me. She lays back down, pulling some of the cover off her and putting it onto me. “Go to sleep,” she says, putting her arm around me. I close my eyes, and I’m back on the streets again. Dreaming that same old dream. I’m too tired to wake myself up. So I push the cart. All night long, I push the cart.