Money Hungry (3 page)

Even though I’m not supposed to, I sold some more stuff at school today. So on my way to Zora’s house, I’m using the calculator to figure out how much money I made. I’m so busy counting dollars that I don’t notice I’m on the express bus. It doesn’t stop for six blocks now.

Two old ladies run off at the mouth all the time I’m on this bus. They’re complaining about their arthritis and grandkids who don’t never come by or call. Stuff like that.

But then they say something that makes me listen up. One of ’em says that the hardest part about being old is not being able to keep her place clean like before.

“I can’t hardly pick up my eyeglasses, let alone pick up a bucket and scrub down the place,” she says.

Soon as one of ’em shuts up, the other one puts in her two cents’ worth. “Girl, I ain’t spending my golden years hauling trash and scrubbing floors, when I can be catching sales and eating out,” she says, puffing up her hair. “I bring somebody else in to take care of that.”

The short one, whose legs don’t even touch the floor when she’s sitting down, turns to her friend and says, “I paid a woman seventy-five dollars just to come and straighten up a little, and my house was still a mess after she left.”

For a minute, they just sit there. Then one of ’em reaches up to grab hold of the cord overhead, and pulls it to let the driver know she wants off at the next stop.

“I don’t use these triflin’ cleaning women no more,” she says, standing. “My neighbor’s girl comes in and straightens up for me. She’s fifteen, but she cleans as good as grown-ups do,” she says, buttoning her coat, and standing to leave with her friend.

When they’re gone, I clear my calculator screen. There ain’t nothing but some money waiting for me if I clean up some of them old people’s places, I’m thinking.

While I’m walking the six blocks back to Zora’s house, I’m smiling. Not even feeling the cold. Just thinking about getting paid seventy-five dollars just to clean somebody’s place up. Shoot, Momma got me doing that at home for free.

By the time I’m around the corner from Zora’s house, I got things figured out. If I can find some old people to clean up after, I can make a hundred fifty, two hundred dollars a week. My mouth starts watering just thinking about all that cash. I stop for a minute, and do some more figuring on my calculator. When I look up again, I see Zora’s dad’s car zoom by me. I guess he don’t recognize me, all bundled up like I am.

Momma and me been knowing Zora and her dad since they moved around here three years ago. We saw ’em at the soup kitchen, while we was living in the streets. Dr. Mitchell brought Zora there because he wanted to show her how the other half lived. Said she was getting too snooty. Too sassy. Too much like her mother, I guess.

Me and Momma was at the soup kitchen serving stuff. When we wasn’t doing that, we was way back in the corner, eating till our stomachs got full. Momma would never let us eat unless we cleaned and served others first.

Dr. Mitchell and Momma got to talking and it turned out they both come from the same place . . . the projects on the other side of town. Dr. Mitchell knew Momma’s brother who got shot for four quarters and a bottle of beer on his twenty-first birthday.

When Dr. Mitchell found out we was living on the streets, he invited us to come stay at their place till we got back on our feet. Zora looked like she would die if we did that. Momma said no. She told Dr. Mitchell we would make out.

A couple months later, we finally got us a place in the projects. Our first night, Momma cried till the streetlights went off. She said she was just tired, but I think she was sad over ending up right back in the projects where she started out all them years ago.

Zora, Ja’nae, and Mai don’t even say hi when I get upstairs. They tell me to shut up so they don’t miss the show they’re watching. I roll my eyes at them, and take me a slice of cold pizza sitting on the dresser.

We all live near each other. Mai’s up here in Pecan Landings with Zora. I live five miles from here, up the tallest hill in the world. Folks say it’s to keep us project kids from coming down to Pecan Landings and causing trouble. That don’t stop me none. I’m down here all the time.

Ja’nae lives with her grandparents. She’s younger than us three by five months. But you wouldn’t know it. She’s short and fat, and dresses like them old church women do, with skirts down past her knees. Her face is beautiful, though, especially her big, dark eyes. If you don’t believe me, ask Mai’s brother, Ming. He loves himself some Ja’nae. Ja’nae likes him, too. But Ja’nae knows ain’t nothing gonna happen between her and Ming. Ja’nae’s granddad is crazy. Ever since her mom took off, he keeps her in lockdown as much as he can. He thinks if he doesn’t, Ja’nae will end up just like her mother.

“What took you so long?” Zora says to me when her show goes off.

I don’t answer. I sit down on the floor next to her, and start talking about how we can make us some good money.

Soon as I open my mouth, Zora zips up the sleeping bag she’s in till we can’t see nothing but her ponytail. Mai puts on her earphones and turns it up so loud I can hear every word the band is singing. Ja’nae up and walks out the room. None of them want to hear me out.

I yell for ’em to listen up. Tell ’em I know how we can make us some decent dollars. Mai don’t wanna hear it. “You always say that,” she says. “It never do work out that way.”

Ja’nae reaches in the pizza box and scrapes a clump of cheese off the box top. She rolls it into a small ball with the tip of her fingers, and flicks it into her mouth. “You too money hungry,” she says.

“You just too hungry,” I snap back.

Ja’nae’s big eyes start to blink. She gets real quiet.

“Sorry,” I say.

I been making my own money since I was four years old and my granddad paid me a quarter to clear his dinner plate when he came to visit. Later on, when Daddy was acting out and money got tight, I would go hunting for loose change on the street like a pigeon hunts for bread. On Saturdays I’d get up early and beg people to let me carry their groceries to their car. I’d pick their things up before they had a chance to say no. It helped, me being a girl. People would give me a dollar but still carry their own stuff. Much as I tried, I couldn’t make enough money to keep Momma and me from ending up on the streets.

Now Zora and them are talking about how greedy I am. How I’m always trying to make a dollar. They’re right. But as long as I got two hands, I ain’t never living in the street no more. Ain’t never gonna be broke, neither.

When they’re all quiet, I finally get to say what I gotta say. When I’m finished, they just stare at me. Then they bust out laughing. All three of ’em.

“You out your mind? I ain’t cleaning nobody’s house,” Ja’nae says, frowning. She walks over to Zora’s dresser, picks up a pair of gold hoop earrings, and asks if she can put them on.

“Sato’s right,” Zora says, shaking her head no to Ja’nae. “You’ll do anything for a dollar.”

They’re all staring at me like I said I want to sell body parts or something.

Usually, it’s easy to get them to go along with things. But now that I’m talking ’bout mopping and dusting, their jaws get tight.

“Why would we wanna be somebody’s maid?” Zora asks.

Mai is the next to speak up. “No. No way,” she says, curling up her lips and shaking her head. “My mom and dad work me like a dog now. Got me always smelling like grease and chicken and fried pork from working on their food truck. No way am I gonna start smelling like bleach, and Pine-Sol, too.” She stands up and starts making fun of her dad. He’s Korean. “Egg roll. Yes, we have that . . . and collard greens with a side of fried rice. Yes, yes,” she says, smiling way too much, and bowing down low while she wipes her hands on an invisible apron, and pats sweat from her forehead.

“He is so embarrassing,” she says. “Always talking that talk. He’s been in this country twenty years and he still can’t speak English right,” she says, throwing a handful of bobby pins across the room.

Mai has a faraway look in her eyes. “Why did my mother have to marry my father? Why not a nice black man like your dad, Zora? He’s nice. Smart.”

I want to tell Mai to stick to the subject of us making money cleaning houses. But it’s too late. Zora’s talking about her mom and dad and how she ended up living with her father, not her mother.

Then Ja’nae steps in. “Mai, you lucky you even got a dad,” she says. Ja’nae don’t even know her father. Not even his name. And her mother just up and left one day. She went to the store for orange juice and cigarettes. Two days later she called to say she was in California, that she had to get her head clear. That was years ago.

Ja’nae’s grandmother calls Ja’nae’s mother the Triflin’ Heifer. “That Triflin’ Heifer sent you a letter today,” she’ll say, right in front of me. “That Triflin’ Heifer called and asked how you doing. Like she really care.” Ja’nae never says nothing about her mother to her grandmother. But sometimes, when I spend the night at Ja’nae’s place, she cries herself to sleep, holding on to letters from that Triflin’ Heifer.

I go over to Zora’s CD player and put on some tunes. Ja’nae is the first one to start dancing. Her arms and legs are flying all over the place. Mai is singing loud with the music like she can really carry a tune. Zora’s foot is moving back and forth inside her sleeping bag. I’m watching all of them jammin’ to the music.

When the music stops, I go to Zora’s bathroom, stick my mouth underneath the faucet, and take a few gulps. “Y’all with me on this housecleaning thing?” I ask, wiping my mouth dry with the back of my hand.

They don’t even bother to answer me. Ja’nae just puts on another CD and starts throwing down again. The harder she dances, the more she sweats, and the sweeter the room gets. Ja’nae got this thing about smelling good. She says kids think all fat people stink. So she makes sure she smells good twenty-four/seven. She’s got cotton balls sprayed with perfume pinned to her bra strap, stuffed in her pocket, and sitting in her purse. Sometimes it’s too much, and the smell can make you wanna gag.

“The only one that makes any money working with you is you,” Mai says, knocking her skinny hips from side to side. Next thing I know, she’s at the mirror, frowning, going for her eyebrows with the tweezers. She’s pushing up the end of her brow with one finger and holding down her eyelid with another.

Mai’s brows are big, bushy, shiny things. They are beautiful, though, just like her slanty eyes, and long, thick lashes. Half the time, people can’t figure out what race she is. And they’re always telling her how exotic she looks, like she’s some kind of bird or plant that somebody shipped here from halfway cross the world.

While Mai picks at herself, Zora starts agreeing with her. “Raspberry, we work hard for you and don’t get nothing out the deal,” Zora says, going over to her drawer and pulling out three crumpled dollar bills. “See.” She throws balls of money across the room. One of ’em lands right in Ja’nae’s shoe. “Three lousy bucks for all my work.”

Ja’nae takes the cash and puts it into her pocket. Zora hunches her shoulders like three dollars ain’t no big deal. If somebody threw money at me, I wouldn’t be shrugging it off, even if it was a penny.

I can tell by how all three of them are looking that they ain’t gonna change their minds. They’re fed up with my stuff, same as Momma.

“Old folks would pay big-time for somebody to help ’em out,” I say.

“My mother didn’t raise no maid,” Zora says.

Mai screwed up her eyebrows, but she throws up her shoulders like she could care less. Now she’s squeezing a pimple, watching a white, wiggly worm-looking thing ooze out all over. She looks a mess standing there with her messed-up eyebrows and that worm sitting on her cheek.

“I gotta go,” Ja’nae says. “I gotta interview Ming for a class paper I’m writing.”

Nobody asks Ja’nae what the paper is about, ’cause we know she’s gonna tell us even if we don’t want to know.

“It’s for English class,” she says. “Mr. Knight says we should interview somebody we know. Get them to tell us something noteworthy about themselves.”

Mai turns around. She got her hands on her hips and her lips stuck out. Her cheek is as red as an apple.

When Zora sees Mai’s face, she turns away fast. I know she wanna bust out laughing. But she knows now ain’t the time. So she goes and lies down on the bed and shoves a fistful of cheese balls into her mouth.

Mai tells Ja’nae she better not go dragging her business into school. “I’m not playing,” Mai says, getting loud.

Next thing I know, Ja’nae is messing with Mai, telling her she and Ming should be proud of being mixed.

“I ain’t mixed. I’m black . . . like you,” Mai says, throwing her tweezers at Ja’nae.

I don’t know why Ja’nae even goes there.

She knows how Mai feels about her mixed race, and how Ming feels about being mixed, too. Ming don’t want to be called black, African American, or Korean. He says he’s biracial. Mai don’t want to be called Korean or biracial. She’s black. Call her anything different, and she will go off on you.

Ja’nae won’t stop talking about her paper for school. She’s saying maybe she will even interview Mr. Kim, Mai’s dad.

Mai’s looking like she wanna hurt somebody. “Why don’t you go write about your own screwed-up family,” she says, getting up in Ja’nae’s face, stomping loud on the floor. Now Zora’s dad is yelling upstairs for us to stop making so much noise, to stop acting like hoodlums, and start acting like young ladies.

Ja’nae and Mai get real quiet, but they’re still in each other’s face.

“You interview my dad, or Ming and I’ll . . . I’ll . . . I’ll tell your grandfather you snuck Ming into your house when he wasn’t home.”

Ja’nae’s eyes get all big. She knows what happens to sneaks in her granddad’s house.

They get into big-time trouble.

Jan’ae tries to defend herself. “It’s not like we did anything. We just watched TV. Anyhow, my grandmother knows about Ming. She was there when he came over.”

“So your grandmother gonna get in trouble, too,” Mai says, rubbing Vaseline on her eyebrows.

Zora don’t seem bothered by none of this. She’s just watching it all, lying on her bed, still stuffing her face with cheese balls.

“Forget you and your brother and your whole stupid family,” Ja’nae says.

All of a sudden, Zora’s making this sound like a cat coughing up hair balls. Soggy, half chewed-up cheese balls come flying out her mouth and all over Ja’nae’s feet.

“You
pig
. You did that on purpose,” Ja’nae says, shaking her foot, kicking cheese stuff onto Zora’s white rug.

Soon Ja’nae’s got Zora pressed down on her bed, and she’s pouring the can of cheese balls down her shirt. Mai and me grab the can and start bouncing cheese balls off each other’s head.

When I look up, there’s Zora’s mom standing in the doorway. “What’s going on here?” she wants to know. “Pick up the mess and keep down the noise, girls,” she says, stomping over to the bed, and jerking Ja’nae’s hands off Zora.

I want to ask why she even cares what’s going on. She ain’t living here no more. Her and Zora’s dad are divorced, only you wouldn’t know it. Her mom comes by a couple times a week and walks around the house like she owns it. Tells the housekeeper what to do, stuff like that.

Zora thinks it’s goofy, too. But her parents say they don’t want their divorce to change her life.

When Ms. Mitchell turns around to leave, I grab one of the cheese balls and throw it after her. It gets stuck in the back of her hair.

“Somebody thinks they’re funny?” she asks, stomping out the room, pulling the cheese ball out her hair. Ja’nae falls down on the bed, laughing, with her hand over her mouth. Zora runs into her bathroom, slams the door, and starts cracking up. I cover my head with a blanket, but I can hear Ms. Mitchell walking down the steps, saying she don’t know why we always gotta be hanging out at her child’s house. Me, I’m wondering the same thing about her.