Begging for Change

by Sharon Flake

  Before Ja’nae and Ming finish dancing, I’m out the front door and headed for home. I hear her yelling for me not to be like that, but I keep on stepping.

  By the time I’m at the end of the block, Sato is walking beside me. Matching every step I take. We don’t say a word to each other till we get to the corner of Nectar and Oak—four blocks away. We in trouble too. The fireplug is on full-blast. Water is shooting halfway ’cross the street onto passing cars, and kids and grown-ups are standing in the street trying to cool down from the heat. Sato and me don’t move. We staring at wet women sliding barefoot across the slippery street like it’s made of ice. We laughing at the pigeon-toed little boy pulling off a wet Pamper and sitting down on the curb butt-naked. It’s crazy. Everybody and everything is wet, except me and him.

  After maybe ten minutes, a man yells for somebody to hold back the water so me and Sato can pass. Six little boys stick their butts up to the fireplug. The water squirts up in the air like a fan.

  We halfway ’cross the street when one kid holding back the water says, “Now!” You can’t outrun water. So we don’t try. We get soaking wet, like everyone else. After that, Sato pulls me over to the fireplug. He holds me ’round the middle while he stands right behind me making sure the water soaks every part of me. I’m kicking and screaming and laughing—swallowing water and wiping it out my eye with my fist. I’m pulling at Sato’s wet, slippery fingers, and begging the girl next to me for her bucket.

  “It’s so hot, you don’t mind people trying to drown you,” Sato says, walking over to the curb and sitting down with me. A few minutes later, he’s talking about what happened at Ja’nae’s.

  “How come you ain’t wanna dance with me?” he asks.

  I lean over and let the cool water roll over my hand. “I don’t know.”

  Sato asks me again. I tell him the truth this time. He don’t laugh. He says he only slow-danced two other times before. “I was practicing with my aunt the first time.”

  Momma probably been home from work a long time now. So I’m gonna be in trouble when I get in. But it’s like a party out here. Water and music and food everywhere. Nobody hurting nobody else. Just people having fun.

  I squeeze water out the bottom of Sato’s T-shirt.

  “You like your freckles?” he asks.

  I stare down at my wet, wrinkled shorts. “I don’t know,” I say.

  He looks up the street at a man pulling a woman into the waterfall. “I do,” he says, sweet and low.

  I keep my mouth closed after that, ’cause I don’t want to ruin things.

  By the time we get to my place, my hair is dry and crunchy like Brillo.

  It’s almost eight o’clock. Sato and me been saying good-bye for a long time. But we still here, in front of my apartment building. I’m standing on the second step. Sato’s on the pavement. There’s a bunch of kids over at Miracle’s building making all kinds of noise. They got a lamp on the porch, and they playing cards and eating food. Weave Girl ain’t with ’em. So nobody’s paying us no mind.

  “I gotta go,” Sato says again. “I’ll be in trouble if I don’t.”

  “Me too,” I say, looking away when his eyes fix on mine. I wonder, when he licks his dry lips, what it would be like to kiss him. Not a long kiss, like they do in the movies. Just a quick one. A peck, Ja’nae would call it.

  Then I see Odd Job coming our way.

  “Raspberry Merry.”

  I back up two steps. “You better go,” I say under my breath.

  Odd Job elbows Sato in the side. “You don’t know how to call and say you gonna be late?” he says to me.

  “Man,” Sato says, pointing and laughing at me. “Your mom sent Odd Job to find you? That’s so lame.”

  I sit down next to Odd Job. He says Momma called him from the university and told him I wasn’t home. Asked if he could go look for me.

  The three of us sit out front for twenty more minutes before Odd Job says for me to get inside so he can go take care of his business.

  I walk up the steps backward, saying bye to Sato six times in a row.

  “You got a home, ain’t you boy?” Odd Job says, putting Sato in a headlock, and knuckling him on the head.

  Sato is so embarrassed. “Aaah, man. I ain’t like that,” he says, breaking loose from Odd Job’s big, strong arms. “Raspberry’s the one that be trying to come after me,” he says, walking up the street backward. “Ask her. See if it ain’t true.”

  Odd Job looks at me and winks. “Better stay away from her boy, ’fore I have to cut you or something,” he says, reaching in his pocket like he gonna pull out a knife.

  I turn to Odd Job and tell him to stop it.

  “Oh, so you embarrassed now,” he says, walking up the steps. “Good. That’s what I’m here for.”

  We sit on the top step till Miracle’s friends get so loud we can’t think.

  “Let’s go,” he says, but neither of us moves.

  I close my eyes and breathe. “Don’t they smell pretty?” I say about the flowers.

  Then I tell Odd Job how Sato wet me up in the fireplug, and how he is the first boy ever to say he likes my freckles. Odd Job leans back on the step and looks me in the eyes. “You sure are pretty,” he says.

  I smile, and wonder when Sato’s gonna say something nice like that to me.

  I’m sleeping in today, even though I could be at work with Momma making money at the dry cleaners. Her boss wanted somebody to come sweep up. Momma asked if I wanted to do it. I said no. I’m too tired. But I was lying. I just wanted to stay in bed and think about Sato. Wonder what it would be like if him and me went together. Momma asked if I was sick, turning down money. I told her no. Just tired.

  After Momma left, I went back to sleep. Ain’t wake up until two o’clock in the afternoon. Stayed in bed eating cereal out the box and watching movies until four. Then somebody knocks on our front door right when my show’s getting good. I’m so busy trying not to miss nothing that I open the door without asking who it is.

  “Raspberrry!” my father yells with his arms stretched out. “Give me a kiss, girl.”

  I take a giant step backward, and try to shut the door. “You can’t come in. Momma said so.”

  Daddy’s run-over boot keeps the door from slamming shut. “I don’t want nothing,” he says, “just my visiting rights is all.”

  Daddy’s high again. He’s gotta hold on to the door to stand up straight. “You okay?” he asks, pulling the door wide open, then letting out a big breath, like he just hauled trash to the curb.

  I tell him that I’m okay. But I’m not. My insides feel like warm Jell-O. I gotta squeeze my lips together so what’s in me don’t come up and go all over him. I swallow and feel sicker inside.

  Daddy’s nose is running like it’s cold out. He wipes it with the back of his hand, rubs his fingers down his pant leg like he’s fixing a crease. “Your Momma in there?” he says, peeking behind me.

  “Yeah. No. She’s coming in a minute, though,” I say, hoping that’ll scare him.

  Daddy’s friend is sitting on the steps, holding his head in his hands like he’s trying to keep it from falling off. A big, brown water stain covers the back of his white T-shirt. Tiny lint balls, looking like popcorn pieces, are stuck in his hair.

  Him and daddy smell—sour. I hold my breath. Turn away when I see greasy black marks on the back of Daddy’s neck when he asks his friend if he got a headache.

  I hated it when Momma and me lived on the streets. The worst part, though, was not being able to wash up when we wanted. We smelled sometimes. Or itched from dirt stuck to our skin like crumbs. When Momma and me was out there, we washed up at restaurants and gas station rest rooms. But sometimes we couldn’t get to one for a few days. That’s when I missed having our own place, being able to clean up, like real people.

  I look at the brown stuff under Daddy’s nails and the dried blood on the side of his face. “You need a bath, Daddy,” I whisper, opening the door wider. The words
come out my mouth at the same time my brain is saying for me to run inside and find another hiding place for my money.

  “You Daddy’s girl, all right,” he says, pushing past me. Yelling for his friend to come in and get something cold to drink.

  Right away, I know I done the wrong thing. ’Cause, soon as he’s inside, Daddy’s sitting on the couch with his boots up on the coffee table—his friend’s opening the fridge, taking out chicken and Kool-Aid, bread and mashed potatoes.

  “You a angel, girl,” his friend says, sticking his finger in the potatoes and sucking it. “Sent from heaven, I tell you.”

  I’m sitting on the floor, under the window. I can smell Momma’s flowers. They make it seem pretty in here, even though it ain’t.

  Daddy goes into the kitchen, opens the fridge, and takes out a peach. He sits down on the other end of the couch and smiles. “You getting big,” he says, not trying to stop the juice from sliding over his lips and down his chin. “Pretty, too. The boys looking at you yet?”

  I start smiling, like I’m stupid. He asks for the boy’s name. Says for me to tell Sato he will kick his butt if he breaks my heart. That makes me feel good for a minute, till I realize that this is Daddy and he don’t never mean what he say.

  Daddy rolls the peach seed around in his mouth. Pulls it out with his fingers and says he’s gonna plant it in the park where he lives sometimes. “Grow something pretty, like your Momma does,” he says, sticking it in his back pocket.

  His friend hands him a plate with two chicken sandwiches on it, piled high with lettuce and tomatoes. They don’t say one word to me while they eating. I excuse myself. Head for my bedroom to get my money, till I get to thinking real good that they might follow me in there and take it all. So I go back to my spot under the window. Sniff the flowers and the funk, and hope Momma calls soon to check in on me.

  Daddy crosses his legs and passes gas. “That was good, good, good,” he says, picking food out his teeth with his fingers, then laying down on the couch.

  “You can’t stay,” I say, standing up. “Momma’s gonna . . .”

  He says they ready to leave any minute now. But they need to wash up. I go to the bathroom. Come back with washcloths and towels. Soap, too. “You first,” Daddy says to his friend. And while the guy’s in the bathroom, Daddy tells me how they’re both broke. “Ain’t got a penny between the two of us.”

  I’m in the kitchen, putting food back in the fridge, so worried ’bout them taking my stash that I’m dropping forks and napkins, tasting warm Jell-O in my throat again. “We broke too,” I say, bending down and wiping mayo off the floor.

  Daddy smiles. Says he gotta pee. I’m glad, ’cause now I can go put my money someplace else. Drop it out the window into the yard, even. But when I get into the living room, I see Daddy in Momma’s room.

  “You ain’t supposed to be in here,” I say, snatching her jewelry case out his hand.

  “Y’all got a little change? A few dollars, don’t you?”

  I shake my head. Tell him again to get out. “Now!”

  He ain’t listening. He’s opening drawers. Checking dress pockets and dumping out old purses Momma got piled on top of a shelf in her clothes closet. I run out the room. Grab the phone and start dialing Momma’s job.

  “Your momma just gonna get mad,” he says, pressing the receiver down. “She’ll call the cops or something.”

  His hand is covering mine. Rubbing and squeezing my fingers at the same time.

  “Just a few pennies. Ten, twenty bucks. Your momma got that ’round here someplace, don’t she?”

  If I say yes, and go get him a little cash, he will leave—maybe. But if I say no, he will stay way too long, begging me for money, maybe even hurting me. So I nod my head up and down and tell him not to follow me when I go get the money.

  “Whatever you say, princess.”

  Momma always keeps a few dollars in her room. But I can’t give that to him. It ain’t right. So I go to my room and get the money I took off Zora. Before my hand is out from under the rug, though, Daddy’s got a hold of my money. Pulling back the rug and taking a whole bunch more.

  “That’s mine!” I scream. “I worked for that!”

  I ain’t notice how red his eyes was before. Or the way he keeps licking his lips and clicking his teeth. “It’s a whole lot here. Maybe two hundred dollars,” he says.

  “It’s mine,” I say, trying to grab it off him.

  Daddy slaps my hand. “How you get all this money, girl? You stole it?”

  I tell him I ain’t no thief. “So give it back.”

  He’s walking into the living room, hollering for his friend. Asking me again how I got all this money. “’Cause if you stole it, then you had this coming. ’Cause nothing good comes of bad money.”

  I get up in his face. “Then you shouldn’t take my money, ’cause nothing good’s gonna come of it,” I say, holding both my hands out.

  Daddy’s friend opens the front door. He asks how much Daddy came up with. I beg my father again and again not to take my stuff. He looks me right in the eye and says, “Sorry. But I need this for something.”

  When he’s outside on the pavement, I let out a scream so loud and scary that Miz Evelyn across the street comes to her front door and asks what’s wrong.

  “They,” I say pointing to my dad. “They. . .”

  My father pulls down his pant leg and straightens up his back. “Nothing good’s gonna come of it nohow,” he says, shoving the money in his pocket and walking away.

  I can’t move. It feels like my feet are stuck in ten pounds of peanut butter. But I scream so much that Miz Evelyn runs into the street, right in front of a moving car, just to get to me.

  “You all right,” she says, holding me. Rocking me. “No matter what, you gonna be all right.”

  I know what she says is true, but I cannot stop screaming. No matter how hard I try.

  Momma nailed the windows shut. All of ’em. She said she would pick up three ceiling fans and that would be enough to keep us cool. I tried to tell her that we was gonna die in here with no outside air to breathe and cool us off. But she ain’t listening to me.

  “He might come back while I’m working and hurt you, or take everything we got,” she said, banging nails into the wood, closing her eyes when paint chips start to fly.

  It’s my fault, what happened. I told her that. But Momma ain’t hold it against me. Just said she wanted me safe. After that she got on the phone with Dr. Mitchell and mentioned something about getting a restraining order against Daddy. That way the police would pick him up if he came around again. I was for it, at first. I ain’t want him taking no more money off me. Then it made me sad thinking of them hauling him off to jail. Momma musta felt the same way, ’cause by the time she was done on the phone, she decided not to do it. But the nailed windows was gonna stay shut, she said. That was a week and a half ago. I been sweating ever since.

  Yesterday Momma came in my room real early, before the sun was even up. “We gotta get outta here,” she said, laying down next to me. Holding me so tight it hurt.

  I was wondering when Momma would say it was time for her and me to hit the streets again. To live anyplace but here, where Daddy can find us anytime he wants. I turn my head, so she don’t see me cry.

  “No, baby,” Momma says, wiping my tears. “We ain’t running, just getting away for a while. To the beach. Like rich folks do when they can’t take it no more.”

  Momma said she talked to Dr. Mitchell late last night. Told him she needed to get away to someplace pretty. I wanna stay here, I tell her, and make back the money Daddy stole off me. Momma says no. I gotta go too.

  “I’m not frying up chicken or packing a thing,” Momma says, crawling out my bed.

  She’s wiping sweat off her neck with a shirt I got sitting on the dresser. “I’m just gonna have fun, for once.”

  Zora and me are in the backseat. She’s pressed up against the door like she’s trying to get out. I’m leani
ng on the other one. We both facing a window, so we don’t have to see or talk to each other.

  Since my dad stole that money off me, I keep thinking about what Zora said at Mai’s house. She’s right—even if I don’t say it to her—when people steal, they kill something deep inside you.

  By the time we stop for gas, and pick up chairs and new towels, it’s loud and crowded on the beach. The sun is white hot and the blue in the sky is as pretty and clear as the dish liquid we keep in a bottle by the sink. The sand is so hot you can’t just walk on it. You gotta run or hop from foot to foot to get across.

  Momma says for me and Zora to go find a spot. She and Dr. Mitchell gonna rest. Zora and me both do the same thing—look around at all the shiny, greasy people sitting in lawn chairs and lying on the sand. “We not gonna find a good spot,” I say, with my hands on my hips. “It’s too many people out here.”

  Dr. Mitchell tells me and Zora to get going. “Unless you two wanna stand up all day.” Then he and Momma start taking off their clothes. Folding ’em, and laying ’em over the chairs. “We’ll be in the water,” he says, taking Momma by the hand and running.

  Me and Zora stand there like we stupid. She picks up a chair and Momma’s things, and starts walking with her sneakers in her hand.

  “Your feet will burn,” I say, before I remember we ain’t speaking.

  Her gray eyes find mine. They look soft and sad. She drops her sneakers in the sand and steps into ’em. Then she picks up her bag and chair and keeps walking. I do the same.

  The spot we find is too close to the water. I tell Zora that.

  “So sit someplace else,” she says, flapping her beach towel too close to my face.

  I move my stuff away from hers. Sit down in the chair and watch Momma and Dr. Mitchell. He’s trying to make her go into the deep part of the water. Momma can’t swim. She’s pushing him away and laughing real hard.

  I roll my eyes at Zora. “Excuse me,” I say, snatching my magazine out from under her foot.

  Zora rubs sunscreen on her arms and legs. When she gets her CD outta the bag, sand flies into my face. I blink and rub my eyes and tell her to watch it.