by Sharon Flake
Daddy’s head is still bleeding. Blood is all over my sheet, on the floor in my room, and the rug in the living room. I’m walking in circles. Using a wet sponge to wipe the blood off my fingers and from beneath my nails. Telling him again and again, “You gotta go. Now.”
He’s sleepy. Balled up like a baby with his black feet dirtying up my pink spread.
“Use some gloves,” Sato says, carrying the bucket to the bathroom. “You don’t know if he has AIDS or not.”
We walk back to my room, water spilling over the sides of the bucket and onto the floor. The knot on Daddy’s head is as fat and wide as a doughnut hole. His eye is still swollen shut. “It hurts,” Daddy says over and over again.
Sato wrings out a wet rag and hands it to me. “He needs a doctor.”
I look at him, then back at Daddy. “Doctors don’t come to your house,” I say.
Sato dips a rag in the bucket, starts wiping the blood away. “You wanna do it?” he says, handing it to me.
I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t wanna clean him either if he wasn’t my dad. “Do his feet then, okay? They so dirty. They look like they hurt.”
He puts on a second pair of plastic gloves and reaches for a rag. “Maybe Dr. Mitchell should come.”
I squeeze bloody water out the rag. “No. He would tell Momma.”
It don’t take Sato long to clean Daddy’s feet, even though he had to wash ’em three times ’fore they was mostly clean. And it’s easier than I thought to get the blood out the rug. But we can’t get Daddy’s head to stop bleeding, no matter what we do. In the last hour we changed the bandage three times.
Now we gotta do it again.
“He needs stitches,” Sato says.
I look down at my gloves. I go to the kitchen for ice, take off the bandage and ice Daddy’s head even though he slaps my hand away when I do.
Sato wipes sweat from his forehead and downs the rest of the pop I gave him. “You shoulda let the police take him,” he says.
I look at Daddy and get so mad down deep inside that I want to take something and hit him. You ought to be taking care of me! I want to yell. Protecting me from the cops. Not me protecting you. Then I do what I don’t want to do. I call Dr. Mitchell. Only he ain’t at the office, so I try him at home.
“Your father there?” I ask Zora when she finally picks up the phone.
“No,” she says, hanging up.
I call right back. I tell her I really have to talk to her dad. It’s Wednesday, she says. He don’t work in the office today. He’s making rounds at the hospital. “And you better not bother him there.”
I look over at Sato and my dad. “Zora.” That’s all I can say.
“You finished?” she asks.
“Zora . . .”
I can tell she’s gonna hang up.
“Daddy . . .”
“He’s not your father. He’s mine. So you and your mom stop trying to hog him up like—”
The words fall out my mouth faster than rotten peaches from a wet paper bag. “My father got beat up and the police brought him to my house bleeding and I need somebody to help me fix him up ’cause Momma gonna kill me if she find out he’s here.”
Zora’s so quiet it’s like she’s not even there. “I woulda given you the money,” she says. “Lent you more than that even.”
My father turns over, sits up, and coughs. Then goes back to sleep again.
“You supposed to let a person sleep when they get hit in the head?” I ask.
She hangs up the phone.
I look at Sato, then I walk over to my dad and press cold wet tissues to the knot on his head. The blood still won’t stop, so I get more tissue and do the same thing over and over again.
When the phone rings, I tell Sato to answer it. I’m gonna have to call my mother anyway, I think, so it don’t matter if it’s her on the other end.
“It’s Zora,” Sato says, handing me the phone.
“You shouldn’t let a person sleep too long if they were hit in the head,” she says. “You have to wake them up off and on, like they did your mother in the hospital.”
I pat my father’s cheeks. “Wake up, Daddy.”
He turns over and change falls out his pocket—four quarters and a dime.
I whisper the words so low, I ain’t sure Zora hears ’em. “I know how it feels when somebody steals from you.”
Zora don’t waste no time saying what she thinks. “Good. Now tell my dad what you did. Your mother, too.”
I wanna let Zora know that this is between me and her—not everyone else in the whole, wide world. But my father starts talking crazy. Saying he wants the money I just stole out his pocket. “I gotta go, Zora.”
Zora don’t let me hang up before she tries to get in the last word. “You need to tell my dad, Raspberry.”
I put the change back in my father’s pocket. “You want me to tell him so he can hate me too?”
Zora don’t say nothing for a long time. “Yeah!” she says, hanging up the phone.
Sato’s gone. He said he had to go do something for his mom. Daddy’s sitting on the side of the bed, holding his head. Telling me to give him two more aspirin even though he just took four.
“When your mother due in?” he asks, feeling the knot on his head. Looking at his hand and checking for blood.
“Soon,” I tell him, glad his head stopped bleeding.
Daddy stands up, zips his pants, and walks over to the chair by the door. I go to my drawer and take out a clean sheet and pillowcase.
“That boy that just left, he that one you talked about liking? Satin. No. Sato, right?”
I tell my father that Sato had to go home.
His mom and dad were going to church and he had to watch his brothers and sisters.
I pull off the bloody pillowcases and sheets and put on the clean purple ones with flowers.
“One day,” my father says, wiggling his toes and checking out the bottom of his feet, “I’m gonna send you a case of sheets. Towels too. Pretty ones. Pink. Blue. Ivory.”
I go to the window and open it real wide. “You gotta go,” I say. “Right now.”
Daddy stays put, asking me if I got a comb he can use.
I get loud on him, this time. Ask him how come he don’t care if he gets me in trouble with Momma. When he walks out the room, I’m right behind him, making sure he don’t go into Momma’s room and take nothing. He sits down on the couch, pulls out a pack of cigarettes and lights up. “When I get myself together, you gonna have more than you need,” he says. “Lots of pretty stuff.”
I stare down at the floor. “You ain’t got no money, Daddy,” I say.
My father goes into the kitchen and opens the fridge like he lives here too. Then he says that he ain’t always gonna be broke down like he is now. “I’m gonna get me some help.”
Daddy’s talking ’bout going to a treatment center, and getting his old job back at the office where he worked downtown. I sit down at the table and listen to him go on and on. When he say he gonna buy me a diamond tennis bracelet when times get better, I take my hand and slide it across the table real fast, watching the sugar bowl fly into the air and smash against the refrigerator. Sugar is all over the floor. I apologize to Daddy, then excuse myself and go to the bathroom, taking the cordless phone with me.
“Odd Job,” I say, when I dial his cell phone number for the third time.
“Raspberry Merry,” he says. “What’s up?”
“My . . .”
“You all right?” he says.
“He—”
“He what?” Odd Job says, acting like he wanna punch somebody right now. “Sato done something to you, girl?” I tell Odd Job I ain’t want nothing. “Your Daddy been by again? He there now? Bothering you?”
I shut the bathroom door. Sit on the stool with my feet and legs up. “My father . . .”
Odd Job says for me not to worry, he’s coming over right now. I lie. Say Daddy ain’t here. That I heard that he was ’round Odd
Job’s way yesterday. “I’m just checking is all.”
Odd Job tells me he ain’t seen Daddy in weeks, then he asks how come I’m talking so funny. “Sad and quiet.”
“I just woke up,” I say, standing up and unlocking the door.
He says he’ll talk to me later, ’cause he’s washing somebody’s ride right now.
I hang up the phone. When I get to the living room, Daddy’s at the front door ready to leave. Wasn’t even gonna say bye or nothing.
“Gonna take a handful of your Momma’s flowers,” he says, pointing to the ones out front. “Just to sweeten me up some,” he says, sniffing under his arms and making a funny face. Then he tells me how the peach seed he planted is growing real nice. And that one day people gonna be glad he lived in the park, ’cause they gonna be able to eat some sweet, juicy peaches ’cause of him.
I look up and down the street to see if anybody’s out. Miracle’s sitting on her steps.
“You saved my life, baby girl,” Daddy says, holding my face with his hands. “You my own little angel.”
I look down at his feet. Ask where his boots went to. He says he sold ’em, for a “little something, something.” But he’ll have some soon, ’cause he’s headed for the corner right now, so he can hustle up some change.
I pull up the flowers for Daddy and give him more than I should.
He sticks them in his shirt pocket. “I named it Raspberry, you know.”
“You named what Raspberry?” I ask, keeping my eye on Miracle.
“My peach tree. I call it my Raspberry Girl.”
Daddy walks up the street, stops at Miracle’s place like he knows her, and gives her some of his flowers. A few minutes later, he gets up, looks back my way and waves, then walks up the street.
Miracle don’t stomp on the flowers like she did before. She don’t get smart with me or come over to our place. She’s just sitting there watching Daddy walk away, just like me.
He did it again. Stole my money while I was in the bathroom, I guess. Most of it wasn’t there, though. I put it in the bank like Momma said. But I had a hundred fifty bucks under that rug. And he took it. Just like before. After all I done for him.
“You stupid,” Ja’nae says. “Shoulda kept it in your pocket or banked it. Anyhow, he’s a crackhead. They always taking what’s not theirs.”
We in my room with the door shut. Momma’s on the phone, seeing when the new beds, kitchen, and dining room sets she ordered gonna be delivered to our new place.
I tell Ja’nae I’m gonna get my money back. “No matter what.”
She says it’s been a week since Daddy took the money, so it’s spent by now. I don’t care. He’s gonna give it back to me even if I gotta stand on the corner next to him while he begs for it, I tell her. Ja’nae says that’s mean, what I just said. “But it ain’t right for your father to take what’s yours. To steal from his own blood.”
I ain’t tell Momma about it this time. I took the sheets, gloves, and rags and dropped ’em in the alley behind Miz Evelyn’s house while she was next door talking.
“We going over Ja’nae’s house,” I tell my mother. She waves her hand and keeps on talking to the person on the phone. She’s happy, I guess, ’cause we can buy new stuff for once. Not have to use leftover furniture like usual.
“We gotta hurry up,” I tell Ja’nae, when we get to the end of my block. She says she don’t want to go. I tell her she can stay here if she wants. But I’m gonna get my money back from my father—now. A half hour later, we getting off the 27A, standing outside Ming’s house, ringing the front doorbell.
“Why you gotta drag them into my business?” I ask Ming when Su-bok, Ling, and Couch come out the house with him.
Ming says Mai’s on punishment again, and he gotta watch out for Su-bok and Ling while his parents take her to some counselor.
Su-bok’s hair is bright pink today. “What’s up?” she says.
Sato is carrying Ling. Her hair is French braided with lots of yellow, blue, and green barrettes. “Ja’nae made me pretty,” she says, smiling.
I tell Ming he messed things up by bringing The Cousins. “I can’t just take them anyplace. They gonna be scared.”
He looks at me like he wants me to be quiet.
“We going to Freejack Park. That ain’t no place for kids,” I say.
“If Ming don’t go, I don’t go,” Ja’nae says, holding tight to his hand.
“They don’t go, I don’t go,” Ming says, looking at The Cousins.
“All y’all make me sick,” I say, walking away from them.
We walk in twos for the next ten blocks. Ja’nae and Ming are first, The Cousins, then Sato and me. He got me by the hand. Every once in a while, I feel his thumb rub my sweaty palm. It’s hard to be mad while he’s doing that. Hard to concentrate on Daddy too.
In a way, I know what I am doing is stupid. My money is gone, just like everybody says. But I still wanna see my father. I want him to look me in the eyes and tell me how a person can steal from his own child. When we get to the park, Ming starts to back out. He says he might get in trouble bringing his cousins to a place like this. I look at him. His face is as brown as a gingersnap cookie now that the sun’s been beating down on it all summer long. His hair is braided all over and pulled back into a ponytail that goes way past his shoulders. He could pass for a Puerto Rican around this way. But The Cousins, they are who they are.
Ain’t no kids in this here park. Just grown-ups. Men playing craps over by the wall where the closed-down swimming pool is. Men sweating and cussing while they playing hoops and drinking beer. Women scratching, and taking drags off cigarettes and weed. Crackheads and drunks all over the place.
“I don’t see your dad. Let’s go,” Sato says, pulling me by the arm.
I point to the other side of the park. “He could be way over there, can’t tell from here, though,” I say, bending down, then standing on my tiptoes, to see what I can see.
Ja’nae lets Ming’s hand go. She comes over to me and says, “We shouldn’t be here.”
I stare into the park, feeling sorry for the trees that look as skinny and half dead as the crackheads walking around here.
“I want to go home,” Ling says, putting her arm around my waist.
Su-bok is so quiet. She ain’t shaking her butt ’round this place. She all up under Ming and Ja’nae.
“Y’all can go,” I tell ’em. “I’m gonna find my father.”
“Ahh, man,” Ming says, getting mad. “You and Mai get on my nerves. Never listen to people when they telling you the right thing to do.”
I look at Sato, wanting him to take up for me. He’s staring into the park. “Every week, somebody dies in this here place.”
“Everybody goes or nobody goes,” Ja’nae says, putting her arm around my shoulder. “We girls. So I gotta go,” she says, staring at Ming.
Ming says something in Korean. Ling and Su-bok laugh.
“Oh, Ming, I’m gonna tell on you,” Ling says, taking her fingers and digging ’em into Couch’s ear. He growls at her, then walks over to me and lays down by my feet.
“Couch will bite if I tell him to,” Ling says.
Sato looks at me like I ain’t got good sense. “Let’s just go and get it over with.”
Freejack Park is small, so it don’t take no time to get through the whole thing.
“I can jump rope,” Ling says, closing her eyes, turning her hands, and jumping up and down. “One. Two. Buckle my shoe. Three. Four—”
“We don’t wanna hear no more,” Sato says, picking her up and sitting her on his shoulders.
Ling is laughing. Sato is running with her up there, saying he ain’t responsible if she falls down and busts her head wide open. He is maybe twelve trees ahead of us now. Then all of a sudden he stops, turns around and runs back to where we are. Ling is bumping up and down on his shoulders like she riding a horse, holding on to her eyeglasses. Sato can’t hardly talk or breathe when he gets back to us. “I seen,
I seen your father. Over there,” he says, bending down and letting Ling off.
Warm Jell-O fills my mouth again.
“You okay?” Ja’nae says, taking my hand.
I nod my head yes.
Sato gets all up in my face, his breath smelling like milk. “He don’t look so good. Maybe you don’t wanna . . .”
I don’t plan for it to happen, but my feet start moving backward. Sweat starts running down the middle of my back like ants crawling down my spine.
Ling grabs my other hand. “How come your father lives outside, Raspberry? Not in a house with you?”
My mouth is so dry it hurts when I talk. “He just don’t, that’s all,” I yell.
Ja’nae tells me to stay put till we can think of what to do. The ants are on my legs and arms now. I’m sweating and itching everywhere.
Sato is talking about the sun going down and us not being in here when that happens. I look up at the sky. It’s as bright as it was first thing this morning. It’s only seven o’clock at night, I want to tell him. The sun ain’t going no place.
Ja’nae is talking and talking. Saying that even though my father ripped me off, he is still my father.
I look at a man wrapped tight like a mummy in a greasy, green sleeping bag, and a woman with no hair pushing a shopping cart full of trash.
“I wanna go,” Ling says, starting to cry.
Su-bok says she ain’t scared, but she’s holding on to Ming’s shirtsleeve.
My feet start up again. And we all walk past the swings with no seats, rusted monkey bars, and seesaws with half the seat broken off. Sato says Daddy is over there. I run to where he is and holler at the top of my lungs, “Give me my money back!”
My father is covered with old newspaper. His eyes open and shut. Half a smile is on his face.
“Had a bad night,” his friend says, covering his eyes from the sun. “He can’t hear nothing you say.”
I put my hand out, and tell him I want my money now. His friend laughs. Says whatever Daddy took off me is long gone now. Then he tells me I better get going. “Your dad would be mad at you being in a place like this.”