by Sharon Flake
“You want it or not?” I say, putting my hand out for the money.
“What you do with all the money you make off us?” he says, wiping cheeseburger juice off his chin with the back of his hand.
“Yeah,” Charles Taylor says, finishing off his lunch—a giant-size Snickers bar and a Big Gulp Pepsi. “You always got some scam going. Gotta be making money off somebody or you ain’t happy.”
I don’t say nothing to Eric or Charles. I just take out my pencils and start counting how many I still got to sell. I’m doing the math in my head. Hmmm. I sold ten pencils in math class. I still got twenty left.
“You want one or not, Eric?” I ask. “Zora likes purple, you know. It’s her favorite color. Right, Zora?” I say, poking her in the side.
She ain’t paying neither one of us any attention. She’s staring at herself in a mirror she got in her hand. Me, I don’t look in mirrors too often. I don’t need no reminders of why my mother named me after a piece of fruit. I got red hair, red eyebrows, and enough freckles on my face that you can play connect the dots. Nope, that ain’t the kind of face I wanna be looking at unless I absolutely have to.
“Zora, tell him,” I say, reaching over and taking one of her carrot sticks.
She still watching herself in her mirror, like she expecting her eyes to change color or something. “Yeah, whatever Raspberry says, that’s right,” she says, drawing back her lips, so she can get a good look at her teeth. They got pink braces on ’em.
“Forget it,” I say, walking away from both of them. Then I spend the next twenty minutes going from table to table trying to sell them things.
“You rich yet?” Sato asks me.
“She makes enough money off us to buy herself a house,” Charles Gordon says.
“Nothing wrong with doing a little business,” I say, stepping over Sato’s raggedy book bag. “Maybe you could buy yourself a new book bag if you worked for me, Sato.”
“Oh man, you gonna let her play you like that?” one of his boys says.
“Man. Forget her,” Sato says, sticking out his foot like he’s trying to trip me up. “My bag may be whacked, but at least I sleep in a bed at night. Not under no bridge like a troll.”
Before I know anything, I’m throwing them pencils right at Sato’s big blockhead. But that don’t make him shut up.
“I guess the projects seem like the White House to you,” Sato says, getting loud. “I mean, so what if you got holes in the walls and rats biting your feet at night.”
“We don’t have no—” I start defending myself, but Sato cuts me off.
“It’s better than living out a cardboard box and washing up in the gas station bathroom like you used to, huh?”
Sato knows how to crack on people good. So I don’t give him a chance to say nothing else. I pick up my pencils and go.
Momma and me never lived under no bridge. But when things got bad, real bad a few years back, we did live in a junkyard not far from here. We slept in a old beat-up van that was up on blocks. It didn’t have no wheels. And the front window was busted. The mosquitoes ate us up good all summer long. One night, I counted fifteen bites.
We wasn’t always broke. We was renting us a nice house, in a half-decent neighborhood, till daddy started hanging out. Coming in with the sun, Momma used to say. I still don’t know how it happened. One day he was daddy. Going to work all day long, and hugging me good night before I fell asleep at night. The next day it seemed like he was somebody else. Arguing about money all the time. Walking off with our TV, or Momma’s old fur jacket. Dragging home friends that looked like they just got out of lockdown. Meeting me after school with his hand out . . . begging for whatever change I had.
When the dope made him so crazy, he beat Momma up and sent her to the hospital for the third time, Momma left him. We lived with friends and family till they got tired of us. Then we lived in a motel till Momma got laid off work, and our money ran out. We went back to living with some of Momma’s friends till they started hinting about how crowded their place was, and how much I eat. Next thing I knew, we was living outside with stray cats and dogs. Dirty men. Crazy women. Kids without parents, and people pushing shopping carts filled with smashed-up pop cans and wrinkled-up newspapers.
People said Momma should go to one of them shelters for women and kids. She wouldn’t. She said she was in a shelter when she was little, and something bad happened to her there. Only she never would say what. So we slept on the street, and in dark corners of tall, empty buildings. We washed up in gas stations and fast-food restaurants. Asked for handouts. Prayed real hard that nobody would knock us in the head, or try to steal the little bit of stuff we had.
No matter how bad it got, though, I never missed a day of school in all the time we was living on the street. And I never missed saving Momma a little of the free lunch they gave me in school. Cold Tater Tots taste like steak when that’s all you got.
Momma’s the kind of person that don’t let her surroundings mess with her head. So every night, when we lived in the van, she would sit in the driver’s seat, look up at the stars, and tell me how things was gonna be. “One day,” she’d say, “we gonna have our own place. With a family room, and a fireplace. What color room you want? Yeah, I figured you’d want blue . . . but what about letting me paint some clouds on the walls for you? And a few stars, so we don’t forget that even bad times is sprinkled with a little good,” she’d say, reaching up at the sky like she was gonna grab a fistful of stars and hand ’em to me.
After we got off the street, Momma had some job stuffing envelopes at night. Sometimes we would be down to just rice, beans, and Kool-Aid. You know what it’s like to eat beans every night for two weeks straight? To drink Kool-Aid without sugar?
Even now, Momma’s always dreaming about the future. But you can’t cash dreams in at the bank or buy bread, or pay rent with ’em. You need hard, cold cash for that. So every penny I get, I save. Momma thinks I just got a little pocket change stashed here and there. But nickels don’t keep you off the street. That’s why I got six hundred dollars stashed all over my room.
You gotta sell a lot of pencils and skip a lot of lunches to make that kinda dough. But it’s worth it. ’Cause if you got money, people can’t take stuff from you—not your house, or your ride, not your family. They can’t do nothing much to you, if you got a bankroll backing you up.
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 st
anding 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, wip
ing 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.