by E. R. Frank
About half the time when I walked in around three, they would be showering and getting ready. The two of them dressed up in outfits he bought them. Adult, sexy high heels and low-cut, sparkly tops. They were only allowed to wear those to work. At home it was just sweats and T-shirts. L.A.’s fur-lined vest was more stylish than my new black coat, and Brandy’s gray wool looked warmer than mine, plus it had square white snaps on it. But my fresh clothes were nicer than their daytime sweats and T-shirts. I was worried they would be mad about that, but they didn’t even seem to notice. I thought it was strange, because after living with her for so many days, L.A. seemed like the type who would notice and not like it.
They always gave their tips to Daddy. That’s what I started calling him, because everybody else did. And because that’s how he acted; making sure we had food and shampoo. Protecting us. Nobody going to mess with you when they know you mine, Daddy would say, and I knew that must be true. He was tall and built and dressed well without being too flashy, and people always showed him respect when they came around our place.
Daddy would get annoyed at the others if he thought there wasn’t enough money.
“Where the rest?” he asked Brandy.
“That’s it,” she would say. “It’s all there.”
“That’s not shit.”
“Cold,” Brandy said. “People ain’t going out.”
“L.A. got me three times that,” Daddy said.
L.A. smiled.
“She been working longer. Got her regulars,” Brandy tried.
“You better get you some regulars,” Daddy said. “You ought to be making more than L.A. White quota higher. That ain’t rocket science. You better step it up.”
I did my homework and pretended I wasn’t listening. I didn’t want to know what it all meant. I still wanted to believe that L.A. was selling clothes during the day and working at a restaurant at night. I wanted to believe she and Brandy shared the same shifts, seating fancy people at candlelit tables or maybe taking drink orders from a group of grown girlfriends or from a family party. Like how it is in restaurants in the movies.
But it was hard to ignore the truth. Those tips weren’t tips. They were pay. For what L.A. and Brandy were really doing. I tried not to look at the money changing hands, because Daddy got tense if we seemed like we were too interested in it. He never gave any to L.A. or Brandy. It wasn’t their job to manage the coins. It was his.
A few days later was Saturday, and I was reading in my alcove in the morning while everybody else slept. I heard what sounded like some sort of animal: a big dog or small bear, but then I realized it was Brandy, making noises on the couch. I slid out of my sleeping bag. She was mostly asleep.
“Hey.” I perched on the edge of the leather and shook her shoulder. There was wetness under her. Sweat. “Brandy,” I said. “Wake up.”
Then L.A. was next to me, in her white tank top and gray sweats, sucking her teeth. “Thought we was done with this shit,” she muttered. She leaned over Brandy, tapping her face light and fast. “Wake up, girl.” She kept tapping. Brandy was still making those snuffing sounds. “Shut up.”
Brandy opened her eyes. There were tears coming out of them. I didn’t know you could cry in your sleep. “Get off.” She pushed us away and sat, huddled. Her red T-shirt was soaked.
“Dime, get a towel,” L.A. ordered. “Brandy, get up off that couch. Daddy going to be pissed off you messed up this leather.”
I thought about when I had been bleeding on it. He wasn’t pissed off at all then. What was L.A. talking about? Brandy stood up and crossed her arms over her elbows. She shuffled out of the way and then sank onto the rug, leaning against the armchair.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Get me a damn towel,” L.A. hissed.
Brandy wouldn’t look at me. She just rocked forward and backward, arms crossed, fingers tucked under armpits. I got a towel from the bathroom. When I came back, L.A. took it and began wiping down the couch. Brandy was still hunched on the floor. Then Daddy banged out of his room. For a minute, he looked as pissed off as Janelle. But he glanced at me and softened.
“I got it, Daddy,” L.A. said. “Don’t worry about nothing.”
“Yeah?” Daddy asked Brandy.
She shrugged. “I’m good.” Her voice was almost a whisper. She didn’t look good. Daddy threw me a soft look, his you special look, and then he went to her.
“I’m good,” she mumbled.
He knelt down in front of her, and she stopped rocking. He took her face in his hands. It made an ugly feeling well up in me, even though I felt bad for Brandy. He stroked her hair back out of her face. I wished there was something wrong with me so that he would stroke mine like that. “Ain’t nothing but a dream,” Daddy told her.
L.A. kept wiping the couch, behind me. I could hear the towel sanding the leather. Daddy scooped Brandy up, standing and holding her like a baby, her legs dangling over his right arm and her head resting on his left. “You want smack for real, I’ll go buy you some,” Daddy told her quietly. “But think on how hard we worked to get you off that shit.”
Brandy nodded a tiny nod. “I know.”
“And if I get you some—which I will do, you just say the word—you know I can’t have none a that up in my household.”
“I know.” Even from where I was standing, I could see her body trembling.
His voice was so gentle. “I get it for you, then you got to leave.”
“I don’t want it.”
“You sure?” Daddy asked. She nodded again. “Come here, baby,” he said, and I turned away because I couldn’t stand my own jealousy. But then Daddy called to me. “Dime.” I turned back. He rested his chin on top of Brandy’s head and winked. Then he disappeared with her into his room.
* * *
I tried not to listen to them, but it was hard. The apartment wasn’t that big. L.A. stomped back into her own room as soon as the couch was dried off, and that left me alone to hear them and to imagine what was happening. It wasn’t difficult, especially because I was imagining it was me in there instead of Brandy. Wishing.
Chapter Twelve
“COME ON, BEAUTIFUL,” Daddy said, as soon as I walked in the door after school. I could tell from the quiet that L.A. and Brandy were already gone.
I looked at him, nervous.
He slipped the knapsack off my back, then gently turned me around toward the door. “About time I took you out.”
It’s like what I used to say to Vonna. Come on. I’m taking you out. And she would jump up—actually jump—and keep jumping all the way to the door. We never went anywhere real, because there was never anywhere to go. But I pretended. I would use my bus pass and take her across Newark, telling her we were about to see a circus. She would play along, and when we got to the cluster of fabric and wig shops all around Academy Street, we’d stop and lean against a construction barrier wall somebody once put up and never took back down. Watch the elephant parade, I would say, when four fat old ladies all together shuffled into a store across from us. We could see everything through the plate-glass windows. Wait, there’s a clown. I would point to a man in another store holding up a platinum wig in one hand and a magenta one with bangs in the other. He going to put one on? Vonna would giggle. Watch, I would tell her as he picked out a third wig. Maybe he’s going to juggle.
Out by the curb, Daddy opened the door of his Honda for me and then trotted around to his side. I’d never been inside it and was surprised at how clean it was. The radio didn’t work, though, and the floor mats were worn thin. We drove on streets I’d never seen and parked in a lot he was going to have to pay for later, with a ticket that slid out from a machine.
Out on the sidewalk, Daddy slipped his hand down from my shoulder to my bottom and then wiggled up under my new coat until his palm slid into the back pocket of my jeans. His warmth felt good in the freezing cold, and the way his hand told anyone who could see that he was mine felt even better. He steered me through street
s with cafés instead of dollar stores, through men and women wearing business suits mixed in with the regular people. He chose a café and sat opposite me inside a booth.
“You want a hot chocolate?”
I nodded.
He ordered two with whipped cream and a plate of french fries for us to share. He dipped a fry into his hot chocolate. “That some good shit,” he told me. “You try it.”
I tried it. He smiled, eyebrows angling, when I switched back to my ketchup. Then we were quiet awhile. I ate my fries as slowly as possible, wanting to make everything about the way I was feeling last as long as it could, hoping that we would never have to stand up and he would never turn away from me.
“You got any questions?”
I shook my head, nervous again. There were things I wanted to tell him, but they weren’t questions. They were just things I wanted him to know. I love royal blue, and you gave me that royal-blue pillowcase, I wanted to say. Once I had a gym teacher who looked a lot like you only not as cute and he was bald. My favorite smells are barbecue potato chips and Murphy Oil Soap and also the smell of A & D ointment, which is what you put on babies’ bottoms.
“You been with me a time.” He popped another fry into his mouth. “Thought you might have a question.” I didn’t want to think about questions. I didn’t want to think about what I knew he was asking me.
I used to play checkers a lot with my foster brother, Jywon, and I beat him every time even though I’m younger. I taught Vonna and another boy Janelle kept for a while who we called Truck, but those two couldn’t beat me or Jywon. We had a tournament one weekend, and the winner was supposed to get everyone’s dessert for a week. I won, but Jywon wouldn’t give up his ginger snaps. Truck tried to beat Jywon for cheating me, but he was too small.
That’s what I wanted to tell him, but instead a question came out after all. “Last week. That Saturday morning. Brandy was dreaming about heroin?”
“That’s what you want to know?” Daddy smiled. “You funny.”
I didn’t feel funny, but he looked happy with me, so I didn’t mind.
“Yup. Girl was skinny as a rail and half-dead when I found her. She ain’t had her a dream like that in a good while.”
Do you love Brandy a lot? I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t. Daddy knew, anyway. It was like he could read my mind.
“I got a big heart.” Daddy smiled. “I got room for a lot of loving.” He tilted his head and let me see his gold D and looked straight into my eyes the way he did. “And you.” He stopped smiling. “You real special.”
His voice was like a blanket, and I closed my eyes for half a second, imagining I could crawl right into it. And then I was talking. “Once I won the class spelling bee, and that same year I had stitches in my chin when I was nine when I tripped running up the stoop, and Janelle let me eat Froot Loops all day long for a week after that because I loved Froot Loops and she always spoiled us if we were hurt.”
He finished his hot chocolate, licking his top lip for the whipped cream. “Sound like your Janelle done a good job with you when you was coming up.” He nodded, and I nodded because Janelle had been good at a lot of things a long time ago, even if she wasn’t good at everything and even if that gin made her evil now.
“Did you ever think you saw someone you thought you knew and then when you got up close to say hi, it wasn’t the person you thought?”
“Did that yesterday.” Daddy seemed surprised. “That happen to you, too?”
I nodded. I’d never talked so much in my life. “Who was it?”
“Who was what?”
“Who was the person you thought you saw?”
“A old associate.”
I ate a few more fries.
“Dime.”
I stopped eating at the serious tone of his voice. “I can’t do what L.A. and Brandy do,” I whispered. I looked down at my place mat. It was white paper with a row of old-fashioned bottles drawn in bright colors.
“You know what they do?”
I nodded without looking up. He didn’t get annoyed that I had only nodded and not spoken.
“You sure?”
I nodded again. “But I can’t do that.” Except with you. I shivered the way I seemed to when I was around him and now at the thought of doing that with him. I glanced up fast and then back down. “I’m a virgin.” I was more than a virgin. I felt my face heat up.
“You ever even been kissed?”
I shook my head, my face even hotter from how he wouldn’t let me kiss his mouth the way I wanted to when I hurt my head.
“Dime.” He was gazing at me again, like I was the only person in the world. “They do it because they want to. Ain’t nobody expecting you to do nothing you don’t want.”
He looked away and rubbed his face, as if he felt tired or sick.
“Are you mad?” It was hard to ask.
“Nah, I ain’t mad,” he said. “I couldn’t never be mad at you.” He dipped a fry in ketchup and ate it, chewing slowly. “Just stressed.” He frowned at something he was thinking about. “Don’t worry about nothing.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“What for, Beautiful?” He leaned forward, resting his forearms in a triangle pointing toward me.
“Just. I don’t know.”
He slid his hands over to mine and covered my fingers with his. I loved how strong they felt. Just like his voice, only solid.
“You know I’m a take care a you, right?”
I nodded, trying not to smile about it too much, trying not to burst with how good it felt.
He picked up both of my hands in his and bent his head to kiss them. “All right then.”
* * *
He must have been more stressed than I even knew, because I heard them arguing in his room before L.A. went out the next afternoon.
“You know how it go,” he was saying in a low, mad voice. “You know how it go. It the same every time. What you bothering me for about it now?”
I couldn’t hear what she said, exactly, except I could hear how mad she was too.
“You just do what you do, and it going to go down how I say. Six months, L.A., like I told you. Then we going to—”
She interrupted him, with something about a little bitch. Then I heard a thump, and it was quiet. I think maybe he swatted her or pushed her onto a bed or maybe a chair. I looked over at Brandy, who was waving her hands in the air, trying to dry nail polish. She changed it once a week, working over flattened grocery bags so she wouldn’t stain the kitchen table.
“She talking about you,” Brandy said. “ ‘Little bitch’ is you.”
I knew L.A. didn’t like me much, but hearing that hurt. At least Daddy stopped her. I loved how he protected me. “Get used to it,” Brandy told me. “They fight a lot. Not going to be about you all the time neither.” She blew on her tips. “It ain’t ever personal with L.A. anyway.”
“. . . back to where your uncles and them can do you for free, without even taking care a you?” I heard Daddy ask, and then something muffled. “So you just . . .” Then Daddy got quiet again. It stayed quiet for a long time.
“L.A. tell you all about her special self yet?” Brandy asked me.
Now I heard something else. At first I thought it was L.A. crying, but then I realized it was her making another sound. Then the music went on in there, loud, and Brandy rolled her eyes. “I hate that song.”
I hated knowing what they were doing in there. Hearing them argue bothered me, but it bothered me more picturing what was going on now.
Brandy shook her head. “Now she going to be late, and he going to blame her.”
I stared at my books until Brandy spoke up again. “L.A. had a lot of boyfriends before Daddy,” she told me. “But once anybody find Daddy”—she spread her purple nails in a fan on top of the table—“hardly nobody choose to leave.”
* * *
This was the third Sunday, and the third time we all ate dinner together, early, at four. L.A. and Brandy
were going out to work after. Tonight Daddy looked distracted. He wasn’t glancing at his phone and thumb typing at all. He was just nursing his forty and staring at the center of our round table, not eating.
Brandy looked at me over our spaghetti and meatball plates and then at L.A.
“What?” L.A. said. She wasn’t so smart sometimes.
Brandy jerked her head at Daddy.
“What is you looking at?” L.A. asked impatiently.
Brandy sighed so loud it was almost a groan. “Daddy, you okay?” she asked. Now L.A. looked more carefully at Daddy.
He rubbed his face. “Nah.”
L.A. sat back and crossed her arms. She glared into the air above the table, not looking at any of us.
Daddy shook his head. “Dime, you got to go back home.”
Back to Janelle? Back with Jywon and being kept home from school and the shouting and the smacks and that ugly smell of gin? Not here? Not with Daddy, whispering and warm?
“Close your mouth, girl,” L.A. told me, still glaring. Was she mad I was going to have to leave? But I thought she didn’t even like me.
Daddy’s face was sad. He frowned, crunching up the scar in his eyebrow. “Saw her by your block,” he told me. How did he know where Janelle lived? He must have asked around. He must have found out. He must have wanted to know more about me, because I was so quiet I could hardly tell him anything. “She all liquored up,” Daddy said. “She ain’t doing good.”
I didn’t want to go home to Janelle all liquored up. The last few times, she threatened me with the big knife we used for chicken and carrots. What if she got my eye? Why was Daddy saying I had to go back to her?
“She need you, Dime. You a smart girl. You mature.”
I heard L.A. snort. Daddy ignored her, and so did I.
“You got to go help her out a her mess.”
“Don’t make me.” How could I leave him? He was the only one who ever took real care of me.
“This ain’t no place for you,” Daddy said. “Ain’t right, me keeping you.”
L.A. lifted her head and began to eat her spaghetti. She slurped the noodles hard, rude, but Daddy still ignored her.