Dime

by E. R. Frank

  “Anyway, you wouldn’t leave us, would you?” It would be hard without Brandy. Partly because she and I were cool together and partly because being the only other one with L.A. would be stressful.

  Brandy shook her head. She put her plate down and pulled something out of her front pocket. A little rectangular card. She turned it around on the table so that I could read it. Pamela Terrence, The North Star. There was an 800 phone number and a different number to text. We heard L.A. opening her door. Brandy slid the card back into her pocket and picked up her plate again. She wasn’t eating much. “I’d leave L.A. in half a heartbeat,” she mumbled. “Not Daddy. He save my life every day.” Her face got soft like I almost never saw it, underneath all that swelling and purple. “He take care of me.”

  What about me? I wanted to ask, but L.A. interrupted, appearing from her room.

  She sat down and took my plate. “Get me a fork,” she ordered Brandy.

  Brandy got the fork. She moved slowly.

  * * *

  Now the interesting thing, Money would add to the note, is that a ho is not supposed to handle me except for the time it takes to do her business and then drop me to her Daddy. Of course, the Bottom Bitch is sometime called on to take care of me when the Daddy is out hurt or, say, locked up. But for the most part, I don’t touch a ho’s fingertips more than a minute. It just doesn’t look good and it’s not wise practice. They better know me well, but hos are not meant to be the boss of me.

  * * *

  We followed Daddy’s instructions. We played poker for Fudge Stripes and watched some TV. I liked TV, but I wanted books. By midmorning, I closed my eyes against the heavy heat and reread what I could remember.

  Alec, nearly drowning in the middle of the churning ocean, clinging to the black stallion in order to survive. Charlotte Doyle, desperate to prove herself to the pirates, climbing down the ship’s ratlines, losing her footing and nearly dying. And that attic. Filled with handmade paper flowers and little Cory’s deadness and Cathy, growing up hidden away, with hardly any sunlight to brighten her days.

  When I ran out of book memories, I tried some of my own. Janelle’s maple brown sugar turkey for Christmas dinner and then all of us singing carols as loudly as we could on the house’s roof, looking for Santa, even Jywon, who brought the binoculars that got sent to us from Amazon by mistake and Janelle let us keep. Me going with my friend Angelica and her mother to buy her new pink boots, and her mother buying me a pair of pink socks, too. The man in the store thought we were sisters, and he gave us each a Dum Dum, which we hated, but we saved, and I gave them to Vonna later. Me, curled in a ball reading in the corner of the school library beneath a table and next to a cluster of three potted plants, and I was so inside my book, I couldn’t hear them calling, and getting detention for causing trouble, and Ms. McClenny winking, saying, She can serve it with me, as if that were a punishment. The firefighters who came to our classroom and let us touch their breathing masks and taught us to stop, drop, and roll. Rocking inside of somebody soft and big who smelled like barbecue potato chips and whose watch scratched my left shoulder each time she turned a page.

  * * *

  We sat around. We were tired. It felt good to sit so much. Brandy didn’t sit. She lay down. When L.A. made her get up so there was room on the couch, Brandy borrowed my sleeping bag to lie on the floor.

  “At least take Advil for the pain,” I told her. Advil was allowed.

  “What pain?” She grimaced, her head resting on my blue pillow.

  Daddy forbidding alcohol or drugs made him different from other pimps. Stone kept his girls in heroin, and Whippet and George gave theirs beer and liquor, too. Brandy said it felt good to be drunk or high most of the time. She knew about the feel of drinking because somebody who used to take care of her when she was small made sure she drank a lot. She said it made the work easier but living harder. They made her use smack later, which she loved more than anything ever except for Daddy. She said stopping cold for Daddy when he first found her was a million times worse than the worst trick she’d ever had to turn, but Daddy helped her do it. She said he was like a living angel.

  “I can’t take no Advil,” Brandy told me now. “Daddy say that’s like picking up. He say he can’t trust a ho who’s an addict.”

  “It’s just Advil,” I tried.

  “I told you this before, Dime.” Brandy sighed. “Daddy say the drink or the drug become a ho’s God, and the ho going to choose that over her pimp any day. Daddy say junk makes hos stupid and not trustworthy.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  “Used to.” She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Felt like dying. And the dreams.” She dropped her hands and shuddered. “Ugh.” Then she rolled over onto her stomach, hiding her face, but I saw that it had gone pink. It embarrassed her, I guess, how much she loved him. “Daddy took such good care of me,” she said quietly. “I was about to die. Daddy saved me.” She rolled back over to face me again. “You ever mess with all that?”

  I shook my head. Trevor and Dawn sometimes smoked weed. I smoked with them once or twice, but it just made me tired. I drank with them once or twice too, but I didn’t like the taste. Janelle had offered me her gin, but after seeing what it did to her, I didn’t want to touch it. Besides, I hated the smell.

  “I’m getting you some Advil.” Maybe if I was firm, she would take it.

  “Advil ain’t going to help the pain I got,” Brandy said.

  I looked at her.

  She clicked her tongue. “I mean, if I even had any pain.”

  I wondered if that cop broke her ribs. Or broke something inside of her. I wondered what he had really done to her to make her not want to sit down, to make her walk awkwardly and gasp randomly, when she hadn’t even seemed to move.

  The only thing she did was shower. I showered too. Longer than I ever got to, and with hot water the entire time. With no work, I was going to stay clean after that shower, after I brushed my teeth. It was good to feel so clean in my mouth and in my underwear, knowing the clean would remain for two or even three more days.

  But I missed Daddy. I kept hoping he would call and L.A. would have to give me the phone, but he didn’t.

  “What did you tell the cops?” L.A. asked Brandy after we ate lunch.

  “I didn’t say shit,” Brandy said.

  “Why he left out then?”

  Brandy shrugged and reached for the remote. She wanted to watch Bourne Identity. “How should I know? He just being smart. He can’t trust nobody, not even me. So he staying away.”

  “You know he down south, right?” L.A. said.

  I kept quiet.

  “I’m talking to you, bitch.”

  “I don’t know.”

  L.A. looked at Brandy. “What does you know?”

  Brandy shrugged. “He don’t tell me anything.”

  I thought L.A. was going to jump both of us. She was big. I tried to decide whether to run or fight.

  But instead L.A. laughed. “You bitches don’t know shit,” she said. “You know why he went down south?”

  We shook our heads.

  “He finding a place. He going to take me with him, and we relocating down there. And you, not neither one of you, coming.”

  “Whatever.” I could tell Brandy thought it might be true. I could tell by the way her mouth turned down at the corners and by the way her face got more stiff than usual. And if Brandy thought it might be true, than it could be true. Why would he have lied to me, though, about a Brother and the Russians? Why would he have done that?

  He still didn’t call. I tried to take a nap, but I couldn’t sleep, so I gave up. I showered again instead, just because I could, and got ready for grocery shopping. As I was about to walk out the door, L.A. tried to take Daddy’s thirty dollars. I’d had it at my feet inside the sleeping bag during my nap, then folded in my underwear balanced on the sink’s edge during my shower, and now it was steam damp in my pocket.

  “Give it,” L.A.
said. It was three forty-five.

  “Daddy told me to go.”

  “He meant you to give it to me.”

  “No, he didn’t.” I didn’t care so much about getting out for the food. I wanted to get out for another reason.

  “Give it to me or I’m going to pop you.”

  “Pop me then,” I told her. “And then explain it to Daddy.” I walked past her and out the door, half expecting a glass or a chair to fly through the air and knock me down.

  Chapter Twenty

  HE SAID HE had eyes watching me, and I didn’t want to make him mad. But there was a library not too far from the store. I’d noticed it when Daddy drove us to work. He took different routes at different times, turning if a car in front of him was moving too slowly or if he just wasn’t in the mood for the scenery. So I’d noticed that library. And if I went quickly now, I could get one book. Just one. And hide it in the grocery bag. And pretend I’d found it in my cardboard box later and have something to read.

  It must have been strange to see a girl with a bag full of groceries walk into a library. But nobody seemed to mind. I didn’t even glance around for Ms. McClenny. I just headed to the Ks and snatched a Stephen King I had already read and knew I loved. Carrie. I thought I could be in and out in five minutes. But then there was an issue.

  “Your library card has expired,” the librarian said, raising her eyes from her computer and looking right at me.

  “Oh.”

  She was dark-skinned, with short, straightened hair. “It’s not a problem. We can renew it. Do you have your school ID?”

  “It’s summer.” I don’t know what that was supposed to mean, but it was something to say.

  She wore glasses just like librarians are supposed to. Thick black frames with an oval-shaped red jewel on each earpiece. “All right. Well. You can come back with it anytime.”

  Daddy made us give him all our IDs so he could hold them and keep them safe. He took my bus pass too. “I think I lost it.”

  She tapped on the keyboard, her eyeballs scanning her screen. “Do you still live on Crescent Avenue?”

  That was Janelle’s house. I nodded.

  She looked at me straight on again. “Can you bring your mother by with some proof of address?”

  “She’s busy with the babies,” I lied.

  The librarian clicked her nails on the counter. The index fingernails were a pale blue, and the rest were silver. “That’s not true, is it?” She said it kindly.

  I was trying to picture what she saw. A skinny fourteen-year-old with braided hair, jeans shorts, sneakers, a white tank top, and a pink bra strap striping her shoulders. Big eyes, pierced ears with huge fake gold hoops, and smooth skin. I knew I looked all right because I was clean and wearing square clothes. But maybe she knew what I was. Maybe hos weren’t allowed to check out books. I wasn’t sure, and the clock was ticking, and what if it was Whippet or Stone Daddy had watching me?

  “I usually work over at the main branch.” She wore a long necklace that had three pretty polished stones. Two white and one a cat’s-eye. They clicked against one another as she moved, making the same sound her fingernails made on the keyboard and on the counter. “Daniel just left for the day, and I don’t know how staff here handles this sort of thing. We are all supposed to go by the book.” She sighed. “Of course you’re welcome to stay and read if you have some time.” She peered at me through her lenses. “But I just can’t let you take anything without an up-to-date card.”

  I don’t know why that was the thing that made me cry when so much for so long hadn’t. But the silhouette and the fuzz cleared for long enough that I could feel certain ways I’d stopped feeling, and then the tears just came. I spun around, holding tightly to my grocery bag.

  At the door, I felt something touch the back of my shoulder. She had come all the way out from behind her counter just to stop me. “Here.” She handed me a thick paperback and the expired card. “Have you read To Kill a Mockingbird?”

  I shook my head. It was almost impossible to push back the tears.

  “It’s presumptuous of me to give you a book you didn’t choose,” she told me in her steady, librarian voice. “But since I’m breaking the rules for you, I feel entitled.”

  I shifted the grocery bag to my hip and took the paperback from her. I would have rather had Carrie, but at least she gave me something.

  “Just this once,” she said, necklace clacking. She put her hand on my shoulder for a second. “And if that book is overdue, I’m going to Crescent Avenue myself to find it.”

  I almost couldn’t get the words out. It took a few breaths. “Thank you.”

  Outside on the hot steps, I carefully put down the grocery bag on the sidewalk, removed the ramen noodles, turkey slices, grape tomatoes, Doritos, apples, bread, and the Coke. Then I slid the book inside and repacked. I held the bag with both arms, supporting the bottom on the fast walk home.

  * * *

  I made dinner, but when I fixed a plate for myself, L.A. took it from me. When I tried picking food up in my hand out of the refrigerator, she grabbed it away.

  “Let her eat!” Brandy tried. “Damn, L.A. What is your problem?”

  “Daddy told her to give me the money for food,” L.A. insisted. “She lying to us, and we can’t have no lying.”

  “Dime is not a liar,” Brandy argued. “If she say Daddy gave her money, then he gave her money.”

  “Why he going to give her the coins?” L.A. nearly screamed. “I’m the Bottom Bitch! Not her!”

  * * *

  I was starving. It was the morning of the third day. Brandy’s face wasn’t looking any better. She was still lying down a lot too. And not doing a lot of walking.

  “If you eat,” L.A. told me. “Or you give her food,” she told Brandy, “I’m telling Daddy Dime got a book.”

  L.A. had found it in two seconds. You can’t really hide a book in a grocery bag.

  “Daddy likes it that I read,” I tried. “He doesn’t care if I have a book.”

  “He say you could go get yourself a book?”

  I wanted to lie, but Daddy would find out in two seconds.

  “Uh-huh,” L.A. said. “You don’t eat. Not until Daddy home. And if you do eat, he going to know you went to get a book when he pacifically said nobody go out.”

  “Specifically.”

  “What?”

  It was stupid, but I couldn’t help it. “Specifically.”

  She smacked my head so hard I saw orange spots and couldn’t get up off the floor the first two times I tried.

  * * *

  Sitting on the couch, clean, afraid to pull out my paperback that L.A. hadn’t yet thought to take from me, staring at American Idol, starving, I tried not to think about what it all meant.

  Was Daddy telling me lies to keep me happy while he was preparing to take L.A. with him down south and start up a new life? Or was he lying to L.A., and if he was lying to her, why would he? Why would he give me the money? Why didn’t he tell me to give it to L.A. to tell her to go shopping? Was he testing me? Was he testing all of us? Was he really going to come back home? That last thought scared me. I didn’t know what I would do if he never came back. I needed him to hold me. I needed him to take care of me.

  L.A. finally went to bed, but she left her door open so she could stop me if I moved toward the kitchen. I thought I would die from hunger at first, but then inside the sleeping bag, wrapped in two paper towels, I found a turkey-and-mustard sandwich, some grape tomatoes, and a Coke. I ate and drank as quietly as I could and then shoved the soda can to the bottom of the sleeping bag, because I didn’t want L.A. finding it and going off on Brandy.

  L.A.’s phone rang at two in the morning. I scooched out of my sleeping bag and went to sit on the couch. Brandy was horizontal but awake. She wasn’t sleeping well, the way she used to. I heard her the last two nights, restless. Now we could hear L.A. talking, but we couldn’t make out what she was saying. She sounded happy, which could be good or
bad. Then she came out. “Here.” She handed me the phone.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Beautiful.”

  Inside my chest, my heart warmed and things began to breathe after a long time of not. I waited.

  “How you doing, Beautiful?”

  “Good.” I tried not to look at L.A. I could feel her steaming mad.

  “Brandy?”

  “She got beat up,” I told him.

  “I heard. Tell her she got to start over earning for that phone she want so bad.”

  “Okay.”

  He lowered his voice. “Don’t forget I love you best.”

  “Okay.” I was careful not to let my voice shift, not to let the joy seep in. I didn’t want to hurt Brandy or make L.A. more bothered than she already was.

  “Now give the phone back to L.A.”

  I handed it back, and she took it to her room.

  I felt worried that he didn’t ask to speak to Brandy, but I pretended I hadn’t even noticed that. “He said you have to start over earning for the phone.” I couldn’t look at her.

  “He didn’t want to say nothing to me?”

  “I guess he’s mad you were locked up.”

  And now Daddy wouldn’t even talk to her. She loved Daddy as much as I did. I didn’t like that, but still. Daddy didn’t have to be so cold. She crossed her arms over her chest and tucked her fingers into her armpits.

  I found her feet through the blanket and rubbed them.

  “Get off, pervert.” Beads of sweat appeared on her upper lip.

  “Daddy will come back soon,” I told her.

  I didn’t stop rubbing, while she didn’t stop shivering, trying not to cry.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  IT WAS NEARLY lunchtime on the fourth day of Daddy being gone. I decided to risk reading in front of L.A. I just couldn’t wait any longer, and I was hoping starving me to death was enough for her without taking my book, too. When Daddy walked in, I had just reached the part where Scout realizes somebody slipped a blanket over her shoulders during the fire.