Dime

by E. R. Frank

  “How my bitches?” He was wearing new Seven jeans and new orange-and-blue high-tops and a new leather coat. I let To Kill a Mockingbird collapse closed.

  Brandy had finally started sitting down again, but now she stood fast and went right to him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m real sorry. It was—”

  He interrupted her with a hug and whispered something in her ear. He held her close like that for a long time and kissed her mouth tenderly before letting her go. It was hard to watch because I got so jealous, but I was glad Daddy had decided to forgive her.

  “Come here,” Daddy ordered L.A., releasing Brandy.

  Brandy went to the armchair while L.A. glared at him from the couch. “Why you gave Dime money?”

  “You mad.” His gold D was shinier than ever. “Get over here and trust your Daddy always got a good reason.”

  She thought about that. “What good reason?”

  “Get over here.”

  She stood without touching him, her arms by her sides, while he whispered to her. She crossed her arms when he was done, but leaned into his chest.

  He looked at me. “Where my change?” I got up shakily and pulled three dollars and fifty-three cents out of my pocket. “You sick?” He let go of L.A. to look at me more closely.

  I was starving. “No.” He caught me as I started to fall. His arms were huge and hard.

  “Maybe some toast,” Brandy suggested, cutting her eyes at me.

  “She sick?” Daddy asked L.A.

  She shrugged.

  He pulled me into him and whispered into my ear now. “I missed you, Beautiful. My big plans coming soon.”

  He let me go so I could sit at the kitchen table. Brandy started pulling food out of the refrigerator for me, Daddy walked over to the open window. “Check it out.”

  “What?” L.A. peered through. “Nuh-uh,” she said. “That yours?”

  “That ours.” Daddy grinned.

  Brandy left the food to look. “The ride out there?”

  I picked up the cheese, turkey, and two pieces of bread and made a sandwich as fast as I could. “What is it?” I asked with my mouth full.

  “Escalade,” Brandy answered. “White.”

  “Why you got white?” That was L.A. “White cheap-looking. You should have gotten black.”

  “Shut up.” But Daddy was in a good mood. He spanked L.A. on her behind.

  “Where’s the Honda?” Brandy asked.

  Daddy chuckled. “Passaic River.”

  I went, wobbly, by the refrigerator, pulling more food out. More cheese and bread, a fistful of grape tomatoes, three more slices of turkey, sweet pickles. I sank back down, already planning what to eat after.

  “We going indoor,” Daddy announced.

  “For real?” L.A. sounded surprised, and it wasn’t easy to surprise her.

  “Indoor?” Brandy said. “Where at?”

  * * *

  Now once we go from the track to indoor, Money would explain in the note, a lot more of me can be had. First of all, a john has a room with a bathroom and a bed in it. That right there allows you to charge more of me than when all you have to offer is an empty lot or a car. It’s true that now you have to pay out to keep the room. That’s a con. But on the pro side—no pun intended—you can keep an eye on your hos better, and in some ways you are better protected from the police. This Daddy with the D on his tooth was ambitious. And he had a good mind in a lot of ways. He was going to move himself and his stable up by moving indoor. He could have done it too, if circumstances hadn’t interfered. But that’s not your problem. In fact, you don’t have a problem. I’m counting on any square reading Money’s note to be horrified. What you have here is a golden opportunity.

  * * *

  “You bitches going to earn me back my money I lost these past days,” Daddy told us. “Then we taking us a road trip.”

  “Where we going?” L.A. asked.

  I was eating everything left in the refrigerator.

  “Down south.” Daddy gazed out at his Escalade. “Getting a prize, and then back here for indoor.”

  “Indoor where?” Brandy asked at the same time L.A. said, “What prize?”

  “Indoor like room eleven?” Brandy wanted to know. “Because eleven don’t even count as indoor. That’s just a room in a rotted-out house.”

  “Shut up,” L.A. said. She turned to Daddy. “What prize?”

  Would we go to the track anymore? I was thinking about Whippet and Stone and how hot or cold it could get. I was thinking how it would be good not to have to go back there. Daddy knew what I was thinking. He always did.

  “Next few days out on the track,” Daddy said. “Then, you do right by me down south, we done with the street.”

  * * *

  Their Daddy was a go-getter, Money would elaborate. He could have chosen to become something important, some kind of respectable business owner or an accountant. Maybe even a lawyer. But this Daddy wasn’t interested in living a square life. Instead he used his good mind and his ambition for something more to his liking. If his Lollipop worked out the way he hoped, he would have more of me than ever. And as soon as enough more of me got dropped into his pocket, he was going to run an indoor scheme down south with some Russian bitches. He would travel back and forth, and that would be the beginning of his franchise.

  But in order for his grand plan to succeed, this Daddy needed a lot of me at the front end. So he had to toughen up. His bitches weren’t going to like that, but the boss sets the rules and the employees must live by those rules. It’s not as if those hos were chained to him. They worked of their own free will. If they wanted to try and make enough of me on their own somehow to eat and sleep and stay warm in the cold and cool in the heat, well, as you know, it’s a free country. Anybody with a little get-up-and-go, like her Daddy, can pull herself up and make more of me than she even needs. This Daddy’s hos didn’t choose to do that. And of course you will never be in such a position. Especially because you—I would write Money to be so repulsive—you in fact have a windfall: You don’t even need to be a go-getter. Dumb luck has brought you a gift.

  * * *

  Daddy didn’t take any of us for over a week. He had us working practically all day and all night. “Whoever make the most money by Thursday get to lie down in the back,” Daddy promised. He’d told us the trip down south would take a few weeks; half driving, half working, so that meant whoever was lying down would sleep more comfortably than the others. We all wanted sleep.

  “That’s fifty,” I told a date. It was usually forty-five, but I was so hot and tired. L.A. and Brandy both would be angry if they knew I was changing prices, but I didn’t care.

  “Fifty?” the date said. “Since when is that fifty?”

  I shrugged and pretended I was going to walk away. Sweat glazed my body. I could see my own skin shining with it. We were in the alley between the two far brick buildings. I always went to the spot where there was one gray brick in the middle of all the red ones. It was eye level if I was bracing my forehead on my forearms, and I liked to look at it and try and get lost in the gray whenever I could. I pretended it was a dusk sky or the skin of an elephant or a magic panel that would open up and pull me into somewhere beautiful, some alternate spectacular universe. Oz. Or Never-Never Land.

  “Wait,” the date said, pulling at my shoulder. “Fine. Fifty. You better be good.”

  “I’m the best.” I said it the way Brandy had coached me way back at the beginning of the summer. The first time I practiced saying such a thing with such a surprising tone of voice, she laughed enough that she almost choked on a blueberry muffin. Damn! She sputtered, Where that come from? They pay you more when you tell them you’re worth more. That’s what Brandy said. Also if you smile while you turn your trick and act like you love it. All of it. That’s what Brandy told me, and she was right. It’s difficult to show with your face and your body and what you do that you love something you actually despise, but if you practice enough and you have
already died, you can learn.

  I must have been good, because he made me get on my knees to do some extra things, and I got another five.

  * * *

  I guess I wasn’t the only one making up new prices, though, because Daddy said L.A. won. Brandy sat up in the front seat, and I sat up in the back with boxes of clothing and supplies loaded beside me and Mockingbird on my lap. L.A. had tried to tell Daddy how I had sneaked away to get it, but he ignored her, saying he didn’t want to hear about our petty shit. If I weren’t so scared of L.A., I would have laughed in her face.

  He worked us twelve hours straight before we got in the car. He let us shower, but then he told us to dress in clean working clothes for the car ride. The Escalade’s air-conditioning was like Daddy’s room and Christmas. Even sitting up reading, pleased that Scout was finally beating up Francis in the pages of my paperback, I fell asleep so fast, I didn’t notice the city disappear behind us.

  It only felt like a minute, but it must have been hours, because when I woke up to the car stopped and the back door opening into the dusk and me stepping out onto gravel, I didn’t recognize anything: small roads with wide, short houses, a church off in the distance, and a bodega next to a gas station next to a motel. Daddy handed me a cardboard box, and I followed L.A. and Brandy along a covered sidewalk to the door of room five. We three waited while Daddy swiped a card through a slot to unlock our door and then walked down the covered sidewalk to swipe room six. When we all walked inside, I saw the two rooms were connected by another door. I’d never been in a motel. I liked the way it looked like an apartment. Two double beds, a chair, a desk, and a bathroom. Heavy dark curtains, which moved together and apart on chains made of tiny metal beads. It smelled like bleach and mold and like old Doritos and stale smoke and beer. It smelled like the track.

  I put the box on the desk while L.A. sat down on the bed. Daddy came through the adjoining door.

  “Get up off that bed, L.A. Get them boxes in my room and then we going out.”

  “Where are we?” Brandy asked.

  “Don’t matter,” Daddy said. “Get the boxes out the car.”

  When we finished unloading, he let us go to the bathroom. I was the first one, and when I lifted the closed toilet seat, I broke a plain piece of paper wrapped around it, like an oversize ribbon. I wasn’t sure what that paper was for, but my bladder was about to burst, so I didn’t spend much time wondering about it.

  He had us back in the car without any food, and I felt shaky and crampy from having slept sitting up and being hungry. I stepped on my book by accident. I picked it up and wiped it off with the back of my hand.

  As we drove away from the motel into the evening, a word popped into my head: portico. That covered sidewalk was a portico. I tried to remember what books I’d seen the word in. I pictured rounded red tiles and white columns and maybe even green vines, bright in morning sun. Not a strip of concrete covered by a dark ledge, lit up by vibrating fluorescent glare.

  Daddy dropped us on a stretch of road behind the highway. In the soft darkness I saw three or four other shapes of girls off in the distance. Other than that, it was just high grass, broken bottles, a plastic baby swing half-stuck in a patch of dirt, and gravel under our feet. There was no pavement anywhere, and I kept turning my ankles on the unsteady ground.

  “Go make me my money.” Daddy drove the Escalade down the road and over a low slope, so that when it stopped on the shoulder, I could barely see it.

  It was different. Almost no johns came at first. We walked up and down just out of boredom, sweating through our tank tops. We tried to sit, but the ground was prickly and uncomfortable, so we walked slowly and chitchatted. Mainly L.A. did the chitchatting. I didn’t say a word, and Brandy only spoke back to L.A. once in a while. L.A. didn’t seem to notice. She liked the sound of her own voice.

  Then, after another hour, everything happened in fits and starts. First there would be no johns at all, and the girls would just slouch around. Then three or five vehicles would arrive almost at the same time, their headlights blinding us for a minute. Most of the dates wanted to stay in their cars, so we didn’t have to walk to the Escalade. But twice I led a john down the road. I was nervous Daddy would be there in the front seat while I worked, which would have been mortifying. But I didn’t see him at all. He must have gotten out to walk and text or talk on the phone. The second time, though, Brandy was there. I didn’t realize it until I opened my eyes to look into the Escalade through the window, since my date didn’t seem to want to wait but just leaned me face-forward on the car. When I looked, Brandy was below, facing up from the backseat while her john had his head buried in her shoulder. She was yawning. When I saw that, I started to laugh, and when I laughed she jumped and yelped, and her john must have thought he was something special because even from the outside, I could hear him saying, “Yeah, feel that, feel that, feel that.” And then Brandy was laughing, and then I was laughing harder, and then I stopped laughing because I was afraid my date wouldn’t like it, but he did. “That’s a good time, huh?” he said into my ear.

  * * *

  I had little bug bites all around my ankles and on my feet. They itched like crazy.

  “Why we couldn’t do indoor right now?” L.A. whined. “Why we had to work like that out on a farm road?”

  “You ain’t seen farm yet,” Daddy said. “We not even close.”

  “Whatever,” L.A. said. “My legs itching.”

  “You all shower and eat something. More work coming.”

  It was late. Four, maybe five in the morning. Daddy had some kind of bucket chicken on the table and a package of Fudge Stripes. I thought I would fall over from hunger and fatigue.

  “Can we sleep?” Brandy asked. “I’m tired.”

  “Got to make up all that money we lost,” Daddy said. “Get yourselfs clean and eat if you hungry and then put the food mess back in my room. Be ready in forty-five minutes. You going to work in here now.”

  On the street I sometimes had to work with Brandy busy not three feet away. I even had to do three-ways sometimes with her. It was embarrassing. Brandy acted like she didn’t care, but she didn’t like it either, when we had to do it like that. We pretended with our smiles and giggles because you had to, but we never really looked at each other. Now I was nervous. It seemed like we were going to have to work all day in the room on the two beds. How were we supposed to manage the space? How were the dates going to feel about not having privacy? When things didn’t go the way they liked, some of them got rough.

  “We worked a lot already.” I made a point of never complaining. I never spoke much, anyway, but somehow I was speaking now. “Can’t we rest a little?”

  “I’m surprised with you, Dime.” Daddy pointed his finger at me and then waved it at the others. “You all had three days’ vacation. You going to stress me when I got us a new car and we out taking a trip all together?”

  “We’re just tired.” I wanted to go back home to my alcove and read my book all at once, without interruptions, in peace. I wanted to get past the part with Mrs. Dubose fighting her drug habit and dying so slowly in front of Jem. I wanted to catch another glimpse of pale Boo Radley and watch Jem take a dare from Dill.

  Mostly, I wanted to stop working, even though I knew that was part of being with Daddy. For the first time since my first steps on the track back home, it occurred to me that maybe I should just tell him I didn’t want to do it anymore. But I was too tired to think much about that.

  “L.A.?” Daddy said. “You tired?”

  “Please.” L.A. rolled her eyes.

  Daddy kissed her, long. I didn’t even care. Then he left.

  * * *

  L.A. took the first shower, using up twenty of our forty-five minutes. I didn’t mind because I was so hungry, and it gave me a chance to eat in peace. But she told Brandy to go next. When it was finally my turn, just like at home, there was no hot water. Also, there was mold all along the shower stall walls and around the fauce
ts and the handles in the sink, and there were no towels. L.A. had used the only one. It was only a little bit bigger than a washcloth. So I had to dry myself with toilet paper, which is practically impossible. It kept falling apart and clumping in white bits. I was freezing from the water and from the cold damp I couldn’t get all the way off.

  I was barely dressed again when Daddy came back with the johns. There were five of them. Four were black and one was white. I thought the white one would go with Brandy, but he wanted L.A. All the other johns wanted Brandy, but they all wanted to go right away. There was nearly a fight, but Daddy said something to them, and they calmed down and two agreed to go with me.

  Daddy put me to work in the bathroom. Which was good because at least it wasn’t with L.A. or Brandy right next to me, watching. And because I could find a way to rinse just a second right before or after a date. But bad because it was small, and I kept banging into corners. And because it meant Daddy couldn’t charge the men as much. So I couldn’t make as much money as the others, which meant Daddy would be annoyed with me, even though it wasn’t my fault he put me in the bathroom.

  Over the next few hours, I could hear the men arriving and leaving. A lot of them complained at the door when they saw the way Daddy had us set up. They all had to wait to come in and pee until I was finished with whatever job I was doing. Some of them grinned when the door opened and I came spilling out of it with another man. Some of them cursed.

  Then one of them punched me. I think he was aiming for my face, but he hit the very front center of my neck, taking all my air, painfully, and making me cough a long time. Daddy spun that one around and pounded him so hard, I could hardly believe it. The first hit sounded the way a car must sound hitting a tree. Over at the beds, L.A. and Brandy’s dates jumped up fast.

  Daddy hauled the one who hit me toward the door, glaring at the other two over his shoulder. “You better leave me my money.”

  Then he disappeared while the dates hopped into their clothes, threw cash onto the dresser, and practically ran out the door. Daddy walked in right after, blood on his shirt. He pulled it off with one swoop, revealing his chest, slick with sweat. He strode over to me. “You okay?”