Dime

by E. R. Frank

  Ray never touched Lollipop again. And it wasn’t long before he was telling her all about the adventure he was going to arrange. While he was setting it up, Ray made himself more money from two previously and carefully arranged in-person dates. He wasn’t thinking about Lollipop getting pregnant, and Lollipop didn’t know she could.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “HOW MUCH I got to throw down for some of that?” Jywon asked, sliding his fingers across my butt.

  I slapped him away. “Get off.”

  I had been up for most of my sleeping time—two thirty to seven thirty—reading The Color Purple inside my sleeping bag. I was so exhausted from working and from worrying about the baby and the note, that I thought I only had the wherewithal to peek at the first paragraph. Just to distract my tired brain. But Celie starting out writing directly to God about what was happening to her made me want to crawl inside the ink, grab her hand, and hold on. And when you feel like that in a book, you don’t stop turning its pages. A few hours later, when Celie finally tells off Mr. ___ at the dinner table in front of Shug and Sofia and Squeak and Harpo and everybody, I knew I was going to march over to Crescent Avenue to demand what was mine. If I was going to get Lollipop’s baby out alive and then make sure it got what it needed, I had to have coins Daddy wasn’t going to provide—not for some baby not even his own.

  Janelle came to the door, holding a tiny newborn, swaddled in a flannel pink-and-blue hospital blanket. Sienna toddled behind her legs, hiding. She got so big. Jywon scooped her up, making her cry. I wanted to kill him, but I forced myself to look at Janelle instead.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “You all right?” She moved back to let me step inside, but neither one of us closed the door. She didn’t seem drunk. “Vonna miss you.” She fussed with the newborn’s ear while Sienna squirmed in Jywon’s arms.

  “Where is Vonna?” I had this idea that maybe I would take her for a walk and try to tell her some things. Things about life.

  Janelle shrugged. “She around.”

  I couldn’t let myself think too much about Vonna right now. I had to stay focused. “I need to start getting some of my DYFS money.” Janelle’s hands went still. “Every month.”

  Jywon put Sienna down, and she went running to huddle behind Janelle’s legs. “We heard you making your own money.” He used his thumb knuckle to push his glasses higher. Maybe he had seen me once on the track or one of my dates was someone who knew him. Maybe he was just guessing.

  “You still staying at that friend’s?” Janelle asked. Sienna peeked around to get a good look at me. She was still cute as anything.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But what I’m saying is if you want to keep on taking my DYFS money, I need some of it too from now on.”

  “Listen to you.” Janelle shifted the bundle to her other shoulder. “You speaking up.”

  I waited, glancing around to see if there were any blue Booth’s bottles anywhere.

  “Well, you know it ain’t easy as that. Comes in stamps and vouchers. Ain’t no cash.”

  “You have cash.”

  “Glad to see you got some get-up-and-go now. You was always so quiet.”

  “Get-up-and-go for damn sure,” Jywon said.

  “Shut up,” Janelle snapped at him. She tucked the newborn under one arm and slipped her other fingers into a back pocket, pulling out three wrinkled dollars. “This all I got today.” She held them out to me. “You want it? Go ahead.”

  It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. Maybe she had to take care of people, but I had to take care of people now too. I frowned at the bills. “You spent the rest on gin?”

  She stared at me before she answered. I guess she was surprised. “Do I look like I’m drinking to you?” She slid the money back into her pocket.

  I tried to think of what Shug might say. “Maybe not right this second.”

  Jywon made a whooshing sound with his mouth. Janelle looked more than surprised now. She looked as if I’d pulled a gun on her.

  I kept on. “I guess you’re just waiting until somebody takes this baby away.”

  She tried to slap me with her free hand, but I was too quick. She just swiped air. I backed up more into the open doorway, expecting for her to try again, but she didn’t. Instead she huffed out some kind of sigh and lifted the newborn back to her shoulder. She huffed again. “I can’t hardly believe you.”

  We were quiet for a minute. All of us. Sienna had her big eyes fixed on me. Jywon had his little ones.

  “I’m not coming back again,” I told Janelle. “DYFS will figure it out. And they’ll investigate you and take everybody away.” I believed myself for a minute and thought about how she would cry all night. “I’m sorry for that.”

  “Well, life is not no storybook,” Janelle said. “I see you worked that out by now.”

  Sienna kept peeking out at me. I wanted to smile at her, or wink, but I didn’t know how right then.

  “If they investigate me,” Janelle pointed out, “they going to investigate you. Jywon know where you at. He’ll be right delighted to tell them.” She wasn’t saying it unkindly; just as a point to consider. But Jywon smirked and did something obscene with his hand at his crotch behind Janelle’s back. Then he turned and walked away somewhere.

  I looked after him while I spoke to Janelle. “You need to watch Jywon around the little girls.”

  Janelle shook her head. “Please,” she said. “Jywon harmless.”

  “You need to watch,” I repeated.

  Janelle nodded. “All right then.” She jiggled the baby a beat and then rested her other palm on the top of Sienna’s head. “See you.”

  Part of me had known it wouldn’t work. None of it. Celie would have known too. I guess I was foolish to have hoped otherwise.

  * * *

  At the library I kept my head down, hiding How to Deliver a Baby in an Emergency on the table but under my puffy coat. I read the chapters I needed half-shaded beneath the gray fur-lined hood. Every time anybody came close—the Puerto Rican male librarian named Daniel or the white female—I used the math textbook to knock-slide the baby book all the way under.

  I didn’t want to be reading about how to deliver babies at all. I didn’t want to be staring at geometry, either. I wanted to be far away from babies and math and Daddy. I wanted to be riding an elephant or on a front porch fanning flies with Celie and Nettie. I wanted to be reading The Color Purple over and over until I was so far inside it, I wouldn’t even remember myself.

  I didn’t know how to discuss it, though, and so even though a part of me hoped to see the librarian with the clacking necklace, another part of me was relieved she never showed up, covering for anybody.

  * * *

  I took notes and looked at pictures. Whenever there was a working computer, I put my name on the list to use it, so that I could search YouTube videos and websites. It wasn’t that hard. If everything went fine, there wasn’t that much to know. But all sorts of things could go wrong. The baby could come feet first or with the cord around its neck. Lollipop could bleed to death. I wasn’t sure how a baby could get out of an eleven-year-old girl. It didn’t make sense to begin with, even with a full-grown woman. And Lollipop was somewhere around seven months now. I needed an A in this. I couldn’t fail.

  I never actually failed a class before last year. Now I was getting Fs in English and math, both. I thought I would get called out by a guidance counselor, but it hadn’t happened yet. My English teacher did keep me one day, though. It made me nervous, because I was scheduled for a party. Daddy was picking me up in the Escalade, and he would be furious if I was late.

  “You’re struggling in my class,” Mr. Davis told me. He was the color of a tree trunk at dusk—it made me think of down south—and his hair was shaved close to his head. “As you know, your tests have not gone well.” His round eyes made him seem surprised all the time, but nothing else about him seemed that way. Mostly he was calm and solid. Trevor said he used to be in the military. �
��And you haven’t turned in homework assignments for a while.”

  I glanced at the clock. Mr. Davis noticed. “Are you expected somewhere?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m available after school for help. I stay an hour later Tuesdays and Thursdays for students to drop by.”

  I nodded.

  “I notice you’re falling asleep in class frequently.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  His round eyes looked at me, seeing me, just a little bit the way I once thought Daddy used to see me. But I had been so stupid to think that. “You don’t have to be sorry.” His voice was kind, but Daddy’s had been too. “I’m just wondering if there’s any way you might get more sleep at home.”

  “Okay.”

  “I would be happy to speak with your parents or parent or guardian, if that could help.”

  I tried not to show panic. “I have to go. My boyfriend is waiting for me.”

  He frowned and looked past me, then at me, then past me again. But he couldn’t figure it out. So he excused me instead.

  * * *

  Lollipop was getting big enough to really notice, so not many men wanted her anymore. On the other hand, the ones who did were apparently paying top dollar. Frogs, Celie might say. They all frogs to me. It made me want to laugh and cry both at the same time, what Celie thought of men.

  Lollipop was tired, and she said her legs jumped around at night. But she was proud. “I’m making all of us rich,” she boasted, patting her round belly.

  We were in her hotel room, and I was trying to explain to her how she needed to breathe during contractions. She didn’t want to listen.

  “Daddy didn’t want me to know, but that last date from Tuesday told me how much he paid.”

  She wanted me to ask, but I couldn’t. I could hardly look at her myself, much less think about her with a date. It was too messed up.

  “Three thousand!” Lollipop shouted. “Three thousand!”

  I guess she learned her numbers. “Lollipop, I don’t care how much anybody paid for you. I have to get that baby out of you safely, and I need you to pay attention to me.”

  “Stop worrying, Dime,” she pouted. “It’s not going to be a big thing. I’ll just go away when it’s time.”

  “You can’t go away from a baby coming out of you!” I still didn’t know if her ignorance was an act or not.

  “You can go away from anything,” Lollipop said. “I do it all the time so that when it hurts, nothing hurts.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But I did. She was talking about what I imagined when I tapped on the gray brick, hoping for an escape route. Except I think what Lollipop was telling me was that she really knew how to make it work. How to go far away so that she wasn’t feeling or thinking anything when her body was right there.

  “If it’s a boy, I’m going to name it Ray, after Ray, since I’ll never see him again,” she said matter-of-factly. “And if it’s a girl, I’m going to call her Rayelle after him too.” She thought for a second. “You think Daddy will put the baby in here with me? Or do you think he’ll keep the baby back at the apartment?”

  “I don’t know, Lolly,” I told her. “I really don’t know.”

  * * *

  Fake snow and candy canes were up on the walls at school. In the front lobby, just past the metal detectors, they put up a plastic Christmas tree. Two days later it was knocked over and half-crushed. TV commercials were filled with red and green and silver and gold and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and “Jingle Bells” and “The Little Drummer Boy.” The Puerto Rican man and the white woman pulled out books on Christmas and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. I watched them set up the display the day I was studying breech births for the fourth time. My librarian showed up again, her fingernails freshly silver with green ribbons painted perfectly on each thumbnail. She had no idea I was on my third reading of The Color Purple. Or that I had even looked at it yet.

  “I hope you’ll discuss it with me the next time we cross paths,” she said. “It really is challenging.”

  I nodded.

  Daddy bought us Christmas-colored bras and panties, and Brandy got a new coat, red on the outside and black lining on the inside. Lollipop didn’t get one because she wasn’t allowed out. Three different dates gave me red-and-white-striped candy canes.

  Then L.A. came back. Wearing a new sweater jacket that went to her knees. I’d forgotten about the gap in her mouth.

  She decided to hang tinsel all over the apartment within an hour of walking in the door, dragging Lollipop’s pink and white suitcases behind her. “It is slow down there.” She poked her tongue through her gap. “I mean, slow.”

  “What are those Russian girls like?” Brandy asked.

  I wanted to know why she was back. Was it just for Christmas? Did Daddy miss her?

  “Slow.” She pulled out another piece of tape and attached her green tinsel to the top of the TV. “We going to switch,” she said. “After the baby come, you going down south and I’m staying up here.”

  “Yeah, but until the baby come, you working the street with me,” Brandy said.

  “I’m not working no track.” L.A. twisted the tinsel so that it curled around the edges of the TV, all the way around. The locks turned, and Daddy walked in as L.A. kept talking. “I’m doing outcalls and parties. Daddy say Christmas season more profitable up here than down south. If I bring home a certain Christmas quota, I’m getting a new tooth.”

  “Who say you getting a new tooth?” Daddy asked. He hung up his new black-and-brown coat—Brandy said it was shearling—and then thumbed his phone without looking at us as he walked to the couch.

  “You getting it for me,” L.A. said. “Don’t play like you ain’t.”

  “How much does a new tooth cost?” Brandy asked.

  “More than you make,” L.A. said.

  Daddy ignored them, tapping his phone fast. I wondered if he was texting Eagle. And I wondered what a new tooth cost. A hundred dollars? A thousand? Why didn’t Daddy just get her a new tooth right away, because—except for the true freaks—wouldn’t it likely turn off most dates?

  “Dime, get me a beer,” Daddy said.

  I went to the kitchen to get a forty. When I came back and handed it to him, he pulled me down onto his lap. “You studying hard?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” he said. “We all counting on you.”

  * * *

  The one they called Dime didn’t see it coming. That’s how Truth would begin this next part. She thought she had grown up enough by now and knew enough by now not to be surprised by anything anymore. Not by Daddy cooking the household’s Christmas Eve turkey himself. Not by Daddy ordering them all to work Christmas Day. Dime was sure nothing would ever surprise her again. But she was wrong.

  * * *

  Daddy was home when I came back from the library. He was in the best mood I’d ever seen him in. If I didn’t know better, I might even think he was drunk or high. Instead of telling me to hurry up and change, he took me into his room, tossed me onto his bed, and got himself naked in two seconds. His new scar bumped a short line on his chest. His muscles were tight and his shoulders bulged. He was standing up straight—every part of him—grinning.

  “Just had me a conversation with Uncle Ray.” He dragged me down the bed by my ankles. “You know what you doing birthing that baby, right?”

  My bottom was at the bed’s edge, so I lifted my hips. “Yes.” Lollipop had never been to the clinic. What if she had high blood pressure? What if she had gestational diabetes? What if the baby was a boy, and Uncle Ray didn’t want to buy a boy? I guess that was Daddy’s problem. Or maybe Uncle Ray did want to buy a boy.

  “Ain’t nobody seen you reading about it?” He wiggled my jeans down and then tugged them off.

  “Nobody knows,” I said. I was more used to pretending now, plus I knew he knew I was scared about the baby, so it was okay if I didn’t pretend as well as I usually tried.

&n
bsp; He was in a hurry, and it was over fast. He dressed right away. “I’m out,” he told me. “You stay. I’m a be back in a while. Take you a shower and wait for me clean.”

  “What about work?” I asked. “What about my quota?”

  He flashed his D. “You getting a little vacation this afternoon.” He smiled. “Business booming.”

  He hadn’t taken me twice in the same day since before down south. I wished I hadn’t been the only one home. If L.A. had been here, he probably would have taken her instead of me. I had to hope that when he came back, he would want it fast again so it would be over quickly. I listened to him leave, to the locks on the door clicking into place. Then I lay there, wondering how much time I had. It was strange not to have somewhere to go, something to do. I was just about to get out of the bed and get into the shower, when I heard the locks again. I thought it was Daddy, forgetting something, and I almost called out. But it wasn’t Daddy. It was L.A. and Eagle.

  “Whippet got the spot set,” L.A. said. I heard her walk to the refrigerator and pull something out. “Philadelphia.”

  “I do not trust Whippet.” I heard Eagle scrape a kitchen chair as he sat down.

  “Well, he got the spot set.” L.A. sucked her teeth. “Anyways, I don’t trust you.”

  “I have buyer,” Eagle said, in an impatient tone, as if he had said it lots of times.

  “How do I know you ain’t playing me?”

  There was a silence. Then L.A. sucked her teeth again. “Lollipop’s people going to pay forty grand for a baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “So that what you and Daddy been planning? To sell the baby back down south? To her uncle Ray or whoever?”