Dime (23 page)

Daddy was strong, all the way back to his old self, and he was driving again. When Lollipop had live dates, he circled the block until they left. Then he double-parked around the corner from the hotel, put on his flashers, and went up to check on her.

Otherwise, Eagle was around the hotel most, working in his Lincoln town car as if it was his office. Eagle was still in charge of the computer part of things. According to Lollipop, the passwords would never stop having to be changed, and there were always different things that had to be typed in every few days. Eagle had his own gun. It was bigger than Daddy's and black. He kept it sitting on the seat beside him, like it was nothing. Eagle also had an iPad. He watched a lot of YouTube on it. But mostly it was for managing Lollipop's website and also using Backpage and Craigslist and DateHookup ads to attract johns looking for dates with little girls.

He usually drove me back home around two in the morning. I was making quota by then most nights, since Daddy lowered it after he assigned me to deliver the baby. I guess Daddy realized I had to rest sometime. So I was able to sleep four or five hours most nights, which helped. I was still tired, but not as tired. My brain seemed to be working better. I forced it to work better. I was thinking about the baby all the time, every minute, except when I was reading.
I have to get this baby born alive,
I kept thinking.
And then I have to save it. Nobody else will. It has to be me.

*  *  *

Eagle pulled up in front of our stoop, and I stepped out without either of us saying anything. We never spoke. I walked up the steps and knocked on the door. Daddy let me in.

I handed him the money and kicked off my heels. They didn't bother me as much as they had on the track, because it was only sometimes that a date asked me to put them on, and that was never for walking anywhere.

It wasn't until my heels were off that I noticed L.A. sitting on the couch. And three parallel scratches on Daddy's cheek. L.A. was wearing sweats. Lollipop's pink suitcase and white suitcase stood ready by the door. Daddy was holding a forty and his eyebrow was scrunched tight, hiding its scar.

He barely seemed to notice me. He took the money and counted it, but then he turned to L.A. I walked straight to the alcove and didn't even look at her. I didn't know what was going on, but I knew I better disappear. Right as I was trying, something whipped past me, crashed against the wall, and fell to the floor. Before I had a chance to see what it was, I could hear Daddy walk across the apartment. I waited for a thud or a thwack, but there was silence and then he was laughing. I was afraid to peek. Instead I looked for what L.A. had thrown. It was the remote control, lying in the alcove corner. The battery lid had come off, and the rectangular battery was dangling by short red and yellow and black wires.

“You do that again, bitch,” Daddy said to L.A., “and I will kill you.” He sounded cheerful.

Now I peeked. Daddy was pointing his gun straight at L.A.'s jaw. He didn't look like a man who got stabbed anymore. He looked just like his old self.

“You said we was getting married,” L.A. said. She looked sadder than I'd ever seen her. She looked weak.

Daddy held the gun steady. “And we going to. But we can't get married if you dead.”

“You keep saying six months and it ain't never six months and now you sending me down there without you?” She was crying.

Daddy lowered his gun and softened his voice. “I'm a come soon as I can. You stupid?”

L.A. poked her gap with her tongue, sniffing. “You know I ain't stupid.”

“Then you know plans change. You supposed to be Bottom means I rely on you. I need your ass down south, then you get your ass down south. You don't throw no fit and scratch up my face.”

He leaned down to kiss her and kissed her long. Then he grabbed a fistful of her hair and wrapped it around his fist. He yanked her head down to one side hard. Then he yanked it down to the other side hard. She gasped from the pain. He did it again. “I would shoot you in the rest of them teeth right now for this bullshit lack of cooperation.” His voice was like he was stroking her instead of hurting her: whispery and tender. “I would shoot you right now except you my Bottom.” He kissed her long again. “And I'm a marry you just like I said.” He unwrapped himself. “Get up.”

She stood up, wobbly.

His voice was regular again. “Take your shit and go. Eagle out there waiting. He going to drive you.”

L.A. hesitated a second, but Daddy raised his gun again, and this time he wasn't laughing or kissing her or looking soft. She left.

Daddy nodded at me. “Plans changed,” he said. “You not going down south until after that baby born. L.A. going to be my Bottom Bitch down there.”

Who was Bottom Bitch here now? Lollipop was making the most money, but she was only eleven and never left the hotel room. Brandy made more than me because she was out working more hours. But Brandy didn't even want to be the Bottom Bitch.

“I got to go to the hotel,” Daddy told me. He tucked his gun away. “Eagle going to be gone a few days. Don't open the door for nobody.”

Before he pulled the door closed, he winked and flashed his
D
. “I ain't marrying that bitch,” he told me. “She too stupid.”

*  *  *

Even though I wasn't pregnant and I was too old for the johns who saw Lollipop, Daddy thought I was young enough that having her and me next door to each other would bring in more johns and make us more money. I was tired of worrying about Lollipop's baby, but it was hard not to. A few times, between dates, I pulled
The Color Purple
out from underneath the bed, but I was too distracted to begin reading. Instead I stared at the cover, trying to guess what the bottom half of a woman in a dress, the hindquarters of a dog, and purple flowers might be about.

Brandy still had to work the street. She still didn't have a phone. She didn't care. She was just glad L.A. was gone. It made her different, or maybe being worn out was finally making her different. More quiet and less attitude. She was sort of the Bottom Bitch, but Daddy had it all set up so strangely, it was hard to tell. I heard George and Stone making fun of him.

“You a simp,” I heard them say when I was in my alcove, changing from school clothes into work clothes and trying to review in my head what I had learned about breech births.

“Yeah?” Daddy said. “Who making more coins? I'm a forward thinker. You want to stay on top of the game, you got to think outside the box.”

George and Stone snickered like a couple of little boys.
“Box.”
Stone giggled.

I heard front chair legs thump back down on the kitchen floor. “Life give you a lemon,” Daddy said, “you make lemonade.”

*  *  *

I just want to be clear,
Truth would continue
. Lollipop got pregnant in May by the second or third fan who ever visited her.
Brandy and I questioned her closely until we figured it out as best we could. Until we put together a picture of how things must have happened.
Uncle Ray probably never even knew. By chance, Lollipop's first blood came after her first date. Uncle Ray thought the blood was from that date. She had no other signs: no nubs on her chest, no hair. Nothing but a slim little-girl body. Uncle Ray didn't realize what that first blood was until her second period, when she had not been visited in person by anyone.

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.

“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.