Little Peach (7 page)

His words burrow into me. I flinch, Calvin’s face flashing in my aching head.

“You know what’s out there,” he continues. “Waitin’ for you to come home. Waitin’ in the dark.”

I turn and look him in the eye. “Shut up.”

He looks right back. “No. Because you gotta understand. You
safe
here, girl. As safe as you ever gonna be. Look at Kat. Look at Baby. They’re happy, right? Healthy. Fed, clean, they got new clothes and a place to live. It don’t get much better. Not out here. Not for girls like you.”

“I didn’t want to be with that guy last night,” I murmur. “I can’t even remember. Why can’t I remember?”

Devon lifts my chin with his finger. “Look at me,” he says. “Best thing to do is forget about it and get on with what we gotta do to survive.”

Devon turns me to face the mirror again. “Look at you. Look at how beautiful you are. Can’t you see yourself? We gonna make money, Peach. You’re gonna make money—you and me and Kat and Baby Girl. We gonna
save up, buy a house, get up outta here and onto somethin’ better. We gonna have a good life. That’s what you want, right?”

It is. It is what I want. A good life with food and people who like me. But I can’t do what he’s asking. Sleep with men for money. It’s disgusting.

“I’m not like that,” I say. “I ain’t never been with a boy before.”

“Before last night, you mean.” Devon leans in, his mouth on my ear. “You loved it, ’Chelle. You was all like, ‘Yeah, baby . . .’”

“Shut up!” I scream, pushing him away. “You’re lying! I didn’t say that! I didn’t want to!”

Devon grabs my wrist and smiles. “But you did, didn’t you? You did that shit for hours. Maybe you ain’t what you think, Peach. Maybe you mad right now, but you did me proud. I’m proud of you. Hear me? You ain’t what you think you are. You’re strong. You’re tough. I knew it from the moment I saw you at Port Authority. You smart too. Smart enough to run away from whatever mother-fuckers you lived with before. And lucky enough to meet me.”

I look at myself in the mirror again, this girl I don’t
know. She is beautiful—her hair perfect, her face clean and painted like someone on TV. She’s a girl who had sex. And survived. Devon wraps his arms around me. I can hear the orange fish shouting on the TV in the living room. “Nemo! I found you!”

My mother. That house.

Calvin.

Grandpa. Dead.

Maybe I am lucky to be here, with him and Baby and Kat, in our own place, with food in the kitchen and a TV that works. I will make it clean here. Fold the laundry. Make my bed. Fill the air with the smell of something cooked.

“My girls call me Daddy,” Devon says. “You should, too, ’cause that’s what I am. I can take care of you. I protect you. Understand? Me, my girls, my boys, we all been where you are—and we’re surviving. One more thing: I didn’t touch you last night. You hear? I wouldn’t do that. Not to you.”

Devon’s eyes flame, like a match in the night. “You want a family? You got it, girl. We right here. And we got a place for you. Just for you.”

In my room, my bed is neat, the comforter tucked in, red bear blanket folded in a square on my pillow. Grandpa’s shirt is still on the floor in a ball. Baby’s getting dressed, yanking a pink cotton dress over her head. There’s a kitten on the front. It might be a nightgown. Her hair is in pigtails, twisted and fastened with old-school plastic barrettes like the ones I used to wear when I was young. She looks like a little girl.

“I washed ’em.” She grins, pointing to my bed. “Your sheets.”

“Thanks,” I say, but I don’t look.

“You gonna stay, right?”

“What?”

“You gonna stay with us?” Baby fiddles with the edge of her dress. “The last girl, she left. I didn’t like her anyway. She wasn’t nice. Not like you. She got a different daddy now. We see her on the track sometimes, all busted up and skinny.

“It’s scary down there,” she whispers. “But we don’t work the track. We better than that.”

I shiver and pull on the dark-blue jeans that are laid out on the bed. They are brand-new. The shirt is purple and shiny, but not too tight. The satiny fabric drifts
across my stomach in soft waves. It’s not a kid’s shirt, not like the simple black top I got at the store with Devon. I look in the mirror and for a moment I flush with pride. Who is that girl? I turn and try on a smile. Then I see the bruise on my arm.

“Here,” Baby says, putting a black jacket over my shoulders. “It’ll go away soon. You should stay with us. It’s better here.”

I search her face. Does she know what I did last night? Did she see it?

Baby smiles again. Her cheeks are chubby, and there’s a gap between her yellowish front teeth, with bits of potato chips stuck in between. Her eyes are dark brown and wide open, looking up at me like a puppy. “You look so different. Pretty. When I grow up, I’m gonna be pretty like you.”

“You’re already pretty,” I say. Her face lights up. She bounces over to me and throws her arms around my neck.

“How old are you?” I ask.

“Twelve,” she says. She seems younger to me, but I don’t want her to feel bad, so I just smile back.

“Promise you’ll stay,” she whispers, and suddenly
I can feel Grandpa. Like it’s his big arms around me, holding me tight to his chest, making me feel like there was nothing that could hurt us, so long as we were tucked in tight together in our warm, dark cave. I hug Baby back, gathering her as close as I can stand. I don’t want her to be scared.

“I dunno,” I say. “I dunno if I can stay.”

She buries her face into me like she’s known me her whole life. “It’s not so bad here. You got somewhere else to go?”

“No,” I say, tightening my grip on her. I have nowhere else to go.

“Then stay. Please?”

My own mama don’t want me. But here’s this girl. And Devon. They want me. Maybe we could be something. Maybe we can get up outta here, like Devon said. Get a house and giant beds. Get happy.

Maybe I should try.

“For a little while,” I say to her. “Okay?”

Baby hugs me tighter, my long braids trickle down my back. I stand up straight and gather her up.

You see me, Mama? I’m not your kid anymore.

At 9:00 p.m. Kat appears in the doorway in a short, white pleated skirt with black and red plaid, flat black leather boots, and a white shirt that falls from one shoulder. Her braids are pulled back into a high ponytail.

She looks rich. Her shoulders are pulled back proudly, her sharp chin pointed out.

She scans us quickly and turns on her heels. “Let’s go,” she says.

I don’t know where we’re going. I want to ask. I want someone to explain what’s about to happen. I glance at Baby, then at Kat, who looks annoyed. “You good?” she asks.

I swallow and nod.

We descend the stairs with Devon, through the same moist air I remember from the night I came here, when I was half-asleep and hungry, and out into the dark night. Two guys, both in red shirts, open the heavy doors for us. Devon nods at them, Kat flashes a smile. We cross the parking lot, the apartment building behind me like a finger reaching out from the ground. In the distance there’s the roller coaster and Ferris wheel with colorful lights turning slowly in the night like a fake moon.

Who’s up there, on that ride? Can they see me?

Devon’s shiny car. Doors locked. Kat up front, smoking a cigarette. Devon rolls down the window. I grip Baby’s hand. She smiles and chews her gum and hands me a piece. I take it in my fist and stare out the window.

The street is very wide. I search the signs. Surf Avenue. 27th Street. A school, a playground, more tall buildings, taller than Pink Houses, taller than anything in Strawberry Mansion. Tall like the buildings in the city. But the streets are the same kind of quiet as North Philly. Deserted except for the corner stores and the boys who stand outside them, mothers rushing their kids home before it’s too dark. There’s a woman on a corner, shuffling slowly, scratching at her arm. Her body slightly tilted, like she’s being pushed by an invisible hand. She looks like Mom.

Chuck must be outside Boo’s by now. Does he know I’m gone? Has he noticed?

Kat hands me a bottle of orange juice. “Drink,” she says. “You don’t look so good.”

I take a sip. This time I can taste something else. Like bitter metal. I spit it back into the bottle. My heart punches at my chest bone, like it wants out.

“No, thanks,” I say, and give the bottle back.

“You’re not gonna pass out, Peach. It’ll just calm you down. You look like you about to jump out the window.”

“What’s in it?” I ask.

“It’s just medicine. Like from a doctor. See?” Kat takes a big swig and hands it back to me.

I take a sip. Then another. My heart slows down.

We make a right, past a block of empty houses, past buildings as long as an entire city block, with garbage trucks lined up along the curb.

Then we turn again.

A hotel. We stop at a hotel. The Litehouse.

A small gravel parking lot. Guys leaning up against cars, smoking, watching, nodding to one another. Devon steps out. Complicated handshakes. Throbbing music. Devon barks into the night, a sound like a wolf or bear, and the other men bark back. I shiver, keep my head down, and follow Kat, her skirt swaying as she walks through the lot and up the rusty staircase to the second floor, where there are two other girls perched outside the open doors of hotel rooms. Baby waves, walks down the outside balcony to the last room, and disappears.

Wait. Please. Not yet
.

Kat leads me into Room 5. The walls are a sick
yellow, the color of rotting teeth. There are two beds, a limp pillow on each, and an old dusty TV plopped on a chair in the corner. It smells like smoke and salt, like a filthy ocean.

“A’ight!” Kat claps her hands once—loudly—like a coach. “This is how we do. Tricks don’t pay us direct. They pay the daddies outside so we don’t gotta deal with no money, which is good because tricks always try to get over. Not the regulars, ’cause they know how it work, and they know they’ll get their ass beat if they try to scam. But the tricks we don’t know? Those the ones you gotta watch.”

Kat talks at me, fast and clear and hard. Her hands too. Pointing to the bed, explaining. She fishes in her silver bag. A small knife. She puts it under the mattress. More talking. She pulls out two pills and a bottle of orange juice. She swallows one, breaks the other in half and hands it to me.

“Here. You need to calm the hell down.”

She blots my face, shakes the front of my purple shirt. It’s wet beneath my armpits, dark like a bruise.

“What is it?”

“It’ll help you maintain. Anything goes wrong, we yell
for Daddy. He and his boys’ll be up here in a second. Girls out there on the track, they ain’t got no daddy lookin’ out, not really. Once you in a car with a trick, he can do whatever he wants and nobody gonna help you. Up in here, though, we covered. Shit goes wrong, you just yell.”

I don’t understand what she’s saying.

What do you do if you’re in trouble?

I want to go home.

No. Not home. Just somewhere else.

I can’t do this. I can’t.

Kat steps toward me.

“You straight?” she says.

I shake my head.
No
.

“I gotta go,” I say.

“Sit down.”

“No. I want . . .” I glance at the door. Outside, someone laughs. A girl.

Where’s Baby?

Kat grabs my wrist. “C’mere.”

She drags me to the window, shoves back the curtain so I can see the parking lot.

“You see those guys out there? They all Bloods. This
whole damn town is Blood. Every red shirt you see, every red sneaker. They run shit here. You do what you told, they’ll kill for you.”

Kill for me. Like Grandpa. There are at least ten guys out there, all bigger than Calvin. Bigger than Mama. Bigger than anyone who’d ever try to mess with me again.

“But you try to take off? They’ll beat your ass ’cause you’ll get us all locked up. Understand? Every single one of them. If you lose your shit and go runnin’ out that door lookin’ for fuckin’ Batman to come up in here and save your ass, you gonna get beat. And then I’m gonna get beat for not beatin’ you myself.”

“Bloods?” It burns between my legs.

“Yeah. Bloods. You ain’t got gangs where you come from? You see red on a guy? Blood. You hear them do that howl? Blood. They’re everywhere. And they know who we are. We run with them. We’re Blood too.”

She pulls me back to the bed and takes my hands. “Take the pill. Drink your juice. In five minutes, you won’t feel so scared.”

Kat’s eyes burn into me. Small beads of sweat dot her forehead. She grips my shoulders and kneels in front of me. “Please.”

“I ain’t a junkie,” I say, staring at the pill.

“Me neither,” she snaps.

I swallow it, gulping down the juice. Kat sighs deeply, rubs her forehead, and glances at the door like she’s making sure no one heard us. Like we’ve just escaped something terrible.

“Good girl,” she whispers, and arranges my braids, her eyes full of relief. “Good girl.”

Warmth. I begin to float away. Drift all soft and cozy. Like a hug. Kat here with me. I did a good job.

She looks like a cat. The way she walks.

Do I look like a peach?

I laugh and lie back on the bed, pull down the blanket, smush my face into the pillow.

“Will I remember?” I ask.

“Yeah. But you won’t mind so much. Sit up. And do what I do.”

Outside I can hear voices. Chuck and Little John sitting on their chairs. There’s a knock at my door. And I grin.

Grandpa’s coming.

12

2700 SURF AVENUE, APARTMENT 6B CONEY ISLAND, NEW YORK

June 30

She acts like a doctor, but she doesn’t look like one. Her hair is short, braided into uneven cornrows. She’s old—older than my mom, and fat. Behind her left ear is a red star tattoo. There’s another tattoo on her chest, peeking from underneath her white tank top. A saggy bug—maybe a bee—and two faded words I can’t make out. Devon leans against the doorway of the bedroom, watching us.

She uses her hands to examine me. My teeth, my
tongue, my arms. I lift my shirt. Take a deep breath. She presses the bruise on my thigh.