by Sharon Flake
“My father ain’t around all the time neither,” he says.
I know about Sato’s dad. He lives with them in the summer, when he can get construction work full-time. Come wintertime, he heads for Florida. Works there till it’s warm here again.
“It ain’t the same,” I say. “Your dad is a real dad. My father—he don’t care about me.”
Sato tries to say it don’t matter if I ain’t got the kind of father I want, ’cause at least I got Dr. Mitchell and Odd Job. But that ain’t the same, I wanna tell him. They ain’t supposed to take care of me, even though they do sometimes.
When we get to the corner, we stay put for a while. I keep waiting for Sato to say something smart about my dad or me being homeless. He don’t. He leans on a car and crosses his legs like he’s cool. Then he asks me how many freckles I got.
“I don’t know,” I say, feeling my face, like I can find out that way.
“Two hundred twenty,” he says. And he ain’t smiling like he’s making it up, neither.
I know my face is red and my right leg is shaking way too much. But that don’t keep me from staring right at Sato. Or him from looking at me like I’m the prettiest girl he ever seen.
They had a pretrial for Shiketa today— but Momma wasn’t there. Just the lawyers and the judge. They wanted to look over Momma’s medical records and see what witnesses they might want to call later. Shiketa’s lawyer don’t want her doing time in jail with grown-up criminals. He wants her to stay in juvey and try to make things right by doing community service. So they’re supposed to talk about that too. I hope Shiketa gets ten years for what she done to Momma.
It’s been one month and one week since Shiketa hurt Momma, and I think they shoulda had the real trial by now. Momma says to be patient. That she wants to make sure Shiketa gets some help and don’t hurt nobody else. But that ain’t the whole truth. I know. I seen the letters she wrote to Shiketa. Six of ’em, half-finished and balled up in the trash.
Dear Shiketa, one of ’em said.
You could have killed me and made it so my daughter wouldn’t have a mother. Then who would take care of her? Nobody. I hope they . . .
All six letters ended just the same. I hope they . . . Last night, I filled in the missing words myself. I hope they put you in jail till you ninety. I hope they make you wash dishes all day long until your fingers shrivel up and fall off like dead leaves. I hope they do to you what you did to Momma.
I didn’t write the words down like Momma. I said them in my mind—not out loud where Momma might hear ’em. She wouldn’t like it, even if she might be thinking it herself.
“Hey, Momma,” I say, walking up to our apartment building right after school.
Momma’s sitting on the top step with a newspaper under her butt, trying to keep her tan pants clean. She’s got a tray with a pitcher of lemonade on it, and two tall, skinny glasses with ice cubes almost melted down to nothing.
“Sorry I’m late,” I say, digging out the ice and putting a piece in my mouth.
She rubs her neck with her dirty hands. She takes off the new purple scarf she’s got on and straightens up the wig she’s wearing till her hair grows back in. “That’s all right. I—I’ve been busy.”
Momma don’t have to tell me what she’s been up to. Our pavement is soaking wet. And there’s four big bags of dirt and all kinds of flowers sitting out.
“They need to lock Shiketa up for good and throw away the key,” I say, spooning sugar onto a piece of lemon and sucking it.
Momma touches the spot Shiketa hit. “Maybe not for good. Just till she learns right from wrong.”
My face twists up from the sour lemon. “She knows right from wrong,” I say, spitting lemon rind into my hand. “She just don’t mind doing wrong.”
Momma ain’t listening. She’s down on the pavement emptying a giant bag of dirt into a big blue flowerpot. “See those plants over there? The yellow snapdragons?” she says pointing to the tall puffy flowers in a pot close to the house. “The woman across the street liked ’em so much, I took her to the store to get some. We spent half the day digging up her yard and planting ’em.”
I’m looking at Momma. Wondering why she ain’t learned her lesson the first time with Shiketa. Now here she is getting in folks’ business again. Next thing you know that old lady gonna be complaining that the flowers died. Then she gonna come screaming and hollering at us.
Momma comes over to me and gives me a hug. Dirt crumbs roll off her fingers and down the front of my shirt. She tells me she got two new jobs. She lost her other part-time jobs ’cause she couldn’t go back to work right after she got hit. She kept saying her head hurt. I think it was something else.
“Where you gonna be working now?” I ask.
“I got a job at the university where I take classes. Six months from now I won’t have to pay hardly nothing—anything—to go to school.”
Momma’s gonna work in the dorms. Buzzing students in and out.
“Crazy hours though,” she says, scooping dirt out the bag and putting it in the pot. “Weekends, late nights, daylight.”
I bend over and look at Shiketa’s place. The girl with the burgundy weave is sitting out front. The other day she told Momma Shiketa might come home on house arrest. I freaked out when I heard that. So Momma called her lawyer, to see what she could do to make that not happen. So far, so good.
Momma walks up the front steps. “I start working in two weeks. Gonna use the money everyone collected to buy a nice used car.”
“Don’t use it all,” I say, downing my lemonade. “We ain’t got that much, you know.”
Momma looks at me. Shakes her head. “You have to spend it sometimes, Miss Cheapskate.”
When Momma goes in the house to rest awhile, I kick off my sneakers and socks. Then I close my eyes and think about Sato. But that don’t last long.
“You got a problem?” I hear someone say.
I know that voice. It’s the girl with the burgundy weave. But I keep my eyes shut, even when a handful of dirt smacks me in the chest.
“I asked you a question.”
When I open my eyes, Weave Girl is standing right over me with her fist pulled back. “My sister Shiketa coulda been home by now if it wasn’t for your mother.”
I scoot back on my hands and feet. She walks down the steps and rips Momma’s flowers out the pot. Ten daffodils come flying my way.
“My mother planted those!”
Weave Girl comes up to me and pokes her finger in my cheek. Her long nail feels like it’s a knife. “Your mother need to mind her own business.”
Weave Girl ain’t as old as Shiketa. She’s, like, fifteen. Them two call each other sister, even though they ain’t. She’s hardcore, with big muscles in her arms and legs like maybe she runs track or plays baseball. But I don’t care. I’m tired of people treating me and Momma anyway they want. “Leave me alone,” I shout.
She pushes me. I get up and give her what she gave me. Then I swallow hard and get ready to get my butt kicked.
Both her fists go up. “You think you bad, huh?” she says, moving ’em back and forth like she’s trying to figure out where to hit me first.
“Raspberry?” Momma says, sticking her head out the window. “Get in here!”
Weave Girl steps back.
“And you. What’s your name?” Momma asks, coming to the front door.
“Miracle,” she says. “Shiketa’s sister.”
Momma bends down and starts picking up flowers. She tells Miracle that she owes her three dollars. Miracle smacks her lips like Momma can forget ever seeing that money.
Momma puts her arms around me and tells Miracle that she better leave now.
Miracle takes her foot and smashes the daffodils like bugs. “Or what? You gonna call the police on me?”
Sweat sneaks out from under Momma’s wig and rolls down her neck. “Please leave,” she says. “Right now!”
“Shiketa better not do no time.” Miracle smiles, fi
ngers her weave, and walks down the steps.
I tell Momma she needs to call up the judge and tell him to give Shiketa life. She says we can’t make Shiketa pay for what Miracle’s just done.
“Why? Miracle’s gonna make me and you pay for what the judge does to Shiketa. And she ain’t gonna care nothing ’bout what’s fair, and what’s not.”
Ming and Ja’nae moving so slow toward the bus after school that when we get on to go home, we gotta stand up. People on this thing are packed as close as clothes in a closet—so it’s kind of funky, you know. Ja’nae wants the driver to cut on the air. He won’t. It’s only the middle of May. “Too soon,” he says, even though it’s eighty-three degrees out and smelly pits are stinking up the place.
When a seat near us is finally empty, Sato sits his skinny butt in it. Ming ain’t like that. When the boy in front of him gets up, Ming moves aside to let Ja’nae sit down. I tell Sato that he shoulda done the same thing for me. He says, “Ja’nae and Ming go together. Me and you ain’t got it going on like that.”
Ming is Mai’s brother. Him and Ja’nae been boyfriend and girlfriend for two years now. He works on his parents’ food truck, right by the school. But he rides the bus eight stops outta his way, just to be with Ja’nae, then walks back to work. Sato tells Ming that he’s the dumbest boy he ever met. Ming says, “That’s aaight, but I got me a girl, now don’t I?”
You’d think Sato would be embarrassed letting me stand here with this heavy book bag, while he sitting down. But he ain’t. He talking his head off. Asking about Momma. Telling me to tell her that he gonna come by our place to visit her soon. I’m hoping it’s me he really wants to see.
Ja’nae waves her finger for me to lean down so she can tell me something. “Don’t pay Sato no attention. He likes you. A lot.”
My eyes go from Sato’s new black sneakers, to his purple tee, to his smooth, brown lips.
Ja’nae pulls her long braids off her neck. “Some boys act tough ’cause they don’t want girls knowing how much they really like ’em.”
A woman gets up. I sit down. Sato scoots over next to me. Puts his lips too close to my ear when he asks what me and Ja’nae are talking about. He can’t whisper, though, so of course Ja’nae hears him.
“We talking ’bout the class trip,” she lies.
Sato thinks they might cancel it. “Not enough people signed up.”
He don’t know what he’s talking about. In three weeks, we’ll be in Canada with no parents.
Sato asks us who we rooming with, since he’s rooming with Ming. Mai is rooming with Ja’nae. I’m supposed to room with Zora, I tell him.
Ja’nae puts her arm around my shoulder. Her hot breath tickles my ear when she says that Zora don’t wanna room with me now. “If I even say your name, she acts like she wants to hit me.”
Sato is minding our business. “Zora mad at you?”
“Yep,” Ja’nae says, pulling out a cotton ball and wiping vanilla perfume on her neck and arms. “She—”
“She what?” I say, trying to see what Ja’nae knows.
Ja’nae drops the cotton on the floor and kicks it under the seat. “She won’t say what you did. Just that you better not say nothing to her.”
Zora hasn’t mentioned the money to me yet, but she don’t treat me the same no more. At lunchtime, she sits at another table. When we all walk to class, she makes sure she don’t end up walking next to me. I asked her the other day what her problem was, wondering if she was really gonna tell me. She just said, “You know,” and walked away from me.
Ja’nae takes Ming’s hand in hers. “It was something bad, wasn’t it?”
I change the subject, ’cause I ain’t gonna tell Ja’nae what I done, and I ain’t gonna give Zora the money back neither. Anyhow, it’s about time she got some of the bad luck that’s been following me around.
“Who wanna buy some pretzels?” I ask, pulling pretzels out my bag. Greedy Sato wants some, but don’t want to pay. Next thing I know he’s talking to Ming about going to the food truck for free food.
Ming tells Sato he will hook him up with dak bulgogi and bean deh toc.
Sato frowns. “What?”
“Barbecued chicken and fried onion pancakes,” Ming says, rubbing his stomach.
Sato asks if Mai will be there.
When Ming laughs, his eyes disappear just like Mai’s. “Yep. My mom’s keeping an eye on her. Says she’s getting too sneaky.”
“Forget it then,” Sato says, shaking his head. “She’s too evil.”
Ja’nae gets on Sato’s case. Says he’d be evil too if some girl cut his hair off, stuffed it in plastic bags, and taped them to the girls’-room mirror, the way they did to Mai at the beginning of the school year.
Ming gets up, pulls down on the cord till the driver tells him to knock it off. “I went after that girl’s brother, didn’t I?” Ming says. “And Mai got mad about that, too.”
Ja’nae is right behind Ming, telling him that Mai didn’t wanna make things worse by dragging other people into her business. Then the two of ’em get off the bus.
Sato asks me what the note taped next to Mai’s hair said. I ain’t never gonna forget it, mean as it was. “Hard times at Mai (My) House. Human hair for sale. One bag for a dolla. Three bags for two-fiddy.”
Sato gets on me. He says we all Mai’s friends, so we shoulda went after them girls and whipped their butts good.
He’s right. But none of us can fight, and them girls were bigger than us—eleventh graders. Anyhow, Mai said to leave it alone. She didn’t want no more trouble. But she ain’t been the same since. She been suspended three times and things between her father and her are worse than ever. We keep telling her to chill. Not to get so upset over what people say about her being mixed and all. She says we don’t know how it feels, always having people look and point— asking about your skin color and hair before they even ask your name.
“I don’t care what people say about me,” Sato says, standing up to leave. “I know I look good.”
When the door opens, I push him off the bus. Tell him he needs to look in the mirror sometime. But I don’t let on what I’m really thinking. That I like him so much it hurts.
Sato and I don’t go straight home. We head for Odd Job’s place. The barbecue wings cooking on the grill make Sato smack his lips. He wants me to get Odd Job to hook him up with some water ice and chicken. I look at him like he crazy. “Yeah. Just like you did me that favor on the bus and gave me your seat,” I say.
“Aaaa, girl,” Sato says, showing off them pretty white teeth. “I was just trying to treat you like we equals. Not baby you, like you was a girl or something.”
Odd Job ain’t got no regular store. He got his whole operation set up on this street-corner lot. He ain’t selling frozen Kool-Aid out a cooler like he did last spring. Now he got a water-ice stand with a big orange umbrella attached to it. And besides washing cars, he got his boys working the grill—a big, rusty trash can he split in half and put high up on sticks.
“Please?” Sato says, getting up in my face. Making it so I can’t think straight. “I would do it for you,” he says, still trying to get me to hook him up with food.
Odd Job’s scraping and scooping up balls of lime-green water ice and putting ’em into cups. “Raspberry Girl. How’s Momma? I called her a few times. Woulda come visit her in the hospital too, but I don’t do stuff like that,” he says, handing the water ice to me and Sato.
“I don’t like green all that much,” Sato says, eating it anyway.
Odd Job wipes sweat from his forehead with a ripped-up shirt he pulls out his back pocket. “It’s free, ain’t it?” He turns my way. “Hospitals ain’t my thing. I break into a cold sweat every time I go inside one,” he says. “Couldn’t even go in when my mother was dying. My brothers and sisters still mad at me for that.”
Sato goes and sits down in Odd Job’s lounge chair. Pulls back the stick and crosses his legs like he’s sitting in his own living room.
Sato stays put. Odd Job don’t tell him again to get moving. He asks me some more about Momma. Says he told her not to worry ’bout the rent.
Odd Job, Dr. Mitchell, and Momma grew up in the projects together. He looks out for us. When we had to leave the PJ’s and couldn’t get that Section Eight house we wanted, he let us move into one of his apartment buildings. He don’t charge us hardly nothing. He says Momma can make up the difference by cleaning up the two vacant units in the building. They nasty, though, and Momma ain’t had the nerve to go at ’em yet.
“Momma’s doing okay.”
“Your daddy been by?”
I get mad when he asks that. “He don’t know where we live!”
Odd Job tells me to chill. Not to get all excited. “If he show up, y’all call me. I’ll take care of things.”
I don’t ask what that means. I just nod my head yes. Then he pulls out twenty-five dollars and says for me to give it to Momma.
“Sure,” I say, smelling the money before I stuff it in my pocket.
Sato walks over to us with lime-green lips and teeth. “Can you hook a brother up with another water ice?”
Odd Job looks at him like he lost his mind. But he don’t say nothing, ’cause three cars pull up at once. Five little girls get outta the first car. The oldest one only looks six years old. Two of ’em start whining to their dad about wanting some chicken.
“A little help here, please,” Odd Job says, looking our way.
I ask the girls what they want. They all start talking at once. I tell ’em to shut up. Sato says that he can tell I ain’t used to being around little kids. He has five brothers and two sisters. He’s the oldest.
Sato leans down and picks up the smallest one. She’s maybe three years old. “You want something to drink, too?” he says, tickling her belly.
