Begging for Change

by Sharon Flake

  Mai puts her hand out for another tissue and asks if we gonna go to Daddy Joe’s with her. Zora says we can count her out.

  Ja’nae puts her arms around me and Zora. “Go. So you and Raspberry can make up.”

  I tell Ja’nae I ain’t mad at Zora. Zora puts her purse over her shoulder. Folds her arms and says that I should just go ahead and tell ’em what I did. “Then they’ll know why we’re not friends anymore.”

  Mai and Ja’nae look at me like I’m gonna tell ’em the truth. I don’t. I tell Zora to tell ’em. I’m scared, though. ’Cause she just might. Only she ain’t done it so far, and I don’t even know why.

  Zora shakes her head no.

  “Is it about your dad and her mom?” Ja’nae asks.

  “Or your real father?” Mai says.

  Zora says she ain’t telling. “Because my telling won’t make it any better.”

  I roll some of Miz Evelyn’s quarters around in my pocket. I ask Mai if she’s still going to Daddy Joe’s.

  “Yeah,” she says, throwing her tissue in the grass. “Maybe we can do something tomorrow, Zora. You, me, and Ja’nae.”

  Zora says she’ll ask her dad to take them to the movies. I’m glad, ’cause maybe when he don’t see me there, he will drive by our place to ask why. Then Momma and me will get to spend time with him—to do something special, like drive around for ice cream or go see a movie.

  The three of them make plans for the weekend. I sit by the curb waiting for Mai. I’m never giving Zora her money back, I say to myself.

  They need to shut down Daddy Joe’s. I tell Mai that when I see a smashed-up roach on the floor by the booth we sit in. She’s laughing. So is Sato. It’s me and Q that look like we want outta here.

  “When you have food, you get roaches,” Mai says. Then she starts talking about how her family’s food truck got a few of ’em too.

  “You can get shut down by the government for that,” I say, wiping my hands on my shorts.

  Q unzips his backpack. Pulls out watermelon-flavored hand gel. Squirts some on his hands. Mine too. Sato says we all just pathetic. “A few germs ain’t gonna kill you.”

  Mai’s shaking her head, but she got her hands out too.

  Daddy Joe’s is exactly sixteen bus stops from our school. On Saturdays the place is hopping. People line up outside all day long to get a table. During the week, things slow down. Like now. There ain’t nobody here but us four and two tables with one person each at ’em. We in the restaurant ten minutes before anybody comes from the back and asks us what we want.

  “I ain’t got no money,” Sato says, looking at me.

  I roll my eyes at him. “I got money,” I say, “but I ain’t buying you nothing.”

  The waitress is so neat and pretty you wonder why she works in a place like this. “Don’t waste my time, now,” she says, staring at Sato.

  “Give me . . . Give me a bag of chips and some iced tea,” Q says. “Vanilla pudding too.”

  Mai orders apple pie, a glass of water, and french fries covered in gravy.

  “Help a brother out, Q,” Sato says, trying to get money. “I’ll pay you back. I get paid Saturday.”

  “I got your back,” Q says, trying to sound cool.

  I check out the dead flies hanging on the dirty yellow strip in the corner. I stop counting at fifteen.

  Q’s dipping his barbecue chips in his vanilla pudding one at a time and smacking his lips like that mess taste good. Sato’s getting down on cheese fries and milk. I’m sitting with my hands folded in front of me. Sato puts a fry up to my mouth and tells me to taste. I shake my head no. But I eat the fry anyhow.

  “Q,” he says, “you know Raspberry is so cheap that she don’t spend money on her own self? Not a dime,” he says, sticking another fry in my mouth.

  I chew on the fry real slow, trying to make it last. Q wipes his bowl clean with his two middle fingers. He tells Sato that he don’t know that much about me. Mai tells him that I’m the cheapest girl in the whole wide world. We stay in that place three hours. The waitress finally asks us to leave when she sees we ain’t doing nothing but taking up space.

  Sato and Q leave us as soon as we get outside. There’s a basketball court up the street. They say they gonna walk ahead and check it out. Me and Mai take our time. I ask her about her dad. Whether he’s really gonna send her away or not.

  She stops. Grabs hold of her long, thick hair and says, “If he makes me go, I will cut it off. Snip, snip, gone.”

  My eyes get big. “Your dad will kill you.”

  “So?” she says, rolling her eyes. Next thing I know Mai’s jumping over a fireplug, her long hair flying all over the place.

  “Now, that’s what I like: a Puerto Rican girl with long pretty curls,” some boy says. He’s mowing grass in front of the funeral parlor without no shirt on. The blond hair on his chest looks thick and wet, like the stuff you take off corn when you clean it. He looks older than us. Like seventeen or eighteen.

  “Hola, little momma,” his friend says. “Won’t you come to Poppa?”

  Mai fingers her tattoo and keeps on walking.

  The boy with the hairy chest crosses the street and follows us. “You too good to speak?” he says.

  We walk a little faster.

  “Señorita, will ya please-a tell me your name-a?” he says, keeping up behind us and putting his hands in her hair.

  Mai pushes his hand away. He pulls on her hair again.

  “I’m not Puerto Rican. I’m black,” she says, stopping and pointing to her tattoo.

  He laughs. Says she should wear a bigger sign if she wants people to know what she really is.

  I look him up and down and tell him he needs a sign himself. “Stúpido,” I say, remembering some Spanish.

  Mai starts saying stuff too. “Idioto.”

  I slap her five, but the words that come out his mouth next shut us both up.

  “Perpetrator,” he says. “That’s what you should have on your arm. Your forehead, too,” he says pointing there. “Fake.”

  Mai crosses her arms and says, “I said I’m not Puerto Rican.”

  Sweat is dripping down the side of his face. He takes his T-shirt and wipes it. Smells the shirt and makes a face. “Well, you ain’t black, neither. Not all the way, anyhow.”

  Mai puts her arm next to his. His is almost as dark as hers. “How you know what I am?” she says.

  He laughs. “I got eyes,” he says, sticking his neck way out. “Two of ’em.”

  I can see Sato and Q up the street about a block and a half away. I tell Mai we should go ’cause they gonna wonder what happened to us. The boy with all the lip starts walking away, telling Mai she could say she was Puerto Rican if she wanted. “Those girls are hot,” he says.

  Mai and me start walking again. “See what I mean? People think they can say anything to me,” she says, digging in her purse for a rubber band and putting her hair in a ponytail.

  “He was just talking,” I say, sitting down on the curb. “Don’t pay him no mind.”

  Mai says she already forgot about him. But she don’t say nothing to me, Sato, and Q the whole time we’re on the bus headed back to school. When Sato asks her what’s wrong, she doesn’t speak. But before we off the bus she hands me a note. Why do people care what I am, anyhow?

  I write her back. Smack Sato’s hand when he tries to snatch the note from me. I don’t care if you black, white, or crazy, even. We girls. All the time.

  She smiles—a little. Writes me back and hands me the note while we stepping off the bus. I’m black. I’m black, it says, like maybe she won’t believe it herself if she don’t keep repeating it.

  “Truth or dare?” Zora says, pointing to me.

  I act like I don’t know what she’s talking ’bout. So I go over to the table in the corner of the basement and sit by myself. “I ain’t playing that game.”

  School’s finally out for the summer. We’re at Mai’s house. She tricked me. Said it was gonna be just her, me,
and Ja’nae. I show up and they got Zora here, too. Mai and Ja’nae want us to make up. “’Cause y’all not being friends is making it bad on all of us,” Ja’nae says.

  I don’t like this game. I told ’em all that from the start. But everybody else wanted to play truth or dare. So I went along, too. Now I’m sorry.

  “Don’t play then,” Zora says, getting mad.

  Ja’nae comes over to me. Whispers in my ear, and begs me to be nice.

  I tell her it’s not just me not talking to Zora. “She ain’t talking to me, neither.”

  Mai is lying on the couch, eating black licorice. She waves a piece at me and says, “You did something to her, that’s why.”

  I ask her why she told me to come if she gonna lie on me. Zora rolls her eyes at me and says she’s gonna go home.

  “Come on, Raspberry,” Ja’nae says. “Play.”

  We supposed to be at the movies, but Mai’s mom ain’t got back from the food truck to take us. “I don’t wanna play this game,” I say, getting up and going over to Mai. I dig my hands in her bag and take three licorice.

  “Greedy,” she says, snatching a piece out my hand.

  Ja’nae wanted to play cards, but Zora don’t know how. Mai wanted to watch TV, but ain’t nothing on. It was Zora’s idea to play this game. I think she wanna show me up with it. Ask me something that’s gonna embarrass me.

  “Let’s do hair,” Ja’nae says, fingering her braids. “I need to get these redone. Y’all can take ’em out for me.”

  We tell her no. Then before I know anything, we back to playing the game. They dare me to call Ming and tell him I hate his guts. Ja’nae ain’t going for it. She snatches the phone from me and starts telling Ming not to believe nothing I say. Then she asks for Sato. When he gets on the phone she says, “Raspberry likes you.”

  I stick my licorice down her skirt, snatch the phone, and throw it on the couch. Zora’s laughing. Mai is too.

  “Truth or dare?” Mai says, starting the game up again. “Ja’nae’s mom’s coming to live with her.”

  Everybody’s eyes are on Ja’nae. She’s smiling like crazy. “True,” she says.

  Zora drinks the last of her iced tea. “But she’s crazy. She lives in somebody’s basement, doesn’t she? Trying to heal people.”

  Ja’nae’s mom went to the store when Ja’nae was little and never came back. She lives in California. And every now and then she and Ja’nae sneak and call one another. Ja’nae’s grandparents don’t like it, so I don’t see how they letting her mom come live with them, even though it’s their daughter.

  “You sure?” I ask Ja’nae.

  She doesn’t want to talk about it now. She points to Mai. “Truth or dare? Did your dad change his mind about sending you to live with your cousins in California?”

  Mai’s eyes get big. She’s jumping up and down. Running ’round the room like them people on TV when they get picked to play on a game show. “You mean I’m not going? I’m staying here? All right!!”

  Ja’nae tells her she better not tell Ming who told her that. “He said your mom talked your dad out of it.”

  When Mai points to me and says “Truth or dare?” I don’t get mad that it’s my turn again. I figure Mai’s truth or dare wasn’t a real one nohow. So mine is gonna be easy. “Did you take money out Zora’s purse? Truth or dare?”

  Zora smiles. Ja’nae won’t look at me. She’s playing with Ming’s gold baby ring. The one she wears around her neck. Mai asks the question again.

  I walk over to the steps. “I ain’t no thief.”

  Ja’nae comes over to me. “Just give it back. Say you sorry so we can be like we was before.”

  I tell them they was wrong for doing this to me. Mai says they know how much I like money. “Too much, sometimes.”

  “But you ain’t a bad person,” Ja’nae says. “Not a real thief,” she says, patting my back.

  Before I think about it, I’m digging in my pocket and pulling out quarters and dollar bills. “Here,” I say, holding it out to Zora. “Take it.”

  Mai does a little dance. Ja’nae hugs me tight from behind.

  Zora never looks up. And her voice never changes—it’s still slow and sad. “We might be sisters one day. That’s what my dad said about me and you just before your mom got hurt.” Zora stands and heads up the steps. She tells me that she got mad at her dad when he said it. Because him and my mom are so different. “But I changed my mind, when your mom was in the hospital. Daddy cried that night. I heard him, after you went to sleep.”

  I walk up the steps. “Zora . . . here . . . take it. Please,” I say, clearing my throat.

  “I didn’t know the money was gone for a while,” she says, shaking her head no, when I push the money her way.

  Ja’nae’s yelling for us to come back downstairs. Zora’s in the living room, telling me that in her family, stealing is like killing. “My father says that when you steal from somebody, you kill their trust in you.”

  Change falls outta my hand. I stop to pick it up, and I apologize for what I did.

  “You need to tell my dad what you did,” Zora says, opening the door.

  My hands start to shake. “No. I’m not,” I say, afraid to look Zora in the eye.

  Zora shakes her head and opens the door. “You know what, Raspberry? You’re a thief and a liar, just like your dad,” she says, walking out.

  Ja’nae and Mai come upstairs when they hear the door slam shut. “What happened?” Ja’nae says.

  “You took the money back, didn’t you?” Mai asks.

  I ball my money up, put it in my back pocket, and open the door wide.

  “Don’t go!” Ja’nae yells.

  I move as fast as my legs can go, and try hard not to think about what Zora said. But her words come into my head anyhow, and before I’m at the corner, I know she’s right . . . I’m just like my dad.

  Ja’nae tells me to stop walking so fast. “It’s hot. And your legs are longer than mine.”

  I slow down, and ask her again if she thinks I’m like my father.

  She takes her time answering. “I guess not.”

  I like Ja’nae more than the rest, ’cause she will stick by you no matter what.

  “When you took the money from me that time,” she says, pulling up her long skirt, “I ain’t have to ask for it back. You felt bad, and just gave it to me. Even though I owed it to you.”

  I don’t want to talk about the money, even though I can’t get Zora’s words out my head. So I ask Ja’nae how come she ain’t tell me ’bout her mother coming here. She kept it to herself, she says, ’cause she ain’t know if it would really happen or not. “Anyhow, everybody is mad at everybody else. Or mad at somebody else that done something to ’em. I just decided to keep it to myself.”

  All the shades are down in Ja’nae’s house. So she’s going from window to window pulling ’em up, letting in the light. She’s talking on the phone to Ming too. Telling him to come over. “My grandfather ain’t coming home till late.”

  She hangs up the phone and drags me from the living room to the kitchen. Her grandmother went to California to bring her mother back. So she’s gotta cook dinner for her grandfather for a week. She’s pulling out frying pans and pots; washing off chicken breasts and whole potatoes.

  Ja’nae flours the chicken and puts it in a pot of hot bubbling grease. “Set the table. Four plates.”

  I tell her I don’t wanna eat with her grandfather. She looks at me and smiles. “Sato’s coming.”

  I stink. My hair is frizzed up from the sweat and heat. “I don’t want him here.”

  Ja’nae comes over to me. “You scared he might kiss you or something?”

  I make her get her chicken fingers off me.

  She laughs. “We just gonna watch TV.”

  While the chicken is frying and the potatoes and pork and beans are cooking, Ja’nae and me running ’round the house picking up newspapers. Then Ja’nae hands me a blue spray bottle and a rag. “We have to do the
bathroom.”

  “That’s your toilet, not mine.”

  She asks me if I want my chicken smelling like the toilet. I take the rag and tell her she gotta pay me if she want me for her maid.

  “Take it outta Zora’s money,” she says, trying to be funny.

  I don’t say nothing to her. But all the while I’m cleaning, I’m thinking about Zora’s money and how hurt she was back there.

  Soon as we get the table set and the food in pretty bowls, the bell rings. It’s Ming and Sato.

  “I know you saved me some food,” Sato says, coming into the house all loud. He don’t even say hi when he walks in the door. He just walks right into the living room, sits down like a cowboy getting on a horse, and starts digging his dirty fingers into the biscuit bowl.

  Ja’nae is like her grandmother, pushing all kinds of food Sato and Ming’s way.

  Ming says he ain’t hungry. Sato piles chicken and potatoes on his plate like this is his last meal. After we done, I ain’t so sure telling them two to come over was such a good idea. Ja’nae and Ming are hugged up together over there on the couch. We’re watching a scary movie. Every once in a while, Sato leaves the room and comes back another way trying to make Ja’nae and me scream.

  In the middle of the movie, Ming shuts off the TV. Puts on a CD and starts dancing with Ja’nae. It’s a slow song. They’re dancing so close you couldn’t get a notebook between ’em.

  “Want to?” Sato says, pulling my arm.

  I push him away. “No!” I say. “I mean. Hmmm. Cut the light on Ja’nae. I can’t see.”

  Ja’nae ain’t listening. She’s giggling over there with Ming.

  Ming moves her over my way. Drops some of Ja’nae’s sweet-smelling cotton balls on my head and says, “Don’t be scared. He ain’t gonna hurt you.”

  Sato is standing in the middle of the floor with his hands in his pockets. “I’ll show you how to do it,” he says, real low. “It ain’t hard.”

  I ain’t never danced with a boy before. But I ain’t telling Sato that. So I sit on the couch like a knucklehead, wishing I was home with Momma.