Begging for Change

by Sharon Flake

  I push away the newspapers. Dig in his pockets. Tell him over and over again he ain’t have the right to take my stuff. “To steal what I worked for.”

  “Raspberry,” Ja’nae says, coming over to me.

  I take both my hands and shove my father good, trying to make him turn over so I can check his back pockets. “You got it. I know you got it!” I say.

  Sato and Ja’nae pulling me by the arm. Saying we need to go. My father still ain’t awake, and Ling is crying so much I think she gonna be sick.

  “No! No! I ain’t leaving till he gives it back,” I say. “All of it.”

  Daddy’s friend digs in his pockets and pulls out the insides. “We broke, girl. Don’t you see that?” He stands up, smelling just like he did in the hospital. “And if we get us a quarter, we gonna go get more stuff. ’Cause that’s how it is.”

  I back up. Look down at my father, snoring. “Where’s his tree?” I ask.

  Ja’nae says I’m crazy. “There’s trees everywhere.”

  Daddy’s friend points to a tiny little plant near their bench. Rocks are circling round it. A big, flat stone is laying on the ground next to it with “My Little Raspberry Girl,” scratched on it, in big crooked letters. I throw the stones outta my way. Lift my foot high in the air and squish the plant with my sneaker.

  We getting out this place today. Moving to Pecan Landings. Momma is so happy. Me too, ’cause finally we gonna be living someplace nice, where bad things don’t happen to you all the time, and Daddy won’t be able to find us. So, August 3rd is a day I’ll never forget.

  Our house is full of people: Dr. Mitchell, Odd Job, The Cousins, Ming, Ja’nae, Zora, and Sato. Mai is on punishment again.

  Ja’nae’s got a cherry Popsicle in her hand. Sweet, sticky juice is dripping down the side of the stick and running over her fingers.

  Zora is over by the fence, talking to Sato. She ain’t said one word to me all morning, even though I spoke to her three times. Dr. Mitchell made her come help out. Said he had enough of our nonsense. But you can’t make people be friends, I guess. So she’s here, but it still ain’t no different between us.

  “Help me carry this,” Ja’nae says, licking her fingers and looking down at a big box of plants Momma pulled out the ground yesterday.

  I’m looking around the yard. It’s a mess now with holes in the ground from all the plants me and Momma dug up, and bags full of junk we ain’t want to take with us to our new place.

  “Raspberry. Let’s get going, girl,” Momma says, walking over to me. “Everybody’s working but you.”

  “Okay,” I tell her. But I don’t move. I stand on my tiptoes and look over the fence. Watch Miz Evelyn sitting out on the porch in a long white robe. Momma already said good-bye to her. I want to, but I can’t.

  “Stop playing around, girl,” Sato says, pulling the back of my hair when he walks by.

  I open the fence. Walk out to the pavement and sit out on the curb. Ling sits next to me.

  “Mai likes living in Pecan Landings,” she says.

  I smile and look at Miracle’s place.

  “I ain’t gonna miss being here,” I tell Ling. “Not one little bit,” I say, standing up and going back inside.

  It takes us three more hours to finish packing. After we done, we stuff ourselves in Momma’s car like too many vegetables in a crisper. Ling steps on my foot and tries to push my legs out the way so she can sit by Sato too. Momma looks back and tells her there ain’t no room. That she needs to get in Odd Job’s car. Ling’s got her mind made up, though. She squeezes her little butt in between me and Sato, then starts whining that it’s too tight back here.

  “Get out, then,” I say. But it don’t matter. Sato sits her in his lap. Ling pokes out her little pink lips and kisses him on the cheek.

  By the time Momma gets in the car, we all sweating and Ling is crying ’bout something else.

  “Miz Hill, where’s the air?” Sato asks. “You got a new ride so I know you got some air in here.”

  Momma slams the door shut. Turns to him and says, “Soon as I start driving, you’re gonna have all the air you ever wanted. Your window’s down, right?”

  Everybody laughs. Momma says for us to wait a minute, then goes back inside and gets pop for all of us, even the people in the other cars.

  “Let’s go, Miz Hill,” Ja’nae says, hanging out the window. She’s in Dr. Mitchell’s ride with Zora, Ming, and a whole bunch of clothes and boxes.

  Zora’s sitting up front. She got the visor down and she’s staring at her eyes. She don’t take the drink, like everybody else in the car, or answer Sato when he stick his head out the window asking who she getting pretty for.

  “Let’s go!” Odd Job shouts out his car window. Then he beeps his horn. Dr. Mitchell does too. Su-bok reaches over Momma and presses down her horn. We drive right behind each other off the street, beeping our horns nonstop, yelling out the windows and waving tissues and socks like we in a parade. I look out the back window and see Miracle sitting on her front steps. She’s glad we’re leaving, I bet. Me too.

  Our place in Pecan Landings looks brand new. The landlord repainted it inside and out. He replaced the stove and refrigerator. Dr. Mitchell, Momma, and me went over there and repainted my room though. It’s blue with stars on the ceiling, just like Momma and me always talked about. When you cut the lights off, the stars glow in the dark.

  After we unload everything, all the kids sit down and do nothing. Momma gets on us to unpack some things.

  “We tired, Miz Hill,” Sato says, laying on the living room floor next to me. “This here is hard work.”

  Momma says we have ten more minutes to rest. If we don’t get moving then, everybody better just go on home and leave things to “Raspberry and me.”

  I tell them to get busy, ’cause I don’t want to do all this work by myself.

  Momma gives everybody a partner to work with. Naturally, she puts me and Zora together. “Do the basement,” she says.

  Zora looks at me with them green cat eyes she got on today—they match her shoes and shorts. Then she stomps all the way down the basement stairs. I don’t wanna work with her. She don’t wanna work with me neither and tells me that. She says just because her father made her come today doesn’t mean she likes being here or that we friends again.

  I stack Momma’s old albums on the shelf, even though we don’t have a stereo to play ’em on. Then I ask Zora to help me move a desk, after Momma said it’s in the wrong place.

  She looks at her nails. “I broke one over at your old place and messed up my shorts,” she says. “So you need to get somebody else to help you.”

  I wanna tell her father on her. To let him know she don’t wanna do nothing but try to look cute. But if I tell on her, she might just tell on me. So I move the heavy desk all by myself. In between wiping sweat off my face and neck, I watch Zora. She could care less about me right now.

  I tell Zora I ain’t working with her no more. So I go to my room. Su-bok’s there all by herself. She’s glad to see me and I’m glad I came in, ’cause she’s putting all my clothes in the wrong places. I’m dumping out those drawers, telling her how mean and selfish Zora is.

  “Ja’nae just told me that you took Zora’s money,” Su-bok says. Then she tells me how she goes to school with a boy who steals money outta people’s lockers.

  I snatch my jean shorts out her hand. “I ain’t no thief.”

  She asks if I took Zora’s money or not.

  I look at myself in the mirror on the closet door. “It’s not like that,” I say.

  I tell Su-bok I don’t wanna talk about Zora no more. She starts talking about my dad, then. Asking if I ever found the money he took off me.

  “Crackheads don’t never give you your stuff back,” I say, throwing a box of clothes on the bed.

  We don’t talk for half an hour. Then Ja’nae comes in, saying she called Mai on the phone downstairs. “Her mom says the two of them need to get away—alone—and talk abou
t all the things Mai’s been going through.”

  Su-bok stops working. She starts talking ’bout what happened yesterday at the mall when Mai punched a boy.

  “Him and his friends were so cute,” Subok says. “Nuh-moo nuh-moo gui yoh woh!”

  “What?” I ask.

  “Very, very cute,” she says.

  “Black?” Ja’nae wants to know.

  Su-bok puts sunglasses on. “Two black. One white. All cute,” she says, sitting on the bed next to Ja’nae. “I gave one boy my phone number. Another boy asked Mai for hers. When she gave it to him, he asked if she was mixed. Ling with her big mouth said that she was part black too, just like Mai.”

  The boys thought that was funny, Subok says. So they started making jokes. Telling Ling that she didn’t look black. Asking her to point to where the black was. “My sister is so stupid,” Su-bok says, kicking off her sandals. “She starts looking at her fingers and toes. Feeling her face and nose. Saying for Mai to tell them that she was black, too, just like her.”

  Mai flipped. Told Ling she was not black, not even a little, tiny bit. Ling started crying real loud. One of the boys tried to be smart and asked Mai if she was really mixed. ’Cause he “couldn’t find no black in her neither.”

  “Mai popped him in the forehead for saying that,” Su-bok says. “I don’t blame her.”

  Zora walks in the room, right then.

  I ask Su-bok if she’s sorry she came to visit. She says no. She likes all the cute boys we got here.

  Zora sits down next to Su-bok and turns away from me.

  Su-bok keeps talking. “I go to a private school, far from my neighborhood. It’s mostly white. Sometimes I want to scream because people don’t get who I am.” She’s sitting cross-legged on my new blue rug. “They think because I’m Korean that I’m not an American. That I’m supersmart at math and science.”

  Zora turns to her. “Are you?”

  Su-bok laughs. “Yeah, but not because I’m Korean. My stupid father makes me study all night long and take special classes on Saturdays.”

  Ja’nae asks Su-bok if she talks to Mai about stuff like this. “A little,” she says, using my brush on her hair. “I tell her that people don’t know what I am either. They ask me if I’m Chinese. Call me Japanese. Ask me if I know karate or if I can speak kung fu. But at least they know I’m Asian. They can’t figure out what she is, so they’re always saying something stupid and hurting her feelings.”

  I look at Ja’nae and Zora, sitting close and laughing ’bout something. “Is it better to be a hundred percent something, or half and half, like Mai?”

  Su-bok looks at me like I lost my mind. “It’s just better to be you,” she says, holding her nose and picking up a box of my old shoes.

  I told Momma about Daddy today. How I brought him to our old place after the cops hit him. But I didn’t say the part about all us going to the park looking for him. I waited for her to get mad. She didn’t. She just put some more home fries on my plate and squeezed ketchup on top of my eggs. Then she said she’d talk to me about it later.

  It’s almost suppertime now, and Momma still ain’t mentioned our talk from this morning. We sitting on the front porch swing— that Dr. Mitchell gave us—watching people working in their yards, or walking their dogs. Momma’s toes pat the porch and push us off again when the swing slows down. She says she heard me the last few nights, tossing and turning for hours. She wanna know if that’s ’cause we only been in our new place a week, or ’cause my mind is busy with things a girl my age shouldn’t have to worry ’bout.

  “I’m fine,” I say, keeping my mouth shut about the dreams I have at night. Crazy ones, with Zora, Miz Evelyn, and Daddy all coming at me with their hands out. “You think I’m like him, Momma?”

  She stops the swing from moving. But doesn’t say a word. I put my legs across hers. “He don’t care how he treat people, Momma. No matter how good they are to him.” Momma changes the subject. Asks me what’s going on between me and Zora. I can’t look her in the eyes. So I put my feet back on the ground and push. “Nothing,” I say.

  She asks if this thing between Zora and me got anything to do with money. My eyes get big.

  She stops the swing, and cuts the porch light on, ’cause it’s dark out now. “Did you borrow and not pay her back, or take what wasn’t yours?”

  I stand up, and the swing almost tips Momma over. “Sorry.”

  Momma’s mind won’t stay put. Now she’s talking ’bout Daddy again. Saying how the dope makes him not care for nobody but hisself. “When he’s on it, he’ll steal the shoes off your feet, or the light out your eye.”

  I think about him stealing her fur coat long ago, and taking money off me. “How you do that to people you know?” I think to myself. But I done it. To Zora and Miz Evelyn, so it’s easy, I guess.

  Momma holds my chin, while she stares into my eyes and tells me that I got Daddy’s freckles and hair, but I ain’t exactly like him. “Not yet.” When she says them last two words, she stares extra hard at me. Like maybe she’s trying to see if I’m more like Daddy than she knows. “Answer me,” she says, pressing hard on my chin. “Did you take money from Zora?”

  My eyes look at Momma’s smooth, pretty brown skin. They move over her long eyelashes and thick, red lips. “No. Zora’s just jealous ’cause she don’t want me and you ’round Dr. Mitchell.”

  I can tell that Momma don’t believe me. Every word she’s saying now is louder than the one before. By the time she’s done telling me that we starting fresh here—“Not dragging our old ways with us like burnt pots that need to be trashed”—the woman next door is up on her feet, looking down her nose at us.

  Momma asks me again what I did to Zora. I wanna ask her how come she cares so much about Zora and ain’t worried ’bout me? Then she leans over and picks a ladybug out my hair.

  “Nothing bad ever happens to Zora.”

  Momma blows and the ladybug flies away.

  “Daddy steals off me and don’t have no shoes, and Zora gets to go to London.”

  The moon is out now. It’s full and clear and shining so bright it feels like God’s pointing a flashlight at me.

  “Do you want something bad to happen to Zora?” Momma asks.

  I think a minute. Then I say what I really want to say. “Sometimes. Sometimes I wish . . . bad stuff would happen to her . . . just so she wouldn’t . . .”

  Momma finishes my sentence. “Have it so good?”

  I catch the ladybug with my hand. “No. Yeah, I guess.”

  Momma reminds me that if bad things happen to Zora, they happen to Dr. Mitchell and Zora’s mother, too. Just like when Daddy went on dope and lost his job, it was me and Momma who ended up on the street first.

  I tell Momma that I don’t want nothing bad to happen to Dr. Mitchell.

  “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you or Zora,” she says.

  We go to the back of the house. Watch how the moon makes the red roses look orange and the white flowers look lemon yellow. My eyes are closed. I breathe in the sweetness. Momma says her head aches, and just as quick, she tells me that I’m on punishment.

  “He made me let him in the house,” I say.

  She bends down and snaps a dead flower off its stem. And in a voice as soft as the lamb’s ear she planted yesterday, she says that she can’t trust me no more. That I lie and sneak around like . . .

  She don’t finish her sentence. I don’t look her way. But I hear the hurt in her voice when she says, “You can do better. Shiketa can do better. Your father too. Y’all just have to wanna do better.”

  I’m waiting for Momma to yell at me. To maybe go back inside and nail up the windows, or run in my room and empty my money out the window like she did when we lived in the projects. She don’t move. She smells the flowers and acts like I’m not even here.

  Momma went looking for Daddy. She found him. In the park. She won’t say exactly what happened. Just that he won’t be coming ’round me no more. An
d that I better not go digging him up and bringing him to our new place, neither.

  I’ve been on punishment ever since. I got one week’s punishment for letting him in the house in the first place. One week for not telling her about it. And one week for the mess I stirred up with Zora even though Momma still don’t know what really happened.

  All I been doing is sitting on the porch swing or watching TV. That means no work. No money. No way out. I keep trying to talk Momma into trusting me again. She shakes her head, no. Tells me I gotta earn it back.

  I am not like my father. I wrote them words fifty times, all along the sides of the bills I got in my room. Then I snuck out to sit on the swing and called up Ja’nae. I asked her what she was doing. Her mother was at the house, so she couldn’t talk.

  I call Mai next. She’s not on punishment, for once. She and Su-bok are going to the mall. “You don’t even like her,” I say.

  “Well, she’s leaving in two weeks. Anyhow . . . her being here kept my dad off my case . . . sometimes.”

  Mai has to go, Su-bok wants to use the phone to call a boy she met. I rip open a giant bag of Cheetos, then lick the yellow crumbs off my fingers and dial Odd Job’s number. I want him to ask Momma to let me off punishment. It ain’t his business, he says. I ask him if he wants me to clean up his old place—the two apartments Momma never got to.

  “Oh. Them.”

  “The one we left is empty too, right? So you losing money from all three.”

  Odd Job says that place is rented out. But the other two need cleaning. He’ll talk to Momma about letting me help out. “Don’t get me in trouble, girl, by doing something you shouldn’t.”

  I promise that I will do what I’m told. Then I ask if he helped Momma find Daddy. He won’t say.

  “Was he high?”

  “Yes.”

  I pat my feet and push off into the air. “It’s gonna be cold soon.”

  “Yeah. Three months from now and we’ll be shoveling snow.”

  Hot air blows across my face. I wonder if my father will have shoes by then.