Begging for Change

by Sharon Flake

  “Raspberry Swirl,” Odd Job says. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”

  “I know.”

  “You know? For real you know? Or you thinking you know something but you don’t really know much of nothing?”

  I laugh at him being silly. “Sometimes I know. Other times I don’t know why I do what I do.”

  When Odd Job and I are done, I go inside. Hug Momma so hard she says I’m breaking her ribs. “It’s okay,” she says, flouring my nose with her white fingers. “I have you and you have me. We’ll be just fine.”

  I look at the spot where Shiketa hit Momma. It’s all better now. The hair’s grown in and you can’t tell nothing bad ever happened there. I squeeze Momma again, then go up to my room and pick up the phone while I still got the nerve. I ask Dr. Mitchell to put Zora on the phone. And before she says one word, I start talking. “I took your money . . . for spite. Not because I really needed it.”

  Zora’s trying to get her say, but I cut her off. “I would never hurt you or your dad on purpose. I like him. Better than my own dad, even.”

  “I know,” Zora says. Neither one of us speaks for a long while.

  Then, I don’t know why, but I also tell Zora about the money I took off Miz Evelyn.

  “You never stole before. Not ever.”

  “My dad—”

  “Steals because he’s on that stuff. But you . . .”

  “I don’t know why I took Miz Evelyn’s money.”

  Zora says she’s gotta go. But she’ll call me right back. I don’t think she will. So I hang up the phone and lay down on my bed. Twenty minutes later, though, the phone rings. It’s her. I ask why she never told her dad on me.

  “He trusts you.”

  I stare up at the stars on my ceiling.

  “Sometimes people never do trust you again when they know you do things like that,” she says.

  “So,” I say. “Why did you want me to tell on myself then?”

  Zora explains, “The money you took off me came from my dad. He gave it to me to buy your mom a gift when she was in the hospital. But since I couldn’t find one I liked, he told me to hang on to it. When I found a nice scarf, I saw the money was gone, and I had to use my own. So you stole the money off of me and my dad. And basically off your mom, too.”

  My legs wobble and my mind races.

  “I got the money,” I say, reaching in my drawer and pulling out cash.

  She tells me to keep it. But I don’t want it now. It ain’t brought me nothing but trouble.

  Before Ja’nae and me even knock on Mai’s back door, it opens. Mai’s got a sandwich in one hand and a mouth full of food. “Let’s go,” she says, bread crumbs flying. “I don’t want them to see me,” she says, licking her lips and locking the door. By the time we get to the front of the house, The Cousins are standing on the porch.

  “We’re going,” Su-bok says. She’s got on salmon-colored sunglasses. They match her shorts. She and Mai go at it for a while. Then Su-bok says she’s gonna tell on Mai if she can’t come along. “You’re not supposed to leave the house anyway. You’re still on punishment for mouthing off.”

  Ling takes a pinch of Mai’s sandwich and sucks on it till it’s gone. “Please. We’ll be good.”

  Mai shoves the sandwich into a trash can sitting by the curb for pickup. “Whatever,” she says to The Cousins. Then she ignores them for the next few blocks.

  Ling starts complaining right away. “My hair itches,” she says, pulling on it, like she can take it off.

  “Oh, shut up,” Su-bok tells her. Then she grabs Ling by the arm, squeezes her between her legs right where we’re standing and starts French braiding her hair.

  Ling pushes her away. “Not you. I want Raspberry to do it.”

  I don’t braid all that good. I tell Ling to let Ja’nae do it.

  Mai is getting madder and madder, saying this is why she didn’t want The Cousins to come. I am getting mad too. It’s hot. I’m wearing the wrong jean shorts and top and my skin can’t hardly breath.

  Ja’nae whispers something into Ling’s ear while she braids her hair. Ling laughs. She hugs Ja’nae, and asks her to carry her. We look at Ja’nae like she’s stupid when she picks her up.

  “I ain’t doing that,” I tell Ling. “So don’t ask me.”

  Su-bok and Mai say the same thing.

  We are headed to my old apartment building. We gonna start cleaning up the place. We’ll just sweep and pick up today, and do the really hard, dirty stuff next weekend. I get fifty percent of what we make. Ja’nae and Mai split the other fifty. We’ll give Ling five dollars and a coloring book.

  When we get to the apartment building, nobody wants to go inside right away. I do, ’cause I don’t want to run into Miz Evelyn. “Y’all ready?” I ask, after we been on the front steps for a while.

  Ling’s digging in a flowerpot, making pancakes with spit and dirt. Mai’s on the top step, staring inside, asking me who moved into our old apartment. Right away my heart drops. Miracle, I think. She musta finally gotten kicked out her old place.

  I lean over the railing and look in through the window. The lights are on. You can hear Reggae music and smell bacon cooking, even though it’s lunchtime. I look across the street at Miz Evelyn’s place. Then back inside. “Let’s go,” I say, hoping to sneak in without Miracle knowing.

  I unlock the front door and run up the steps. The door to our place flies open. A woman holding a big stick is right behind us. “Y’all better get out of here, ’fore I call the police.”

  I show her the key. “We working for Odd Job.”

  She says her name is Carol. She moved in three days ago. “That apartment up there is a mess. I wouldn’t clean it for four hundred bucks.”

  I am the first to go inside. I walk into the kitchen and get pop out the fridge. Odd Job said he’d leave some there for us. Su-bok, Mai, and Ja’nae go from room to room, shaking their heads. Dry leaves and sticks crack under their feet. Empty beer cans with spiders crawling over them are all over the place. The toilet bowl ain’t got water in it, just a thick, green ring of mold.

  “I—” Ling says, sucking her thumb, “I don’t like it here.”

  Su-bok goes into the kitchen. “The sink’s gone. Even the pipes.”

  Ja’nae gets pop out the fridge. “It smells.”

  “Like pee,” I say.

  “Like the house we worked in that time,” Ja’nae says, talking ’bout the boarding house we cleaned last year.

  It takes us three hours to bag the broken glass and cans. To pick up the tree branches and leaves. I want to work another hour. Ja’nae and Su-bok want to leave. Ja’nae’s going to the movies with Ming. Su-bok just wants to go home.

  “I’m staying,” Mai says. “So you take Ling.”

  Su-bok’s not going for that. She tells Mai that she’s supposed to be on punishment, not trying to make extra money.

  They argue a little, but Mai and me end up with Ling anyhow.

  By the time we head out the building, it’s five o’clock. We’re too tired to walk, so we go up the street and wait for the bus. Mai and me take turns holding Ling. When the bus finally comes, we are so tired we can’t hardly lift our legs to get on it. Ling is doing what she did when we first started out—whining and sucking her thumb.

  We try to transfer buses, but the second one never comes. So now we walking the rest of the way to Pecan Landings where me and Mai live. Ling won’t walk, so Mai drags her by the arm for five whole blocks. Ling is screaming at the top of her lungs. Nobody cares though, until Mai stops and gives Ling a good smack on her butt and legs. You’d think she got cut, she’s screaming so loud.

  We’re in front of Gi-Su’s Nail Salon. The man sweeping the pavement eyes Mai when Ling kicks and kicks her. “What you do to her?” he asks Mai.

  Mai tells him to mind his own business.

  He ignores her. Comes over and wipes snot off Ling’s face with his fingers. “Little girl. They hurt you?”

  Ling nods her
head up and down. Tears come. “I wanna go home to my house.”

  The man speaks to her in Korean. Ling says something about California. He stares at Mai and says, “Who you?”

  Mai grabs Ling’s hand and pulls. Ling’s whole body gets loose, like a shoelace, and falls to the ground. “Don’t touch me,” she says.

  Mai’s on her knees, talking to Ling. “Didn’t I tell you to come on?”

  The man with the broom sweeps at Mai’s legs and feet like she’s dirt. “You go. ’Fore I call police.”

  People are standing around, looking and pointing. Someone tells the man he should call the cops.

  When Mai picks up Ling and tries to make her stop crying, Ling asks for Su-bok, then her face turns redder and her mouth opens wide. She cries so hard she chokes and coughs. The man tells Mai to put Ling down.

  Mai starts to walk away. “Mind your own business.”

  “Trash. Ggam doong yi!” he says, holding the broom up high.

  Mai throws Ling into my arms. “Take her!” she says walking over to him. Her face is wet with sweat. “I should just . . . I should just,” she says, balling up her fist.

  I turn Ling’s face away and holler Mai’s name. Only it’s too late.

  By the time Mai’s dad comes, she’s sitting in the back of a police car. Ling is drinking pop and eating candy that one of the cops bought her.

  Mr. Kim, the store owner, and a policeman been inside the salon for an hour. Next thing I know, they back outside. A few minutes later, Mai gets out the car.

  Mai’s dad looks sad. Tired. Like he could go to sleep forever. “Apologize,” he says to her.

  She looks at her feet. “Sorry.”

  “Now. In Korean. Like you mean it. . . .”

  The police are by the car writing something down.

  Mr. Kim is talking fast to Mai now, and speaking Korean to Ling.

  Mai shakes her head no. “You don’t know what he said to me.”

  “Apologize.”

  “But . . .”

  “No buts. Apologize.”

  “He . . .”

  Mr. Kim grabs her by the arm, the one with the tattoo on it. “This man. He won’t press charges if you just apologize,” he says. “So do what I say. Now.”

  Mai is talking a mile a minute. Stuttering. Saying, “Daddy, but Daddy, you don’t . . .”

  Her father turns his back to her. He shakes his head and walks away.

  Mai runs behind him. “He called me trash. Black trash.”

  Mr. Kim keeps his back turned to her. He repeats himself. “Apologize.” When he turns around, I see tears running down his face. “You too,” he says, pointing to the man with the broom.

  I don’t know what Mai and the man say, ’cause they’re speaking in Korean. When they are done, Mr. Kim whispers something in Mai’s ear. She shakes her head and says, “No, Daddy. No.” He holds her, rocks her from side to side.

  “You look in the mirror and all you see is a little black girl,” he says, pushing curls out her eyes. “I see my sister and my mother. People I love, just like you.”

  Mai points to the store owner and his wife, then to the people all around us. “They don’t see what you see, Daddy. All they see is this,” she says, pulling at the skin on her arm. “And this,” she says, shaking her hair. “And they can’t figure out what I am.”

  Mr. Kim walks over to the curb and sits down. Mai does, too. “Are you part Indian? they ask me. Mexican mixed with a little Chinese fried rice.”

  Mr. Kim leans over and kisses Mai’s neck, then rubs her back.

  She leans her head on his shoulder. “Daddy, I’m so tired. . . .”

  Ling sits in Mai’s lap and plays with her hair.

  Mai tells her father that everybody wants her to choose sides. To just be black, or biracial, or Korean. “I did choose,” she says. “Only nobody likes the side I picked . . . not the kids at school, or the boys at the mall, not even you.”

  Mr. Kim stands up and holds out his hand to Mai. We walk to his car, ignoring people staring at us like we aliens. Mai and her dad speak in English and Korean, so I don’t know all of what they say. But I like it when he says that the next time someone asks what she is, she should tell ’em that she’s Kim Sung-hee’s daughter. “Sweet as honey and brown as fresh baked bread.”

  I like that. So does Ling. She asks Mr. Kim if her skin will be brown like Mai’s when she grows up.

  He tells her no. “Raspberry and Mai have something extra special in their skin, that makes it look that way.”

  Ling stares at her arm.

  He looks at her through the rearview mirror. “You have something special too. Just not the same thing.”

  “Lemon mixed with a pinch of vanilla,” I tell Ling. “And so does Mr. Kim.”

  “Hmmm,” she says, wiggling in my lap.

  “I’m gingersnap,” Mai says, looking back at us. “Raspberry’s brown sugar mixed with cherry juice.”

  Ling bends down and licks my arm. “I eat you up,” she says, grabbing Mai’s arm too. Before we get through three more stoplights, Ling is lying in my lap, asleep.

  Mr. Kim breathes in real deep. “Dooridul dah doh jal hae yah hae.”

  I get close to Mai’s ear and ask her what her father said.

  Her fingers roll over the tattoo like she can read it with her hands. “He says that he and I have to do better.”

  Ling snores all the way to the house. When it’s time to get out the car, Mai takes her outta my arms. Them two have the same-shaped ears and lips, I think to myself. Then I sit back in my seat and wait for her dad to take me home.

  Summer’s over—almost. In two weeks we’ll be back in school. Two days from now Su-bok and Ling will be back home. I’m having a sleepover tonight at my place, to say good-bye to them and to have a little fun before school starts up again.

  I invited Zora. She said no. But Mai, Subok, Ling, Ming, and Sato are here. The boys can’t stay overnight, though.

  “Dr. Mitchell,” Sato says, sitting next to me in the swing. “How come you always wear the same pants?”

  Dr. Mitchell’s sitting next to Momma. He laughs. “Not the same pants. The same color pants.”

  Sato tells Momma she needs to hook Dr. Mitchell up with some different color pants. “Make him hip. Not like . . . you know.”

  Momma tells Sato that she likes her man just the way he is. We all look at her. “Somebody’s getting married,” Ja’nae hollers.

  Ling, Mai, and Su-bok make the words into a song, and sing ’em over and over again. My eyes stay on Dr. Mitchell. A few minutes later, he takes me by the hand and down the steps. “Help me with the food.”

  It’s almost ten o’clock and we ain’t ate yet. The grill is full of half-cooked burgers and chicken wings. A carved-out melon filled with fruit and bowls of pretzels and chips is sitting on the table.

  “I didn’t want you to hear this from your mom.”

  My heart skips.

  “Zora and I are going on vacation. Just the two of us.”

  Dr. Mitchell wants to take me and Momma, but since me and Zora still aren’t getting along so well, he can’t do it. And he doesn’t think it’s fair to Zora to take me if that’ll make her have a bad time.

  I slide the spatula under the cheeseburger, right when Dr. Mitchell wraps his arms around me.

  “If you tell me what happened, we can make this whole thing right again. And all of us can go on vacation together.”

  My hands shake.

  Sato leans over the railing. “They’d fire you, if you worked at Burger King.”

  Dr. Mitchell asks him to give us another minute. Then he fans the smoke and looks into my eyes. “A thousand locks won’t keep you safe if you let the boogeyman make your bed.”

  I don’t know what he’s talking about.

  His mother used to say that, he says. It means that you can’t feel safe if you keep the things that scare you locked inside. You gotta talk about ’em to let ’em go.

  I bite my lip an
d put three more frozen burgers on the grill. Ten minutes later Dr. Mitchell heads for the gate.

  I’m so ready to lie again. But then I think about Mai’s dad. How he stands by her no matter what. “I took—I stole Zora’s money,” I say.

  I’m waiting for Dr. Mitchell to tell Momma he don’t wanna be bothered with us no more. He clears his throat. “Keep talking.”

  I’m trying to explain why I stole the money. He asks how I could do something like that. I turn away so I don’t have to look at him.

  “Can a brother get a chicken wing ’fore he die out here?” Sato says, hollering over at us.

  Momma comes in the yard. She looks at us and says maybe we should take a walk. I wait for Dr. Mitchell to say he ain’t going nowhere with me. But he’s got me by the elbow, leading me through the gate and into his car.

  We drive to his house, not talking at all. “I told her I was sorry. But she’s still mad, kinda.”

  He gets out the car and opens my door. “I am so disappointed in you.”

  I reach in my pocket and hold my money. “I . . .”

  Dr. Mitchell says he knows I’ve been through a lot. But I ain’t the only one who’s had it hard. So I got a lot nerve stealing, especially when Momma’s out there working every day to give me a good life.

  He don’t wanna see us no more, I think to myself. Then he opens the front door and calls up the stairs for Zora. When she comes down, I pull out thirty dollars and hand it to him right in front of her. “I owe you ten more.”

  Dr Mitchell don’t want the money. He says he don’t want Zora to take it. He wants us to know he’s disappointed in both of us. Me, for stealing. And her for not letting him know sooner, so this whole thing coulda been over with.

  I point to Zora. “She didn’t want you to hate me.”

  He looks at me, then at her. “You’re like a daughter to me. I couldn’t hate you, just like I couldn’t hate Zora.”

  I tell Zora again that I’m sorry for stealing from her, and for trying to keep her dad all to myself. I know it’s gonna take a while before we’re friends again. But I can wait.