Begging for Change

by Sharon Flake

  Dr. Mitchell wants to head back to our place. Zora still don’t wanna go. Her dad doesn’t force her. On the way out the door I lay thirty dollars and some change on the coffee table. Nothing good comes of bad money, I say to myself. Then I shut the door and follow Dr. Mitchell to his car.

  By the time we get to my street, three police cars are parked in front of my house. People in pajamas and street clothes are standing on porches and sidewalks. I know why before I even get to our house. Miracle’s here.

  Momma’s sitting on the porch step with Ling in her lap. A policeman is standing over her taking notes. Miracle is by the police car, pointing my way. She’s not screaming, like you’d think. Her voice is calm, like maybe she’s too tired to go off on people.

  She’s talking to the police and pointing at Momma. “She owes me money. Three months’ back rent.”

  He asks her if she was renting a place to Momma.

  My mother gets loud when she says she doesn’t owe Miracle a dime.

  “You missed it,” Sato says, almost running over to me. “Miracle walked up to your mom, like she was gonna hit her or something.”

  Su-bok and Mai pull me over by the tree. Miracle came to the house with two other girls, they say, but the girls took off when the police showed up. Miracle’s been living on the street every since she got put out the apartment. She’s blaming Momma. Saying she started everything when she got Shiketa put away.

  Miracle points to Momma. “She living in this nice house. Working. Why I gotta live in the streets, and her have it so good, when it’s her fault what happened to me.”

  Momma shakes her head and sits Ling in Dr. Mitchell’s lap. When she heads Miracle’s way, Dr. Mitchell and the rest of us tell her to stay where she is. She keeps walking. Miracle gets loud. More neighbors come outside to see what’s going on.

  “Miracle!” Momma shouts.

  Miracle looks hungry for whatever words Momma’s gonna toss her way.

  “Don’t you dare!” Momma screams, then lowers her voice. “Don’t you dare think you have to act like trash, just because you slept in trash last night. You hear me, girl?”

  Miracle’s weave is gone, and her short, black curls look dusty. Her shoes are run over and her peach shorts set looks grimy. “You don’t understand,” Miracle shouts. “If it wasn’t for Shiketa, I woulda been out in the streets years before now. Most people don’t want no fifteen-year-old around, not even parents.”

  Dr. Mitchell comes over to Momma, holding Ling in his arms. He whispers in her ear, and she walks back over to the porch with him.

  I walk over to Momma. Sit down in her lap. Listen to her tell the police that she don’t want to press charges. They want her to. They say they can do it, even if she doesn’t. “People in Pecan Landings don’t want this kind of nonsense going on,” one cop says.

  I watch their eyes, our neighbors. See them whispering, curling up their lips and talking ’bout us. A woman Momma’s color says, “That’s why we tried to keep ’em out the first time.”

  They put Miracle in the backseat of the car, and the police say for everybody to go home. Nobody moves, not till they drive away and another whole hour passes.

  Momma’s head hurts. It’s been a long time since she said it did. Ja’nae’s in the bathroom getting her an aspirin.

  I’m rubbing her neck and Dr. Mitchell’s handing her water.

  “We ever gonna eat?” Sato asks, patting Couch on the head.

  “You had two burgers,” Mai tells him.

  Ming heads for the backyard. “Any chicken left?”

  I look at Momma. Her and me got the same kind of sad in our eyes. ’Cause even though we don’t like Miracle, we don’t want her living on the streets neither.

  When Ling and Su-bok go to the airport, Mr. and Mrs. Kim take Mai and me too. Ling is crying. She wants to stay here. So does Su-bok.

  I speak up for them. “Just come back next summer.”

  Mai looks at me. “Well. Maybe.”

  Su-bok writes down my phone number and address. She says maybe she can stay with me part of the time. “You and your mom have so much fun.”

  She’s outta her mind, I think.

  “But I wish you still had the old apartment. There’s cuter boys around there.”

  Ling’s arms go up. “Sato gave me this.” She holds up her fingers. She’s wearing three plastic bubble gum rings. Blue, green, and red. “He’s my boyfriend.”

  Mai tickles Ling’s stomach. “No. He’s Raspberry’s boyfriend.”

  Su-bok asks me if that’s true. “’Cause if you don’t want him, I do. I could call him up sometime.”

  Mai looks at me like, See how she really is?

  I say the words even if they not really true. “Yeah, we go together.”

  Mai’s parents say it’s time for Ling and Su-bok to go to the boarding area. They have special permission to go with them. Couch is already in cargo. Mai and I have to stay behind. I pick Ling up. “Kisses,” I say, sticking out my lips.

  She pushes her face into my chest and strangles me with her arms. “I wanna stay . . .”

  I try not to cry. “Here,” I say, putting a handkerchief full of quarters in her hand. “There’s twenty dollars’ worth of quarters.”

  I give Su-bok a pair of earrings that Ja’nae gave me once. “I’d rather have money,” she laughs.

  Mai and me wave good-bye. “Your cousins were cool,” I say, pulling dead skin off my knees.

  She looks at the door they just walked through. “Yeah. Not as bad as I figured.”

  Me and her wait a long time for her dad to get back. When he does, he asks her if she wants to stay with them next summer.

  “No,” she says, stepping onto the escalator. “Not by myself. If Raspberry goes, maybe. Or Ming.”

  Her dad kind of smiles. “Uh tok hae hae bohjah.”

  “What?”

  Mai tells me. “He says, ‘We’ll see what we can do.’”

  Mai’s parents hold hands and walk to the right of us. Mai and me are walking side by side staring at some cute boy who’s staring over at us. “I have to learn some Korean before I go stay with them.”

  Mai looks down at her tattoo. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe what? Maybe you gonna teach me?”

  She looks at me and smiles. When she does that, she looks just like her dad.

  School starts Monday. Sato says if I wasn’t so cheap, I’d be at the mall buying school clothes, or at the movies, not in Odd Job’s apartment building, scraping old paint off walls for money.

  I shove him. “You’re here with me.”

  He sweeps more paint chips into the dustpan. “You right. I’m here. Odd Job’s gonna pay me and your momma’s gonna cook me dinner. That’s all right.”

  Momma’s in the kitchen washing cabinets. Odd Job’s lying on the bathroom floor, putting in sink pipes. Two of his boys are pulling up bedroom rugs, coughing from all the dirt and dust.

  With the new car, the new house, and furniture, Momma’s funds are low. So she’s finally doing what Odd Job asked her to do last year—helping him get this place together. Only she wasn’t gonna do it unless he really took care of business. Plastered. Put in new pipes and rugs. “Made this place look like something decent people want to live in.”

  Odd Job knows how to fix things. He’s just too busy for stuff like that. But Momma told him if he did it up right, she would help him find some real nice people to move in here.

  “Like Miracle, huh?” Sato says.

  Miracle’s in juvey, hanging with Shiketa, I guess. The cops ain’t take her there for showing up at our place. She got put in for grabbing some woman’s pocketbook when she opened it to give her some spare change.

  Odd Job walks into the living room. He wipes black grease off his hands and onto the back of his pants. He downs a glass of ice water and says, “Girls are supposed to be nice and sweet, like Raspberry. Not thugs, like Shiketa and Miracle.”

  Momma takes up for the two of ’em. “It isn’t o
ver for them yet. If they want better, they’ll find a way to do better.”

  Sato moves closer to me. He slides the scraper across the paint fast. Blue paint chips pop off the wall and hit my cheek and nose. His finger touches my face and rubs my stinging nose. “Sorry.”

  I swallow and try not to look him in the eyes. I do anyhow. “That’s okay,” I say, licking my lips.

  Odd Job’s big boots stomp over to me. “You all right?”

  Sato steps back.

  “I’m okay,” I say, getting embarrassed when Momma comes over too. “Dag. He ain’t cut me or nothing.”

  The men in the back room come out for a break. Momma asks if anybody’s hungry, then she takes out sandwiches and chips, Kool-Aid and cold beer.

  I head for the door. Tell her that I’ll be back after I get me some air. Sato’s right behind me. I’m glad.

  Sato sits down beside me and dribbles water down the back of my shirt. It feels nice and cool. “You miss it? Living ’round here.”

  I look at the giant sunflowers in front of Miz Evelyn’s place and all the flowers the woman from the first floor got in clear plastic containers on the pavement. I close my eyes and breathe in deep. I don’t miss Shiketa, I wanna say. Or my father showing up whenever he wanted. But I miss how sweet the flowers smell in this place. And even though Momma moved most of ours to our new house, it ain’t the same. There’s so many flowers in Pecan Landings that the sweet hurts your nose sometimes.

  Sato stares at me. I cover my face with my hand, ’cause I know he’s counting my freckles again. He takes my hands away. Leans over and kisses me. His lips taste like coconut. I move closer to him. Watch his long fingers stretch out on the step so an ant can walk across ’em.

  “You and Zora talking yet?”

  I tell Sato that Zora’s on vacation with her dad. She gets back tonight. “She’s still mad, I guess.”

  When Sato twists his hand and lets the ant walk up his arm, I stand up and tell him the whole story about me and Zora.

  He looks right at Miz Evelyn’s place. “I wouldn’t talk to you neither.”

  I try to get Sato to see why I done what I did. He don’t wanna hear it. “You never stole nothing off of nobody, ever?” I ask.

  “Not from my friends. My mom and dad neither.”

  Miz Evelyn’s front door opens wide. I stand up and open the door. I lick my lips to taste the coconut. “I wouldn’t do nothing like that again. Never.”

  Sato runs in front of me and stops. “Everybody does something bad sometimes, I guess.”

  I look at his lips and eyes right when he changes the subject.

  “You wanna be my girlfriend?” he says, not even looking at me.

  “What did you say?”

  “Go together. You know. Like Ja’nae and Ming.”

  I know I should make him wait, or something. But I like him, so I don’t waste no time telling him yes. “I’ll go with you.”

  He leans over to kiss me, and stops.

  “This is hair grease, not lip gloss,” he says, pointing to his lips. “My lips was ashy, you know.”

  I touch his bottom lip, then rub my finger in my hair. “Is it shiny?” I say, trying to be funny.

  Momma calls for us. We both run upstairs. I stop. “I wouldn’t steal from you.”

  Sato gives me this funny look. Then says he wouldn’t go with a girl who was a real thief.

  I feel funny with him saying that.

  “You know, a girl who would just steal over and over again, not somebody like you, who just did it once ’cause she was mad at somebody.”

  Momma calls us again. Sato steps to the side and lets me go inside first. I think about Odd Job and what he said about boys treating you special. “Thanks,” I say, walking into the room.

  Me and Momma are lying in my bed. Tomorrow’s the first day of school and we’re practicing getting me up early again. It’s six-thirty A.M. Momma’s letting me read Shiketa’s letter. She finally wrote the whole thing. Dear Shiketa, it says.

  You and I are a lot alike, you know. When I was fourteen, I smoked and drank and hung out in the streets. Then my mother died. A neighbor took me in and showed me that I could do better. Hard times still follow me like flies do an elephant. But I’m not giving up. Don’t you, either. You are strong-minded, like me, and willing to work hard. Better’s out there, if you want it bad enough.

  Mrs. Hill

  P.S. I’m still trying to forgive you. It’s not so easy, though. Tell Miracle that I said hello. I will write you both again. Promise.

  Momma folds the chocolate stationery the letter’s written on, ties the satin brown bow over it, and puts it back in the matching envelope. I put my feet on my walls and ask her how come she never told me none of this stuff before.

  “I don’t like to talk about it. After my mother died, I lived with Odd Job’s family and his mom set me on the right road.”

  I look at her. “You lived with them? I thought Odd Job lived with your family.”

  Momma says that Odd Job lived with her when she was nine and hard times hit his family. Then when her mom died and her family fell apart, they moved in with Odd Job’s family. “Nobody makes it on their own.”

  I look up at the stars on my ceiling and count. It’s like Momma’s talking to herself. Saying out loud how Odd Job’s mother taught her to sew and cook. “She showed me what it really means to have people look out for you.”

  Momma picks up the envelope and holds it up to the light like she can see through it. Then changes the subject back to Miracle and Shiketa. She says she was always in Shiketa’s business because she could see she was headed for trouble. “And I didn’t want it to find her like it found me. ’Cause I knew maybe she wouldn’t be so lucky and turn out so well.”

  I walk over to the window, and watch the woman across the street get in her red BMW. “Let somebody else help her.”

  Momma’s right behind me. “Somebody else can help her. But we can help her too.”

  She sits the letter on my dresser. “Everybody does something wrong sometimes.”

  I think about what Sato said. “Daddy did wrong. You gonna forgive him, too?”

  Momma heads out my room. I’m following behind. “I’m trying to forgive your father. But I’m not all the way there yet.”

  We go out on the porch and sit down on the swing. I reach behind Momma and pick up the purple scarf she left out earlier. I tell her that I haven’t forgiven him neither. “But I think about him. Wonder if he got on shoes.”

  Momma pushes and cool air blows my hair when the swing moves back and forth.

  “Nobody’s perfect,” she says, waving at Mrs. Johnson next door. “No place is perfect either.” She’s right, I think, pressing the silky smooth scarf to my cheek.

  “Hurry up,” Momma says, driving away, even with my door still open. “My chemistry class starts at nine o’clock.”

  Momma’s down the street and around the corner when I ask if she’s picking up Zora. She hadn’t thought about it. Figured her father would do that.

  “Can we?” I ask.

  She drives over to Zora’s house. I get out the car and knock on the door. Her dad answers. He smiles and winks at me. “Zora. Your ride is here.”

  Zora comes down the steps zipping her jeans. I hold my hands behind my back so she don’t see ’em shaking. I’m scared. She might tell me she don’t wanna ride to school with me.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi,” she says.

  Words spill out my mouth like pop with too many bubbles. “Momma was gonna take me to school by myself but I told her to come by and get you so we could be together if that’s what you wanna do ’cause I know you still mad at me. . . .”

  “Oh.”

  Zora picks up her purse, the red one. Puts it over her shoulder and looks at me. “I’m ready,” she says, smiling just a little.

  We get in the car. I’m in the front and she’s in the back. Momma’s on the front steps talking to Dr. Mitchell.

  �
�Sato told me you two go together.”

  I look back at Zora, and tell her everything that happened between me and Sato back at the old place.

  “You can’t go selling him candy and chips, now that you go with him.”

  I think about that. “You right.”

  “You can’t take what’s not yours, either.”

  I cross my heart. “I won’t.”

  She stares at me, like she can see a lie in my eyes. But she never did tell her dad or my mom the full truth about what I did. She still must want them to trust in me. Maybe that means someday she just might forgive me.

  Momma gets back in the car and drives off. Zora’s quiet all the way to the school. When the car stops, she gets out and walks to the front door by herself. But she don’t go inside without me. She waits till I get there. Just like she used to.

  I see his feet first. They are long and thin, but the bottoms are not black with dirt like the last time.

  “Raspberry!” my father says, when I walk up to our place.

  We’re almost finished with the apartment. Momma and Odd Job are still there. Me and Sato left early. They started sanding the kitchen floor and the dust was getting all over me.

  “You want me to call somebody?” Sato asks, staring at my father.

  I tell him no. He says hello to my father and sits on the porch swing.

  “I don’t want nothing,” Daddy says. “Just came to say bye.”

  I sit down next to him. I stare at the boots he got sitting on his lap and the new blue work pants he’s wearing.

  “You working?”

  He rubs his chin. “Not real work, like your mother do. But I ain’t standing on the corner begging for change like usual.”

  I look at my father real good. His hair’s been cut, but not by a real barber. Maybe a friend with good scissors. The ends ain’t all the way even. “You still . . .”

  “Living in the park?”

  I turn away, ’cause I don’t want to see his eyes when he talks about the peach tree I smashed.

  Daddy’s still living in the park. He says he ain’t had no luck since he took my money. “Got beat up two times, and somebody smashed my peach tree.”