by Sharon Flake
Mr. Kim waits on his customers. Mrs. Kim grabs Mai by the arm and whispers something in her ear. Mai starts yelling. “I will not apologize to him,” she says pointing at her dad. “He—you—should apologize to me. Everybody’s laughing at me ’cause of you two with your Afro-Asian, collard green, black-eyed peas, fortune-cookie truck, and your mixed-up kids. Why didn’t you two each marry your own kind?” Mai grabs her book bag and coat and heads for the front of the truck. She sits down in the driver’s seat, and folds her arms tight across her chest.
Mr. Kim is counting out change to the next customer. Ming takes off his jacket, rolls up his sleeves, and helps his father serve people. Mai’s mother hands me a bowl of fried rice, and an egg roll busting open with fried cabbage, bacon, and shrimp. “Sit. Eat,” she tells me.
Mai’s parents are used to her going off. They ignore her, let her cool down. I kick back and eat my egg roll. Mr. Kim hands me an orange soda and some barbecue chicken. He and his wife are like Ja’nae’s grandmother. They will feed you until you explode.
Ten people come up to the truck in the next fifteen minutes. Mr. Kim is scooping, bagging, and handing things off quick as you please. And just when they think things are slowing down, here comes trouble. Kevin, from school.
“You seen a dog ’round here?” he says, walking up to the truck.
Mr. Kim shakes his head.
“You musta seen it,” he says, getting louder. “A little bitty thing. Black, with a white patch over his eye. Long haired . . . a mutt, you know,” he says, sounding serious. But I see him shooting his eyes back at his boys over there by the tree, and I know a joke is coming.
Mr. Kim don’t get it, but Ming does. So does Mrs. Kim. “Y’all get outta here. Get,” she says, waving a spatula round like she’s gonna smack them.
“Let me . . .” Kevin’s laughing so hard he can’t get the words out. “Let me check out what you got cooking. I wanna see if you ain’t trying to pass my pooch off for chicken,” he finally says. His boys can’t take it no more. They rolling all over the bus-stop bench laughing. Telling Kevin he’s crazy.
Some people in line behind Kevin make a face, and head for the pizza truck up the street. Ming throws his leather jacket off so fast, a sleeve lands in the rice. He’s off the truck hitting Kevin upside the head. Before you know it, Mr. Kim is out there grabbing Ming by the shoulder.
“You can’t beat down ignorance with your fists,” he says.
Ming is still yelling at Kevin, but he’s following his dad back to the truck.
“Ignore them,” his mother says, handing Ming a Pepsi.
Kevin and his crew stand by the tree making barking sounds. And saying, “Here doggy, doggy.”
Mai’s so quiet, I figure maybe she don’t hear nothing with her earphones on. But she does hear, and the next thing I know, she jumps from the truck, and heads down the street and around the corner. She don’t even have no coat on.
I grab Mai’s coat and go after her. I yell, and yell for her to wait for me. She keeps running. I don’t try to keep up after a while. I walk at a normal pace. I figure when she gets too cold she’ll stop and get her stuff. By the time she stops, we’re almost to her house. Her nose is red and runny. Her hands are so cold she can’t unbend them to get her keys out. I unlock her front door and help her with her things once we get inside.
It ain’t too long before she’s feeling all right. After a while, she bad-mouthing her folks.
“You going back on the truck today?” I ask.
“No,” Mai says, pushing up her sleeves. She got a bunch of dishes sitting in the sink, with steaming hot water running over ’em. “I’m tired of the doggy jokes. And the cracks about my dad cheating people, and the stuff about how fat my mother is,” she says, almost crying.
“Your parents are cool, Mai. You know that,” I tell her.
Mai wipes her face with the back of her wet hands. Now she got a big soap bubble hanging from her nose. “I wish they never got married,” she says, walking into the living room and sitting down on the couch.
I sit down beside her, put my feet up on the coffee table, and check out the room.
There’s some of everything in here. African masks. Watercolor paintings of Korea, and a painting of Mai and Ming when they were babies. In the picture, Ming is sitting on his mother’s lap. Mai is smiling, and sitting on her father’s lap. Her tiny finger is holding tight to his big thumb.
“You look a lot like your dad, only darker,” I say, staring at the picture, then back at Mai again.
Mai grabs a handful of her thick, wavy black hair and pulls it away from her face.
“I look like myself,” she says, turning away from the painting. “Not nobody else. Just me.”
The Heifer called. Ja’nae is giving us all the details. She says she talked to her mother all night long, under the covers, so her grandparents couldn’t hear. The house was real hot, she said. And even though Ja’nae sweated out her hair, and had to wash under her arms when she was done, she says it was worth it. Ja’nae is talking so fast and so much at lunchtime, that she don’t get a chance to eat her fries before they go cold.
Ja’nae is telling us all about how her mother’s got some job laying hands on sick people. Zora looks at Ja’nae sideways, like she’s crazy. But I know all about that hand-laying stuff. On the street it happens a lot. People touching you where it hurts. Your foot. A cut hand. A bad back. And praying for it to get better. Only nobody ever makes no money from laying hands. I guess Ja’nae’s mom ain’t making much money from it, either. Ja’nae says she’s living in somebody’s basement, till she builds up her practice.
This is the most Ja’nae has ever said about her mom. And the more she talks, the more we see how much she’s been holding back from us. Ja’nae says she talks to her mom almost every night. She uses calling cards to sneak and call her when her grandparents go to bed. Zora asks how she even knew where to find her mother. “I didn’t,” Ja’nae says, “I picked up the phone one day about two months ago to call Raspberry, and she was on the line trying to phone me. It was weird,” she says, shaking her head like she still can’t believe it. “We been talking every night since. She wants me to come live with her.”
I’m looking at her like she lost her mind. Wondering how she figures her mother can take care of her if she’s living off somebody else and trying to make a living doing something that nobody’s willing to pay for.
Ja’nae is still talking when Ming walks over and sits down next to her. He’s wearing the leather jacket. Sato is with him. He’s dressed in all black, from his wave cap to his sneakers. He looks like a gangbanger.
“Hey, greedy,” he says, popping me on the head with his rolled-up paper. “Hey, y’all,” he says to everybody else.
I ignore him. But deep down I hope he keeps saying stuff to me . . . even if it ain’t all that nice.
“Heard you got kicked off the food truck, Mai,” Sato says, taking one of Zora’s fries. Zora smacks Sato’s hand and tells him to stay out of her food.
“My parents say I don’t have to work if I don’t want.”
“That’s ’cause you’re mean. And don’t do no work,” Ming says, moving closer to Ja’nae.
Mai rolls her eyes at him. “Forget you,” she says, getting up. She walks over to Sato’s side of the table, sits down next to him, and says, “I didn’t get kicked off of that smelly truck, I quit.”
“Shoot,” Sato says. “If I quit like that, my mother would knock me upside the head and tell me I had to work anyhow,” he says, smacking a plastic fork against the table, then using it to eat his applesauce.
Mai makes this real ugly face at Sato.
Then Sato says what we’re all thinking. “You just don’t want to be around your dad.”
We look at Mai to see what she’s gonna say to that.
“Mind your own business,” she says. She stands up and grabs her backpack. Ming says something to Mai in Korean. Mai starts to leave. “You only do that to embarrass m
e,” she says, smacking him on the back.
Ja’nae starts whispering something in Ming’s ear. Zora holds up a plastic fork like it’s a knife she’s gonna stick in Sato’s hand if he don’t let loose on that fry he just took off her plate.
Sato’s complaining about still being hungry. I see this as a way to pull in some extra cash. I dig in my backpack and pull out ten bags of barbecue chips.
“Now that’s what I call real food,” Sato says, reaching for a bag.
“Real food ain’t free,” I tell him.
He shakes his head. “Cheap. Greedy and cheap,” he says, digging in his pocket and throwing two quarters on the table.
Zora, Mai, and Ming give me money, too, and before I get up from the table, six other kids buy the rest of the chips.
On the way to Spanish class, Ja’nae asks if I can lend her more money. I look at her like she’s crazy. “No way! Pay me what you owe me and maybe then we can talk,” I say, pushing open the door to class.
If Ja’nae paid me everything she owes me plus interest, I wouldn’t lend her no more money. But I can’t help but wonder why she always got her hand out for money these days.
We’re at Zora’s house again. Her mother says she’s gonna start charging us rent since we come here so often. I think to myself, Dr. Mitchell need to be charging you rent, much as you hang out here.
Ja’nae walks over to Zora’s dresser. There’s six bottles of perfume, a whole tray of fingernail polish, and a little dish with gold chains and rings sitting in it. Ja’nae whips out her cotton ball and sprays it with perfume from the red bottle. The room smells like oranges mixed with peppermint. I guess that’s better than the coconut-strawberry perfume Ja’nae’s been wearing all week. It seems like Ja’nae used up half the bottle. That’s how strong it smells in here.
Zora don’t act like she minds Ja’nae messing with her expensive perfume. She’s in a good mood today because her mom snuck her sixty bucks. Now she got half of the money she needs to buy the sneakers. But Zora’s got her eye on some sixty-dollar jeans now, too. “Daddy already told me I have to contribute forty dollars toward them, and he’ll contribute the rest,” she says, pulling open her closet door. “When I get my sneakers, I’ll have fifteen pairs,” she says. All of Zora’s sneakers are lined up and organized by color, just like her clothes. “I’ll have twenty pairs of jeans when I get my next pair.”
We’re all eyeballing Zora’s stuff. She’s got so much, she uses part of her dad’s closet and the one in the hallway, too. Two times a year, Dr. Mitchell makes her give some of it away to the Goodwill. But that’s no use. Zora’s mother just keeps giving her more clothes, or sneaking her money so she can buy more herself.
Mai’s got her eye on a red blouse in Zora’s closet when, all of a sudden, she says that she’s gonna come clean houses with me and Ja’nae. Her dad told her last night that she don’t have to work the food truck until him and her can work out their problems. But since she won’t be contributing to the family, she’ll have to earn her own spending money. “That means lunch money, too,” says Mai, “unless I want to bring food from home.”
I tell everyone about that cleaning gig Ja’nae’s grandmother got us, working for a lady named Miss Baker. Zora says to count her in—the money will come in handy for clothes. Ja’nae and I look away, though, when Zora says she wants in on the kind of money we made last time at Miss Neeta’s. Shoot, neither one of us ever told her that we had to give most of it back.
When I say that Miss Baker’s place is on Jade Street, Zora changes her tune and says she ain’t too sure about going.
“Jade Street’s in a rough neighborhood, even worse than Raspberry’s,” she says.
I know what Zora means. Lots of drugs get sold around there. People be shooting up—and shooting each other.
“Yeah, Jade Street is rough,” I say. “But Miss Baker will pick us up and drop us off so we won’t be out in the street. And we gonna make two hundred and fifty dollars for cleaning up. That’s sixty-two dollars apiece. Good money.”
Ja’nae sprays a cotton ball. “Listen, I need the money,” she says. “Even if it means we gotta work on Jade Street.”
I look at her, and think I shoulda just kept the fifty dollars I took from her after we cleaned Miss Neeta’s.
Mai asks why anybody would give all that money for cleaning up. “She could hire a cleaning company for that much cash,” she says.
I explain that one of them companies ripped Miss Baker off before. Stole some valuables. “Now she wants to hire kids, ’cause she thinks she can trust us.”
Mai and Zora ask how long it’s gonna take to make that “good” money.
“It takes as long as it takes,” I say, reminding them that they never made that much money at one time before.
The next day, Miss Baker picks us up in front of the corner store at 5th and Mallow.
As soon as we see the car, we know things ain’t right. Miss Baker’s car is a big blue station wagon that looks like somebody burnt half the paint off with a blowtorch. When we get in it, the engine stops cold.
“All right, Bessy,” Miss Baker says. She got a gap between her teeth big enough to hold a slice of bread. “Now don’t show off for the girls.”
Cars behind us are beeping.
“She can talk all night to this thing. It ain’t gonna help,” Zora whispers.
But finally Bessy gets going.
My girls ain’t saying a word. They’re rolling their eyes at me. I’m wondering how Miss Baker’s gonna pay us for cleaning when she don’t have enough cash to keep her ride running straight.
Miss Baker is a tiny little lady, can’t hardly see over the steering wheel. She stays a long time at every stop sign, and she lets other cars pass in front of her.
Jade Street is only twenty minutes away from Mallow, but it takes Miss Baker forty minutes to get there. Once I see the house we’ll be cleaning, I’m wishing the car had broke down right outside the store.
That’s when Miss Baker explains this ain’t the house she lives in. It’s a boarding home she owns. “I got ten boarders living here. Me and my daughter run it together.”
There’s bottles, cans, paper, trash everywhere. Miss Baker says, “You all got your work cut out for you.”
I don’t want Miss Baker to open the front door. From the yard, I can see some old guy in a wheelchair. He’s shoved up to the window in dirty pajamas, drooling spit.
“I feel like I gotta throw up,” Zora says.
Ja’nae grabs her hand and holds it tight.
When we get inside, Zora is holding her nose. It smells like pee in here.
One woman is sitting in a wheelchair with socks on her hands, rocking. She’s younger than the rest. Miss Baker says that she was in a car accident. She’s brown as me, but her skin is ashy, and cracked like she’s covered with chalk dust. She’s hunched over to one side of the wheelchair, humming.
Zora says, “I’m getting out of here.”
The words ain’t hardly out of Zora’s mouth when some old hunchback man comes up to her and grabs at her jacket.
He’s so bent over all he can do is stare at the floor. Zora yells for him to stop touching her.
He twists his whole body to the side and looks up at Zora as best he can. “Had my own tailor shop. First black tailor in the city,” he says rubbing his fingers together real quick. “Still can spot me some good leather,” he says reaching over and touching Zora’s coat again. Then he turns his face back to the floor like a child who just got his fingers smacked, and drags his feet up the hall.
Miss Baker tells us we can hang our stuff up in the corner. That there’s buckets and rags waiting for us on the second floor. Ja’nae is already doing something we ain’t hired to do—wiping dried oatmeal off some old lady’s mouth. Talking to her real quiet. Asking her name. Saying she would brush her hair if she wanted.
Zora rolls her eyes. “You have any gloves? Lysol?”
Miss Baker laughs. Shakes her head and laughs s
ome more. “Gloves? Lysol? Where y’all think you at, some hotel? I got buckets, rags, soap, bleach, and water. That’s all you need to clean.” She moves closer to Zora and looks down at her boots. “And you better do a good job too. The state health inspector is coming in two weeks and things got to be in order, so let’s get to work, girls. I ain’t paying you to talk.”
For starters, there ain’t no carpet on the floors and we have to mop them. We each mop one floor apiece. My arms ache. Cleaning up with that cheap stuff Miss Baker gave us makes Mai’s fingers swell up and turn red.
“I’m calling my father to tell him about this funky place,” Zora says.
“You call and we gonna lose out on all that money,” I remind her.
Zora don’t argue. She picks up a rag and we all start dusting woodwork.
“Told you to start with the woodwork first. Now we gonna have to sweep the floors again before we leave,” Ja’nae says, coming over to me.
“Don’t forget the windows,” Miss Baker says, inspecting the floors.
She hands us a bunch of newspapers and some vinegar and tells us to be sure not to scratch up her mirrors and windows. There’s thirty windowpanes in all. We count every one of them.
Next, Ja’nae yanks off a bedsheet.
“Man,” Mai says, holding her nose.
The sheet Ja’nae got in her hand got a big brown stain in the middle.
“She didn’t say do the beds. Forget it,” I say, trying to grab the sheet from her.
Ja’nae turns and stares at me. Her voice is really low, and sad. “They need someplace clean to sleep.”
We all stare at her. There’s maybe twelve beds here. And my fingers are like Mai’s now. Cracked, red, and itching.
“What if your grandmother lived here?” Ja’nae asks us.
“The nursing home my grandmother lives in has a golf course,” Zora says, lifting up her foot and looking at her white leather boot. There’s a long brown mark across the toe.
“Shut up, Zora,” I say.
Ja’nae got a good heart. She always wants to do the right thing no matter what.
