Dime (15 page)

“Nice-looking bitches around here,” Daddy told Brandy. She just kept chewing.

“What's the damn prize?” L.A. asked for the thousandth time. “Why we doing this?” She glared at Daddy over her waffles. “I do not like this shit. Some crazy man going to drive us away and chop us up.”

“Nobody going to hurt you.” Daddy shoved a cheeseburger into his mouth.

I saw a new family walk in. A white Daddy with a dark Bottom leading three dark girls. When they got closer, I saw they weren't Puerto Rican or Dominican or black or even dark white. Also I saw they were tiny skinny.

“Chinese hos,” Daddy said. “See that.” There were some Asian girls back home. George had two. Stone used to have one and another one stabled with Whippet. But I think their girls were all a little mixed.

These were pure-looking. Korean, maybe. Or Chinese. I wasn't too sure. They glanced at us and then glanced away when their Daddy said something. They sat down, and I heard them speaking softly to one another in a fast, whining language. He said something again, louder, and they stopped talking.

Daddy left cash pinned beneath his plate and then walked us out to the car. When we passed their table, the youngest one, about my age, glanced at her Daddy ordering more coffee and then quickly at the back of the Bottom walking away—probably to the bathroom—and then at Brandy. Just at Brandy. The Asian girl whispered something I couldn't understand. “Hep. Heppeese. Stowen.”

Daddy didn't hear, but L.A. did and so did Brandy. She slowed down, then sped up. L.A. started to laugh, and when she laughed I pictured myself picking up a ketchup bottle and slamming it into the back of her head. I didn't really know then what that Asian ho said. Or why I was so especially mad at L.A. for laughing.

I didn't figure it out until later, when I closed my eyes in the Escalade, Brandy asleep in the front, and L.A. stretched out behind me. I was so tired I could hardly hold on to it in my brain when I realized that what the girl had said was,
Help. Help, please. Stolen.

*  *  *

You might wonder,
Money would write
, what kind of ho makes more of me. That is an interesting question without an answer everybody will agree on.
I had heard Stone and George debate it at our kitchen table.
Some say that the ho who is most foreign to the man makes the most of me. Others will swear that most men prefer white bitches, the more blue-eyed and blond-haired, the better. Hos of Eastern European descent and Asian bitches are said to bring in more of me than anyone, depending on where in this free country the transaction is occurring. Then again, there are always exceptions to a rule.
Mostly Daddy claimed he had no interest in associating with his competition, especially such ignorant competition. But other times he chitchatted with them just like a girl.
Some men will only purchase black hos. Others won't look at a black bitch. It all depends. Knowing the rule and then knowing the exceptions to that rule is a moneymaker, a me maker.

This Daddy intended to make a lot of me off of knowing these kinds of things. Why not use his northern associates to bring some “Russians” down south?
Stone said Daddy didn't know a Moldavian from a Czech from a Russian. Daddy had said he didn't have to know bullshit details because all those types of bitches were the same to dates.
He knew business, and he knew his particular down south could use some fresh cuts of meat. He knew me.

*  *  *

Daddy let us sleep in the motel beds for four hours and then he had us up again.

“You back in the bathroom,” he told me, right before he went out to find some business.

“Daddy.” I wasn't sure what I wanted to say, and I was afraid of saying anything to him, but I couldn't help it. And he knew, the way he always knew everything.

He walked in with me and closed the door behind him. “I know I'm working you hard, Beautiful.” He pulled me close to him. “I know you tired. We going back to something better after we get us our prize and get home.”

“I just don't—”

“Shh.” He rubbed my back. The bathroom was so small he had to hold me close anyway. It felt so good to be held like that, but the sink was jabbing into my spine. “I got a big plan,” he told me. “You going to be real happy when it get done. Just keep that complaining mouth quiet and trust you Daddy.”

“I don't mean to complain,” I tried. “It's just that I—”

Daddy thunked his fist on the side of my head, and the jolt exploded my skull and jabbed at my back, from the lip of the sink.

“I told you shut your complaining.”

I stood still, not making a sound.

He looked at me, disgusted, and for a part of a second I knew I hated him, and then he pulled me close again and pushed me away a little and kissed me long. “Don't make me hurt you, Beautiful,” he whispered. I tried not to cry, but the tears came. I was so tired. Then he kissed me some more. “You know you my best. Don't make me hurt you. I hate to hurt you.” He wrapped his arms around me and held me again, and I felt bad for making him feel so sorry.

*  *  *

About ten minutes after we packed up and drove away, in the daylight, I saw those Asian girls. They were getting out of a white van, walking in a row, like dark little ducklings, into a low, flat-roofed building that had
MASSAGE
painted in red on its front. Their Daddy and the Bottom Bitch were arguing about something behind them, but the girls never turned to look. They kept their shiny black heads tilted down and walked quickly, disappearing through the door. Something about the way they walked made me realize they weren't as old as they had looked in the diner. They were young. Younger even than me.

I WAS COMING out of a dream where my mouth was filled with chewing gum, but it tasted nasty and was choking me. When I woke all the way up, I was drooling morning-breath drool. I sat up fast to wipe it away. Brandy was still sleeping, her head lolling. And L.A.'s feet were two inches from my face, where she'd somehow hooked them from the backseat across and over to my row. Daddy was outside pumping gas.

I looked beyond him and saw a highway. I looked opposite and saw a massive strip mall rest area with vehicles and people and dogs everywhere. I noticed a lot of vehicles had boats hooked up to trailers. I opened the door to humid air tinged with the taste of fuel and salt. Seagulls flapped against the wind in the sky, screeching.

“May I go to the bathroom, please?” I called to Daddy.

“Fast,” he told me. “Don't speak to nobody.”

I could leave,
I thought.
I could disappear until he gives up trying to find me.
Would he give up or would he keep looking? If he kept looking and found me, would he beat me, or would he put his arms around me? Probably both. Where would I go, anyway? Maybe instead I could find an official somebody and tell them. But what would I tell them?
Would you ask my boyfriend to let me stop working?
And who would I tell? I was nothing but a ho.

I stared across the way at all the people and food windows and tables and chairs. A little brown girl perched on a fat woman's lap. She was eating school-bus-colored crackers from a Baggie and leaning her head back against the fat woman's doughy chest. The fat woman rested her cheek on the girl's head. Maybe I could find the woman who smelled like barbecue potato chips, who tickle-scratched my shoulder, who read to me. Had she been my mother? My grandmother? Where would I look for her?

There was a spinning rack of paperbacks in the store next to the ladies' room. I spun it, reading titles, watching them blur by. About a week ago in the Escalade, I came across the word
chifforobe
. I thought that might be some sort of dresser or bureau, but I wasn't too sure. I wanted to figure it out, and more importantly, to find out what had really gone on between Tom Robinson and Mayella. I wished I could read
Mockingbird
in the motel, but there was too much work. We had been staying in this one—our second—for five days now. This time I was in a bed and Brandy was in the bathroom; a bigger bathroom than the first one. I wondered if Daddy was planning to take us to another soon or to pick up our prize, whatever that was. I wondered what would happen if I didn't go back to the Escalade. Just stayed wandering around the pretzel stand and the book rack and in and out of the ladies' room. Probably I would be arrested and put away for good. In jail or in a mental hospital. I spun the rack and spun it again. It was whirring around so fast, I thought it might topple over, but I kept spinning it anyway.

“Daddy looking for you,” I heard L.A. say in my ear, and she was there, grabbing my shoulder.

“Books,” she told Daddy, as we climbed into the car. “She was looking at books again.”

Daddy's
D
glittered. “Told you she wouldn't never step out on us.”

Brandy was still asleep, the seat belt still hammocking her head. I slid into the middle seat, looking around.

“You want this?” L.A., popping gum, handed me my paperback. With a hot-pink wad stuck between the middle pages and another caked onto the back cover.

I tried to hand it back. My fingers were still somehow, but my heart was shaking. “Clean it up.” Inside my head I apologized.
Sorry,
I said to Scout and Jem and to their daddy, Atticus Finch.
I'm sorry,
I said silently to Dill and Boo Radley and Tom Robinson.

“You funny, Dime,” L.A. said, as if she heard me apologizing, and then she blew a bubble.

I glanced at Daddy up in the driver's seat. I could see the right side of his face. His angled eye cut a dark slash. I knew better than to say anything else after what happened last time when L.A. messed up my books. But I was so mad I thought if I could get my hands on Daddy's gun, I could kill somebody.

*  *  *

When I don't have anything to read, I feel like a tortoise without a shell or a boat without an anchor. There is nothing to hide under. Nowhere to stop and rest. When I don't have a book, there is nowhere good or interesting to be, there is nobody to care about, nothing to hope for, and nothing to puzzle over. When I do have something to read, it keeps me breathing. It's the reward for all the other things. It's the thing to look forward to, the reason for doing my day.

When I was little and living with Janelle, I knew that after the beds were made and the dishes were washed and dried and the floor was mopped and the toilet was cleaned and the laundry sorted into piles by color, I could go sit on my pillow in the corner behind the TV and read myself into other places and other times and other clothes and hair and words and people. I could melt through a page and out the other side, where nobody could find me or touch me because I was floating on a boat inside my shell, and I could just gently rock with the wavelets of the phrases.

*  *  *

About fifteen minutes after Daddy got back on the highway, Brandy woke up. She glanced back at me. “You crying?”

I shook my head.

Brandy wiped her mouth and her eyes. She picked up her Poland Spring from its little round cubby by her seat and took a lot of sips. Then she glanced back at me again. “L.A!” she called past me. “You mess with Dime?”

“Who you talking to?” L.A. called back. She didn't even sit up.

“You: Bitch,” Brandy said.

Daddy's hand struck like a snake as he popped Brandy's ear. It must have stung, but Brandy ignored the pop and looked at me again. I hadn't even known I was crying until Brandy asked. “What happened?”

I shook my head again and pressed my fingertips on my eyes. Sometimes you can push the tears back in. But sometimes is not all the time.

“This is bullshit,” Brandy said to Daddy. She said it with the kind of attitude only L.A. ever gave.

“Shut up,” Daddy told her, and he popped her again. The Escalade swerved.

“You got to let us rest!” Brandy yelled at him. “Look at her!” She meant me. “She's nothing but a baby, and you working her to death! You working all of us to death! We tired!”

“See what you did.” L.A. was sitting up, and now she popped my head.

“Get off her!” Brandy yelled. “Damn!”

Daddy yanked the wheel and the car over three lanes and screeched onto the shoulder. The other cars and trucks whizzed past us, making zooming noises just like in cartoons. Daddy opened his door and stepped out. He gazed out at the traffic for a second and then opened the back door. He grabbed Brandy and hauled her out and then hauled me out, too. He shoved both of us down. Then he kicked us all over our hips and behinds. The next thing I knew, he hauled L.A. out of the car too and punched straight into the side of her jaw, as hard as if she was a man. Blood gushed out of her mouth. She spit the blood and spit again, and one of her teeth landed on the back of my hand and skittered off.

“I am just about sick a all you all,” Daddy said. The traffic kept whizzing by. “We a mile from picking up our prize, and let me tell you, she going to be a breath of fresh air. She called Lollipop, and you, every single one a you, going to treat her like she a goddamn queen. Now get your asses back in my ride, and if I hear so much as a swallow out of any bitch, I'm throwing you out the window while we driving, and I am not playing.”

So we stood up and got our asses back into the car.

DADDY LET US out one at a time to use the bathroom. As usual, I went last. The house was wood frame, peeling yellow paint, at the end of a sandy dirt road. Tiny bits of broken-up shells, and a few bigger swirly chunks, were mixed in with the sandy soil all over the ground. They gleamed in the sunlight. Inside, I could hear the ocean all around, but I couldn't see it. It sounded a little bit like a highway, only deeper and with more rhythm. The soap dish on the sink was actually a clamshell turned on its back. It made me think of Mandy: She had an entire cottage room made of seashells.