Dime (22 page)

“Then the sperm swim all up through your tubes and hit a egg right where your belly button at and then you pregnant and that baby growing get all its food from your umbiblical cord,” L.A. was saying.

Brandy unstilled herself to cross her arms and tuck fingertips under her armpits. She wasn't making a sound, so it took me a few seconds to see that she was crying. Her eyes were shiny and blinking. There were three wet tear tracks lining her cheeks.

What?

I was terrified.

*  *  *

Daddy was like the devil. A weak devil, but the devil. He threw things at us constantly. He didn't lift his arm all the way, and his throws were feeble and he winced every time. But he hurled whatever he could reach: forties not even empty, plates, the remote control, boxes of gauze pads, a comb, a vanilla-scented candle. He stayed on the couch because it was hard for him to get off it, and he wanted to watch us. L.A. and Brandy got his bedroom, and I stayed in the alcove and waited on him.

What?
It was all I could think. I did what I had to do each day, and everyone saw the same Dime they always saw, but inside I wasn't me. I was just,
what?

Daddy didn't eat much at once but a little bit all day long. He held his gun in his hand all the time. Before, he used to keep it hidden inside his pants somewhere.

“I'm a kill that motherfucker,” he kept saying that first week. He was talking about Uncle Ray. “I'm a blow up his ass.”

Then he got a visit from George, who talked sense to him. My body was right there, bringing chips and salsa and taking away their empties, but my brain was lost.

“Dudes out there paying mad money for a look at that?” George asked, tilting his head toward Lollipop's room.

Daddy nodded from where he was lying down on the couch. “Bunch of perverts out there.”

“Perverts going to travel for it too,” George added.

What?

“Travel to get some of that in person. You got you some months. But you best get rid of the little bitch before any baby come. What you going to do with her?”

“I'm a make my money first,” Daddy said. “And then I'm a send her back down south.”

What?

“You giving up a boy?” George asked. “You giving up a son?”

“Ain't mine.” Daddy shook his head. “I never hit that.”

George looked surprised. “Baby ain't yours?”

Daddy shook his head. “Lollipop a little girl,” he said. “Damn. I ain't no pervert.”

What?

He shook his head again. “She came pregnant.”

“Huh,” George said. “She might be having a bitch, anyway.”

Daddy threw his bottle of Advil at me and winced. The bottle hit my arm and fell onto the floor. “Open that up.”

I untwisted the cap. “Give me four,” Daddy said. “Then get out. Eagle waiting on you.”

*  *  *

What what what.
I was stuck, frozen, trapped. No more hot coals and lava and searing volcano inside my belly. No nothing but stone cold
what?

*  *  *

I came in last just as the sun was rising. Two and a half hours before first period was going to begin. L.A. and Brandy were on either side of Daddy on the couch, still in their work clothes. He was sitting up straight. In the past few days, he hadn't been taking so much Advil, and he didn't seem feeble anymore when he moved around. He'd gone back into his own room and had mostly stopped throwing things at us.

I could hear Lollipop through her door, talking to some john on the computer. I could hear her giggling.
What?
Daddy was drinking cranberry juice from a glass. I hung up my coat in the closet and then waited until he put the juice down on the coffee table before I gave him his money.

I was cold in my miniskirt and high boots and short sweater with no bra.

“Sit down,” Daddy told me.

I sat on the cloth armchair.

“Bitch,” Daddy said to me. “Looks like you going to be real useful right about now.”

What?

L.A. poked at her tooth gap with her tongue and tapped her foot fast on the coffee table. Brandy's eyelids were drooped so low, I thought she was asleep, except she would never disrespect Daddy like that. All I wanted to do was lie down inside my sleeping bag and warm up. I forced myself not to slump.

“All you all listen good.” He glanced down at his phone. “We got a new plan.”

L.A. spiraled her tongue in the gap. Brandy lifted her head a fraction.

“Dime. You been wanting to go to the liberry so much, now you going.”

What?

“Take you a hour one time a week after school and educate yourself on birthing babies.”

Brandy opened her eyes.

“She ain't working no more?” L.A. asked.

“Shut up,” Daddy said. “I never said she ain't working.”

I didn't want to go to the library for Daddy. The library wasn't his. It wasn't for him. It was for me. It was mine. Daddy didn't belong there. He wasn't allowed there. And I didn't want to read about how to deliver a baby. That wasn't what I wanted to read. That wasn't anything.

“You not taking Lollipop to a hospital when it her time?” Brandy asked.

“Hell no,” Daddy said. “My grandma say ain't nobody had they babies in no hospitals back in the day.”

“You got a grandma?” Brandy asked. “Stop.”

What?
I closed my eyes for longer than a blink. It didn't make me feel warmer or help me to disappear.

“Hospital for dying,” Daddy said. He flashed his
D
. “Or beating down dying, just like I done.”

“Nurse said you wasn't going to die, anyway,” L.A. muttered.

“Shut up, I said.”

“Where Lollipop having her baby, then?” Brandy asked.

“In the hotel room,” Daddy said. “Dime, you going to be the main doctor. You going to educate yourself everything about it.” He looked at Brandy. “You going to be Dime's nurse.”

What?

“I know you not asking me to help deliver no baby,” L.A. said.

Daddy threw a bag of Cheetos at her head. “You got that right,” he said. “Because I know you ain't no doctor.”

“You off the track again,” he told the three of us. “Brandy and Dime back to the hotel. L.A., you on outcalls and overnights.” She smiled.

“Lollipop moving into the hotel. She going in, and she ain't coming out until after that baby here.” He stood up. He could stand now without wincing. He was getting stronger. “Come on, now,” he said to me. He glanced at Brandy and L.A. “You two dismissed.”

He took me into his room. He let me shower, and the water was warm but I kept shivering anyway. He tucked the sheets around me tenderly, just the way he did the very first time he turned me out. When he crawled into bed wearing nothing but his boxers, I could see how much he really had recovered. His bandage was fresh and small, and his body had bulked back up a lot.

“You going to do good, Beautiful,” he whispered to me, stroking my back. “I'm counting on you to do good.” He kept stroking. “You get that baby out and we going to send it straight back to Uncle Ray.”

What?

Daddy stopped stroking to turn me around. He sat up and pulled me with him. He leaned his face close to mine. “You tell anybody and I'm a rip your fingernails off and beat your teeth out. Understand?” He slowly took a fistful of my hair and then suddenly yanked so hard it was like he'd set my scalp on fire.

What?

“Understand?” He yanked again and then again and then pulled my face the last inch closer until he was kissing me. I couldn't breathe.

After a second, he let go, pressed me down, and spooned me again, like it was nothing. My head burned. “Don't tell nobody, but we getting a sweet price.”

What?

“Dime, we getting a sweet price. And with that baby money, I'm a buy you some nice new clothes and a diamond none a the other bitches going to get, plus a phone.” He rubbed his nose on the back of my neck. “You get that baby out safe and it going to be the best thing ever happened for all a us.”

*  *  *

There's only so much one brain can take. There are only so many thoughts one brain can have at any one time. The body is different, though. The body knows things instantly that the brain can't understand so fast. When a brain has all it can handle, it just thinks
what?
But while the brain is thinking
what
, the body is like an entire planet exploding or becoming. My brain was thinking
what what what what what what what?

But my body already knew I was going to get that baby a decent life, if that was the last thing I ever did with mine.

The icy slam at my chest and the slushy freeze in my blood knew right away, knew underneath all the
what?

I was going to use courage and write the best note ever written.
What?

I was going to have to kill myself after, but that wouldn't matter, and the note I was going to write wouldn't even be about that or for me.
What? What? What?

The note would be for the baby. Only for that baby.

*  *  *

She must have remembered who I was, because she greeted me when I walked by her desk. I watched myself greet her back quietly and then duck away so that I could find what I needed. Then I watched myself sit at a corner table and pretend to do homework. I was hunched over a childbirth guide, my gray sweater nearby to cover it up fast if anybody came near.
What?
I read.
What?

When I had fifteen minutes left, I made sure to return the book to the spot where I'd found it so that nobody could see what I'd been reading. Then, without meaning to, I was in front of the stacks for
Mockingbird
. There were only fresh copies on the shelf. She didn't usually work at this branch, so maybe she never saw the taped pages on the one I'd returned back in August.

When I slid one of the fresh copies over the counter to her along with my school ID, she took it like it was nothing and began conversation as if it hadn't been any time at all since she last saw me. “So you enjoyed this, then?”

I tried to think.
What?
I nodded. I was inside myself and not watching myself now. I wished I could lie down.

“What stood out in it for you?” she asked, swiping its bar code beneath the red beam and adjusting her jeweled glasses. “What did you like about it?”

I liked so many things about it,
I suddenly thought to say.
I loved so many things about it.
It was a relief to have a new thought, something other than
what?
Even though I didn't speak.

She didn't seem to mind, but just slid
Mockingbird
back over to me and then drew her index finger along a line of books standing upright next to her computer. “I got my love of books from my father,” she continued as if we were having a conversation. “What about you?”

I was still just barely thinking, and not well enough to answer, so I stared at a black clump of gum stuck to the blue carpet.

When I lifted my head, she was pulling a different title out from the row she had been searching next to her computer.
The Color Purple.
She opened it up and swiped it beneath the red beam too. She handed it over to me, along with my school ID. Her necklace clacked. “Maybe we'll run into each other again the next time I'm covering here.”

One thing I liked was that everybody thought Boo Radley was a shameful criminal and not a respectable person,
I realized I wanted to say.
But all along, he was actually a hero.

*  *  *

Walking back home, somehow I unfroze.

Lollipop was pregnant, and there was going to be a baby, and I was going to deliver it. Lollipop was pregnant, and there was going to be a baby, and I was going to deliver it.

There was going to be a baby.

I thought about the babies I'd known. Vonna, and Sienna, a little bit. And the other ones. There were a lot. Eight. Maybe nine. I couldn't remember all of their names. I just remembered holding them, tiny bundles tipped over my shoulder. Tilting bottles at just the right angle so they didn't drown and they didn't suck in air. I remembered their hard gums on my chin, and their fists tangled in my hair. Their drool soaking their onesies and the way their two front teeth glistened inside their mouths. I remembered how when they started to walk, they lurched around as if they were drunk. How they played with my ears and how they loved bowls and feathers and tape and watching things drop onto the floor.

I had to stay unfrozen now. I had to form a thought more than
what?
My body had understood and prepared a plan while my brain had been stuck in
what
. Now I had to stay unstuck and leave
what
behind. I had to keep my brain caught up to my body. I had to concentrate.

It had to be me because there was nobody else. Not L.A. Not Eagle. Not Bird or any of the Russians or Uncle Ray. Not the johns. Not Daddy. Not even Brandy. I had to get that baby out alive, and I had to come up with a note so good that its reader would do the right thing and keep on doing the right thing until that baby was grown.

Daddy and L.A. and Eagle and George would kill me slowly if they found me alive. I couldn't let that happen. But more importantly, I had to make the note perfect.

THAT WAS SIX weeks ago, and all the time since then seems so slow and so fast, both at once. It seems like a book I read a long time ago and I can't remember the title or the ending. There are parts I do remember, clearly, and other parts that don't make any sense.

When I came home from school four days a week and from the library one day an hour later, I had to change clothes and then let Eagle drive me to work the hotel room next to Lollipop's. Lollipop did her thing in front of the camera there and sometimes with a live date. Daddy moved her in on a Saturday with all of us so that things wouldn't seem suspicious. He took the hotel comforter off her bed and made sure no identifying furniture was in the camera's view. L.A. said he paid somebody at the hotel not to send in the cleaning people, so the only ones who ever went in and out were him, Eagle, and dates. Lollipop cleaned up after herself, and L.A. or I took her sheets home to wash.