Dime (14 page)

“Got to make up all that money we lost,” Daddy said. “Get yourselfs clean and eat if you hungry and then put the food mess back in my room. Be ready in forty-five minutes. You going to work in here now.”

On the street I sometimes had to work with Brandy busy not three feet away. I even had to do three-ways sometimes with her. It was embarrassing. Brandy acted like she didn't care, but she didn't like it either, when we had to do it like that. We pretended with our smiles and giggles because you had to, but we never really looked at each other. Now I was nervous. It seemed like we were going to have to work all day in the room on the two beds. How were we supposed to manage the space? How were the dates going to feel about not having privacy? When things didn't go the way they liked, some of them got rough.

“We worked a lot already.” I made a point of never complaining. I never spoke much, anyway, but somehow I was speaking now. “Can't we rest a little?”

“I'm surprised with you, Dime.” Daddy pointed his finger at me and then waved it at the others. “You all had three days' vacation. You going to stress me when I got us a new car and we out taking a trip all together?”

“We're just tired.” I wanted to go back home to my alcove and read my book all at once, without interruptions, in peace. I wanted to get past the part with Mrs. Dubose fighting her drug habit and dying so slowly in front of Jem. I wanted to catch another glimpse of pale Boo Radley and watch Jem take a dare from Dill.

Mostly, I wanted to stop working, even though I knew that was part of being with Daddy. For the first time since my first steps on the track back home, it occurred to me that maybe I should just tell him I didn't want to do it anymore. But I was too tired to think much about that.

“L.A.?” Daddy said. “You tired?”

“Please.” L.A. rolled her eyes.

Daddy kissed her, long. I didn't even care. Then he left.

*  *  *

L.A. took the first shower, using up twenty of our forty-five minutes. I didn't mind because I was so hungry, and it gave me a chance to eat in peace. But she told Brandy to go next. When it was finally my turn, just like at home, there was no hot water. Also, there was mold all along the shower stall walls and around the faucets and the handles in the sink, and there were no towels. L.A. had used the only one. It was only a little bit bigger than a washcloth. So I had to dry myself with toilet paper, which is practically impossible. It kept falling apart and clumping in white bits. I was freezing from the water and from the cold damp I couldn't get all the way off.

I was barely dressed again when Daddy came back with the johns. There were five of them. Four were black and one was white. I thought the white one would go with Brandy, but he wanted L.A. All the other johns wanted Brandy, but they all wanted to go right away. There was nearly a fight, but Daddy said something to them, and they calmed down and two agreed to go with me.

Daddy put me to work in the bathroom. Which was good because at least it wasn't with L.A. or Brandy right next to me, watching. And because I could find a way to rinse just a second right before or after a date. But bad because it was small, and I kept banging into corners. And because it meant Daddy couldn't charge the men as much. So I couldn't make as much money as the others, which meant Daddy would be annoyed with me, even though it wasn't my fault he put me in the bathroom.

Over the next few hours, I could hear the men arriving and leaving. A lot of them complained at the door when they saw the way Daddy had us set up. They all had to wait to come in and pee until I was finished with whatever job I was doing. Some of them grinned when the door opened and I came spilling out of it with another man. Some of them cursed.

Then one of them punched me. I think he was aiming for my face, but he hit the very front center of my neck, taking all my air, painfully, and making me cough a long time. Daddy spun that one around and pounded him so hard, I could hardly believe it. The first hit sounded the way a car must sound hitting a tree. Over at the beds, L.A. and Brandy's dates jumped up fast.

Daddy hauled the one who hit me toward the door, glaring at the other two over his shoulder. “You better leave me my money.”

Then he disappeared while the dates hopped into their clothes, threw cash onto the dresser, and practically ran out the door. Daddy walked in right after, blood on his shirt. He pulled it off with one swoop, revealing his chest, slick with sweat. He strode over to me. “You okay?”

“Yes,” I sputtered inside his hug, his hot wet skin, my heart pounding with pleasure at how he'd just defended me.

He straightened to speak to all of us. “Ain't nobody messing with my bitches.” He stroked my neck with his big hand. “See?” he whispered to me. “See how I take care a you?”

The fingers on my neck were the ones I was used to loving. The same ones that touched me so gently in all the right places and cupped my bottom and my face when he whispered how special I was. They had just beaten off someone who hurt me. I leaned in to hug Daddy again, so grateful and happy at how he took care of me. But Daddy stiff-armed me, holding me away.

“Get off.” He glanced at his watch. “We got three more coming in ten minutes.”

Oh. I swallowed back disappointment. I hadn't thought he would put me back to work.

*  *  *

I worked and I worked. I don't know how Daddy got so many men to come to our crowded motel room in the middle of nowhere, but it was a steady stream the whole day long. When daylight began to ease away from the bathroom window, Daddy came to get me.

“Get in that shower and get clean,” he said. “You did good.”

That meant he was going to take me. After all those johns and my throat hurting from being punched and being so dead tired. I took a shower. I had hot water, and I was thankful for that.

Daddy led me to his room. The sheets were clean. It was quiet. I tried to be thankful for that, too. He began by kissing my neck, where it hurt. “Daddy,” I started. He was kissing up to the underside of my chin. Usually I loved the warm tickle, but now it bothered me. “I don't like being with dates,” I whispered. I said it so quietly, I wasn't sure he heard.

But he paused and then mumbled through his kisses as he kept on. “Where you going to be without me?” He was making circles on my skin with his lips. Usually I loved that. Usually it just made me melt. “Living with that bitch keeping you home from school, making you take care a all them kids, beating on you for no good reason, her pervert taking it from you hard and for free.” He switched to using his tongue. It felt too wet, too big. “Or you out sitting on some bus stop bench, and some do gooder notice you and send your ass to a home or say you crazy and lock you up.”

It was true. I had nowhere else to go. And he didn't have to take care of me. He took me when nobody else wanted me. He punched anybody who punched me.

“I don't like turning tricks,” I tried, while he left my chin and neck and began to lick toward my belly button.

“What?” He sat up and back and then pressed himself on my stomach. “You like it just fine when you with me.”

“Feels good with you,” I told him, trying to remember the truth of that. “But all those dates . . .”

“Yeah?” He sat up. “Nobody forcing you,” he told me. “Go ahead. Get dressed. Send Brandy in. Then, soon as we home, you go on back to your Janelle.”

“What? That wasn't what I meant. I don't want to . . .”

He had his jeans on already. “You said you don't like it here, then leave.”

I sat up too. “I don't want to leave. Don't make me leave.”

He picked up his phone and thumbed it. “Beef me again, and you out.”

I didn't want to leave Daddy. But I didn't want to be a ho, either.

It was like he had read my mind. “Once a ho, always a ho.” He didn't even bother to look up from his phone. “That's what you is. Ain't nothing else for you now. You go out there without me and somebody likely to kill you or lock you up or put you in a crazy hospital. You want to live out your little life in jail?”

I shook my head, but he didn't see me.

“You want to be strapped down to a bed next to somebody think she Jesus?”

I shook my head again. He glanced up.

“You want to break yourself to Whippet? And him gorilla you nine times a week?”

I knew I didn't want to be beat up or worse every day. “I didn't mean that I—”

“You better get straight what you mean,” Daddy said, tossing aside his phone and unzipping his jeans again. With his pants half on, he pressed me back flat again and slid his palm from my sore neck all the way down. “Get it straight, Beautiful,” he whispered, “or we done.”

MRS. DUBOSE FINALLY died, right as Daddy pulled off the highway by a rest area sign.

“Get up,” Daddy said. I tried to picture him reading to Brandy longer and longer each day the way Jem read to Mrs. Dubose, weaning her off her drug. How did Daddy help Brandy get clean? I couldn't imagine it.

“I said, get up.”

I closed my paperback.

On the near side of the diner and the 7-11 were rows and rows of gas pumps. On the far side there were rows and rows of trucks. In the dark, it looked fake somehow, like a painting in a book, or the way I imagined the set of a movie.

Brandy lifted her head from the hammock of her shoulder belt. I saw her wipe drool off her cheek with her palm. She unbuckled. “I'm hungry.”

“L.A.!” When nothing came from the backseat, he flung an empty cranberry juice bottle. I had to dodge sideways so it didn't hit my face.

I heard it
thwap
L.A., who made a noise and sat up. “Damn,” she said. “Stop it.”

“Move your ass.”

I thought he meant to the diner so we could eat and use the bathroom, but he didn't.

“Brandy, you middle. L.A., you at the back end, and Dime, you there where the front at.” He was pointing through the window at that parking lot of trucks.

“You bugging?” L.A. asked him when she figured out what he meant.

I didn't like the idea. It was one thing to go with dates in Daddy's territory, but this wasn't Daddy's territory, and what if the rules were different here?

“You want us to go inside those things?” Brandy was eyeing the huge trucks all lined up, sleeping in the dim-lit dark.

“Whatever it take,” Daddy said. “Inside, outside. Just make me my money.”

“May I go to the bathroom first, please?” I asked as politely as I could manage.

Daddy tilted his head toward the ground. “Squat and take care of it.”

L.A. sucked her teeth. “Why you being so savage, all of a sudden?”

“Savage.”
Daddy smiled, flashing his
D
. “You got that right.”

I looked across to the sleeping trailers and wondered why he wasn't worried about us. He knew what I was thinking, like always. “You need something, you scream loud. Enough people around here, someone going to hear you, and your date know it. You scream loud enough, it remind him to treat you nice.”

Brandy glanced at me from the front seat, twisting her head.

Even L.A. was worried. “Easy for you to say,” she told Daddy.

He tapped her cheek. “None of you eating,” he declared, “until I see some coins.”

*  *  *

I wasn't sure if I was supposed to get up on one of those giant steps and knock, or if I was just supposed to walk around or what. L.A. and Brandy weren't saying a word, so I didn't ask. But L.A. chewed on her fingertips all the way until we fanned out. It wasn't pitch-black dark because lights from the diner and the 7-11 and the gas station and the traffic and even some of the trucks lit the air. But it was still night, and we tripped over each other a little.

Brandy shook her head at me as she peeled off, as if to say,
Is this for real?

I went to pee first, because my bladder was about to explode. I went near the mass of trees on the far side of all the trucks. It was darker there, and I was glad because I didn't want anybody to see me squatting. A girl climbed down from a tanker near me. I pulled up my panties and adjusted my miniskirt and watched. She was white with blond hair and a halter top and jeans and Uggs, which seemed strange in all this heat. A white man helped with the huge step. Then she picked her way through the narrow alleys of the trucks. Her purse swung and patted her behind gently as she went.

The man caught me watching. He jumped at first. “Lot lizards every damn where,” he muttered. I didn't know what he meant. I started to turn away. “I'm worn out,” he called to me softly. “But my friend will be glad to see you.” He pointed somewhere down the line. “He likes pretty brown girls.” He began texting something. “I'm telling him you're on your way now.” I looked to where he was pointing and saw headlights flash. “That's him.”

I didn't want to, but I was starving. I looked around for L.A. and Brandy. I couldn't see them anywhere. Then I saw Daddy, talking on his phone in front of the diner while looking out at the trucks. That made me feel better, to know that he might see which one I was climbing into. So I went.

*  *  *

It was different because the two pimps I saw were white and most of the johns were white and so were two of the other three girls. If the girls weren't climbing up or down from the trucks, they were wandering around or in their cars: two in a van that looked maroon in the night and the other in an Escalade, a black one. They disappeared before it got light out. Daddy allowed us into the diner all together after the sun came up. He let us eat whatever we wanted. I ordered an omelet and chocolate chip pancakes. I watched Brandy. She was keeping her head down, just looking at her eggs and home fries. I hadn't wondered for a long time about her not being black. I had even forgotten about it a little bit. But after seeing those other white hos, it felt strange. She seemed different all of a sudden. More white.