Money Hungry (8 page)

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 some 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.

“Okay, okay,” I say. “Ask Miss Baker where the clean sheets are.”

Miss Baker bugs us every few minutes, it seems. So before one of us can hunt her down, she comes back to where we are.

“We got more sheets,” she says. “Only they in the basement. Dirty. The girl we hired to do the washing quit two weeks ago. Things pile up, you know.”

Before we know anything, Ja’nae’s volunteering us to wash that stuff. I mean, I don’t even wash my own clothes at home. Neither does Zora. But we help Ja’nae peel that stuff off the beds and carry it down to the basement. My whole body smells like pee by the time we done.

“I wanna go. Now,” Mai says.

“They don’t have nobody else,” Ja’nae says, making us feel bad.

I look around. No matter what we do, it’s still gonna be a mess in here. But Ja’nae ain’t never gonna see that. She’s probably thinking about her grandparents. She don’t realize that once we gone, this place is gonna look the way it did when we walked in.

“Please,” Ja’nae says.

“Okay,” I say. “Mai, you stay and do the clothes since your hands are so jacked up.

Zora, you go upstairs and wipe down the furniture and pick up a little. That’s not so bad, is it?”

Zora gives me this look. “No,” she says. “Ja’nae and me will do the bathrooms.” Everybody’s okay with the plan. Only the plan don’t work out the way I’m thinking.

Ja’nae’s singing and scrubbing out the toilet and tub. Before I’m done washing the windows in the hallway, she’s headed to check on the sheets in the washing machine. I figure I can rest up till she comes back. So I sit down on the floor and stretch my legs. I get up a few minutes later and head for the kitchen at the end of the hall.

When I push open the door, there’s an old man in there.

“Who you?” he says, like he might hit me if I say the wrong thing.

When I tell him that I’m here to clean, he laughs. Says Miss Baker done found herself another sucker.

“You thirsty?” he asks. I say yes. He leads me to his room, where he points to a refrigerator with a padlock on the front.

“Help yourself,” he says, handing me the key. “But I’m watching you,” he says, lowering himself onto his bed.

Inside his refrigerator there’s bottled water, crackers, and plastic knives and forks sitting on the top shelf right next to cucumbers and cottage cheese. But that ain’t what catches my eye. It’s the money that makes me lick my lips and swallow more spit than I should. It’s stuffed tight in a half-empty bread bag, pushed against a head of rotten lettuce. I can’t help but take the bag out to get a better look.

“Come here, gal,” the man says, wiping the back of his wrinkled lips with his hand.

He’s kind of scary-looking, so I don’t hurry over to him. I keep my eyes on the bag of money in my hand.

Soon as I’m close enough, he grabs his money out my hand and says for me to listen up good. “Never spend it. That’s the secret. Never spend a penny, if you don’t have to.”

I look at all that loot, then I look at the old man again. “Why you put it there?”

The old guy grabs ahold of the rail on the side of the bed. He wraps his hands round it real tight, and pulls. He coughs up some spit and swallows hard. He points to the bag of money. “I been saving for years. I got money stashed in places don’t nobody know about. It’s all mine, too. And ain’t nobody getting it,” he says, coughing again and lying back down.

I grab a bottle of water out the fridge. “Here,” I say, handing it to him. He starts wiggling his lips, and fanning his hand my way. I go over to him, and put the bottle up to his lips like he’s a baby. He balls up his fist and pushes the bottle up so fast, water starts dripping out his mouth and down his neck.

He wipes his mouth with the back of his fist. “Don’t go telling about my money, hear?”

I shake my head up and down. And when he starts coughing and spitting again, I start backing out the room.

“Wait,” he says. He opens the bag and holds it out to me. “Take some,” he says.

I wonder if I’m understanding him right. “Some what?” I say.

“Money, girl. Money,” he says, clearing his throat. “Money won’t never do you wrong.”

I put my hand in the bag and grab as much money as I can. It feels real good in my hands.

“Let me see what you got,” he says.

I show him the money.

“That ain’t nothing but chump change,” he says, laughing, and coughing again. “I still got enough for myself.”

“Keep all of it?” I say, figuring I got maybe seventy dollars in my hand.

“Redheaded gals bring you good luck. That’s what folks say.”

By the end of the day, we’re all dead tired. Miss Baker takes us back to Mallow Street in her old clunker. Zora, Mai, and Ja’nae don’t say a word to me when we all get out of the car. They are mad because Miss Baker didn’t pay us what she promised. Just before she stopped to drop us off, she said she was short of cash. She paid us forty dollars each, not the sixty dollars we was expecting. Zora says this is the last time she will go along with any more of my moneymaking schemes. Mai and Ja’nae agree with her. And not one of ’em even says a word to me for the next thirty minutes we stand there waiting for a bus.