I SEE HIM on that island selling water, so I go to him. For the first time in a long time I ain’t worried about nothing. I just came back from the nail salon. My toenails is barely dry. His forehead is sweaty. His underarms stink. Sweat dripping off his chin almost get on me. He don’t hardly notice. It’s Cricket he like the most anyway. Taking her from me, he gets back to work.
I look at his books—Law for Dummies, How to Hire a Good Lawyer—and laugh. “Somebody in trouble,” I say, then sit down in his lawn chair. Take a bottle out the water cooler and open it. I got money now, so I don’t mind paying. When Solomon come up to me, I got a dollar in my hand. I came to ask him a favor, I said. Would he help me move some furniture? They gonna clear out a apartment building around the corner. In a few days, my landlord heard, they gonna be throwing out furniture. Good stuff.
This time he makes me pay in advance. Twenty dollars. He said it could be more, depending on how hard he had to work. I feel like a baller, shot caller. So, I give him what he asked for—plus five dollars extra. After we move the new furniture in—a couch, mirror, floor lamp, microwave with a dent on the side, he reminds me about something he told me before. The daycare center across the street be giving lots of things away too. I bought Cricket five new one-dollar-store outfits, shoes, and more books. But she could use more.
“Stay asleep,” I tell her before I leave our place. “If you cry, they will figure me out. If they figure me out, they will find you. Take you from me. Put you in foster care or something.” I’m at the door when I make her a promise. “This the last time for real for real that I will leave you alone ’cause I know it’s the wrong thing to do.”
It’s five thirty in the morning. Black out. They getting off work. Kicking off shoes, snatching off wigs on their way up the street two by two, a few all by themselves. Some are my age. A couple of boys is mixed in there too. A car drives up to one. He gets in. Ride off. ’Cause I guess there’s always work to do.
Gemini and me meet in the middle of the street. She don’t ask where I’m going. Just says for me to be careful. I see in her red tired eyes she got no time for me. But then she say, “I’ll be out of town maybe a week or two, could be three.” She got food she don’t want to rot. She’ll give it to me, she say, hugging me hard. “But you gotta come get it.”
Walking away backward, happy, I tell her I got all I need.
The daycare center got bars at every window, but no fence to keep people off their property. The floodlights make it seem like daylight over here. For a little while, I play hopscotch by myself—one game anyhow. After that, I sit on a swing in back, stare up at the stars—coloring everything I see.
A half hour is gone when I hop off, walk to go find the bin. 
is written on the outside in a bright yellow marker. “People stupid.” I pick up a pink rattle. “They throw away good stuff and go buy more stuff they gonna throw away.” I find a talking toy. “B,” it says when I touch that letter. “F,” it yells when I hit the red button with that shape. I sit it on the ground and start my pile.
Most of the toys are dirty. But that’s better than being broken or worn to pieces. Digging deep, I find a set of plastic baby keys in good condition. She’ll chew on it. Hit me in the head with ’em. Have fun shaking ’em. I dance when I see a box of diapers—Cricket’s size. Four inside. Soon, the ground is filling up with what I don’t want and what I do.
I don’t hear them come up behind me. But when somebody says, “Hey!” I jump up with a plastic phone in my hand, ready to knock somebody upside the head.
It’s three women. Two got on uniforms. “Y’all almost got hit with this.” I drop the phone in the bin.
They work at the nursing home a mile from here, they say. The other lady run a program for teen mothers. “At the alternative school ten blocks away.” She walk up to me smiling, with her hand out for me to shake. “This bin allows us to stretch our program dollars.”
I rub my hand down the side of my pants, then shake all three of their hands. “You can call me Char. I got a baby girl. Somebody told me about this place.”
The janitor sets things in the bin after his shift ends, they tell me. This time of morning is when you get the best of what they have. My hands are full when they ask how old my baby is. I tell ’em Cricket is five months. The teacher ask about her shots.
“Shots? You mean needles?”
“Yes. Are they up to date?”
“Yeah. I’m a good mother.”
She say they got a nurse at her facility. “No charge for shots. But you’ll have to be part of the program. Think about it.” I can get back in school and everything, she tells me.
How she know I don’t go?
She digging through the bin. “Here you go, sweetie.” She handing me clothes she say Cricket might be able to wear. “Why pay hard-earned money for something you don’t have to pay for?” She warns me to be careful out here.
I smile and tell her I’m used to taking care of myself. Crossing the street with my hands full, I wonder what JuJu would think. I’m being responsible. Just like she said I should be. Wish she was here to see.