“YOU OKAY? EATING enough? Getting to bed on time?”
I turn onto my belly, smiling. “Yes, Anthony.”
“Good. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you—”
“It won’t. I promise.”
“I know. Because I won’t let it. You understand?”
“I understand.”
“So, tell me the truth. You’re broke again, right?”
I tell him the truth.
“Never lie to me. You cannot trust a liar or turn your back on them. You understand?”
“I understand.”
“Good. Now, get back to sleep. Sweet dreams.”
“Yes, Anthony.”
He only got one rule, he told me yesterday. He wants me to say “Yes, Anthony” or “No, Anthony,” not yeah or okay or uh-huh. That’s low-life, he told me, disrespectful. It’s a little thing to give him what he wants. He been so good to me, I don’t mind.
As soon as I wake up, I put my clothes on and go get my money. Cricket gets to hang out with Solomon for a while. When he ask where I’m off to, I lie. I lie to Maleeka too when she wanna know how come I ain’t been answering my phone. “I accidentally left it in a store. I finally figured out which one yesterday. And picked it up this morning.” The truth is that I can’t concentrate on math when I’m worried about food, money, and everything else. And when I got money, I feel better, smart.
She on her way to gym class. Her school got exercise bikes, little trampolines, and everything. She think she may join the gymnastics team, but the basketball coach is trying to recruit her hard.
I turn another corner, see the hotel fountain splashing water. Rub my arms ’cause it’s a little chilly today. “I never hear you talk about Sweets.” I stop at the light on the corner. Pushing the button to make the streetlight turn faster, I listen to her tell me that she and Sweets don’t talk no more.
“Everything in high school is so different, Char. The teachers. The kids. The cliques.” We both say it at the same time. “I sure do miss McClenton Middle.”
I laugh. Then she laugh. “Well, I have to get to work.”
“You found a job?”
“Sure did.”
I cross the street, look both ways. Roll my eyes when some old man asks my name. “Maleeka.”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me what you see. The colors and everything.”
I head for his car.
If clean was a color, she says, it would look like Cottingham High. “White walls, baby-blue lockers, brand-new light brown shiny wooden floors all over the building. Trees—you believe that, Char—right in the building, live ones on every floor. And it smell like lemons everywhere.”
Seem like the schools you see in the movies. Nothing like McClenton with doors off the bathroom stalls, gum stuck on the ceiling.
“You sure is lucky.”
“Hey. Don’t forget to do your homework.”
He had the car washed and waxed. Water beads still hang on the fender and hood. “Gotta go.” I put my phone away. Smile real nice. Jiggle some. And try not to forget what Maleeka said about commas. She got it in her head that I need to be doing other kinds of schoolwork. “Write five sentences using two commas three different ways,” she told me. I ain’t know what she meant till she explained. I still can’t remember everything she said about conjunctions and how to use and, or, but. When I’m at his window, a sentence pops in my mind. Anthony is good to me, and his driver is always nice. I’m proud of how I use the conjunction, even if I can’t tell her about it.
I need to pay him back. I can’t keep taking and taking. I could go by his place, scrub the floors on my knees, wash the windows by hand, do his dishes, anything he want. But he won’t accept no help from me. He don’t want his money paid back either. “Accept it, baby girl. I like to do for you. No strings.”
“Is that what you say to April?”
He tell me that I’m different. Smart. Only him and Maleeka ever said that about me. His words feel like honey on my skin, a warm sun in the sky. I laugh because some words that come in my head now don’t sound like me at all. Coloring is changing me inside and out. How something that little do that? I don’t know. But I like it. Like talking to Maleeka all the time now too.
“You got a baby, right?”
I ain’t sure exactly what to say. Only, I don’t want April to get in trouble. So, I lie. Tell him that Cricket is mine. Then I make up a whole story about us. Might as well. Once you start lying, why stop along the way?
“Well—there you go. I help you, and you help me.”
“Yes, Anthony. Anything you want.”
Usually our conversations end quick—faster than a mouse running ’cross the kitchen. Seems like he got all the time in the world today. I’m at my desk, one leg tucked, coloring. Cricket’s on her back on the floor pulling on a one-dollar-store mobile, trying to lift herself up.
“Anthony.”
“Yes.”
“Did you go to college? You talk real nice, sound smart.”
He went to community college, he say. And took a few courses at the university downtown. He quit once his mother got sick. “We had a family business. She died. I had to take over.” He sound disappointed, like he sorry he did that. I ask what business she was in. Only, he don’t say.