I’m sleeping in today, even though I could be at work with Momma making money at the dry cleaners. Her boss wanted somebody to come sweep up. Momma asked if I wanted to do it. I said no. I’m too tired. But I was lying. I just wanted to stay in bed and think about Sato. Wonder what it would be like if him and me went together. Momma asked if I was sick, turning down money. I told her no. Just tired.

After Momma left, I went back to sleep. Ain’t wake up until two o’clock in the afternoon. Stayed in bed eating cereal out the box and watching movies until four. Then somebody knocks on our front door right when my show’s getting good. I’m so busy trying not to miss nothing that I open the door without asking who it is.

“Raspberrry!” my father yells with his arms stretched out. “Give me a kiss, girl.”

I take a giant step backward, and try to shut the door. “You can’t come in. Momma said so.”

Daddy’s run-over boot keeps the door from slamming shut. “I don’t want nothing,” he says, “just my visiting rights is all.”

Daddy’s high again. He’s gotta hold on to the door to stand up straight. “You okay?” he asks, pulling the door wide open, then letting out a big breath, like he just hauled trash to the curb.

I tell him that I’m okay. But I’m not. My insides feel like warm Jell-O. I gotta squeeze my lips together so what’s in me don’t come up and go all over him. I swallow and feel sicker inside.

Daddy’s nose is running like it’s cold out. He wipes it with the back of his hand, rubs his fingers down his pant leg like he’s fixing a crease. “Your Momma in there?” he says, peeking behind me.

“Yeah. No. She’s coming in a minute, though,” I say, hoping that’ll scare him.

Daddy’s friend is sitting on the steps, holding his head in his hands like he’s trying to keep it from falling off. A big, brown water stain covers the back of his white T-shirt. Tiny lint balls, looking like popcorn pieces, are stuck in his hair.

Him and daddy smell—sour. I hold my breath. Turn away when I see greasy black marks on the back of Daddy’s neck when he asks his friend if he got a headache.

I hated it when Momma and me lived on the streets. The worst part, though, was not being able to wash up when we wanted. We smelled sometimes. Or itched from dirt stuck to our skin like crumbs. When Momma and me was out there, we washed up at restaurants and gas station rest rooms. But sometimes we couldn’t get to one for a few days. That’s when I missed having our own place, being able to clean up, like real people.

I look at the brown stuff under Daddy’s nails and the dried blood on the side of his face. “You need a bath, Daddy,” I whisper, opening the door wider. The words come out my mouth at the same time my brain is saying for me to run inside and find another hiding place for my money.

“You Daddy’s girl, all right,” he says, pushing past me. Yelling for his friend to come in and get something cold to drink.

Right away, I know I done the wrong thing. ’Cause, soon as he’s inside, Daddy’s sitting on the couch with his boots up on the coffee table—his friend’s opening the fridge, taking out chicken and Kool-Aid, bread and mashed potatoes.

“You a angel, girl,” his friend says, sticking his finger in the potatoes and sucking it. “Sent from heaven, I tell you.”

I’m sitting on the floor, under the window. I can smell Momma’s flowers. They make it seem pretty in here, even though it ain’t.

Daddy goes into the kitchen, opens the fridge, and takes out a peach. He sits down on the other end of the couch and smiles. “You getting big,” he says, not trying to stop the juice from sliding over his lips and down his chin. “Pretty, too. The boys looking at you yet?”

I start smiling, like I’m stupid. He asks for the boy’s name. Says for me to tell Sato he will kick his butt if he breaks my heart. That makes me feel good for a minute, till I realize that this is Daddy and he don’t never mean what he say.

Daddy rolls the peach seed around in his mouth. Pulls it out with his fingers and says he’s gonna plant it in the park where he lives sometimes. “Grow something pretty, like your Momma does,” he says, sticking it in his back pocket.

His friend hands him a plate with two chicken sandwiches on it, piled high with lettuce and tomatoes. They don’t say one word to me while they eating. I excuse myself. Head for my bedroom to get my money, till I get to thinking real good that they might follow me in there and take it all. So I go back to my spot under the window. Sniff the flowers and the funk, and hope Momma calls soon to check in on me.

Daddy crosses his legs and passes gas. “That was good, good, good,” he says, picking food out his teeth with his fingers, then laying down on the couch.

“You can’t stay,” I say, standing up. “Momma’s gonna . . .”

He says they ready to leave any minute now. But they need to wash up. I go to the bathroom. Come back with washcloths and towels. Soap, too. “You first,” Daddy says to his friend. And while the guy’s in the bathroom, Daddy tells me how they’re both broke. “Ain’t got a penny between the two of us.”

I’m in the kitchen, putting food back in the fridge, so worried ’bout them taking my stash that I’m dropping forks and napkins, tasting warm Jell-O in my throat again. “We broke too,” I say, bending down and wiping mayo off the floor.

Daddy smiles. Says he gotta pee. I’m glad, ’cause now I can go put my money someplace else. Drop it out the window into the yard, even. But when I get into the living room, I see Daddy in Momma’s room.

“You ain’t supposed to be in here,” I say, snatching her jewelry case out his hand.

“Y’all got a little change? A few dollars, don’t you?”

I shake my head. Tell him again to get out. “Now!”

He ain’t listening. He’s opening drawers. Checking dress pockets and dumping out old purses Momma got piled on top of a shelf in her clothes closet. I run out the room. Grab the phone and start dialing Momma’s job.

“Your momma just gonna get mad,” he says, pressing the receiver down. “She’ll call the cops or something.”

His hand is covering mine. Rubbing and squeezing my fingers at the same time.

“Just a few pennies. Ten, twenty bucks. Your momma got that ’round here someplace, don’t she?”

If I say yes, and go get him a little cash, he will leave—maybe. But if I say no, he will stay way too long, begging me for money, maybe even hurting me. So I nod my head up and down and tell him not to follow me when I go get the money.

“Whatever you say, princess.”

Momma always keeps a few dollars in her room. But I can’t give that to him. It ain’t right. So I go to my room and get the money I took off Zora. Before my hand is out from under the rug, though, Daddy’s got a hold of my money. Pulling back the rug and taking a whole bunch more.

“That’s mine!” I scream. “I worked for that!”

I ain’t notice how red his eyes was before. Or the way he keeps licking his lips and clicking his teeth. “It’s a whole lot here. Maybe two hundred dollars,” he says.

“It’s mine,” I say, trying to grab it off him.

Daddy slaps my hand. “How you get all this money, girl? You stole it?”

I tell him I ain’t no thief. “So give it back.”

He’s walking into the living room, hollering for his friend. Asking me again how I got all this money. “’Cause if you stole it, then you had this coming. ’Cause nothing good comes of bad money.”

I get up in his face. “Then you shouldn’t take my money, ’cause nothing good’s gonna come of it,” I say, holding both my hands out.

Daddy’s friend opens the front door. He asks how much Daddy came up with. I beg my father again and again not to take my stuff. He looks me right in the eye and says, “Sorry. But I need this for something.”

When he’s outside on the pavement, I let out a scream so loud and scary that Miz Evelyn across the street comes to her front door and asks what’s wrong.

“They,” I say pointing to my dad. “They. . .”

My father pulls down his pant leg and straightens up his back. “Nothing good’s gonna come of it nohow,” he says, shoving the money in his pocket and walking away.

I can’t move. It feels like my feet are stuck in ten pounds of peanut butter. But I scream so much that Miz Evelyn runs into the street, right in front of a moving car, just to get to me.

“You all right,” she says, holding me. Rocking me. “No matter what, you gonna be all right.”

I know what she says is true, but I cannot stop screaming. No matter how hard I try.