He did it again. Stole my money while I was in the bathroom, I guess. Most of it wasn’t there, though. I put it in the bank like Momma said. But I had a hundred fifty bucks under that rug. And he took it. Just like before. After all I done for him.

“You stupid,” Ja’nae says. “Shoulda kept it in your pocket or banked it. Anyhow, he’s a crackhead. They always taking what’s not theirs.”

We in my room with the door shut. Momma’s on the phone, seeing when the new beds, kitchen, and dining room sets she ordered gonna be delivered to our new place.

I tell Ja’nae I’m gonna get my money back. “No matter what.”

She says it’s been a week since Daddy took the money, so it’s spent by now. I don’t care. He’s gonna give it back to me even if I gotta stand on the corner next to him while he begs for it, I tell her. Ja’nae says that’s mean, what I just said. “But it ain’t right for your father to take what’s yours. To steal from his own blood.”

I ain’t tell Momma about it this time. I took the sheets, gloves, and rags and dropped ’em in the alley behind Miz Evelyn’s house while she was next door talking.

“We going over Ja’nae’s house,” I tell my mother. She waves her hand and keeps on talking to the person on the phone. She’s happy, I guess, ’cause we can buy new stuff for once. Not have to use leftover furniture like usual.

“We gotta hurry up,” I tell Ja’nae, when we get to the end of my block. She says she don’t want to go. I tell her she can stay here if she wants. But I’m gonna get my money back from my father—now. A half hour later, we getting off the 27A, standing outside Ming’s house, ringing the front doorbell.

“Why you gotta drag them into my business?” I ask Ming when Su-bok, Ling, and Couch come out the house with him.

Ming says Mai’s on punishment again, and he gotta watch out for Su-bok and Ling while his parents take her to some counselor.

Su-bok’s hair is bright pink today. “What’s up?” she says.

Sato is carrying Ling. Her hair is French braided with lots of yellow, blue, and green barrettes. “Ja’nae made me pretty,” she says, smiling.

I tell Ming he messed things up by bringing The Cousins. “I can’t just take them anyplace. They gonna be scared.”

He looks at me like he wants me to be quiet.

“We going to Freejack Park. That ain’t no place for kids,” I say.

“If Ming don’t go, I don’t go,” Ja’nae says, holding tight to his hand.

“They don’t go, I don’t go,” Ming says, looking at The Cousins.

“All y’all make me sick,” I say, walking away from them.

We walk in twos for the next ten blocks. Ja’nae and Ming are first, The Cousins, then Sato and me. He got me by the hand. Every once in a while, I feel his thumb rub my sweaty palm. It’s hard to be mad while he’s doing that. Hard to concentrate on Daddy too.

In a way, I know what I am doing is stupid. My money is gone, just like everybody says. But I still wanna see my father. I want him to look me in the eyes and tell me how a person can steal from his own child. When we get to the park, Ming starts to back out. He says he might get in trouble bringing his cousins to a place like this. I look at him. His face is as brown as a gingersnap cookie now that the sun’s been beating down on it all summer long. His hair is braided all over and pulled back into a ponytail that goes way past his shoulders. He could pass for a Puerto Rican around this way. But The Cousins, they are who they are.

Ain’t no kids in this here park. Just grown-ups. Men playing craps over by the wall where the closed-down swimming pool is. Men sweating and cussing while they playing hoops and drinking beer. Women scratching, and taking drags off cigarettes and weed. Crackheads and drunks all over the place.

“I don’t see your dad. Let’s go,” Sato says, pulling me by the arm.

I point to the other side of the park. “He could be way over there, can’t tell from here, though,” I say, bending down, then standing on my tiptoes, to see what I can see.

Ja’nae lets Ming’s hand go. She comes over to me and says, “We shouldn’t be here.”

I stare into the park, feeling sorry for the trees that look as skinny and half dead as the crackheads walking around here.

“I want to go home,” Ling says, putting her arm around my waist.

Su-bok is so quiet. She ain’t shaking her butt ’round this place. She all up under Ming and Ja’nae.

“Y’all can go,” I tell ’em. “I’m gonna find my father.”

“Ahh, man,” Ming says, getting mad. “You and Mai get on my nerves. Never listen to people when they telling you the right thing to do.”

I look at Sato, wanting him to take up for me. He’s staring into the park. “Every week, somebody dies in this here place.”

“Everybody goes or nobody goes,” Ja’nae says, putting her arm around my shoulder. “We girls. So I gotta go,” she says, staring at Ming.

Ming says something in Korean. Ling and Su-bok laugh.

“Oh, Ming, I’m gonna tell on you,” Ling says, taking her fingers and digging ’em into Couch’s ear. He growls at her, then walks over to me and lays down by my feet.

“Couch will bite if I tell him to,” Ling says.

Sato looks at me like I ain’t got good sense. “Let’s just go and get it over with.”