Money Hungry (7 page)

The day before we’re supposed to go clean for Miss Neeta again, Miss Neeta calls me and says she made a mistake. She paid us too much money for cleaning her place. Losers weepers, I’m thinking. Then Miss Neeta starts talking about how she has to hold off on paying her gas bill, because her money is short. And how she can’t use her lights so she can save on electricity.

I want to say, “Dag, you act like you gave us a thousand dollars.” But Miss Neeta’s on a fixed income. Her money is tight. I hold my tongue. “How much you want back, Miss Neeta?” I ask, hoping she will just get off the phone.

“You girls did such a nice job,” she says. “You can keep ten, ten dollars each.”

Ten dollars for all that work. For lugging boxes, and sniffing dust, and almost breaking my neck on top of a ladder. Ain’t no way, lady, I say in my head. Then I tell her I’ll talk it over with Ja’nae.

When Ja’nae and I talk it through, I realize I never should have bothered mentioning it to her in the first place. Ja’nae tells her grandmother, who says we should clean Miss Neeta’s house out of the goodness of our hearts. No way. I don’t work for free. So, we give Miss Neeta fifteen dollars back and tell her we can’t clean for her no more.

Ja’nae’s grandmother says she knows somebody else looking to hire us. I tell Ja’nae I ain’t listening to her grandmother no more. But when she says the person owns an elderly care home, and don’t mind spending money, I straighten up. “We can give your grandmother one more chance, I guess,” I say, thinking about all the money we can make.

At school, Zora acts like she’s mad at me. She don’t invite me over to her house or nothing. I’m thinking it’s cause of my mom and her dad. I guess she don’t like what’s happening no more than I do.

For the next few days I stay clear of Zora. But going straight home to an empty place ain’t my thing. So today I go with Mai to her folks’ food truck. It’s parked a few blocks from school. That way, her parents get kids from our school, the college crowd, and the high schoolers two blocks away. Mai is embarrassed working on that food truck. She’s got to serve food to the same kids she sits next to in class all day. And she’s got to hear them make fun of her dad’s English, or her mother’s weight.

To make matters worse, kids is always loud mouthing her dad.

“This ain’t the right change,” Jo Jo Miller says to Mr. Kim.

Mr. Kim takes the money and counts it out for Jo Jo again. “Right,” he says. “Here is the quarter I owe you.”

“Y’all always trying to get over on us,” Jo Jo says, walking away.

Mai’s mother goes over to Mr. Kim. She rubs his back with her soft brown hands, and says something to him in Korean.

“English. Speak English!” Mai yells, rubbing her eye. “And you ain’t even Korean,” she snaps at her mom. “Why you talking that talk?”

Mai can speak and understand Korean, too. When she was little, her dad took her and Ming to a Korean church for language lessons. But after a few weeks, the man who ran the place asked him not to bring them back. Said they didn’t fit in. After that, Mr. Kim taught them at home. Mai says he just wasted his time. She ain’t never gonna speak a word of that stuff.

Mai’s really got an attitude, now. She puts on her headphones and turns up the music on her CD player.

Something happens to Mai when she’s around her parents. She gets so mean.

Mr. Kim is a proud man. A nice man. He wouldn’t hurt or cheat anybody. But the kids around here are just plain mean to him. Mai don’t treat her father no better. But she checks herself when she’s around Ming, cause he don’t play that.

Ming got his leather coat open, and an apron hanging from his neck. He’s standing by his father. When someone orders rice and vegetables with hot sauce, or black bean sauce and noodles, like the next guy in line, Ming repeats their order in Korean. “One
bibimbap
and
chajang
mein,” he says, grabbing a piece of corn bread and a napkin and sticking it in the bag along with the order.

“Don’t forget the collard greens. He ordered collard greens, too,” his dad says, counting out change for the man.

Ming scoops up a big spoonful of collards and stuffs it in a cup. When Ming turns his back, I stick my finger in the pot of greens, and sneak a piece of bacon. The red pepper flakes his mom uses in the greens burn my lips.

“One
mandu
,” Ming says scooping up some dumplings, “and three
dak jims
,” he says, heading for the chicken stew with potatoes. Next he’s taking orders for sweet-potato pie and black-eyed peas.

Mai rolls her eyes at Ming. That’s when some kids from school walk up. Mr. Kim starts speaking in English, then ends in Korean.

“English! English! Speak English!” Mai says again.

Mr. Kim waits on his customers. Mrs. Kim grabs Mai by the arm and whispers something in her ear. Mai starts yelling. “I will not apologize to him,” she says pointing at her dad. “He—you—should apologize to
me
. Everybody’s laughing at me ’cause of you two with your Afro-Asian, collard green, black-eyed peas, fortune-cookie truck, and your mixed-up kids. Why didn’t you two each marry your own kind?” Mai grabs her book bag and coat and heads for the front of the truck. She sits down in the driver’s seat, and folds her arms tight across her chest.

Mr. Kim is counting out change to the next customer. Ming takes off his jacket, rolls up his sleeves, and helps his father serve people. Mai’s mother hands me a bowl of fried rice, and an egg roll busting open with fried cabbage, bacon, and shrimp. “Sit. Eat,” she tells me.

Mai’s parents are used to her going off. They ignore her, let her cool down. I kick back and eat my egg roll. Mr. Kim hands me an orange soda and some barbecue chicken. He and his wife are like Ja’nae’s grandmother. They will feed you until you explode.

Ten people come up to the truck in the next fifteen minutes. Mr. Kim is scooping, bagging, and handing things off quick as you please. And just when they think things are slowing down, here comes trouble. Kevin, from school.

“You seen a dog ’round here?” he says, walking up to the truck.

Mr. Kim shakes his head.

“You musta seen it,” he says, getting louder. “A little bitty thing. Black, with a white patch over his eye. Long haired . . . a mutt, you know,” he says, sounding serious. But I see him shooting his eyes back at his boys over there by the tree, and I know a joke is coming.

Mr. Kim don’t get it, but Ming does. So does Mrs. Kim. “Y’all get outta here. Get,” she says, waving a spatula round like she’s gonna smack them.

“Let me . . .” Kevin’s laughing so hard he can’t get the words out. “Let me check out what you got cooking. I wanna see if you ain’t trying to pass my pooch off for chicken,” he finally says. His boys can’t take it no more. They rolling all over the bus-stop bench laughing. Telling Kevin he’s crazy.

Some people in line behind Kevin make a face, and head for the pizza truck up the street. Ming throws his leather jacket off so fast, a sleeve lands in the rice. He’s off the truck hitting Kevin upside the head. Before you know it, Mr. Kim is out there grabbing Ming by the shoulder.

“You can’t beat down ignorance with your fists,” he says.

Ming is still yelling at Kevin, but he’s following his dad back to the truck.

“Ignore them,” his mother says, handing Ming a Pepsi.

Kevin and his crew stand by the tree making barking sounds. And saying, “Here doggy, doggy.”

Mai’s so quiet, I figure maybe she don’t hear nothing with her earphones on. But she does hear, and the next thing I know, she jumps from the truck, and heads down the street and around the corner. She don’t even have no coat on.

I grab Mai’s coat and go after her. I yell, and yell for her to wait for me. She keeps running. I don’t try to keep up after a while. I walk at a normal pace. I figure when she gets too cold she’ll stop and get her stuff. By the time she stops, we’re almost to her house. Her nose is red and runny. Her hands are so cold she can’t unbend them to get her keys out. I unlock her front door and help her with her things once we get inside.

It ain’t too long before she’s feeling all right. After a while, she bad-mouthing her folks.

“You going back on the truck today?” I ask.

“No,” Mai says, pushing up her sleeves. She got a bunch of dishes sitting in the sink, with steaming hot water running over ’em. “I’m tired of the doggy jokes. And the cracks about my dad cheating people, and the stuff about how fat my mother is,” she says, almost crying.

“Your parents are cool, Mai. You know that,” I tell her.

Mai wipes her face with the back of her wet hands. Now she got a big soap bubble hanging from her nose. “I wish they never got married,” she says, walking into the living room and sitting down on the couch.

I sit down beside her, put my feet up on the coffee table, and check out the room.

There’s some of everything in here. African masks. Watercolor paintings of Korea, and a painting of Mai and Ming when they were babies. In the picture, Ming is sitting on his mother’s lap. Mai is smiling, and sitting on her father’s lap. Her tiny finger is holding tight to his big thumb.

“You look a lot like your dad, only darker,” I say, staring at the picture, then back at Mai again.

Mai grabs a handful of her thick, wavy black hair and pulls it away from her face.

“I look like myself,” she says, turning away from the painting. “Not nobody else. Just me.”

The Heifer called. Ja’nae is giving us all the details. She says she talked to her mother all night long, under the covers, so her grandparents couldn’t hear. The house was real hot, she said. And even though Ja’nae sweated out her hair, and had to wash under her arms when she was done, she says it was worth it. Ja’nae is talking so fast and so much at lunchtime, that she don’t get a chance to eat her fries before they go cold.

Ja’nae is telling us all about how her mother’s got some job laying hands on sick people. Zora looks at Ja’nae sideways, like she’s crazy. But I know all about that hand-laying stuff. On the street it happens a lot. People touching you where it hurts. Your foot. A cut hand. A bad back. And praying for it to get better. Only nobody ever makes no money from laying hands. I guess Ja’nae’s mom ain’t making much money from it, either. Ja’nae says she’s living in somebody’s basement, till she builds up her practice.

This is the most Ja’nae has ever said about her mom. And the more she talks, the more we see how much she’s been holding back from us. Ja’nae says she talks to her mom almost every night. She uses calling cards to sneak and call her when her grandparents go to bed. Zora asks how she even knew where to find her mother. “I didn’t,” Ja’nae says, “I picked up the phone one day about two months ago to call Raspberry, and she was on the line trying to phone me. It was weird,” she says, shaking her head like she still can’t believe it. “We been talking every night since. She wants me to come live with her.”

I’m looking at her like she lost her mind. Wondering how she figures her mother can take care of her if she’s living off somebody else and trying to make a living doing something that nobody’s willing to pay for.

Ja’nae is still talking when Ming walks over and sits down next to her. He’s wearing the leather jacket. Sato is with him. He’s dressed in all black, from his wave cap to his sneakers. He looks like a gangbanger.

“Hey, greedy,” he says, popping me on the head with his rolled-up paper. “Hey, y’all,” he says to everybody else.

I ignore him. But deep down I hope he keeps saying stuff to me . . . even if it ain’t all that nice.

“Heard you got kicked off the food truck, Mai,” Sato says, taking one of Zora’s fries. Zora smacks Sato’s hand and tells him to stay out of her food.

“My parents say I don’t have to work if I don’t want.”

“That’s ’cause you’re mean. And don’t do no work,” Ming says, moving closer to Ja’nae.

Mai rolls her eyes at him. “Forget you,” she says, getting up. She walks over to Sato’s side of the table, sits down next to him, and says, “I didn’t get kicked off of that smelly truck, I quit.”

“Shoot,” Sato says. “If I quit like that, my mother would knock me upside the head and tell me I had to work anyhow,” he says, smacking a plastic fork against the table, then using it to eat his applesauce.

Mai makes this real ugly face at Sato.

Then Sato says what we’re all thinking. “You just don’t want to be around your dad.”

We look at Mai to see what she’s gonna say to that.

“Mind your own business,” she says. She stands up and grabs her backpack. Ming says something to Mai in Korean. Mai starts to leave. “You only do that to embarrass me,” she says, smacking him on the back.

Ja’nae starts whispering something in Ming’s ear. Zora holds up a plastic fork like it’s a knife she’s gonna stick in Sato’s hand if he don’t let loose on that fry he just took off her plate.

Sato’s complaining about still being hungry. I see this as a way to pull in some extra cash. I dig in my backpack and pull out ten bags of barbecue chips.

“Now that’s what I call real food,” Sato says, reaching for a bag.

“Real food ain’t free,” I tell him.

He shakes his head. “Cheap. Greedy and cheap,” he says, digging in his pocket and throwing two quarters on the table.

Zora, Mai, and Ming give me money, too, and before I get up from the table, six other kids buy the rest of the chips.

On the way to Spanish class, Ja’nae asks if I can lend her more money. I look at her like she’s crazy. “No way! Pay me what you owe me and maybe
then
we can talk,” I say, pushing open the door to class.

If Ja’nae paid me everything she owes me plus interest, I wouldn’t lend her no more money. But I can’t help but wonder why she always got her hand out for money these days.