Begging for Change by Sharon Flake

Author:Sharon Flake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction - Young Adult
Publisher: Disney Book Group

Momma nailed the windows shut. All of ’em. She said she would pick up three ceiling fans and that would be enough to keep us cool. I tried to tell her that we was gonna die in here with no outside air to breathe and cool us off. But she ain’t listening to me.

“He might come back while I’m working and hurt you, or take everything we got,” she said, banging nails into the wood, closing her eyes when paint chips start to fly.

It’s my fault, what happened. I told her that. But Momma ain’t hold it against me. Just said she wanted me safe. After that she got on the phone with Dr. Mitchell and mentioned something about getting a restraining order against Daddy. That way the police would pick him up if he came around again. I was for it, at first. I ain’t want him taking no more money off me. Then it made me sad thinking of them hauling him off to jail. Momma musta felt the same way, ’cause by the time she was done on the phone, she decided not to do it. But the nailed windows was gonna stay shut, she said. That was a week and a half ago. I been sweating ever since.

Yesterday Momma came in my room real early, before the sun was even up. “We gotta get outta here,” she said, laying down next to me. Holding me so tight it hurt.

I was wondering when Momma would say it was time for her and me to hit the streets again. To live anyplace but here, where Daddy can find us anytime he wants. I turn my head, so she don’t see me cry.

“No, baby,” Momma says, wiping my tears. “We ain’t running, just getting away for a while. To the beach. Like rich folks do when they can’t take it no more.”

Momma said she talked to Dr. Mitchell late last night. Told him she needed to get away to someplace pretty. I wanna stay here, I tell her, and make back the money Daddy stole off me. Momma says no. I gotta go too.

“I’m not frying up chicken or packing a thing,” Momma says, crawling out my bed.

She’s wiping sweat off her neck with a shirt I got sitting on the dresser. “I’m just gonna have fun, for once.”

Zora and me are in the backseat. She’s pressed up against the door like she’s trying to get out. I’m leaning on the other one. We both facing a window, so we don’t have to see or talk to each other.

Since my dad stole that money off me, I keep thinking about what Zora said at Mai’s house. She’s right—even if I don’t say it to her—when people steal, they kill something deep inside you.

By the time we stop for gas, and pick up chairs and new towels, it’s loud and crowded on the beach. The sun is white hot and the blue in the sky is as pretty and clear as the dish liquid we keep in a bottle by the sink.

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