The Life I'm In: Chapters 31–76

My room got lots of amenities, he say. I’m glad when he explains what that means. “A stove, refrigerator, plastic dishes—two—cups, ice trays, a desk, bed, dresser, and a TV.”

Her silver pleated skirt and see-through top mean she in a car before she get to the other side.

All her money goes to medicine and the mortgage.

The tallest got two thick long plaits down to her belly, with silver ribbons running through ’em.

I sewed on the rhinestone decal.

“No soliciting.” It’s the bouncer. He look down at the ground where people dropped my flyers.

“Good work. Good wages.”

“But rent ain’t negotiable. You stay, you pay like all the rest.”

“He said that you’re a nice girl. That if you show up, I should use my discretion. Help you out.”

She say they got a nurse at her facility.

“Everything in high school is so different, Char. The teachers. The kids. The cliques.”

He don’t mean to be offensive, he say, “But you could use some new clothes. Outfits that show off your figure and how mature and sophisticated you are.”

He snaps the white napkin like a magician, spreads it over my lap. At first, I think it’s meant to hide my short dress. Then Anthony said what he just done is good etiquette.

By the time the floodlights come on, I’m at the back of the hotel, knocking on a dingy gray metal door, looking back.

He ask why I’m so stubborn. I’m used to doing things for myself. Not asking for nobody else’s permission or help.

Her hair is white blond. Long. Matted at the ends.

“I rarely set a finger on my girls. It’s bad protocol.”

April can vouch for him, he says.

...he don’t partake.

The snow outside is doing a dance too, pretending that it’s something it ain’t—flurries instead of a snowstorm.

“Miss Saunders brought in a ledger one day.”
“A what?” Roxanne asks.
“A book where a farmer wrote down stuff like how many pigs and cows, chickens and mules they had. I can’t remember everything. But I remember he had people on that list too. Slaves.”

Then sticks the needle through pieces of popcorn till she got a whole row, maybe forty pieces, strung together. She call it popcorn garland. It’s my job to hang it on the tree.

Branches full of pine needles is on the mantel with fake candles in between.

Pans and flour, brown eggs, sugar, fruit, lard, butter, and spices, fill up the whole table.

Mostly rats and mangy cats they say live in Daddy’s other house next door to us.