Money Hungry Read Online Free

for ’em to listen up. Tell ’em I know how we can make us some decent dollars. Mai don’t wanna hear it. “You always say that,” she says. “It never do work out that way.”
    Ja’nae reaches in the pizza box and scrapes a clump of cheese off the box top. She rolls it into a small ball with the tip of her fingers, and flicks it into her mouth. “You too money hungry,” she says.
    “You just too hungry,” I snap back.
    Ja’nae’s big eyes start to blink. She gets real quiet.
    “Sorry,” I say.
    I been making my own money since I was four years old and my granddad paid me a quarter to clear his dinner plate when he came to visit. Later on, when Daddy was acting out and money got tight, I would go hunting for loose change on the street like a pigeon hunts for bread. On Saturdays I’d get up early and beg people to let me carry their groceries to their car. I’d pick their things up before they had a chance to say no. It helped, me being a girl. People would give me a dollar but still carry their own stuff. Much as I tried, I couldn’t make enough money to keep Momma and me from ending up on the streets.
    Now Zora and them are talking about how greedy I am. How I’m always trying to make a dollar. They’re right. But as long as I got two hands, I ain’t never living in the street no more. Ain’t never gonna be broke, neither.
    When they’re all quiet, I finally get to say what I gotta say. When I’m finished, they just stare at me. Then they bust out laughing. All three of ’em.
    “You out your mind? I ain’t cleaning nobody’s house,” Ja’nae says, frowning. She walks over to Zora’s dresser, picks up a pair of gold hoop earrings, and asks if she can put them on.
    “Sato’s right,” Zora says, shaking her head no to Ja’nae. “You’ll do anything for a dollar.”
    They’re all staring at me like I said I want to sell body parts or something.
    Usually, it’s easy to get them to go along with things. But now that I’m talking ’bout mopping and dusting, their jaws get tight.
    “Why would we wanna be somebody’s maid?” Zora asks.
    Mai is the next to speak up. “No. No way,” she says, curling up her lips and shaking her head. “My mom and dad work me like a dog now. Got me always smelling like grease and chicken and fried pork from working on their food truck. No way am I gonna start smelling like bleach, and Pine-Sol, too.” She stands up and starts making fun of her dad. He’s Korean. “Egg roll. Yes, we have that . . . and collard greens with a side of fried rice. Yes, yes,” she says, smiling way too much, and bowing down low while she wipes her hands on an invisible apron, and pats sweat from her forehead.
    “He is so embarrassing,” she says. “Always talking that talk. He’s been in this country twenty years and he still can’t speak English right,” she says, throwing a handful of bobby pins across the room.
    Mai has a faraway look in her eyes. “Why did my mother have to marry my father? Why not a nice black man like your dad, Zora? He’s nice. Smart.”
    I want to tell Mai to stick to the subject of us making money cleaning houses. But it’s too late. Zora’s talking about her mom and dad and how she ended up living with her father, not her mother.
    Then Ja’nae steps in. “Mai, you lucky you even got a dad,” she says. Ja’nae don’t even know her father. Not even his name. And her mother just up and left one day. She went to the store for orange juice and cigarettes. Two days later she called to say she was in California, that she had to get her head clear. That was years ago.
    Ja’nae’s grandmother calls Ja’nae’s mother the Triflin’ Heifer. “That Triflin’ Heifer sent you a letter today,” she’ll say, right in front of me. “That Triflin’ Heifer called and asked how you doing. Like she really care.” Ja’nae never says nothing about her mother to her grandmother. But sometimes, when I spend the night at Ja’nae’s place, she