Chapter Two

Mommy searched my phone. She knew my passcode; she’d made me give it to her when she bought the phone.

I had deleted the messages, but she checked everything anyway.

“I saw a post,” I said.

“Show me.”

“I can’t remember where.”

She handed the phone back. “His family might try to get in your head now he dead. Don’t let them.”

“What would they tell me?”

“That man made his choices.”

“I want to go to the funeral.”

“No.”

“He was my father.”

“Now he your father?” Her mouth tightened. “Seventeen years he couldn’t buy you a school shoe, and you want go play grieving daughter for his family?”

After she left, I sat with the phone in my hand.

Renee had known my number. My birthday. My middle name.

Mommy had told me David didn’t know where we lived. That he had never cared enough to find out.

The funeral was Monday. Mommy drove me to school herself and promised to pick me up afterward.

At 8:32, I vomited in the nurse’s bathroom. That part wasn’t planned. The school called Mommy twice, and she didn’t answer. The nurse wouldn’t release me to Tasha’s sister. When she sent me back to class, I walked through the front gate and caught the bus.

I arrived at the church fourteen minutes late, sweating in my school uniform.

I stayed across the street.

When six men carried the coffin down the steps, I began to cry. I didn’t know what I had lost. Whatever it was, I knew I couldn’t ask him for it now.

“Maya?”

Renee stood behind me in a black dress and sunglasses. She reached toward me, then stopped.

“Please don’t tell my mother I’m here.”

“I won’t.”

“Did my father know my phone number?”

“Yes.”

“Did he ever call?”

“Yes.”

“Did he send money?”

Renee took off her sunglasses. “Your father paid child support.”

I looked at her. “Every month?”

“I don’t know the details. Anthony Ferguson handled his legal affairs. I can give you his number.”

Mommy had said David never gave us anything. I thought of every time she’d taken my wages to pay a bill.

Renee took an envelope from her handbag.

“There’s something else,” she said. “David had life insurance. Mr. Ferguson can explain it better than I can.”

“How much?”

“I heard a million dollars.”

I could picture the twenty Mommy had given me and the sixty-nine hidden in my textbook. I couldn’t picture a million.

“Does Mommy know?”

Renee put the envelope in my hand. “I believe she does.”

I missed the cemetery. I went to work because I couldn’t bear going home.

That night, Mommy bought me dinner from a drive-through. She had argued over five dollars four days before; now she told me to order whatever I wanted.

“I been thinking,” she said while we waited for the food. “We should open you a proper bank account.”

“For what?”

“You almost eighteen. Time you learned about money.”

I turned toward the window so she wouldn’t see my face.

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