“C’mon now,” she said, pushing folks out of the way. “Let the babies dance!” My sister Sweetie loved the way everybody was looking at her and started shaking her little ass with a big smile on her face. But I hated the music pounding in my ears and all those eyeballs watching me. There was no way I was gonna let loose and get on down. Instead, I did the two-step with my face fixed like I was sucking on a lemon. But it didn’t even matter, those drunk-asses still enjoyed the show. Sitting in a beat-up old chair by the window, Mr. Tommy, a regular, leaned back to watch my sister. He looked at her like she was a juicy piece of chicken and he was about to dig in. “Mmmm-mmm,” I heard him say to his brother, Po Boy. “She look real good.” Sweetie was eight years old.
I hated when Mama made us dance, but she did it all the time. I never knew why until one night when I saw Mr. Tommy slip her a couple of dollars right before she pushed me and my sister onto the floor.
Mama would do anything for a little extra cash. Anything, that is, except get a regular job. Her big moneymaking scheme, the one she came up with when I was seven years old, was picking pockets. Only she didn’t want to do the dirty work herself. Instead, she’d wake me up in the middle of the night and make me do it for her. I guess that was her way of giving me on-the-job training.
“Rabbit!” I heard her call the first time. I was asleep on a blanket on the floor in the bedroom Mama shared with her boyfriend, Curtis. Sweetie was beside me, curled up in a ball.
“RABBIT!”
I opened one eye and saw Mama standing over me. “Get your ass up,” she hissed, waving at me to follow her. She led me to the entrance of the living room and pointed inside. “See that?” she said. “They out cold.” The room was filled with leftover drunks from the night before. Mr. Tommy was asleep in a raggedy armchair by the bar with Po Boy knocked out beside him. Our neighbor Miss Betty was laid out, barefoot, on the sofa with her wig sliding off her head. In a chair by the card table was Mr. Jackson, the janitor from my brothers’ school, his head back and mouth hanging open.
Mama nodded toward Po Boy: “Go in there and pinch his wallet.”
“Huh?” I asked, confused.
“Take his wallet out his pocket and bring it to me. I’ll give you a dollar.”
I looked at Po Boy, then back at Mama. “What if he wakes up?”
“Chile, he ain’t waking up.” Mama took a step toward Po Boy and waved her hands in front of his face. “See?” she said. “He asleep.”
I stared at Po Boy; he had a thin stream of drool running from his mouth. Mama reached over and shoved him on the shoulder. His head fell forward, then jerked back. She nudged him again and he still didn’t move. “I told you he ain’t gonna wake up,” Mama said, satisfied.
What I didn’t understand was why she didn’t pinch the wallet herself. She was already standing right there, pushing and poking the man. What did she need me for? But I didn’t say a word. As scared as I was that Po Boy would suddenly open his eyes, find me digging for his wallet, and whoop my ass, I was even more afraid of Mama. One time she told me to get her a cup of tap water to chase back her gin and I didn’t move fast enough. So she made me bring her three switches from the yard and soak them in the tub. Then she braided them together and beat the dog shit out of me.
“Go on,” said Mama, pushing me toward Po Boy. “Go on and get it.”
Po Boy’s overcoat was hanging off his shoulders, making a puddle of cloth on the floor. I held my breath as I felt around for an open pocket and reached inside. When my hand touched the smooth leather of his wallet, I grabbed it and ran back to Mama, who was waiting in the doorway—I guess so she could make a break for it if Po Boy suddenly woke up.
She opened the wallet, took out a wad of bills and shoved them in her bra.
“Where’s my dollar?” I asked, holding out my hand.
Mama’s eyes got real squinty. She took the stolen money out of her bra, peeled off a single dollar bill, and held it out to me. When I went to grab it, she hung on to it a second longer than she needed to.
“Listen,” she said, real slow. “Go put this wallet back in Po Boy’s pocket. Then go get the wallet from Mr. Jackson. Do it quick, before he wakes up. I’ll give you another dollar.”
That was the first time Mama made me steal. But I knew by the look on her face and the money in her bra, that she was going to make this a regular thing. Sure enough, from then on, almost every Sunday morning before the sun came up, Mama would kick me awake so I could help with her crime spree.
The upside was that with all those blackout drunks, I was making good money—five dollars was a lot for a kid in 1980—and I spent it all at the corner store. I wasn’t stingy, either. I treated my brothers, sister, and cousin to all-they-could-eat Laffy Taffy, Hubba Bubba, and Pop Rocks. And I played so much Pac-Man that my name stayed at the top of the scoreboard: R-A-B for Rabbit, which is the name Mama’s boyfriend Curtis gave me when he came home one day and found me sitting on the porch eating a carrot.
But as much as I liked the money and respect, deep down I hated my job. My stomach went in knots every time Mama made me sneak my hand into somebody’s pocket. I wanted to tell her, “I’m a little kid. I don’t have the nerves for this!” Even Curtis tried to get Mama to stop. “This ain’t right,” I heard him tell her one night. “All you doing is teaching your little girl to steal.”
But Mama didn’t care. To her, there was no such thing as a bad hustle. It was all good, just as long as you didn’t get caught.
Chapter 2
Hot Lead
I was out in the yard catching fireflies and holding them up to my face pretending they were earrings, when I heard Granddaddy call my name. “Mildred Baby Girl!” he hollered. It was Saturday night, and he was calling me to come watch our all-time favorite TV show: Georgia Championship Wrestling.
“Baby Girl!”
I dropped everything and flew up the front steps to the screen door. Granddaddy had thrown out so many customers without opening it first that the mesh screen hung off the doorframe like a skirt flapping on a clothesline. I pulled the screen aside, and ran indoors.
It was still early, but the living room was full of people. The Numbers Man was sound asleep in a chair by the window with his belly resting in his lap like a giant egg; Mama and Auntie Vanessa were on the sofa sipping on corn liquor and arguing about who got the better voice, Lou Rawls or B. B. King; Mr. Tommy and his brother were sitting at the card table in the corner, playing spades. Granddaddy was behind the bar, waiting on me.
I whipped through the room and hopped on my stool just as he was switching on the little TV that he had sitting on the bar. The set flickered and Granddaddy turned to me, “You ready to see some ass whooping, Baby Girl?”