She was just bitter about not getting to go herself. She’d been taking her night classes, but it wasn’t the same as the away-type colleges where evidently you get to live on your own as a grown-up without even going to work, just reading and studying on whatever you feel like finding out about. I didn’t know anybody that had done that. It didn’t seem real, honestly. I was just trying to get my head around the orphan bonus. I wondered about Tommy Waddles. Was he getting paid double for having both parents dead? She said probably. Then I wondered about something else, which was my dad, that died before I was born. Had I been racking up the dough all these years, only to find out on my eighteenth birthday I’d won the freaking lottery?
Sadly, no. She said they’d looked into that, hoping to track down some line on child support, but there was no father on my birth certificate. I told her I did have one, though, and knew his name. I even knew where he was buried, due to Mrs. Peggot and Mom having their arguments over taking me to see his grave. The cemetery was in Murder Valley, Tennessee. I only heard them say it a few times, an age ago. But a name like that is not too forgettable.
Miss Barks said none of this was any use. It was my mom’s mistake for not putting him on my birth certificate. And with him being dead especially, an expensive mistake. I said “Damn,” even though I wasn’t supposed to use language with Miss Barks, and for just that once she made a face and said, “Yeah, double damn.” That was Mom and mistakes. She was a pro.
We got back to town before dark, to eat at the restaurant, but I started worrying about Mrs. McCobb driving out to pick me up at Golly’s, me not being there, her being mad over the wasted gas, Mr. McCobb being mad I’d skipped out. And so on. I told Miss Barks I needed to be back before eight o’clock to have plenty of time for homework. There’s always some lie that will make everybody happy, if you work at it. She was all smiles about the homework, and pretty like always. Pink sweater, tight slacks, that angel hair. I wasn’t cheating on Emmy in thinking Miss Barks was hot, because （1） Emmy was popular, so if she ever saw me again would break up with me instantly, and （2） Miss Barks was a different category from girlfriend, i.e. legal guardian.
The restaurant was a trip. They had it decorated up like a different country and even had a couple of Mexican people in there bringing your food. Plus cooking it, you would have to think. I couldn’t tell you the name of one single thing I ate, except rice and some lettuce, but it was all great and there was a ton of it and I stuffed my face like a pig.
Towards the end of dinner she told me she had more news. Not good, this time. Terrible in fact, but it took me a minute to work that out. She was so excited she was bouncing in her chair. She’d saved up enough to take summer classes full time and finish out her teacher degree. In the fall she would start her student teaching. After that, pretty much guaranteed of getting a job as an elementary or kindergarten teacher, and finally would start making some decent money.
Miss Barks was quitting her job at DSS so she could go have her wonderful new career. Quitting me. And all her other precious orphans, screw us. For the money.
She dropped me back at the McCobbs’ before eight, like I’d asked, so they wouldn’t drive out to get me from Golly’s. I came in the kitchen and told Mr. McCobb some lie about how I’d had an appointment with my caseworker and she’d cleared it with Mr. Golly so I’d get paid anyway. Then I went to my stinking dog room and punched the washing machine. Wiped off the smear of blood with somebody’s black T-shirt that was in the pile, shut off the lights, and planted myself face down on my motherfucking child-size air-mattress bed.
On second thought, I got back up and rummaged around the shelf over the washer, got the baby monitor, and put it in the mop bucket. I didn’t need anybody watching me cry.
Maybe some kids are told from an early age what’s what, as regards money. But most are ignorant I would think, and that was me too, till I was eleven and started pulling down a paycheck. Before that, my thinking was vague. If you had a job, you had money. If you didn’t have a job, you had your food stamps or EBT card and basically, not money. I didn’t really get that there were gray areas. Okay, I did know about rich people, that some few made the big bucks from being movie stars, pro football, the president, etc. These types of people living one hundred percent not in Lee County. Except for this one NASCAR driver that supposedly bought a farm near Ewing in the seventies. Also, the coal miners back in union times. Thirty or forty bucks an hour, old men still talked like those were the days Jesus walked among us throwing around hundred-dollar bills. But for the most part I thought a paycheck was a paycheck, whether from Walmart or Food Country or Lee Bank and Trust or Hair Affair or the Eastman plant over in Kingsport.