The Deadman started showing up in the mornings and saying he’d walk me to school so Daddy could get to his work on time. Daddy didn’t have a work, but he made me promise never to tell the Deadman that, so I didn’t tell, even though nobody who has a work lives where we do and eats powdered mashed potatoes without un-powdering them. I said I didn’t need to be walked anywhere because I wasn’t a baby, but the Deadman just stared down the hall at the pirate kiss closet till Daddy looked too and then nobody said anything but I had to walk to school with the Deadman.
I didn’t like walking with the Deadman. His hands were clammy even when he wore gloves and he always took the long way. He talked a lot but I could never remember what he said after. One time I thought I should ask him questions about himself because that’s what nice girls do, so I asked him where he was from. Grown-ups asked each other that all the time. The Deadman swept out his arm all grand for no reason.
“Paris, France!”
“That’s a lie. You’re a liar.”
“You got me, Badgirl. You’re too good for the likes of me. The truth is, I’m from the continent of Atlantis. My parents had a squat on the banks of the river Styx.”
“Is that in the Bronx?”
“Yeah, Badgirl. That’s just where it is. You’re smarter than a sack of owls, you are.”
“It’s ’cause of my dress,” I said proudly.
A little while after that, the Deadman started walking me home from school, too. He slicked up his hair fancy and told my teacher he was my uncle. Had a signed slip from Daddy and everything. But we never made it all the way home. He’d stand me on a corner and give me a box that had pills inside it, so bright they looked like Skittles. And he said:
“You’re so good, Badgirl. Nobody’ll mess with you on account of how good you are. You’re just as clean and bright as New Year’s Day.”
“I wanna go home.”
“Naw, you can’t yet. This here is medicine. Lots of people need medicine. You know how you hate it when you get sick. You don’t want people to get sick when you could make them better, do you? Just stand here and keep the box in your backpack and when sick people come asking, take their money and give them a couple of whatever color they ask for. If you do a good job, I’ll buy you a new dress.”
I sniffled. It was fall and the damp came with fall. I had a wet leaf stuck to my show. “I don’t want a new dress,” I whispered.
“Well, a new doll then. God knows a girl needs more than that ratty headless thing you got. I’ll come back for you and we’ll get back before your Daddy finishes his work.”
I didn’t have mittens so my hands got tingly and cold and then I couldn’t feel them anymore. I waited on the corner and all kinds of strangers came up talking to me like we were friends and I did what the Deadman said I had to. My fingers felt like they were made out of silver so I pretended that was the truth, that I had beautiful silver hands with pictures scratched onto them like the fancy dishes on TV. And every time I had to touch somebody strange to me so I could give over their medicine I pretended my beautiful silver hands turned them into game show contestants with perfect teeth and fluffy hair and nametags the color of luck.
AT CHRISTMAS TIME the Deadman brought over a tree with one red ball on it and a strand of lights with only three bulbs working. He had on red velvet elf shoes like the kind Santa’s helpers wear at the mall, only his were old and dark and the bells didn’t make any sound. He also brought a bottle of brandy and some cheeseburgers and a cake from the grocery store with HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEXIS written on it in hot pink frosting. I could read it by myself by then, even though I’d had to stop wearing my smart dress because it got holes in it and all the buttons fell off. The Deadman set it all out like he was Santa but he was not Santa, and I bet Santa never came to his house when he was little, if the Deadman ever had been little. He never did bring me a new doll or a new dress. Daddy put on that show where they play part of a song and you have to guess what it’s called.
Daddy and the Deadman had gotten so used to having me around they didn’t bother hiding anything anymore.
“Bennie and the Jets,” the Deadman said. It took the blonde lady on TV forever to get it. She squealed when she did and jumped up and down. Her earrings glittered in the stage lights like fire.
They ate some cake. It was red velvet on the inside but I didn’t feel right eating Alexis’s birthday cake. I ate half a cheeseburger but it was cold and the ketchup tasted like glue. The Deadman gave Daddy his Christmas present. Daddy didn’t say thank you. He didn’t say very much anymore. He just took the little small lump wrapped in red tissue paper from the Deadman and shook some out into a spoon. It did look like sugar after all. He flicked a lighter under the spoon and held it there until the sugar got all melted and brown and gluggy. It was sort of oily on top, too, like spilled gas.
Like a mudpuddle.
Then the Deadman handed him a needle, like the kind at the doctor’s office when you have to get your shots because otherwise you’ll get sick. I pulled the head off my princess and stuck it on the body with the pink ballgown. Daddy tied one of my hair ribbons around his arm and the Deadman stuck the needle in the mudpuddle first, and into Daddy second. Then he did it all over again on himself. Daddy smiled and his face got round and happy. It got to be his own face again. Daddy has a good face. He patted his lap for me to come sit with him and I did and it was Christmas for a minute.
“How Deep Is Your Love,” the Deadman said. Another blonde lady frowned on the TV. She couldn’t think of the song. Poor lady. I didn’t know that song, either. But I knew the next one because it was Michael Jackson and I knew all his songs.
“Billie Jean,” I whispered. Daddy was asleep.
“C’mere, Badgirl,” said the Deadman.
“Don’t want to.”
“Why you afraid of me?”
“I’m not afraid. Little black cats aren’t afraid of anything.”
“Come on, Badgirl. I’m not gonna hurt you. I got you a present. Make you grow up quick and sharp.”
“Don’t want to.”
The Deadman lit himself a cigarette. He had the same don’t-get-sick shot Daddy had so how come he didn’t just go to sleep and leave me alone? I’d have cleaned up the dishes and made sure the TV got turned off. I did it all the time.
“Your dad promised me whatever was in the armoire. You were in there. So you have to do what I say. I own you. I’ve been nice about it, because you’re such a little thing, but it’s hard for a man like me to keep being nice.” The Deadman started doing his trick with the mudpuddle and the spoon again. “I gotta carry that nice all day and Badgirl, I tell you what, it is heavy. I wanna put it down. My shoulders are aching. So you better come when I call or else I’m liable to just drop my nice right on the ground and break it into a hundred pieces.”
“Don’t be rude, Badgirl,” Daddy murmured in his sleep. I looked up at his scruffy chin and something popped and spat inside me like grease and it made a stain on my insides that spelled out I hate my Daddy and I felt ashamed. He wasn’t even awake. He didn’t know anything. But I still hated him because little black cats don’t know how to forgive anybody.
I think it’s against the law for a person to own another person but maybe he did own me because in a flash minute I was sitting down next to the Deadman even though I didn’t want to be. But not on his lap. On TV, a man with red hair was listening to the first few notes of a song I almost knew but couldn’t quite remember. The Deadman reached for my arm and Daddy woke up then, coughing like his breath got stolen.