The newscaster said she took a metal pipe to her head. And she wasn’t gonna be nice about it neither. This morning she said she was gonna have another talk with Shiketa. Called the fire department once too when one of Shiketa’s friends set an old mattress on fire just for fun. Momma called the cops on Shiketa three times last week. And she don’t know nothing ’bout picking up her own mess, or telling her no-good friends to stop waking up the whole neighborhood at three and four in the morning with loud music, crap games, and fights.

She’s seventeen, but she looks twenty-five. It was Shiketa Nixon, the girl who lives two buildings up from us. Wasn’t no stranger who whacked her over the head, neither. The newscaster on the TV in the hospital waiting room said Momma was jumped in broad daylight right out front of our place. Cry some more when I see how really bad off Momma is. I cry all the while I’m in the waiting room. ’Cause if you let ’em loose, somebody gonna say you a punk, and you won’t never live that down.

If you accidentally cut your hand off in wood shop, you better hold back them tears.

In school, there ain’t never a good reason to cry. Mad at God and everyone else who shoulda looked out for her, but didn’t. No way would that girl wanna be me right now, sitting in the hospital hoping my mother don’t die. You probably get to go home for doing something stupid. On my way outta English class, one girl looks at me and says, “You lucky. “Raspberry Hill,” she says real slow, with a crack in her voice. T HEY NEVER CALL ME OVER the intercom at school.īut I can tell by the way the secretary is saying my name over that thing-I’m in trouble. Although vivid images of urban poverty, violence, and drug addiction clearly illustrate why Raspberry is so afraid, Flake never sensationalizes.With love, laughter, and a well-lived life. Is she turning into her father? Flake’s charged, infectious dialogue will sweep readers through the first-person story as Raspberry describes her fears and moral quandaries her new romance her fierce love for her mother and her powerful, conflicted feelings about her dad. Terrified that she and her mother may land back on the streets, Raspberry steals money from a friend. “Would you be all right if your mother got hit in the head with a pipe and your father was high as a kite?” In this sequel to Money Hungry(2001) Raspberry Hill’s mother is in the hospital after being attacked by a neighborhood teenage girl, and Raspberry’s father, homeless and addicted to drugs, resurfaces.

Begging for change by sharon g flake