Young God: A Novel by Katherine Faw Morris Read Free Book Online Page B

white and sagging. After a while Coy Hawkins stops in front of one.
    A Mexican man opens the door.
    “Where the fuck you been?” he says.
    Coy Hawkins shrugs.
    “Trying to stay out of trouble, man.”
    Nikki follows him in. The house’s living room is strewn with little girls’ toys. There’s a blow-up castle in the middle of it. Coy Hawkins and the man go into what must be the kitchen. They close a bed sheet behind them.
    “You can’t go in there.”
    Nikki looks at her. The little girl is curled on the couch, holding a baby doll and wearing a tutu. She is five or six. Nikki puts her hands on her hips.
    “Why not?”
    “You’re not supposed to,” the little girl says.
    “Why?” Nikki says.
    “Because you’re a girl.”
    “What?”
    Nikki thinks she sees the little girl smirk.
    “My mom can’t even go in there,” the little girl says.
    Her tutu is much pinker than Nikki’s hair used to be. Nikki kicks a Barbie Corvette out of the way of her feet.
    “Hey,” the little girl says.
    Nikki sits beside her.
    “My mama’s dead,” Nikki says.
    The little girl makes a face.
    “She killed herself,” Nikki says.
    The little girl drops her mouth on the doll’s head.
    It’s probably four in the morning. They watch TV. It’s a flat screen with all the channels. Nikki doesn’t understand because it’s in Spanish.
    “She left me when I was a baby,” Nikki says.
    She doesn’t know why she just said that. She smells something like burning ketchup.
    “You smell that?”
    The little girl says nothing. Nikki looks at the bed sheet.
    “What is it?”
    “Papi,” the little girl says.
    Nikki stands up and the girl cuts her eyes from the TV. For a second they stare at each other. The little girl is not going to be as pretty as her. If she touched the little girl she would be gooey, Nikki thinks. Nikki sits down again.
    When the bed sheet opens Coy Hawkins is carrying a different grocery bag than the one he came in with. He snaps his fingers at Nikki.
    “My daughter,” Coy Hawkins says.
    The man looks at her briefly.

     
    “HOW MUCH DID YOU GET FOR IT?”
    “Half a ki of heroin,” Coy Hawkins says.
    Nikki’s eyes dart to the bag between her feet.
    “What?”
    On the way home they stop and buy party balloons.

     
    THE HEROIN IS BLACK. It’s sticky. It’s shiny.
    “What’s wrong with it?”
    “Nothing,” Coy Hawkins says.
    They’re in the kitchen. They’re sitting at the card table. Coy Hawkins has ripped open the bag of party balloons.
    “It ain’t white,” Nikki says.
    “It’s black tar.”
    “It’s what?”
    “Mexican shit,” Coy Hawkins says.
    He breaks off a tarry black chunk.
    “You got everybody up here snorting pills and paying what?”
    Nikki shrugs. Coy Hawkins answers his own question.
    “A dollar a milligram. Eighty dollars for one fucking eighty,” he says.
    He nudges the black chunk onto a balloon’s head. He turns the balloon inside out, knots it, pushes it through so that it’s right side out, and knots it again. He holds it up.
    “How much you think this costs?”
    “I don’t know,” Nikki says.
    “Ten dollars.”
    “What?”
    He clips it to a scale and hangs it before him.
    “Tenth of a gram,” he says.
    He tosses it to her.
    “Whoever brings this shit up here first is gonna make a killing.”
    Nikki just stares at him.
    “I’m trying to teach you something,” Coy Hawkins says.
    She is not paying attention. She is thinking about how much better it would be if the table were covered in cash. She looks at the black lump. It doesn’t even seem like that much. Her jaw is still going from that one bump.
    “Pills are the same as heroin?”
    Coy Hawkins laughs.
    “Yeah,” he says.
    The balloon is blue. It’s tiny. Nikki looks at it again.

     
    SHE YAWNS. When she stumbles into the kitchen a man and a woman are sitting there. They turn to her. Then they turn to Coy Hawkins.
    “It’s cool,” he says.
    He has a roll of tinfoil.
    He tears off a sheet. He