Money Hungry

Momma arrives home from work near midnight, and Raspberry pretends to be asleep to avoid a lecture for getting home after curfew. Raspberry listens to Momma trudge to the kitchen to begin studying for her college classes and then answer a phone call from Dr. Mitchell. Raspberry listens to their conversation until close to three in the morning, at which point she falls asleep.

Raspberry awakes screaming from a nightmare. In her dream, she and Momma are living on the streets again. Although Raspberry pushes around a cart full of money, people, including Dr. Mitchell, Sato, and Zora, tell her that her money’s no good, or that, “It’ll never be enough” (71).

In the car on the way to school, Momma tells Raspberry that she is going to get another part-time job. Already upset that she and her mother don’t see much of each other between her other job and college classes, Raspberry says that the only time they spend together now is in their car, which is an allusion to the time they lived together in the van. Momma is quiet for a moment but explains that she is getting the second job to put down a security deposit on a new place outside of the projects in a neighborhood called Pecan Landings.