It’s a warm, soft greeting, but the girl doesn’t look up. Her father has missed her birthday again. He always misses her birthdays. School plays and Christmases, too.
She’s sitting on the edge of her small worn bed. The mattress is so old it no longer has any bounce. He squats in front of her and puts a hand on her knee.
“Sweetie, I’m so sorry.” He sighs. “Daddy had to work.”
“You always have to work,” she whispers, her gaze cast down.
He looks away, then reaches behind him and presents a glossy pink, black and white bag bearing a store logo. Victoria’s Secret, it reads. “Here you go.”
When she doesn’t reach for it, he pulls a doll out of the bag. “Look. Isn’t it pretty?”
It’s a girl doll with blank eyes. Her dress is pink and frilly, and there is a slight scuff mark on her right cheek.
“She’s hurt,” the father says. “Nobody wanted her, but I thought you would want to be her friend.”
She takes the gift. Her father can’t buy her anything new and nice, she knows that. He’s doing the best he can.
They are poor. That will not change no matter what. This is not about her being a girl.
Apparently interpreting her acceptance as forgiveness, he sits next to her on the bed and puts an arm around her skinny shoulders.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. Daddy has to work or we can’t eat.”
“I know.”
Her mother has two jobs. The kids in her school call her poor even though most of them get free lunches just like her anyway.
“I have to leave before dinner,” he says.
“Work again?”
He gives her a tired smile. “Yeah. But I’ll be back soon.”
She nods. He’s always away. He says the money is better if he travels.
She wishes he didn’t have to travel so much. But he said if he didn’t, then her mother might need to take on another job.
Her mother is always so tired. The girl doesn’t want her mother to work more.
Later that day, the girl clenches her hand around a few old and worn bills and coins. They’re sweaty from her palm.
Six dollars and fifty-six cents is all the money she’s saved from her allowance. When she gets an allowance.
Swallowing hard, she places everything on the scarred dining room table where her mother puts down two plates of PB and J sandwiches. Both have crusts since they can’t afford to waste even a crumb.
“What’s this?” the mother asks.
“Can you buy me some lottery tickets?”
The mother stares at her. “What for?”
“To win money. I heard Brian talk about it in school.”
Brian is a jerk who loves to talk in a stuffy-nosed voice she hates, but he knows a lot of things she doesn’t. He said his dad was going to buy ten tickets. When his friends asked why he wasn’t buying any, he looked at them like they were morons. “Kids can’t buy lottery tickets.”
Three hundred million dollars in the jackpot. She can’t count that high, but she knows it’s a lot of money. Enough to make her family really rich—millionaires, according to Brian.
Millionaires don’t have to work so much. Millionaire dads can stay home and not miss birthdays and school plays and Christmases. And millionaire families don’t have to eat PB and J all the time.