the cooler grey cement of the driveway, shaded by the carport roof, with Birdy following after me. My mom was on the phone in the kitchen, talking and smoking. I opened the fridge door and pretended to look for the Kool-Aid, letting the cold air chill my sweat.
“Birdy,” she said, “what are you doing wearing Meredith’s sandals?”
Birdy stared down at his feet, his toes spilling out from under faded Mickey Mouse heads, their ears ripped. She covered the phone with her hand and said, “I don’t want you stretching them out.”
“Here Swatter,” he said, loosening one sandal and kicking it across the room at me, the way we had all day.
“Watch it, Birdy,” she said, her voice meaner than I was used to. He kicked the other sandal anyway, and it just missed a candy dish that was already chipped on one side from being knocked off the counter. She narrowed her eyes at Birdy, but she wasn’t mad enough to get off the phone. We took our drinks out to the carport, going through the laundry room door like we were supposed to. I could feel her watching us walk out. Birdy slammed the door, turned around and waved his middle finger in her direction. “Birdy flipping the bird,” he said.
The house was stifling in summer even with all the windows open, but my mom said she couldn’t afford to run the air conditioning, no matter how much I begged. She put her jogging shoes on, and she and I walked to the library, where it was cool and we could sit and read without sweat wetting the backs of our knees. We walked everywhere during the week because my dad took our only car, a white Toyota, to work every day. We had been the first people on the street to get one, which wasn’t all that special considering it was our only car, and most other families had two. Birdy called it a “Jap car” and told me Dad wasn’t a true military man if he didn’t buy American. Every time Mom rode in it, she shook her head and said, “They got the toy part right.”
To get to the library, we took a dusty path on the other side of an irrigation ditch behind the houses on our street. Mom thought all the houses looked exactly the same, like the military houses on base. “Not at all like the old brick houses in Belleville,” she said. “Those had character.” I poked my finger into the cactus plants to feel the cool juice, or picked white flowers with little heart-shaped leaves. The library was far enough away that my feet hurt by the time we got there. In the music section, I found a book on jazz music, a very thick book. Mom frowned and said I’d have to carry it home myself.
When Birdy came over that afternoon and saw the book on the kitchen table, he smiled. We were eating cherry popsicles that I’d made myself by pouring Kool-Aid into clear plastic Tupperware molds. “That’s the book we have,” he said, opening it up to a section titled Bird Lives. “Here’s Charlie Parker.”
I leaned over his shoulder. “He’s a big guy. Not skinny like you,” I teased. Birdy turned the page, and there was Charlie Parker with his arm around a white woman, his wife.
“When I grow up, I’m going to marry you,” I announced, licking a red popsicle drip off my hand.
Birdy smiled. “Swatter, you’re crazy,” he said. “If you like me so much, give me the rest of your popsicle.”
“After I ate off it?” I asked. He nodded. “Then give me yours,” I said. “Even trade.” We switched popsicles, mine dripping so much I had to wipe my hand on my shorts. “Now I’ll say your nickname: Birdy. And you say mine.” Then I noticed my mom, standing in the doorway watching us.
“Swatter,” he said.
Her face looked like it did when she sat at the kitchen table balancing the checkbook.
“You don’t have a cold or anything, do you, Birdy? You two shouldn’t eat after each other like that.” She looked at my yellow shorts, a pair she bought me the week before. “Meredith, you’re ruining your new shorts.” She yanked a faded dishtowel off the oven door and brought it to me. Then she looked down at the jazz book, where one of us had dripped our popsicle, a red stain puckering the pages of the book.
“Look what you did.” She blotted the open page. “I hope they don’t make us pay for it. You know how much it would cost?” I didn’t know if she was talking to Birdy or me, but we both kept quiet. “More than we can afford, that’s for sure. Birdy, you should go home,” she said. “It’s getting late anyway.”
Birdy put his popsicle stick in the sink and left through the front door so he wouldn’t have to pass her again.
“It could have been my popsicle,” I said.
“Why don’t you ever go over to Stanley and Jeremy’s house?” she said, blowing on the damp spot on the book. “They live right across the street. And Stanley’s your age.”
I dropped my popsicle stick to the floor and left it there. “They’re babies,” I said. “They still play with Matchbox cars.”
“Pick that up,” she said. “What about the twins next door, the girls? You could play with them.” Her voice sounded worried, and she kept blotting the book even though it looked fine now.
“They’re only five.” I ignored the popsicle stick.
“I think you’d be better off if you didn’t hang around with Birdy all the time,” she said.
“I like him.”
“A girl needs to be friends with other girls.”
“Stanley and Jeremy aren’t girls.”
“Meredith, Birdy’s not the best influence. He calls you that ugly nickname, and he’s reckless. Look at your shorts. You better go wash that out before it sets.”
“He’s not going to make a riot,” I said. “Not like the blacks you knew. He’s gifted!”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Meredith.” She sighed. “Go wash your shorts.”
I stood there, waiting for her to say something about the riots.
“Now,” she said. I left the popsicle stick on the floor.
My dad bought a new sprinkler for the front yard, and soon the grass turned green where it had been brown. The little white flowers with the heart-shaped leaves grew, and Mom told me they were weeds, but I liked them anyway. I was picking the flowers when I saw Birdy on the other side of the street. He was barefoot, so I stepped out of my sandals and said, “Here, Birdy.”
“Your mom doesn’t like me,” he said, nodding his head toward my house. I turned around to look, and all I saw were the windows with curtains blowing behind them. Birdy tested the street with his foot, and from the face he made I knew it was too hot. I offered again, and he shook his head no. Then he turned back to the neighbor’s yard and did cartwheels in the grass. Birdy walked away like he’d forgotten me. I wanted to throw my sandals at him. “You’re going to burn your nigger toes!” I yelled after him. He was already far down the street.
I looked down at my hands and saw that I’d rolled my flower into a ball of slick green pulp. I threw it into the street, wishing the tar were still soft enough to swallow it.
That night after supper, I rode my bike down to where the boys were gathered around their ramp. Birdy was there.
“Let me try it,” I said, and the boys laughed and said it wasn’t for girls. I rode toward the ramp anyway, but the boy standing in front of it wouldn’t budge. It was the dog-biscuit-eater, the one who always looked dirty. The Milkbone box was gone and he looked like he’d taken a bath, but I still didn’t like him. I looked to Birdy for help but he was staring away from me, kicking at the edge of the ramp with his sneaker.
“Better not, Swatter,” he said.
“Don’t call me that,” I said, circling around the boys with my bike. “My name is Meredith.” They turned back to their bikes. I circled again, trying to get to the ramp, but they moved their bikes in front of it, blocking me.
As I rode away, I heard Birdy call after me. “My name is Jon Lee,” he said. “Don’t ever forget it.”
About the Author
Lisa Brunette is an Air Force brat. She spent her fifth grade year in three different schools and has lived all over the U.S. but never overseas. She’s the author of the novel Cat in the Flock and the recipient of nume
rous grants and awards for her writing, including a Michener Fellowship from the University of Miami.
Read her blog at www.catintheflock.com
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