How to Knock a Bravebird from Her Perch : The First Novel in the Morrow Girls Series (9780985751616) (2 page)

“Ricky, stop!” I covered myself best I could.

“I just wanna look. I ain’t gonna do nothing.” He looked at me all innocent like. “Come on, Pecan. I swear.”

“You swear?”

“Yeah, I said I swear.” Ricky coaxed my arms down to my sides so he could see what I was hiding. Nothing special in my eyes. I’d known girls that had more to hide but Ricky got real hard and swollen pretty fast. Next thing I knew he was right back to squeezing up against me and growling up in my ear.  

“Ricky, come on stop now.”

With all his strength, he ain’t have to try too hard to lift me up. And he ain’t care none that the tree bark was scratching through the back of my dress. Just wanted to get me so my legs were wrapped around him. And before I knew it he was fumbling up under my dress.

“You feel that? Huh? Feel that? I know you do.”

“Um...Ricky...You swore!”

This groan came from somewhere down deep inside him and he pushed up off the tree so there was space between us. He did it even though he ain’t want to, and watched me fix myself up. Put the buttons back in the right slots. Watched so hard I thought maybe he was gonna come back after me. But then he said, “Wanna be my girl?”

“Your girl?”

“Yeah. Unless you lying to me about being a good girl. You do this with every boy in town? Let them get all up on you?”

“No...”

“Aight, then. You gonna be my girl. My mama always said I should find me a good girl.” He took my hand, grinning at me so I could see his pearly white teeth. “And you pretty too. Betcha know how to cook real good, don’t you?”

“Not really.”

“But you’d learn.” He nudged me on. “You’d learn for me, wouldn’t you, Pecan?”

I nodded and we walked the rest of the way to my house holding hands. We looked a hot mess—dusty and wrinkled and I was missing a barrette. Folks were staring but I ain’t care. Not until I saw the look on my daddy’s face.

“Where you been, Pecan?” His voice boomed down the dusty road and folks cut they eyes in my direction.

“At school.” I couldn’t even look at him, not because it was a lie or anything, just because I was afraid he’d think it was.

“Go on in the house and clean yourself up.”

I did as I was told and by the time I came back out Ricky was gone. My daddy was sitting on the porch, chewing tobacco and nodding to folks as they came past. I never knew what he said to Ricky, but I knew he ain’t like him too much.
 

My daddy was a talker, could out-talk anybody, but never with Ricky. And that night over supper, he ain’t even wanna talk to me much. All you could hear was the clink of forks and the crickets outside our front door. I wanted to say something. I hated the thought of him thinking I was a different girl than I was. I was a good girl. Most girls I knew had already had they first kiss and was working on other things. Not me. But I couldn’t get the words to come out of my mouth. So we ate in silence for a while.

“From now on you come straight home from school. You walk with that girlfriend of yours that live down the street. You hear me?”

“Yes s-sir.” I nodded, damn close to crying.

“If that boy wanna see you, he gotta ask me about it first. You hear me, Pecan?”

“Y-Y-Yes daddy.”

Course it wasn’t really up to me. I passed on the message to Ricky and he just kinda smirked. Ain’t stop him from showing up at the high school or following me and my girlfriends around town, whistling at our behinds. Wasn’t no secret around town. Everybody knew Ricky had his eye on me. Some folks thought he had more than that. I could tell by the way they looked at me. But I was my daddy’s girl. Wasn’t about to do nothing that make him think bad of me. So, I kept my distance from Ricky. He had to settle for smiling at me and making faces from across the street.
 

We were never alone after that little thing in the woods. Must’ve gotten on his nerves real bad because one day he showed up at my house, flowers in hand. They were so fresh the roots were still on them.
 

My daddy met him out on the porch like Ricky wasn’t good enough to come up in the house. Told him if he wanted to see me he could do it when everybody else did. Said Ricky wasn’t gonna be running off with me.
 

Folks said it was just because I was his only chile, only girl. They said because of how my mama did him he wasn’t gonna like nobody for me. But I’d never know if they were right or if it was more than that because the very next day my daddy died. They said he just fell over in the field when he was working. Heart attack. Just like that. One day he was there with me, the next he was gone. I thought maybe it was me. That I’d killed him by doing what I almost did with Ricky.
 

T
HE
M
ISSISSIPPI
HEAT
HAD
its run of Hattiesburg the day we put my daddy in the ground. It was so hot steam was rising off the grass around his grave. Muggy and damn near stifling the heat was. I got all pitted before we even got to the graveyard. Ricky was good. He held my hand through it all. Saying how he knew what I was feeling because he lost his mama that year too.

“Hold on, Pecan.” He said. “Just hold on, baby. It’s almost over.”
 

The sun beamed down on top of that tiny little hill. Me and Ricky, the preacher, and half the town. The preacher read from his book and some of the pages flew out, heading toward the Mississippi. He ran after the missing pages, his little bitty legs leaping up in the air to catch them like they were really worth something. Ricky had to fight back a smile. He tried to hide it but I saw. I just ain’t care. They lowered my daddy down that dark rectangle of a hole and I thought I was dying. Ricky said I was talking and swearing but I don’t remember all that. I remember washing the dirt and grass stains outta my stockings and skirt and from under my nails. I remember crying to him, “I’m all alone now.”
 

“N’all you ain’t.” He said in a husky whisper. “I’m a take care of you. You hear me, Pecan? You gone be just fine.”

We were married before the end of the week.

W
E
WERE
MARRIED
ABOUT
a week before Ricky let me in on his plan. Mississippi wasn’t where it was happening with his boxing and he knew exactly where he wanted to go. Chicago. There was this famous boxing gym there where some guy had trained up under some other guy that used to be somebody. He said it was where he was supposed to be and I was his wife so that meant I was supposed to be there too. Not in the house I’d grown up in, where I’d lived with my daddy. So I packed up my things and off we went.

We lived in this rundown apartment that wasn’t anything more than a bed and a sink. Was right next to the train tracks. Not the kind on the ground, the ones that run around on tall metal stilts. I hadn’t seen anything like it until we moved to Chicago. The windows shook every time the train would run past. The hot water was always stingy, giving up only a few drops at a time. And there was a smell like dead cats from the minute you opened the door. I couldn’t get rid of it no matter how many times I scrubbed the floors. We had a ragged old TV that only had two channels and the weather man kept saying a tornado was coming. Said it every day the first week we were here. And he was right, but I ain’t see it. Couldn’t see it. Couldn’t see anything, not really. Was too busy missing my daddy. Ricky said it’d make me feel better if we were close like a man and wife supposed to be. I ain’t think so but he was sure and he was my husband so...I let him love me. And he loved me every day sometimes twice a day. Loved me so much he gave me a fever. I took to the bed for a few weeks and by the time I got up I realized I’d missed something.
 

Nikki was born nine months later, ten months to the day my daddy died. The exact date. The thirteenth. Ricky ain’t even notice what date it was. Was too busy being happy—proud even. Said something was wrong with me because I wasn’t celebrating. That I ain’t love our baby. Wasn’t that. I loved her, I did! I did. But he ain’t let up about it. Just kept right on picking at me like a day old scab. Until one day when I started acting happy. Started smiling real big. I was somebody’s wife, somebody’s mama. So what if I wasn’t nobody’s daughter no more. Right? It ain’t matter. The past was gone, no use crying over it. Right?
 

It ain’t happen right away, me realizing all the lies I’d told myself. Took me a while to see them but the signs were always there. We’d been living in Chicago about three years when things finally came clear to me. Ricky got up at the crack of dawn, as usual, and I got up to fix him and Nikki something to eat and make sure his clothes were ironed and ready. He kissed me goodbye and asked me if I loved him.
 

Should’ve told him the truth. That I ain’t know enough about myself to love anybody. That I wasn’t even sure I had it in me. Maybe folks were born with a specific reserve of love inside them and maybe mine was all used up. But instead of saying any of that I just said, “’Of course I do. I’m your wife.” And Ricky ain’t know the difference. He was like that back then. Not really knowing or caring about my lies as long as they were what he wanted to hear.
 

Then by the time noon came around a voice in my head was saying go...go...GO! Other folks might have asked the voice some questions but I ain’t need to. By then I knew what I’d done. I’d lost years of my pretending to be who he wanted just so I wouldn’t feel alone. And I couldn’t be in that place, be that person no more. Had to go somewhere real and true. Had to be free from all those damn lies. Sometimes I think it was my daddy talking to me from way down deep inside.
 

So I packed up my baby and all the clean clothes I could find. Searched all around the apartment for enough bags to hold everything. Ended up with a bunch of old plastic bags we’d been saving from the grocers. I would’ve gone with trash bags but they were too big for me to carry along with Nikki. She came with more stuff than I did. Toys and things I got from church giveaways. It ain’t matter if it was missing pieces or missing eyes, she still loved it. I had so many bags they hung around my waist, twisting and slapping against my legs like a skirt made of wrinkled up old plastic.
 

So there we were, bundled up, nothing but our eyes sticking out, standing on the street. Nikki could walk just fine on her own but there was no less than a hundred people marching up and down the block screaming about justice and murder, so I held her. The police had shot somebody named Hampton while he slept in his bed. I remember thinking that it sounded too crazy to be true. Nobody gets shot in their own bed. While they’re sleeping? I told Nikki to hold on tight and huffed and puffed toward the train station. We’d gotten a few blocks away, the dull roar of the crowd was at my back, when I saw it. Ricky’s ’61 Cutlass, bright red, covered with snow, and cruising down the street towards us. Cars back then lasted forever, but Ricky never took care of his so you could hear it from a mile away. Nikki twisted around in my arms, pointed to it, and in her innocent way said, “Daddy!” I just about died and the bitter cold blew through me in a way I’ll never forget. I was frozen, right to my bones. If I had been in the crowd, he wouldn’t of seen me but I wasn’t. His car door slammed shut and his footsteps tracked across the snow. The cold ain’t bother Ricky none. He ain’t have nothing but a leather coat and it wasn’t even buttoned up all the way.
 

“Where y’all going?” he asked.

“No-Nowhere...we not...nowhere.”

“Yeah? Nowhere, huh? Y’all going nowhere? Get in the car,” he growled.

“But—”

“Get in the fucking car, Pecan.”

I tried to tell him we were just going to the market—the grocer’s, but he knew better. He just looked at me carrying a million bags and his only child and he knew. I told myself he grabbed me so hard to keep me from falling on the ice as we stepped down off the curb. Told myself he was just worried about me and our child. That was why he pretty much shoved me into the passenger seat.
 

I held Nikki still on my lap and Ricky slammed the door. All the bags crowded up around me, fighting for space in the passenger seat. Ricky kept on glaring at me all the way around the front of the car until he was back behind the wheel. He parked in his usual spot right in front of the building and nodded to the little old lady that lived on the first floor. She’d come out into the hall to see about all the ruckus on the street. I tried to explain some guy was shot in his bed.