The Revolution of Birdie Randolph

by Brandy Colbert

  The air-conditioning clicks off, plunging the room into silence. The street noise evaporates. All I can hear is her last words on repeat, and then things start snapping into place:

  My mother never mentioning Carlene all those years, doing her best to bury her existence.

  She will always be mine.

  Carlene’s bird tattoo—a delicate inking of a dove.

  She will always be mine.

  Carlene saying she had a baby once and me assuming it was a miscarriage.

  She will always be mine.

  And Carlene telling Emmett how my mother is afraid that she’ll take me away.

  She will always be mine.

  “Mom?” I stare at my mother. But the full-on nauseating dread in my stomach makes me almost sure I’m looking at the wrong person when I say that name.

  Her face is blank in a way I’ve never seen before. Like her insides have been stripped raw. Like her worst nightmare has come true right here in her own living room.

  I turn to Carlene when my mother doesn’t answer. “What do you mean? What does that mean, I will always be yours?”

  My mother is a statue, but Carlene is shaking uncontrollably, her limbs a quivering mess. For the first time ever, I see tears in her eyes. The rapid trembling of her chin makes them spill over and slip down her neck.

  “Mom?” I say, looking back and forth between them. “Carlene?” And then, when I still get no answer: “Dad?”

  But he is frozen, too, staring at the scene before him like he’s just stumbled upon a fatal accident.

  I try once more. “Carlene?”

  She speaks this time, but her voice is so low I can’t make out one word.

  “What?” I say.

  Her tears are still flowing—streams of them, her eyes two broken faucets. She shakes her head again and again, but this time I hear her loud and clear: “I’m your mother, Dove. I’m your biological mother.”

  I bend over, grabbing my knees. But they are made of rubber. I can’t stand up. I back up until my butt is just barely pressed into the armchair.

  This isn’t my life, this isn’t my life, I keep thinking. Over and over again, as if that will make it true.

  I look at my mother—at the person I thought was my mother. The woman who has been lying to me for sixteen years. And who would still be lying to me now if Carlene hadn’t said anything.

  “It’s true, Birdie,” she says like a robot.

  “Birdie was my name.” Carlene’s voice is strong, even as she sobs. “It was my name for her, and you stole that, too.”

  “I didn’t steal her.” Mom is still using that stiff voice and it scares me. I hate it. It makes me feel like I don’t know anything about her. Like I never did. “You couldn’t take care of her. And I couldn’t watch my niece go into foster care because of your addiction.”

  “Because of my disease,” Carlene manages to snap. “You’ve never respected me enough to call it that. You think I wanted to give her up? You think I didn’t want to be here for her?”

  My father is squatting, elbows pressed to his knees, head in hands. Which he keeps shaking over and over, trying to will away what is happening.

  “If you’re my mother…” I start out, my voice so weak I don’t know if I can go on. And the last thing I want is to talk to anyone in this room—all these people who’ve betrayed me. Who didn’t want to tell me the truth about my own life because it made theirs easier. But I need answers. I need to know everything. “If you’re my mother, then who is my father?”

  “Oh, Birdie,” Mom says, and then she finally cracks, too. A tear tumbles down her cheek, something I haven’t seen in ages.

  “Who is it? Who is my father?” I am screaming now, and it fills the entire room with my anger. But it’s still not enough, still not the punishment they deserve for keeping these things from me. If I could, I would burn this fucking place to the ground.

  “I am,” comes the last voice I expect to answer. Muffled, because his head is still in his hands.

  “No, my real father. I want to know who it is.”

  He lifts his head wearily and stands, and it appears to take every last bit of strength for him to look me in the eye. “It’s me, Dovie. Carlene and I… It was just one time, and… It’s me. I’m your biological father.”

  I don’t know where to go. What I do know is I have to get out of this room. Away from these liars posing as my family.

  And for the second time this evening—I run.

  I TUCK MYSELF INTO THE TOP LEFT CORNER OF THE MEGABUS AND PUT MY purse next to me on the empty seat, willing no one to join me.

  The bus is only about half full by the time we take off, though, and the people around me immediately put on their headphones or curl up to go to sleep. The ride to Milwaukee is short, not even two hours, but I wish I were already there.

  I texted Mimi and told her I’d be on the bus arriving just before 2:00 a.m. She tried to video call, then voice call, and when I didn’t answer either of those, she texted back and asked if I was okay.

  Yes/no

  Please don’t tell Mom and Dad I’m coming

  Then I shut off my phone.

  I remember the way Mimi looked when I asked her about Mom and Carlene—if she knew anything that I should know, too. But I forced myself not to think about it when I bought my ticket. I don’t know where else to go. Laz’s place is out of the question, if he’s even home from the police station yet. Booker’s, too.

  Mimi is the only person I want to see right now. Maybe she can help me make sense of what the hell is going on. How everything I knew to be true about my life has been lie upon lie, orchestrated over the years. And how it suddenly feels weird to call Mom and Carlene the names I’ve always known them by; should I be saying Kitty and Mom now?

  I put on my headphones and try to sleep, but my heart won’t stop pounding, my blood won’t stop boiling. The scene from our apartment won’t stop replaying itself, and I can’t unhear the things Mom and Carlene shouted at each other. Or forget how bedraggled my father looked when he said: I am. It’s me.

  Across from me, a girl about Mimi’s age is flipping through a magazine as she dips into a package of store-bought cookies beside her. She feels me watching and looks over. Smiles and holds out the package of cookies. I manage a smile back and mouth No, thank you. Lean my head against the window.

  I guess I do doze off, because I’m looking out the glass with confusion as the brakes squeal the bus to a stop. We’re right on time and I’m here, in Milwaukee.

  It doesn’t quite hit me what I’ve done until I get off the bus and see Mimi’s terrified face, craning her neck to look for me among the passengers. As soon as she sees me she runs right up, wrapping me tight in her arms.

  “Oh, Dovie, what did you do?” she says, pulling back and smoothing a hand over my braids.

  “Did they call?”

  “Only about a hundred times.” She pauses. “I had to tell them you were coming. You’re a minor, and they were, like, five seconds from filing a missing persons report.”

  I frown.

  Mimi holds up her palm, as if to say give her a minute. “But I made them promise not to come up. I told them I can handle it. Whatever it is… we can handle it.”

  “So you don’t know?”

  “Let’s wait to talk,” Mimi says, leading me to the parking lot. “Until we get back to my place. Are you hungry?”

  “No.” I am tired, but I press on. “Why do you want to wait?”

  “Dovie, please.” She beeps the key fob on a car that isn’t hers. She’s never wanted her own because she says it’s easy enough to get around without one. “It’s late. Let’s just get back to my place, okay?”

  I am so restless the seat belt feels like it’s choking me every second of the ride. I still don’t turn on my phone, but before she started up the car, I saw Mimi text our parents to say that I got here safely.

  Her place is on the top floor of a four-story brick building that reminds me of
a nursing home from the outside. Inside, the apartment is still, and she tells me to be quiet because her roommate, Sienna, is sleeping. She places Sienna’s keys into a small bowl by the door.

  I haven’t showered since this morning—yesterday morning, technically. All I want is to wash off. And a pillow. But I’m not going to let Mimi wait until the morning to talk. She must know this because she shows me where the bathroom is before telling me to meet her back in the living room.

  I pee and sit on the toilet for a while. I must be Carlene’s daughter. Both of us run when confronted with something we can’t process. I wash my hands and splash water on my face.

  Mimi has put on a kettle for tea, and I curl up on the couch while she waits for it to boil. It’s clear that almost everything in the apartment is secondhand or hand-me-down, but it’s comfortable. It feels like a home. What if I lived here instead of going back to Chicago? I don’t know if anyone in that apartment deserves to hear from me again.

  After a few minutes, Mimi walks over to the couch with two mugs of chamomile tea, then circles back to the kitchen and returns with a plastic honey bear and a spoon. I grab a mug and hold it to my lips, blowing on the top so I’ll have something to do.

  “I knew,” she says, breaking the silence.

  I almost drop my tea. Even though it’s not as much of a surprise as it should be. Even though I guess Mimi might be the worst liar in the family because I saw it in her eyes that day. Even if she wasn’t quite sure what I was talking about, she knew something had been kept a secret for years that affected me.

  My mouth takes a moment to start working again, but I get out my question: “For how long?”

  “Only a couple of years, I promise. It was an accident.” She sets her mug on a hexagonal coaster. “I needed my birth certificate for something and Mom gave me yours by mistake.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “It was right before I left for school, and I… I couldn’t believe it was real, Dovie. I just kept staring at Carlene listed as your mother, and then I showed it to Mom and she had to tell me the truth.”

  I scowl down into my mug. “I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

  “I know. Mom made it seem like such a big deal, and I didn’t want everyone to get mad at me for this thing they’d managed to keep secret for so long. But you deserved to know, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Dovie.”

  “What happened? Were Dad and Carlene together? Like, dating?” But he said it happened only once. And he and Mom have been together since high school, with no breaks.

  “I didn’t get a lot of details, just that it wasn’t something we talk about a lot. Or ever,” she corrects herself.

  “So, is Mom my legal guardian or has she just been taking care of me this whole time? Did she adopt me? Is there paperwork?” My head hurts, thinking of all the possibilities I hadn’t even considered until now.

  “I don’t know,” Mimi says apologetically. “I’m glad you’re here, but I don’t have any answers for you, Dovie. You’re going to have to talk to them if you want to know exactly what happened.”

  “I fucking hate them.”

  She puts her hand on my arm. “I know.”

  “They’ve been lying to me every single day for sixteen and a half years. And with Carlene in our house… How could they even look at me, knowing she’s my real mother?” I choke back a sob. “Mom barely ever mentioned her before she showed up. What if I never knew her at all?”

  Mimi doesn’t respond. I don’t think she knows what to say, but she rubs my arm as we let our tea cool.

  “What about us?” I ask slowly.

  Her hand stops. “What about us?”

  I look into her eyes for the first time since she admitted she knew. “What are we?”

  “We’re sisters,” she says almost before I can finish. Forcefully. “Same as we’ve always been.”

  “But our bio moms are sisters.… So, aren’t we cousins?”

  She stops to think about it. “Yes, but we have the same bio dad, so… sister-cousins?”

  “Sister-cousins.” And then I burst out laughing.

  Mimi gives me a funny look. “What?”

  “Just… sister-cousins? This is, like, Mom’s worst nightmare. She’d be horrified if this got out. You know if we were anyone else she’d say it was ghetto.”

  Mimi smiles. “Well, she’d think the word ghetto but never actually say that.”

  “True.” I sip my tea.

  “But, seriously, Dovie, this doesn’t change anything, okay?”

  “I know.”

  She stares at the coffee table as she says this next part. “And as much as you don’t want to hear this, it doesn’t change what you have with any of them, either.”

  “But they lied to me.”

  “I’m not saying that’s okay, but—I think they did it to protect you. So you could grow up with the best, most normal life possible. It’s fucked up, but they did it because they love you, Dove.”

  Maybe what she’s saying is true, but it doesn’t make me feel much better. Because love or not, they did it to protect themselves, too.

  MIMI AND I DIDN’T GO TO SLEEP UNTIL ALMOST FIVE, AND I STILL FEEL groggy when I wake up at one in the afternoon.

  She pokes her head in the bedroom as I’m stretching myself awake.

  “Morning,” she says. Then: “Tea?”

  I nod. And I don’t sit up until she returns with a fresh mug.

  “So, Mom and Dad are on their way.”

  “What?” I take the mug from her. “They promised they wouldn’t come!”

  “I guess that promise was only good for last night.” She perches on the side of the bed where she slept.

  “Are they staying here?” I take a drink of tea; ginger this time.

  “No, Sienna doesn’t need to witness all this drama. They’re getting a hotel. And taking us to dinner tonight.”

  I make a face.

  “You knew you’d have to see them again at some point, Dovie,” she says quietly.

  I sit back against the pillow. “I just didn’t think it would be this soon. Is Carlene coming with them?”

  “No, just Mom and Dad.” She winces after she says it this time, like she doesn’t want to make me feel bad for calling them that. “If it makes you feel any better, Mom sounded awful. Like she hadn’t slept and had been crying all night.”

  I wish it made me feel better, but it doesn’t. I’m angry and hurt, and I will be for some time. Maybe forever. I don’t understand how she could have looked at me every day and called me her daughter hundreds of times and never felt compelled to tell me the truth. But I haven’t forgotten the pain on her face last night; how, after her tears broke, it appeared to be physically ripping through her body.

  Mimi curls her legs up beneath her. “How’s Booker?”

  “Not great,” I say, before explaining the whole story about the party and the police station and the cops putting handcuffs on him and Laz. I can’t believe that was less than twenty-four hours ago.

  “Just Booker and Laz?” She shakes her head. “Of course. Well, they didn’t arrest them, did they?”

  “Laz texted me last night. They both got citations, but he thinks the judge will probably just sentence them to an alcohol education class or something and drop it from their record.”

  “But what about Booker? He’s been in trouble before.”

  “I don’t know.” I texted him, but he didn’t respond, and that wasn’t a shock. I almost expected his father to call me and tell me one last time to stay away from him. “I hope they don’t send him back to juvie. They wouldn’t do that, would they?”

  “He’s black and we’re talking about Chicago.” Mimi sighs. “Anything is possible.”

  We lie around and watch movies the rest of the day until it’s time to get ready for dinner.

  I finally take a long, hot shower, and it feels heavenly, but thinking about seeing my parents soon makes me more nervous than when I went on
my first date. More apprehensive than the days I had my final exams, and even more anxious than when Booker and I first had sex. Part of me can’t stop worrying they’ll have even more secrets to tell me, and I can’t handle that.

  We meet them at the restaurant, a fancy seafood place with velvet-lined booths and a long marble bar. When I asked Mimi why they wanted us to go out instead of staying in, she just looked at me like I should know better. “If we’re in public, they don’t have to worry about you freaking out on them,” she said. I know she’s right, but it doesn’t matter to me either way. I don’t have anything to say to them now, and I don’t think I will by the end of dinner.

  Mom—I don’t know what else to call her; Kitty doesn’t feel right—and Dad are waiting up front and positively light up when they see us. I don’t hug them like I normally would, and they don’t make me.

  “It’s good to see you, Birdie,” Mom says. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

  Dad gives me a small smile, and I try to return it, but I think it comes out as more of a grimace.

  Mimi carries the conversation, chatting about living with Sienna and the classes she’s signed up for next semester. I keep my head down, only looking up to order water when the server comes by, then burying my nose in the menu.

  I can feel Mom peeking at me when she thinks I don’t notice. I keep my eyes down until the server returns. But he has to leave, eventually, and then it’s just my family and me. Pieced together in a completely different way than just two days ago.

  “I’m not sure what to say,” Mom begins, sipping her coffee. She looks flawless, as usual, but when I meet her eyes I can tell she’s running on fumes.

  I don’t say anything. Don’t want to make this easier on her, no matter how beaten down she is.

  “It’s probably best if we start at the beginning,” Dad says, rolling his cloth napkin between his fingers. “But first, we love you, Dove. We have always loved you. We will never stop loving you.”

  “We love you so, so much, Birdie,” Mom adds, unblinking. “And you’ll always be our daughter.”