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

by Bryant Simmons, D.

  Nikki stood on her tippy toes, demanding that I watch her be a ballerina. That’s what they were teaching her in preschool. How to be a ballerina.

  “Ricky’s sweet, Auntie.” Then as if to test my point Mya ran stumbling into the kitchen. My heart nearly stopped.

  “Pecan girl, you okay? What is it? Is it the baby?”

  “No, no, Auntie, I’m fine. I’m fine.” I reminded myself that Ricky had changed. He hadn’t even yelled at me in months. Things were good, perfect even.

  “MMMM, PECAN, YOU FEELING real good, baby.” Ricky whispered in my ear. He told me that so much now that I was starting to feel it myself. “You hear me, baby?”

  “Mmhmm.” I sorta mumbled, afraid that Aunt Clara would wake up to the sounds of us making love.

  Ricky ain’t care. He’d do it with the door wide open. He’d get into bed butt-ass naked and wrap his leg over my hip. I’d seen two stray dogs do that once. If I was asleep he’d start off real slow and gentle like, moaning and groaning in my ear. Wanting me to remind him how he was my first and only. Sometimes he’d have me bend over the edge of the bed and he’d really go to town. At first I was worried about Jackie but the doctor said it shouldn’t be a problem. I was kinda glad of that since I was starting to enjoy doing it a bit more. Paula said that was crazy, that she couldn’t stand for her husband to touch her when she was pregnant. I agreed for the first two but something had changed. He was crazy about me, couldn’t get enough, and I loved it. When we would finish he’d hold me close—squeezing my tit in one hand, the other hand planted firmly against my stomach.

  “I been thinking. It’s time for you to gimme a boy. You hear me, Pecan?”

  “A boy?”

  “Yeah, every man want himself a boy to carry on the family name. I think this one’s my boy.”

  I hated to break it to him that I had my heart set in the other direction. That I had even named her already. “If it ain’t...a boy, we could have one more. That one would most likely be a boy.”

  “N’all I want this one. This one right here is my boy.”

  New Woman

  I WISH EVERY MAMA could know what it feels like to give life to somebody and watch them turn into the person you wanna be. That’s what it was like for me with Jackie. I was never very outgoing or funny but she had it all. She was a one-person talent show! Sometimes we’d sit around and just watch her. Me most of all. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t believe she came from me. From the time she was a baby she made the whole room about her. She’d cry and cry as soon as you looked away and giggle and wiggle as soon as you looked back. And she loved me. I could tell. She’d get so worked up at times and all she wanted was me. Even Clara couldn’t calm her down and they were kindred spirits. I could tell that too from right off. She’d dress up in my clothes—purse and heels—and sing into a hairbrush until she was hoarse. And this was at four!

  Clara would egg her on with “Ooo sing it, chile” and “Go on now, do it right.” Clara loved soul music. Me and Ricky was more into what they call R&B but Clara was real specific. Not all R&B was soul music, she said. And not all blues was soul music neither. She’d put on her records as we were cleaning and Jackie’d get up on the sofa or a table and try to be heard over the vacuum. That’s how her and Ricky got to be on opposite sides. He was watching the game one night, a playoff or series or something real important, and she got the itch to start singing.

  I was in the kitchen with Clara and the baby. I’d had another one by that time. Another girl. Ricky was still mad at me about that. But I’d made up my mind not to have any more so the doctor gave me these pills. Ricky ain’t know. It was best that way.

  So, anyway the girls was running through the house the way they did on rainy days, playing some make-believe game when Jackie got it into her head that she felt like singing. She waited until a commercial but Ricky was never a very good audience. He’d sit there and listen, nodding along. Sometimes he’d tap his toes but that was about it. Jackie ain’t care. She’d just sing louder. So when the commercial was over...she kept on singing. He probably told her to move, waving at my baby like she was a fly or something...“Move so I can see the TV!” he’d say. But Jackie was stubborn, just like him.

  I ain’t know it’d happened until afterward. Nikki came running in the kitchen all outta breath. “Daddy...daddy hit Jackie.”

  The walls started spinning and I swear I was moving in slow motion but they told me later I wasn’t. It sure felt like it, though. When I got there...he couldn’t even look at me. He sat on the edge of the sofa, his hands folded, and both eyes glued to the TV set. Jackie was lying on the floor next to it. She looked stunned more than anything. I ain’t even see the blood dripping from the corner of her mouth until Clara picked her up.

  “What’d you do?” I asked him. He was quiet. I moved closer and threw the dishtowel I was holding at him. “WHAT DID YOU DO?”

  “She was in the way. I…I told her to move. I did. Tell your mama! Tell her how I warned you! Why she can’t just sit down and be quiet? Huh? A man can’t come home and just put his feet up and not be bothered by nobody?”

  My breath ran straight out the room without so much as a word. My hands suddenly had a mind of they own. Went after him, they did. Screaming and scratching. I might have drawn blood, I ain’t sure. I was crying so hard I got a headache right from the beginning. Then I heard the smack and felt the floor beneath me, brushing against my elbow. I wondered if that was what he did to my baby. He stood over me for what seemed like hours. Wanted to kick me I could read it all over him. But he stood there still, like a statue.

  When I finally got up I understood why. Clara had run to the kitchen and returned holding the cast-iron skillet, still wet from the dishwater and each soapy drop took its time hanging off the skillet’s rim. She was well into her fifties and with less strength than me so she had to hold it with both hands because it was that heavy. Swung it off to the side like she might let it rip against Ricky’s head at any moment. Don’t know what Ricky was expecting but he damn sure wasn’t expecting that. Clara was his blood.

  “Auntie?”

  “Back on up, now.” Was all she said to him.

  For me, watching the two of them size each other up was like going to the zoo and seeing a tiger pause over its prey. Wasn’t no reason for it. No natural reason. No physical reason. But Ricky did as she said, glaring at me as he walked around the coffee table and into the hallway. She may have been his blood but she was mine. My aunt Clara.

  That’s how our truce came to an end. Me and Ricky’s. Five years of peace gone. It scared me but not like before. Maybe because he looked at me like he ain’t know me. Like I wasn’t the same seventeen-year-old girl he’d married so I believed I wasn’t. I was twenty-five years old by then. And I was mad.

  HELL, THE MORE I loved my baby, the more mad I got. She was so easy to love, Jackie was. And I ain’t see no parts of Ricky in her. Made me think that I had some good in me. Especially when she’d look at me with those eyes like she was watching something important—everything I said or did it was all of a sudden important. And when she didn’t understand it or just didn’t agree she let me know.

  “Mama, how come you always inside? You afraid of outside?” She asked when she should’ve been playing with the bubbles in the bathtub like Mya. “Mama, outside is fun.”

  I answered by cleaning her ears and saying something like, “I’m real glad you like it.”

  “You can come with me. I’ll show you. We got a spot out back where we princesses. You can be one too.”

  Mya jerked around and the bathwater went in the opposite direction. She shushed Jackie, like it was a club that belonged to just them. But I ain’t mind. My girls had each other. I had always wanted a sister. I was glad I’d had them so they could have each other. It was about this time that I figured something out. Nikki was always hanging around the outskirts of things. She watched me just as much as Jackie but for some reason I ain’t notice it until right then. I
t was kinda like remembering something I used to know but over the years I just forgot. Like a part of me shut down and some things just disappeared. Things that had to do with her. She was leaning against the doorway, looking all sad and I just knew I had to make it up to her.

  “WHY NOT?”

  “LATER, BABY.”

  “Why you not wanna hear me sing?” Jackie pouted.

  Clara rocked back and forth in her rocker, threading a needle. She was always knitting something. This time it looked like something for the baby. “See. Your baby went and got all up in my LPs. She been stuck on Ms. Aretha for a good hour. Got it down pretty good.” Clara chuckled a bit, looking at Jackie jumping up and down just bursting with the new song.

  “Two minutes, okay? I just wanna talk to Auntie for a second. Y’all go play.”

  They went but the only one that really wanted to go was Mya. She took off and ain’t look back. I could feel Clara looking at me and looking at Nikki and wondering what was going on.

  “Go on now. Tell your sisters to stay in the front yard.” Clara said it since she could see I was having trouble finding the words. The screen door closed and she lowered the needle and thread.

  “Auntie...?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You think something wrong...with Nikki? Think she happy?” Happy suddenly seemed like a reach so I corrected myself. “Think she okay?”

  “What you mean? She a kid.”

  I ain’t see no other kids moping around the house, dragging they feet to and from school. And I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen my girl laugh.

  “Oh, she fine chile. Don’t go worrying about things you can’t control. Nikki be just fine. She just gotta find her place is all.”

  I nodded. Clara knew stuff that I didn’t. I guess because she’d seen more, lived more. So, I trusted her opinion about things and I felt a little better about it all. But it still came down to me messing up. I wasn’t as good a mama as I should’ve been. Wasn’t as good as Nikki needed. She’d always wanted more of me than I was able to give. That’s what ran through my head while we were fixing supper. I started to say something to Clara, see what she thought of that. But I kept still instead.

  See, Ricky never had to try too hard to convince me that it was all my fault. I just knew. Me and him was my fault. Anything that happened with the kids was my fault. I knew deep in my bones that was the way it was. That I made him mad, made him hit me. I was still making him hit me by not loving him...not being a good enough mama. Maybe I just wasn’t built to be a good wife and mama. Maybe I was just like my own mama. I leaned down on the knife to make it slice through the carrot nicely and ended up choking back tears.

  Clara started yelling and shoved my hand under running water. “What’s wrong with you, girl? You trying to cut your finger off?” She bandaged me up real good like always and handed me the chopping knife again, this time real slow like. Her eyes burned caution into mine. We finished supper but it was all a blur to me.

  “Pecan need a night out.” Clara announced over supper that night. Ricky looked at me to see if he was being set up. But nobody was more surprised than me. “She need to go out with her girlfriends. Women need to have women time.” Clara explained it like wasn’t no choice in the matter. It was just a fact.

  “What I’m supposed to do about that, Auntie? She wanna go out? I ain’t stopping her.”

  “Good. Then you pick a night. A night when you ain’t got a fight and you ain’t gone be training. A night so you can be home with your babies while Pecan go out. I’ll be here but I ain’t gonna be around forever. You they daddy. You can act like it.”

  “I wanna go too.” Jackie’s legs swung so hard under the table that she almost fell right off her chair. I know she had no idea what going out meant but in her mind it was something exciting. “Can I? Can I go out too?”

  “No, you can’t go. I said her girlfriends. You not a girlfriend, you a chile.”

  “But my mama need me. How she gonna have fun if I’m not there?”

  “She’s gonna manage just fine.”

  Jackie looked so confused that I got tickled. She just couldn’t wrap her mind around it. Like I never had any fun until she came around.

  As I was getting myself together for bed I kept thinking about it. A night out with the girls. I hadn’t had one in a long while. Helen had gotten married and divorced and I’d only met the man once. I was sure she’d be up for a night on the town. We’d go dancing for sure. Never could tell with Paula, though. She only had two kids but they ran her ragged. She ain’t have an Aunt Clara.

  “So I guess you real excited, huh?” Ricky came in and I could smell the toothpaste from the other side of the bed. “Going out with the girls...”

  “Well, it’ll be nice.”

  “Don’t let me stop you.” He yanked the covers up. “Just don’t go thinking you gonna make a habit of it. If I wanted somebody that was gonna be running out to the clubs I wouldn’tve married you. And don’t go thinking you like all them girls you see shaking they asses on the dance floor.”

  “Course not.”

  “What?” He snapped, sensing the tiniest bit of sarcasm in my voice. “What you say?”

  I ain’t answer fast enough because he pushed me so hard I rolled right off the bed and hit my head on the nightstand. Not hard enough to draw blood but the tears came anyway. I ain’t want him to see so I tried to keep my head down.

  “You crying? You ain’t gotta be crying. You wouldn’t be crying if you knew how to show a little bit of gratitude. Instead of trying to be smart.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You what? What you say?”

  “I said I’m not!”

  He ain’t say anything else, just looked down at me over the edge of the bed. We’d gotten so good at it, he ain’t even need to say nothing for me to get the warning. So, I got up. Careful to not look him in the eye because that usually got him more riled up.

  “You done got Auntie all worried about you, poor Pecan. Ain’t nothing wrong with you. But go on and go out with your friends, just don’t go losing your mind.” I nodded and took the covers in one hand. “What you doing? Ain’t you got something to say?”

  I was getting back in bed. I ain’t think that needed explaining. But when he snatched the covers outta my hand and moved onto my side of the bed every bit of my body said to move back. Move back. Away. Move away. So, I stood against the closet and watched as he got comfortable. Real comfortable.

  “Where I’m supposed to sleep?”

  “Look like I care? Since you don’t appreciate what I do for you, maybe you should sleep your ass outside.”

  My mouth dropped open. It was forty degrees outside so he couldn’t of meant it, I told myself. He was just trying to make a point. “I’m sorry...sorry I ain’t appreciate you.”

  “And don’t you go running to Auntie, talking about I’m being mean to you. I don’t wanna hear it! What’s between a man and wife, stay between that man and that wife. Here.” He tossed me a pillow. “Sleep on the floor. It’s good for you.”

  The floor was cold and hard but it was better than outside. And knowing Ricky, he wanted me to think there was all kinds of things waiting in the dark outside. Wanted me to see the favor he was doing for me. To know that he loved me so much he gave me the floor.

  Dancing Fool

  I HAD EVERYTHING LAID out neatly on the bed. Stockings...my newest dress...my best shoes. I had gone back and forth a few times on the outfit. It was like I’d been waiting for this my whole life, like I hadn’t been anywhere ever. It ain’t make sense. One night. Just one night of freedom and I damn near lost my mind.

  “Let me do it.”

  “No! You don’t know what you’re doing!” Nikki grabbed the make-up pencil right outta Jackie’s hand, starting World War Three. “You too little!”

  Three words I knew Jackie hated. But wasn’t anything I could do about it. It was Nikki’s brand new mantra when it came to her little sister. Clara sai
d they couldn’t help it. That they were destined to get on each other’s nerves. Said most folks would’ve thought it would’ve been Jackie and Mya going at it all the time because they were so close in age, but Mya ain’t like no parts of any kinda drama so that messed up the true order of things.

  “LET ME DO IT! I’M GONNA MAKE MAMA PRETTY!”

  Jackie ain’t know anything about make-up. Hell she couldn’t have because I’d just learned a little bit about it myself. I hadn’t gotten as far as some girls with using a bunch of color. I ain’t wanna over-do it and look like a fool. Anyway, just looking at my dress was enough to make me blush. Aunt Clara picked it out. She said I was letting all my God-given gifts go to waste. That there wasn’t no shame in a girl being proud of being a girl. Then she marched right up to the salesgirl and made me buy it. Deep dark red like blood. Shorter than anything I ever had. I was wearing stockings with it because I felt so naked.

  “Let-Let me go!” Nikki fell off the bed with Jackie clinging to her back like a chimpanzee or something. “Mama, get her off of me!”

  “Nikki stop fighting with your sister. She just a little girl.”

  “She the one on top of me!”

  They rolled one way then the other. I had to get out the way fast or they would’ve rolled right over my feet. Nikki was all outta breath but Jackie couldn’t stop laughing. She was having the time of her life.

  “Okay. I’m ready.” I announced to the whole family a little while later. They were all crowded in front of the TV set.

  “Oooo, chile. Turn around. Turn around.” Clara demanded. I spun around in a circle, feeling like a princess. “Now that is a dress!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Girrrl.”

  “Mama, you look real pretty!”

  And I did. I was sure I did. I found a picture of Diana Ross and copied her hair real good. Even went out and bought some cheap earrings that looked like hers. I could’ve passed for one of them girls who was always up to the latest fashions. Well...probably. Ricky looked me up and down with big snoopy dog eyes. He was eating a bowl of rice and a chicken leg. He stopped with the meat hanging just shy of his tongue.