Birdie and Me

by J. M. M. Nuanez

  “Hey Jacko. Marathon train much?”

  “No. Um, something happened to Birdie and I have to get home fast.”

  She looks at me for a second and then back at the deli, where some high school girls come out, showing each other their phones and laughing. She puts her skateboard under her foot and takes a cigarette out and holds it between her fingers. She says, “Actually, I just heard Birdie tried to kiss a boy in the bathroom or something. Is he okay? Do you want some soda or a chip? You don’t look so good.” She holds the bag out for me.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Teddy Garner. He was at the Stop-and-Go telling anyone who will listen that your brother is gay and tried to kiss him.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Don’t worry, Jack. He’s known to cause trouble. You know Teddy is a grade A idiot. He can’t help it. It’s genetic. Look at his dad. I can’t believe my mom hangs out with that guy. Ross is a bully and now he’s raising more bullies. Hey seriously, you look a little pale. Take a drink of soda.”

  I shake my head. “I really need to go.”

  “Okay. Well, let me know what happens.”

  I nod and hitch my backpack up so I can run. “I’ll call you later.” Then I’m off speeding toward the highway.

  * * *

  • • •

  Inside, Patrick’s house is dark and quiet. None of the curtains are open.

  It’s not that late, but with all the curtains closed it feels like night. Upstairs, in the hall, there’s light underneath both of their doors.

  I wait by Birdie’s.

  You know those anxious moments when your body stops and all you can hear is your heart beating like it climbed right up your neck into your ear?

  “Knock, knock,” I whisper.

  His bed creaks, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “Knock, knock,” I say again.

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Are you okay, Birdie? I’m going to start dinner. Come down if you want.”

  Still nothing.

  I drop my bag in my bedroom and it hits the floor with a thud, and I go back downstairs to boil water for spaghetti.

  Just when I think that maybe neither of them are coming down, Patrick shows up, followed closely by Duke. I fix him a bowl of spaghetti without waiting for him to ask, mostly because it gives me something to do. We eat for a while before Patrick finally says something.

  “You hear about Birdie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You talk to him yet about that boy at school?”

  There are two pieces of pasta left in my bowl. I push them around, wondering what he knows. “No. I haven’t seen him yet. What happened?”

  “He’s suspended tomorrow.”

  I set my fork down. “What for?”

  “Birdie was in some kind of fight in the boys’ bathroom. He refuses to talk about it with me or anyone, but both him and the other student are suspended. The school has a zero-tolerance policy for violence.”

  “Birdie doesn’t start fights. And Janet said that Teddy is known for causing trouble.”

  His fork stops midway to his mouth. “It doesn’t matter what Janet says. Birdie needs to learn how to blend in.” His voice is low and gravelly. “You don’t live at my brother’s anymore. Birdie can’t be running around however he wants. Dressing however he wants.” He takes his bite of food. “It makes him a target. And running away won’t solve anything.”

  “But he’s not doing anything wrong!”

  “That is not up for discussion.” Patrick looks at me over his fork of spaghetti. “I have a job in the next county tomorrow morning that I can’t skip. You’ll have to stay home with him. I’ll call your school and let them know you’ll be out. I’ll be back around lunchtime.” He takes a drink of his water and wipes his mouth. “I want you to make sure he stays inside the house. No wandering around. No bus ride stunts. No visits to Carl’s place.”

  “Like forever?”

  “We’ll talk about it later.”

  The last noodle left in the bowl is always kind of sad-looking. I chop it into tiny pieces with my fork.

  Patrick eats his last bite and goes to the sink. “You two will adjust.” He rinses his bowl and cup and adds some soap to a sponge. “You can’t be missing from school or getting in trouble. I know Carl let you do all kinds of things, but those days are over. That wasn’t good for any of you.” He puts his bowl and cup into the drying rack and dries his hands. “Thank you for the spaghetti.”

  And then he’s gone.

  I remember when I was younger, when Birdie was still a baby, I’d asked Mama if she had any brothers or sisters. “Like I have Birdie,” I said to her. “Don’t you have a Birdie?”

  She looked at me with sad eyes and then picked me up and said, “Sure. I have Birdies.” I felt safe in her tight, tight hug. “It’s just . . . right now those Birdies of mine, well, they have an opinion about everything and we don’t get along real well. They’ve got loud mouths.”

  “Sometimes I don’t like it when Birdie cries at night and wakes me up. He’s got a loud mouth too.” She hugged me tighter.

  I never asked about her siblings again, but ever since living with Patrick, I wonder: Can you be loud without saying anything at all?

  **Observation #782: Honey Bunny Bun Magic

  Now I know how easily Honey Bunny Buns can disappear.

  Like a magic trick,

  6 Honey Bunny Buns

  become 1.

  Except these don’t disappear into a silk top hat.

  & Uncle Carl isn’t here to pull more from his sleeve.

  & we aren’t there to assist him in his greatest feat yet:

  A marriage proposal that ends with yes.

  CHAPTER 10

  WHEN TO USE THE MICROBLASTER

  The next morning, I sleep in since I’m not going to school and I’m not sure Birdie will be ready to talk. I lie there for a long time wondering if Uncle Carl will be able to buy the balloon tickets on his own. He’s not exactly good at using the Internet and he avoids talking on the phone at all costs because he says when you’re talking into a microphone, who knows who—or what—could be listening.

  On my way downstairs, I see Birdie’s door is wide-open. The blanket on his bed is pulled straight and perfectly smooth. The pillow doesn’t even look like it’s been slept on.

  Downstairs, Duke lies on the couch by the front door. He’ll probably be there all morning waiting for Patrick to come back.

  The leftover spaghetti is gone from the fridge. I grab an apple and that’s when I hear a strange sound coming from the backyard.

  Birdie’s on the patio with a giant orange water gun that’s almost as big as he is. He’s aiming toward empty soda cans on a rusty bench at the far end of the yard. I’m surprised he’s wearing his puffy purple jacket.

  “Hit any yet?” I ask.

  He turns toward me. I gasp, finally seeing his face properly. He’s got a scab on his lip and a purple half-moon underneath his right eye and a puffy eyelid. “Oh, Birdie.”

  “Thanks for saving some spaghetti,” he says, going to the hose for a refill. Like an outlaw, he’s stuffed another water gun in the front waist of his pants. He turns off the water, replaces the water cap, and goes back to the end of the patio and continues shooting. He still doesn’t hit anything.

  “What’s the one tucked in your waist?” I ask.

  “That’s my MicroBlaster. For a last-resort shot.” He shoots the water again and hits a can.

  I watch him, sticking my hands into my hoodie pockets. The air is cold, flowing down from the mountain that already has some early snow. Before moving here, I used to think that California was always warm. I had no idea that it would get colder than Portland.

  “Patrick says I need to defend myself
.” He doesn’t stop shooting. “He wants to teach me how to fight.”

  “I’m not sure water guns is what he had in mind.”

  “I know, but this is as far as I go. I’m not punching Teddy Garner no matter what Patrick says.”

  “Is that who punched you? Teddy Garner?”

  “He didn’t punch me. He elbowed me. After pushing me to the ground.”

  “Was it because of something you were wearing?”

  “No. I was wearing the stupid clothes Patrick bought.”

  He aims and hits the bench.

  “Did you try to kiss him?” The question is out before I realize what I’ve said.

  Birdie is out of water again but he silently pulls the trigger over and over with nothing coming out. Finally he goes to the hose for another refill.

  “At lunchtime, I was working on Uncle Carl’s bow tie and suspenders design for the proposal. I had my notebook and the Alexander McQueen book out and Teddy saw me. He followed me into the bathroom and tried to steal my book. I had to hit him to keep him away.” He looks over at me, his purple eye squinting a little. “Then he knocked me to the ground, and elbowed me in the face. He put my book in the toilet. I kicked him to try and make him stop, and pulled his hair, but then someone else came into the bathroom and Teddy ran out. I pulled the book out of the toilet, but it’s ruined, Jack.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll wash it off and dry it out. Teddy is a jerk. I knew he was lying.”

  He focuses on refilling the gun without spilling.

  “I can’t believe Janet’s mom hangs around with Teddy’s dad,” I say.

  “Yeah well, Teddy said that him and his dad couldn’t stop laughing at the gay outfit I was wearing at the mall. They laughed the whole way home.”

  “Janet’s right. That kid is a grade A idiot.”

  “He hasn’t bothered me since last school year but since seeing him at the mall, he’s worse than ever. Anyway, I have to keep practicing. I want to show Patrick that I can shoot when he gets back from work.”

  “Where did those guns come from anyway?”

  “I found them in a box by the side of the house.”

  “Patrick seems really upset. You probably shouldn’t be wearing your purple jacket.”

  He stops shooting and sighs heavily. Like an old-man sigh. Except he’s only nine years old.

  Then, without warning, Birdie sprays me with the rest of the freezing water. I can barely make a sound before he’s dropped the gun and is off, running toward the side gate.

  I’m startled, but my feet are running too, chasing him into the trees, and onto the road. He’s faster than I expect, but I pump my legs, my track pants swishing with every stride.

  After crossing the empty street, Birdie runs through some thorny buckbrush and his jacket gets caught. I almost reach him when he pulls out the MicroBlaster. The cold water hits me in the face. “Last-resort shot!” he shouts. Then the bush lets him go and he weaves through the plants toward the reserve. I stay in the brush, breathing heavy, my right eye burning from getting hit with water, my arms scratched from the thorns.

  Despite my track pants, I am totally winded and have a stitch in my side. So I decide to walk, not run, the rest of the way.

  When I get there, I don’t see Birdie, but I know he’s in the pallet fort. It isn’t exactly his fort since the wooden shipping pallets were already here when we first explored the reserve. But they had collapsed, and I helped Birdie stand them back up and later he added a bunch of branches to the top, which made it look like a beaver dam.

  I stomp loudly as I approach, deciding that if he really wants to get away, he’ll hear me and then he’ll have time to leave. I’m hoping not to get sprayed again.

  I’m almost there when the MicroBlaster is tossed out of the fort. “I’ll give you one chance to shoot me in the face. It’s only fair,” he says.

  I creep past the gun to the entrance, which is just a gap between the pallets. He sits inside on the dirt. He moves over, letting me share the space.

  “Your eye is really red,” he says.

  “Yeah? It’s kind of burning.” I rub it a little, but that only makes it feel worse.

  “Teddy called me gay, Jack.”

  “Do you know what that is?”

  “I know what gay is. It’s like when boys like boys, okay?”

  I nod.

  He says, “It’s just . . .” and then stops.

  “Mama always understood,” I whisper.

  “Yeah.”

  A gust of wind blows and the fort’s branches scrape against each other.

  Birdie gathers his knees to his chest and puts his head down. “I want to go back to Uncle Carl’s.”

  I wipe my eyes and take a deep breath and try to smile. “That’s why we have to help him propose, Birdie. Just think. We’d be able to live with him again. Him and Rosie. Maybe they’d move into a new apartment, like the ones over by the park, and we’d get our own room.” The sting in my eye is almost gone, but I can’t help but rub it again. “Rosie makes Uncle Carl better.”

  I scoot closer and lean my bent knees toward his. “And Mama used to love ceremonies.”

  He nods. “She would love the hot-air balloon idea.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “But what about Patrick?” asks Birdie, his knee knocking against the inside of his fort. “He doesn’t want us going anywhere.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “Patrick can’t keep us from our family, right? We’ll go early, before Patrick gets up.”

  “Maybe we can also look for my bag. It got all dirty and a little ripped in the fight and Patrick took it away and gave me one of his old ugly backpacks. I said I could fix it, but he took it anyway.”

  “Your bag with the ice cream cones all over it?”

  “Yes.” He kicks the dirt. That was a birthday present from me and Mama two years ago.

  “I’ll talk to Patrick about it, okay? I’ll get it back.”

  Birdie suddenly sits up straight, almost hitting his head. “Oh my gosh! Duke! Did you leave the back door open? Do you think he got out?”

  “Not likely. I doubt he’ll move from his post in the living room until Patrick gets back.”

  “I tried to bribe him with some of the spaghetti and he didn’t even sniff it. He’ll never like me.”

  “Well, I hope you ate some of the spaghetti. It wasn’t there to try to make Duke like you.”

  “I ate . . . most of it.”

  I sigh. He’s the most picky eater I know. But there’s one thing he never refuses. “How about some green eggs? I brought the blue dye from Uncle Carl’s.”

  “Really?” he says. “But it’s not my birthday.”

  “Well, maybe we need to eat green eggs more often.”

  His smile stretches wide and I can’t help it; mine does too.

  * * *

  • • •

  Mama told me that when I was four, she’d read me the Dr. Seuss book Green Eggs and Ham and immediately afterward I demanded to know what green eggs actually tasted like. “Aren’t they yucky?” I guess I asked. Mama said absolutely not! And then she made me some to prove that they were delicious.

  She tried and tried to make the ham green, but it always came out mostly brown, with dark green splotches all over that looked like mold. The eggs, on the other hand, were always this perfect peppy green. So we decided to forget all about the stupid ham and just focus on the perfect green eggs.

  So the birthday green eggs started when Birdie was three. He was still trying to figure out how to string words together because he was kind of late to talk, and Mama had asked him what he wanted for his birthday. He jumped up and down and screamed, “Green eggs! Green eggs! I want green eggs!” And then he did this little exuberant dance with his hips moving around in a circle like there was an invisibl
e hula hoop, and Mama and I looked at each other and just broke up laughing and so did Birdie. It was so unlike the quiet Birdie we were used to.

  So when my birthday came, I copied his dance and shout because I thought it was cute and from then on we always made green eggs on our birthdays. And every once in a while, Mama made them for no reason and it was like Santa showing up at your house in July.

  CHAPTER 11

  GIFTS

  On the way back to Patrick’s house from the reserve, I tell Birdie about the hot-air balloon information I found online for Uncle Carl.

  “The ride includes a champagne toast, a commemorative flight certificate, and a unique souvenir gift package.”

  “Ooh. What kind of souvenir?”

  “I’m not sure. Something romantic. You can reserve tickets online, but you know how Uncle Carl is with the Internet, so he’ll have to call.”

  “But there’s no way he’ll call on his own,” says Birdie.

  “Well, that’s why I was hoping to see him today. I can coach him through it. I’d do it for him, but I don’t have a way to pay.” I kick a pinecone into the road. “And now Patrick said he’ll be home around lunchtime. There’s no way he’s going to let us go over there.”

  “Maybe we should try calling?”

  “I did last night. His voicemail never picked up. He probably unplugged his phone again.”

  “So our plan is doomed.”

  “No, it’s not. You’re going to keep working on the bow tie. I’ll keep calling Uncle Carl when Patrick isn’t around. Then, tomorrow, before Patrick gets up, we’ll head to town. I’ll leave a note so Patrick can’t get mad that we left. You’re technically only suspended today.”

  “I bet he’ll still be mad, though. And I hope he’s not early today. It’s already eleven.”

  But when we return, the house is empty, except for Duke, who’s still on the couch.

  Birdie scratches him behind the collar and Duke raises an eyebrow, but not much else. “I’ll work on Uncle Carl’s bow tie today after green eggs. Do you think Duke would let me put a bow tie on him? He’d look so cute!”