Birdie (15 page)

Birdie

My mother is thinner
than the last time I saw her. The thinness is more pronounced than a quick drop in pounds. It reaches her wrists and exaggerates her dangling bracelets. She has her blonde hair pulled back in a messy twist. Her eyes looked tired. The man I suppose is Robert sits next to her, his thick arm slung over her shoulders. It’s been three years since he wedged himself between my mom and Howard and yet this is the first time I’ve ever met him. He is Howard’s opposite in every way possible. Scruffy beard, untucked shirt, and heavyset.

I sit in the chair across from them and though I try to catch his eye for a moment, he doesn’t look up from whatever he’s punching on his cell phone.

Mom clasps my hands. Hers are cold. “How have you been, Birdie?”

I can’t share her smile. I’m still pissed that she dumped me in Shenoah and snuck off in the night to shed her old life. To shed me. We’ve seen each other a few times since her return visit but each time it’s a little colder and a little more forced.

I’m here for one reason only. “Who is my father?”

Mom drops my hand and the light fades from her eyes. She sips her water. All the fidgeting in the world isn’t going to save her from this question. My face hardens.

“Birdie, how’s school? Darla says you’re taking art classes at the University of Houston. Do you like them?”

I ignore the pang that spears me when I learn she still talks to Darla when I haven’t heard from her in months. “Who is my father?”

“His name is Leon something or other,” Robert pipes up, leaning his elbows on the table. “He’s an inmate in the Huntsville prison. Death row. Raped a few more women after your mother and killed one of them apparently.”

Mom looks angry. “Robert,” she growls.

“Leon what?” I ask her.

She sighs. “Leon Ackerman.”

I sit for a moment, turning the name over in my head. My mother opens her mouth to add something else, but I rise quickly and stride for the door. I got what I came for.

Birdie

I don’t know how
it came to this. My head rests on the cool wood of the bar. I vaguely hear a man calling my name but it sounds faraway. As I focus on the voice, it becomes sharper.

“Birdie? Birdie? Hey man, are you sure that’s her name?”

I raise my head slightly and look around. A straw wrapper sticks to my cheek held on by my dried saliva. Two hands grip my shoulders.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” the voice says, placing a firm hold on one of those hands. “I’ve already sent two guys packing who tried to take advantage of her.”

“I know her,” a familiar voice answers. “She called me. Check her phone.”

“I tried when she got too wasted to leave but it’s dead. If she wasn’t a regular I’d have called the police already.”

The next voice is soft and soothing in my ear. “Birds, come on, wake up.”

“Wesley?” Confusion mixes with the alcohol in my brain. What is he doing here?

The bartender lowers his face to fill up my view. He looks at me questioningly. “Do you know him?” he asks loudly and slowly.

I nod but the action dizzies me. I slip from the barstool. Wesley wraps a strong arm around my stomach and leans my head on his shoulder.

“Come on, Birds, I’m taking you home.” He turns to the bartender. “How much is the tab?”

The bartender waves a dish towels dismissively. “Just get her home.”

The night air is cool on my skin and smells delicious. Or maybe it's Wesley's cologne. He tries to deposit me carefully into the passenger seat of a small car but at the last second I dead weight him and my face is smushed in his gear shift with my ass in the air.

"God damn it, Birdie," he curses softly. He tries to help but I right myself on my own. Wobbly, but on my own. He closes the door walks around the car to scoot in on the driver's side. He glances at me sideways before turning on the engine. "Are you sober enough to give me directions?" he asks.

"Blue house, three trees," I answer cryptically, but my drunken self doesn't know it's cryptic because it's actually quite accurate.

He sighs and reaches between my legs to the floorboard where my clutch fell as I face-planted into his car. He finds my driver's license and curses again. "Of course it's your Shenoah address. You're supposed to update your license when you move," he scolds and the frustration in his voice is evident. He pulls out my cell and tries it out on his car charger. It beeps to life. Setting it down in the cup holder, he waits until it has enough juice to scroll through my contacts.

We sit in awkward silence.

"Where's your truck?" I ask finally.

"Sold it." His answer is short. His eyes burn out of the windshield ahead of us, finding something fascinating in the brick exterior of the bar.

I open his car door quickly and empty my stomach on the graveled parking lot. When I pull my head back in, I steal a look at him while I wipe my mouth on my jacket sleeve. "All road, baby, no car," I say laughing even though he doesn't even look close to humored. The alcohol swims in my head.

He picks up my phone and after pushing a few buttons and studying it for a moment, swings it around to show me the screen. "Lacey Roomie. Lacey from high school?"

"Yes, god don't dial Lacey Book Store. The woman hates me. I have to keep her number for work."

"You ever think about using last names maybe?" he asks, his mouth lifted in a small smile that looks reminiscent.

"Neverrrrrrr," I say, drawing out the last syllable. It sounds funny to me but I stifle a laugh because he still looks grumpy.

He's already got the phone pressed to his ear, waiting. He's watching me but after a few moments his focus shifts away as someone picks up. "Lacey? Lacey Rhone? Yeah, no it's Wes, I've got Birdie's phone. She's drunk off her ass and I don't know where she...what? No, she called me. Look, she's too wasted to give me her address.  Uh huh...no, I'm sober. I can drive her. We're at a bar called Rusty's. Just tell me where...yeah...yeah...wait, a left then the second light? Okay... Yeah, okay, bye."

Wes puts the car in reverse and soon the hum of the engine and the steady movements induce me to sleep.

Minutes or hours later, it's hard to say, I remember waking up briefly as Lacey takes off my shoes and Wes wipes a damp cloth on my mouth. I look at his shirt, dotted with vomit.

"Did I-?" I start to ask before my head lolls to the side. Everything looks blurry.

"...shower?" Wes is asking and I hear Lacey say, "My boyfriend keeps man soap under the sink."

And then nothing.

Birdie

I peel my sticky
eyes open, crust gluing my lashes together.  Blinking rapidly, I prop myself on my elbow and look around. Birds chirp merrily and morning light shines through my window promising a newness and a crisp resolve and a bright day. None of which I feel. I feel heavy and matted and I have a sour taste in my mouth. I glance to my right and see Wes knocked out in my Ikea round chair, his long limbs slung over the edges and his legs sticking out in front of him. His head is rolled over to the side. He will have a nasty crick when he finally wakes and straightens himself.

Wait. Wes is in my room. What the fuck?

I grab a pair of rolled up socks from the end of my bed and pelt him. When he doesn't respond, I launch another and another and suddenly he's shot up from the chair, half-confused and batting away my projectiles.

"Good morning." He glares down at me.

I pull up so I've risen on my knees and glare back right back at him. "What the hell are you doing here?" I hiss, trying not to wake Lacey and trying not to rattle my pounding brain.

"You called me." His voice does not concern itself with a sleeping roommate or my poor brain. I wince in pain but he gives me a knowing, evil smile and raises his voice even louder. "Last night. At midnight. I get a random phone call from you that you're drunk, scared, and at some dive called Rusty's. Then you hang up on me."

I'm clutching my hands over my ears in pain but I can still hear him sigh. He tosses me some shorts and a tank from my laundry basket of weapons and I realize suddenly I'm in nothing more than my bra and panties.

"You puked all over your clothes last night and fought us when we tried to put you in something to sleep in," Wes says, scratching the back of his head. "Get dressed. I'll put on a pot of strong coffee."

*                            *                            *

Ten minutes, a quick shower, and some Colgate later I feel half alive and quite guilty as I sit slowly down at our square patio mosaic table that Lacey and I thought would be funky indoors as a dining room piece. The shower helped clear away some of the fog and I feel thoroughly embarrassed in the full light of day.

Wes slides a mug of coffee toward me and plops a piece of dry toast down on a napkin.

I pick it up and nibble a corner. "Do you have somewhere to be?" I ask quietly.

He glances at his watch. "I did. Twenty minutes ago. A final."

He shoves half a piece of toast in his mouth and chews shooting me pointed glances.

My moan is low and tortured. "Oh God, oh God, oh God...Wes. I'm so sorry."

He shakes his head, swallowing his massive bite with effort. "Don't be sorry. You have too much shit stacked up for a verbal apology. We're way past that."

I sigh. "I don't have the stomach to look at a peppermint snowball cookie, much less make some."

"Oh, we're past snowball cookie apologies, too."

I look at him expectantly, clearly in new territory. In the past, a those cookies were the ultimate restitution.

He taps his palm on the table, contemplating before decision settles on his face. "You know what I need? Tell me why I'm here. What happened that made you get so wasted?" I hesitate and he raises his eyebrows, waiting. "I need to know why I dropped everything and came to wipe vomit off your face."

I grimace. "Okay." I gather my resolve with a deep breath. "I have my father's name. Leon Ackerman. He's on...he's on death row for the murder and rape of a fifteen year old six years ago." I toss my hands up and laugh because the alternative would be to cry and I've had enough of that to last me a lifetime. "That's it. That completes my family. A dad on death row for unspeakable crimes, a mom who loves me when it's convenient, and a sister who'd rather forget I existed."

Wesley's quiet for a moment. I dab at the corner of my eye with my finger, catching any threats before they fall.

“I’m sorry, Birdie.”

I don’t want to look at him. I hear it in his voice and that’s enough. He is sorry. They’re not just words to him. All the bones in his body ache for my pain and his heart is pinched tight and he wants to take his hands and rub my arms. And my shoulders and my back. Just rub me all over like it would slough off the hurt. I know because that’s what I felt when he was going through shit and I wanted nothing more than to clean it off him. I know because that’s how my voice sounded.

I finally sneak a peek and his eyes hold everything I knew I’d see. My breath is shaky.

“Thanks,” I manage.

He places a hand on mine and offers a comforting smile. “Let’s watch some horrifically crappy television and not think about it for a while.”

What he just said is the exact right thing to say and I look at him gratefully.

I pop some movie butter popcorn and we spread over the couch. Instead of horrifically crappy TV we land on
The Price is Right
and spend the next thirty minutes trying to beat each other in price guessing games. I keep the volume turned low and blame my headache whenever Wesley nails the price of puppy chow or dishwashing detergent.

“Two dollars for dog food?” he asks incredulously in response to my guess.  His own guess of seven dollars and ninety-nine cents was almost spot on.

“It’s a
dog
,” I argue. “What are they eating, prime rib?”

“That was a thirteen pound bag.”

“Well, I’ve never owned a dog, so how would I know? Wait, how do you know? How are you so good at this game?”

Wesley shrugs. “Going to UT means I’m doing it on my own. No financial help. I’ve learned to budget. And my roommate has a Labrador.”

After
The Price is Right
we play Guess Who’s Really the Daddy on
Maury Povich
but it’s not long before we get bored because all of them are the father. “Why are these women listing everything they hate about these men but when the DNA test comes back confirming fatherhood, they do a celebratory dance?”

Wes laughs and shrugs. Then his face grows serious as he contemplates something.

“What?” I ask.

“You know what the silver lining to a name is? Your father’s name?” he asks.

“What?”

“Everybody comes from somebody. He may be a criminal and locked up but that’s not all there is to your birth family.”

My interest piques with possibilities I hadn’t considered. “You mean…”

“He’s got a mom. Maybe brothers and sisters. That’s a grandmother and aunts and uncles to you.”

My chest blooms with possibilities. Wesley's eye has that twinkle. "Come on!" I command, dragging him to the desk Lacey and I share in the corner of the dining room.

An hour and a pint of Chunky Monkey ice cream later, we have the names and addresses of a half dozen Ackermans in the Nacogdoches area. I decided against phone numbers. I knew I'd never be able to call them with something like this. Holding onto physical possibilities was enough to lighten my mood.

"We'll take your truck," Wesley says suddenly, swiping my keys from the desk. “I’ll drive.”

"Wait, what?" I stand up with him and block his path towards the door. "What are you talking about? We're not going."

"We are going. You've been torn up over your roots since I met you. Well here they are. Some of them anyway. Loretta, Henry, Jasmine, Gabriel, Isaac."

"Yeah, thanks for helping me search them out. I'm not ready to actually meet them."

"You'll never be ready to actually meet them. Nobody's ever ready for something like this. Strike while the iron's hot, baby. You comin'?"

He walks out my front door, notes in hand. It may have been three years since I'd last seen him but I still know him. He's making that drive whether I'm in my truck or not.

Hastily, I grab my purse and pullover while stuffing my feet into whatever sneakers I have laying by the front door.

So be it. I was comin'.