How to Knock a Bravebird from Her Perch : The First Novel in the Morrow Girls Series (9780985751616) (28 page)

“Hello, girls. My name is Mrs. Gibson. I’m a social worker. I’m going to ask you a few questions if that’s alright.” She sat down next to Nikki, which was a pretty good move since she was the most talkative one. But wasn’t no way the woman could’ve known that. “Can you tell me what it’s been like since your daddy moved out?”

Wasn’t supposed to be a hard question I suppose but they all looked up at me like they weren’t sure what to make of it.
 

“Y’all go head and answer her questions. It’s okay.”

“Do you miss him?” she asked, her pen just waiting for something to write down.

“Daddy?”

“Yeah. Do you miss him?” Silence. Not a word. They just sorta looked at each other and shrugged. “I’ll bet he misses you. It’s okay if you miss him...or if you don’t. You can say either way.” Still nothing. “Nikki?” The gray woman turned more to the side like she was real interested. “What would you say is the biggest difference between now and before, when your daddy used to live here?”

“We got more food.”

“More food?”

“Yeah, because he ain’t here to eat it all up. Daddy always wanna take two, sometimes three, scoops of everything, then he usually go back for seconds.”

“Okay. What about you two? What do you think? Your mama says it’s been a little while since you’ve seen your daddy. How do you feel about that? Mya?”

I held my breath, waiting to hear her say how much she missed her daddy and how much he loved her but Mya just shrugged, keeping the same steady expression that was hers and hers alone.

The gray woman ain’t get to ask her next question because Jackie jumped in. My baby ain’t take too well to too much talk about Ricky.
 

“My daddy, he take us places and we get to go far far away to where there is pink unicorns and tigers and bears and waterfalls and ain’t no vegetables just ice cream.”

“Okay. I’m not really sure I understand...”

“My daddy, he love us. And he-he gonna come get us soon. And he gone marry mama so we be a family. And live happily ever after.”

“Um...”

“She just playing around. Jackie stop trying to confuse the woman now! She asking about your real daddy.”

“He is my real daddy.”

The gray woman just sorta smiled. “So, tell me more about your daddy. What does he look like?”

“He brown, like me. Tall. Nice. And he real smart.”

“That’s nice. What would your daddy say about what happened to your back?”

“Ain’t nothing happen to my back.”

“No? Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.” Her little feet started swinging just above the floor. She was a better liar than me but still not good enough to convince nobody.

“Well...I bet that it probably hurt a lot. Can you tell me how it happened?”

Jackie shrugged and flopped back onto the bed so all we could see was her legs shooting out from behind Mya. Wasn’t that she was trying to protect Ricky none, she just ain’t wanna talk about it. I ain’t blame her. I shouldn’t of blamed none of them but soon as Nikki opened her mouth ants started running up and down my arms, rushing me to blame somebody.

“She okay now. It was an accident but um...” Nikki’s eyes went up to mine then her voice turned to a whisper. “But Daddy blamed her anyway.”

“Your daddy? He blamed Jackie? For what?”

“Because...because of what happened to mama and to the baby—it wasn’t really her fault. She was just being like she is. She can’t help it. She a kid.”

“I ain’t a kid. You a kid!”

Nikki rolled her eyes and went right back to telling it. When she got started wasn’t no stopping her. Nobody’d ever asked her opinion about things that happened before. Was like a great, big old spotlight came shining down on her. The more she talked the more the gray woman wrote down. If I could’ve found my voice I would’ve stopped her but I was speechless. I knew the story—knew what it was like living with Ricky just as good, maybe better, than they did, but listening to it. Listening to it come out my girl, my oldest...it was different. It ain’t feel like I knew it was supposed to, the truth. Truth supposed to be familiar, like knowing your body but this truth wasn’t like that. Was like looking in the back of a restaurant that has delicious food and finding out that the kitchen is nasty. Make you wonder about the food. About what you done ate thinking it was good. Nikki kept going until the gray woman had filled up the back of the page and had to turn to a new one. Her fingers were scribbling like mad and there my girl was soaking up the spotlight.
 

“And then there was the time he—”

“Nikki, that’s enough. She ain’t ask for all that.”

It got real quiet, except for the sound of the gray woman’s writing. Then she stood up and walked out into the hall. I figured I was supposed to follow so I put Nat down and did just that.

“Why didn’t you file a report with the Chicago PD?” Her eyes were shooting daggers at me, and on top of that, the girls were so quiet I knew they were listening too. “Mrs. Morrow? Why didn’t you try to get help for yourself and your children?” She sighed, squeezing her notebook to her chest. “He’s been beating you for how many years?”

“Beating...that ain’t how I’d put it.”

“And how would you put it?”

“I don’t...I don’t know. He hit me sometimes.”

“Fine. He hit you and he beats your kids—”

“He only hit her once—twice! And I got on him about that both times!”

“It didn’t occur to you to go to the police? Or if you couldn’t do it yourself, to ask a friend to? What exactly did you do to protect your kids?”

“I...”

“Because from where I’m standing it doesn’t sound like you did anything at all. Sounds like you thought it was fine to raise them in a house where all they saw was you being thrown around. Is that what you thought? You thought it would be just fine?”

“No, I just ain’t have nobody to—I ain’t have no way to...what I was supposed to do?”

The top to her pen snapped on quickly and she dropped it and her notebook into this bag on her hip. “There are shelters and churches and DCFS and the police.”

“You don’t know Ricky—”

“I will make an official report with the court and your lawyer will have access to it. I’ll see myself out, Mrs. Morrow.” She ain’t bother to even look my way as she went toward the stairs. I must have been real disgusting to her because with each creaky step she hurried to get farther away from my truth. How she’d been so close to it and ain’t seen it was beyond me.

“I’M A GOOD MAMA! I LOVE MY BABIES! IT WAS HIM...he the one...”
 

But it ain’t matter. She was already out the door. I went out on the porch after her but couldn’t think of anything better to say. Just stood there watching as she drove away. That’s when I saw it parked a few houses over. The sun was glinting off the shiny black exterior of Ricky’s Cadillac.

"H
I
MAMA
,
HOW
WAS
work?” Jackie was the first one to stomp up the porch steps, grinning from ear to ear. Don’t know why she had to walk so hard. Sounded like a grown ass man coming up in my house.
 

She’d gotten real good at acting grown but she was still a chile. So, I couldn’t answer most of her questions honestly.

“Work was fine.” Which was mostly true since I’d managed to stay away from Mr. Bryer for the whole day.

“Hi mama,” Nikki and Mya slipped past us and into the house, dropping their book bags near the front door. The two of them took off running. Not long after, somewhere in the back Nat squealed, welcoming her sisters back home.
 

Jackie stayed with me. Telling me all about her day while she unpacked her book bag.

“Y’all can take a rest, have a snack and then you gonna get started on your homework.”

“Okay, Mama. NIKKI, MAMA SAID FIX US A SNACK! AND MAKE IT SNAPPY!”

“Don’t be like that.”

“Like what?” Jackie shrugged, pretending to be innocent. “Not my fault she stay in the kitchen.”

Nikki was exactly where we thought she’d be. She’d laid out bread slices, jars of peanut butter and jelly, and was picking through the fruit basket. I was lucky she was so steady with all the domestic stuff. Just woke up one day and realized she could do everything I could and it ain’t seem to wear on her none. Like she was made for it. Pissed me off. I’d spent damn near my whole life in somebody’s kitchen and I wasn’t about to raise my girls to do the same. But before I could correct the situation Mya distracted me. She popped up in my peripherral vision, arms crossed over her chest. She had a big old band-aid slapped over her elbow.

“What happened to you?”

“She fell.” Jackie sat at the table and leaned down to tickle Nat as she explained. “She was racing the fifth grade boys during recess. All of them. She gotta race them because the boys in her grade won’t do it no more cause she always win. And then Jonathan Murphy had to go and say that boys are faster than girls so…you see mama, she had to. I woulda raced them too but these my favorite shoes. I didn’t wanna mess them up. If I woulda raced we both woulda won. Right Mya?” Jackie didn’t pause for an answer. She just kept going. Describing the looks on their faces when Mya came in second. She could’ve gone on about it for a good ten minutes but Mya looked like she’d already forgotten about it. Her dark stare was fixed on me, thinking on something else.

“What’s wrong baby?” I heard myself say just as Jackie was taking a breath.

“We ever gonna get to see daddy again?”

Silence filled the kitchen and all eyes locked on me. Couldn’t tell them the truth—that I hoped not.

“What if he sorry about hitting Jackie? Ain’t we supposed to forgive somebody when they sorry.”

Ricky hadn’t been sorry a day in his life, but I couldn’t say that either. Besides, Mya seemed real sure of what she was saying…like she had first hand knowledge of his sorriness.

I took a seat at the table and beckoned her over to me. Needed to put my hands on my girl.

“Where’s all of this coming from?”

“Daddy say he told you he was sorry but you don’t wanna forgive him. He say that you hate him and you spreading lies about him so you can take all his money.”

The restraining order said he wasn’t supposed to go anywhere near the girls. Not at home and not at school. That little piece of paper was all the protection I had and it apparently didn’t mean a damn thing. But I ain’t wanna scare them so I smiled and asked, “When your daddy tell you this?”

Mya shook her head. “He didn’t.” I was about ready to call her on the lie when she said, “Jonathan Murphy did. He say his daddy talked to daddy. And…”

“And what?”

“Nothing.”
 

She clammed up after a double glance from Jackie and Nikki. But it was too late. The nerves that was usually reserved for bedtime pricked at the hairs on the back of my neck and ran up and down my arms. Folks thought I was overreacting when I kicked Ricky out. I was just being overly emotional when I said he beat us. They pittied him and was suspicious of me. How Ricky pulled that off was beyond me. I forced a smile and asked her again as sweetly as I could.

“What else did your daddy tell him?”

“That you umm…doing stuff with your boss you not supposed to be doing. To get money.”

I
F
H
ELEN
KNEW
WHICH
one of the girls we worked with was Ricky’s snitch, she wasn’t letting on. She stood at the elevator, pressing the button and giving me that it’s-for-your-own-good face. She’d told me a bunch of times to let it go. Said I didn’t need to let Ricky get me so worked up. I told her she could advise me on my feelings when her husband was telling her kids that she was a whore.

Helen went up in the elevator and I took the stairs down to the first floor and slipped out the employee entrance into the side parking lot. It was close to the loading dock but a brick wall separated me from the men unloading things and joking around. Customers didn’t come through that way so that’s where we went to chit-chat and grab a smoke.

I’d just lit up when I heard somebody calling my name.