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

loved him.  
    Should’ve told him the truth. That I ain’t know enough about myself to love anybody. That I wasn’t even sure I had it in me. Maybe folks were born with a specific reserve of love inside them and maybe mine was all used up. But instead of saying any of that I just said, “’Of course I do. I’m your wife.” And Ricky ain’t know the difference. He was like that back then. Not really knowing or caring about my lies as long as they were what he wanted to hear.  
    Then by the time noon came around a voice in my head was saying go...go...GO! Other folks might have asked the voice some questions but I ain’t need to. By then I knew what I’d done. I’d lost years of my pretending to be who he wanted just so I wouldn’t feel alone. And I couldn’t be in that place, be that person no more. Had to go somewhere real and true. Had to be free from all those damn lies. Sometimes I think it was my daddy talking to me from way down deep inside.  
    So I packed up my baby and all the clean clothes I could find. Searched all around the apartment for enough bags to hold everything. Ended up with a bunch of old plastic bags we’d been saving from the grocers. I would’ve gone with trash bags but they were too big for me to carry along with Nikki. She came with more stuff than I did. Toys and things I got from church giveaways. It ain’t matter if it was missing pieces or missing eyes, she still loved it. I had so many bags they hung around my waist, twisting and slapping against my legs like a skirt made of wrinkled up old plastic.  
    So there we were, bundled up, nothing but our eyes sticking out, standing on the street. Nikki could walk just fine on her own but there was no less than a hundred people marching up and down the block screaming about justice and murder, so I held her. The police had shot somebody named Hampton while he slept in his bed. I remember thinking that it sounded too crazy to be true. Nobody gets shot in their own bed. While they’re sleeping? I told Nikki to hold on tight and huffed and puffed toward the train station. We’d gotten a few blocks away, the dull roar of the crowd was at my back, when I saw it. Ricky’s ’61 Cutlass, bright red, covered with snow, and cruising down the street towards us. Cars back then lasted forever, but Ricky never took care of his so you could hear it from a mile away. Nikki twisted around in my arms, pointed to it, and in her innocent way said, “Daddy!” I just about died and the bitter cold blew through me in a way I’ll never forget. I was frozen, right to my bones. If I had been in the crowd, he wouldn’t of seen me but I wasn’t. His car door slammed shut and his footsteps tracked across the snow. The cold ain’t bother Ricky none. He ain’t have nothing but a leather coat and it wasn’t even buttoned up all the way.  
    “Where y’all going?” he asked.
    “No-Nowhere...we not...nowhere.”
    “Yeah? Nowhere, huh? Y’all going nowhere? Get in the car,” he growled.
    “But—”
    “Get in the fucking car, Pecan.”
    I tried to tell him we were just going to the market—the grocer’s, but he knew better. He just looked at me carrying a million bags and his only child and he knew. I told myself he grabbed me so hard to keep me from falling on the ice as we stepped down off the curb. Told myself he was just worried about me and our child. That was why he pretty much shoved me into the passenger seat.  
    I held Nikki still on my lap and Ricky slammed the door. All the bags crowded up around me, fighting for space in the passenger seat. Ricky kept on glaring at me all the way around the front of the car until he was back behind the wheel. He parked in his usual spot right in front of the building and nodded to the little old lady that lived on the first floor. She’d come out into the hall to see about all the ruckus on the street. I tried to explain some guy was shot in his bed.
    “What?” she barked. She was hard of