The Revolution of Birdie Randolph Page 3

  I WAKE UP PARCHED AT ONE IN THE MORNING.

  I’ve kept a glass of water next to my bed every night since fourth grade, but I forgot this evening. I felt like I was floating when I walked into the apartment. I’d spent the last ten minutes before curfew kissing Booker on the next block over. All I wanted was to fall into bed so I could close my eyes—to relive his lips pressing hungrily against mine, his fingers grazing the small of my back.

  I tiptoe down the hall to the kitchen and start to creep across the room to the cabinet when I see a shadow at the table. I recognize it’s Aunt Carlene and stop myself from screaming. Just barely.

  “Girl, you are jumpy,” she says, her voice calm. I’m light on my feet, but I guess she heard me coming.

  I flip on the light. “Sorry. Most people don’t sit here in the dark in the middle of the night.”

  She smiles and sips from the mug in front of her. I wonder what’s in it, but I don’t look.

  I fill a glass with water and linger near the table. It’s late and I have school tomorrow, but this is the first time I’ve been alone with my aunt since she arrived. And I’m not actually that sleepy now that I’m up. I can’t stop thinking about Booker. But maybe she wants to be alone. She was sitting in the dark.

  “Have a seat,” she says, which should make me feel weird since this is my kitchen, not hers—but it doesn’t.

  I sit.

  She’s wearing a bathrobe that looked white in the dark but turns out to be powder blue under the bright kitchen lights. The elbows of it are particularly worn, like she’s spent a long time leaning on them. She smells faintly of cigarettes, and by now I’m guessing my mom has asked her to smoke down the street and not in front of the salon.

  “Are you always so skittish, or is it just because I’m here?”

  I pause. “I don’t know.”

  “This apartment is too big,” she says. “Easy to sneak up on people. Did you know your mom and I shared a room when we were growing up? And we had no proper dining room, just a kitchen, where we all squeezed in to eat. This place is probably twice the size of our old home.”

  I’ve never thought of our apartment as too big—more like just right for us. It’s three bedrooms, and there’s a full bathroom in my parents’ room plus one in the hallway, a proper dining room and large living room, and a kitchen big enough for all of us to comfortably eat in. There’s a decent-size mudroom in the back, off the kitchen, and a rooftop deck that we don’t use as much as we should. My parents did a pretty big remodel when they bought the building, and we moved up here about a year after the shop opened all those years ago.

  “You shared a room with Mom?” Seeing the two of them with each other now, I can’t imagine that was ever peaceful.

  She shrugs. “I wasn’t around a whole lot when we were your age.”

  I nod, thinking of what my mother told me but not wanting to let on how much I know.

  I wish I could walk into my mother’s room as easily as she came into mine the other night. Just spill everything about Booker—everything I know, that is—and trust that she’d believe the guy I like is a good guy, even with a past she’d call “undesirable.”

  I feel Aunt Carlene staring at me, and when I look over, she’s squinting. Like she’s trying to see deep into my soul. “You’re not really here.”

  “What?” I blink at her.

  She taps a finger against her temple. “Your mind. It’s somewhere else.”

  It’s with Booker, but I can’t tell her that. Booker isn’t supposed to exist. Not without my parents knowing about him.

  She doesn’t give up. “I know that look. You’re thinking about someone.”

  I don’t know how she’s read me so well when she barely knows me, but it freaks me out. I shake my head. “I’m just tired. Ready for school to be out.”

  “I don’t know why you’re so ready for summer when Kitty’s making you study the whole time.”

  I shrug. “What else am I going to do? I don’t really have anyone to hang out with besides Laz.”

  “Ayanna’s kid?”

  I nod. “Yeah, he’s my best friend. But he’s the only person I really see now.”

  Aunt Carlene takes a sip from her mug. I look when she sets it down. White liquid: warm milk. “Why is that?”

  “I sort of lost touch with all my old friends when I stopped playing soccer.”

  That’s not true: I totally lost touch. I think we all just assumed we’d be friends for the long haul, but we didn’t realize how essential soccer practices and games were to our friendships. Now they’re virtual strangers; smiles passing by in the hallways and cafeteria. It’s hard to believe I used to spend nearly every afternoon with them on the field, running and sweating and practicing drills, and weekends where we didn’t talk about soccer at all. Mitchell’s friends were around when I was dating him, but they were dull and seemed to only tolerate having me around because I was his girlfriend.

  “Now you look sad,” my aunt says, and I wonder if she is going to analyze my mood like this for the rest of the time she’s here.

  In the back of the apartment, I hear my parents’ bedroom door open. Aunt Carlene and I sit in silence as my mother’s soft footsteps pad down the hall.

  Mom leans against the doorframe, yawning. She scratches at a spot on her satin headscarf. “What are you two doing up?”

  “I got thirsty,” I say.

  “I was already up,” my aunt says. “Sorry if we woke you.”

  “You should go to bed, Birdie,” Mom says. “You’ve still got school in the morning.”

  I finish my water and take the glass to the sink. When I turn around, my mother is trying and failing to slyly sneak a peek at what her sister is drinking.

  Aunt Carlene tips back her mug to finish the rest and stands. “It was milk,” she says without looking at my mother. “With honey. To help me sleep, Kitty.”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “You didn’t have to.” She rinses the mug and places it next to my glass in the sink. Touches my arm on her way to the hall. “Night, Dove.”

  “Good night, Aunt Carlene.”

  “Just call me Carlene,” she says over her shoulder. She ignores my mother as she passes her in the doorway.

  Mom kisses my forehead before I leave the kitchen. I wait for her to switch off the light and follow me down the hall, but she goes to the sink.

  Says, “I’m just going to put these in the dishwasher.”

  I hear her, but she says it under her breath—almost mumbles. As if she is trying to convince herself that her motivation is honest.

  ONE OF MY FAVORITE PARTS ABOUT SUMMER HAS ALWAYS BEEN SPENDING more time in the salon.

  I don’t know how to do hair. Mom has tried to teach me several times, but I guess she didn’t pass down that talent. My fingers bumble over a simple French braid, and I can never seem to get the little things right, like how to secure my curls into a proper bun or evenly section off my hair for twists. Mimi is actually good at doing hair but doesn’t like it, and thankfully Mom never pressured either of us to keep practicing. So when I’m in the shop, they put me to work sweeping the floors and wiping down stations while the stylists grab a break or quick lunch between appointments.

  The salon can be too loud, mostly when regular clients are there. They talk over one another and gossip with abandon and discuss things that make my mother shush them and nod toward me, in case they forgot I was in the room. I hate that she still does that. She acts like I don’t know what sex is or have never heard a curse word, let alone said one.

  Regardless of how much they’re forced to censor themselves, I like being around all the chatter—the cheerful energy that crackles through the air as people get their hair permed and braided and faded and cut. It’s the opposite of the quiet, respectful apartment upstairs.

  Laz meets me there after school. I’m still jittery from last night and I want to pepper him with questions about Booker. Did he seem extra happy today? Did he mentio
n seeing me? Laz won’t volunteer that information himself, so I’ll have to get him alone and badger him.

  The bell above the door jingles as he walks in. Necks crane and multiple sets of eyes look to the mirrors to check out who’s arrived. When they see it’s him, a round of hearty “Hey, baby” and “Hey there, Laz” and “Afternoon, Lazarus” rings out in tandem, making his buttery brown skin flush as he steps inside.

  He takes too long to say something, though, and from across the room, Ayanna calls out, “I know you didn’t just forget your manners, mister.”

  “Hey, everyone,” he says, dipping his head as he lifts a hand in greeting. He walks swiftly across the room to give his mother a loose-armed hug. She smacks a loud kiss on his cheek in return.

  “How was school?” I hear her ask as the salon powers back to life with overlapping discussions. I’m posted a few feet away at the cabinets in back, folding freshly laundered towels and trying to pretend like I didn’t just hear Mrs. Johnson say she’s thinking of trying marijuana for the first time at age fifty-five. Mom heard it, too, and gives her a pursed-lip look in the mirror.

  “All right,” Laz says to his mother. “Ready to be done.”

  “Tell me something new.” Ayanna ruffles his thick dark curls before walking over to check the time on Ms. Evans’s dryer.

  Laz’s hair has always been a hot topic of conversation around here. His dad is Mexican American and Ayanna is black, and his hair is gorgeous. The older women always talk about how he has “that good hair” and Ayanna always tsks at them, saying he’ll get a big head from all their fawning.

  He makes his way back to me, dropping his backpack at his feet. “Thanks for helping me study last night,” he says in a voice that’s too loud.

  I pretend not to notice that I’m stepping on his foot as I reach for another towel from the pile. “Would you stop? You sound like you’re reading from a script,” I mutter.

  He grins. “Gotta keep you on your toes.”

  Laz helps me finish folding the towels, then we gather up a batch of dirty smocks and tell our mothers we’re heading to the laundromat around the corner. I let out a long breath as we step onto the sidewalk, trading the intimate noise of the shop for the city commotion outside: lumbering buses and rock music blasting from open car windows and loud conversations dripping with Chicago accents.

  “Did you see Booker today?” I ask after we start walking.

  “I see him every day.” Laz swings the canvas bag of dirty laundry between us, falling into step behind me when we meet someone on the sidewalk.

  “Did he…” My words trail off because I don’t even know what I want to ask. But it feels that if I don’t talk about him as much as possible, he will disappear when I’m not paying attention.

  “He likes you, Dove. Not much else to say.” Laz looks over, his eyes tired. The water polo team made it to the playoffs this year, and as soon as that ended, he had to launch right into prepping for final projects and exams.

  I miss juggling completely different activities. When I was playing soccer, I felt balanced; on the field I could stop worrying about tests and grades and just lose myself in the game, and when I was in the classroom I didn’t have to worry about strategies for upcoming matches.

  Laz doesn’t complain, but all I have to do is look at him to know when he’s overwhelmed.

  “Is it weird that we like each other?” I ask.

  Down the street, the train stops at the California Blue Line station. Faintly, I hear the brakes squeal and the doors fly open and the automated voice announcing the stop.

  Laz shakes his head. “I didn’t expect it, but it’s good to see you like this.”

  “Like what?”

  He opens the door of the laundromat, motioning for me to go in ahead of him. The neat rows of stainless steel machines steadily hum and gurgle while the TV on the back wall blares a rowdy judge show. The woman who manages in the afternoons nods at us as she straightens a row of wheeled wire carts.

  I plop the plastic tub of detergent on top of an empty machine. “Like what?” I prompt when he doesn’t answer me.

  Laz takes his time emptying the smocks into the washer, then he drops the bag in with them. “Like… happy.”

  “How am I normally?” I think of my conversation with my aunt last night. Even she seemed to think there was a palpable change in me, and we haven’t seen each other in forever.

  Laz considers this as we sink into the chairs by the vending machines. He digs into his pocket and pulls out a couple of dollars. “Focused,” he finally answers.

  Focused. The same word my mother used to describe Mimi and me. A word that described Mom when she was my age, according to Carlene. I wonder if there was ever a time Mom wanted to wild out—just completely break all her own mother’s rules.

  “I’ve never seen you let anything distract you like this before,” Laz continues.

  “I’ve never met anyone like Booker, I guess.”

  “You guess? Mitchell was boring as hell.”

  “Yeah, well.” I shrug. “I get that now. And there’s nothing boring about Booker.”

  Laz makes a face. It’s slight—just a twist of his lips—but I notice immediately.

  “What?” I say.

  He feeds his money into the machine, and a bottle of soda tumbles out seconds later. “I just wonder… how long do you think this can go on?”

  His words stab at the bubble of happiness I’ve been gliding around in since last night. I shove him when he sits back down. “What the hell, Laz?”

  “I’m not trying to be an asshole. I’m just being realistic. So you keep seeing him and you keep liking him more and more.… If you’re already sneaking out now, your mom’s gonna find out.”

  “Maybe she won’t if we don’t tell her.”

  “Or she’ll find out about everything like she always does and then you’ll be grounded all summer.”

  Laz is right. There is something disturbingly clairvoyant about my mother. She’s so intuitive it makes me wonder if she can see something in me that even I can’t at times.

  “My aunt seems so different from my mom. She’s really chill.” I bring my knees up and wrap my arms around them.

  “Isn’t everyone chiller than your mom?”

  He has a point. My mother is so invested in making everything about our lives look good and respectable that she’s always on edge.

  “Okay, what’s your best-case scenario with this whole thing?” he asks.

  “That I introduce him and she likes him and we can go out without sneaking around.”

  “Right,” Laz says, and it makes me smile, to think of things going so easily with my mother. Until: “But then that all goes to shit when she finds out he’s been in jail.”

  “It wasn’t jail,” I say quickly. “It was juvie. There’s a difference.”

  “Have you met your mom? The only thing she’s gonna care about is that Cook County had its hands on him.”

  The happy bubble officially bursts. I know Laz isn’t saying this to be mean. He’s never been more right about anything. Even if my mother did like Booker, she’d never let me date someone with a past like his. It doesn’t fit in with her plan.

  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised when I heard he’d been in trouble. But I think sometimes people judge situations too quickly without considering the people behind them. The more I know Booker, the more I like him.

  “I’m not saying you shouldn’t see him.” Laz twists open his bottle of soda. “I just don’t think your mom’s gonna be cool with it.”

  I stare at the judge show on TV, where a white woman with watery brown eyes is pleading her case.

  “There’s a party this weekend,” Laz says slowly. “Sort of a last hurrah before we have to give up our lives for exams.”

  “I know,” I say. “Booker told me.”

  “You should come.”

  “How am I going to get out of the house for that? You know she’ll find out right away t
hat no parents are going to be there.”

  Laz pauses. Says, “Tell her we’re going to a movie or something. I’ve got your back.”

  “Really?”

  “You’re my best friend. Of course I do.”

  “Thank you,” I say. He doesn’t have to help me out with this. I know it puts him in an awkward position; Ayanna wouldn’t be very happy if she learned he was helping me sneak out to places I’m not supposed to be. I don’t want to create any unnecessary tension between her and my mother… but I also want to have a life.

  I used to worry that Laz and I would grow apart once he started getting more involved in sports and I devoted all my time to academics. It’s hard enough not going to the same school. But every time I think we might be growing apart, he does something to show me he cares.

  I nudge him when he takes a break from chugging his soda. “What are we gonna get into this summer?”

  “Definitely the beach,” he says, and I nod right away. Summer isn’t summer without at least a handful of trips to Montrose Beach. “I want to hit up Ribfest this year. And the lineup for Ruido Fest is crazy good, but I gotta get a loan from my mom. Tickets are ridiculous. What’s on your list?”

  “Um, I don’t know,” I say. “I guess I haven’t really thought about it.”

  Laz gives me a look, a smile teasing at the corners of his mouth. “The only thing you’re thinking about is seeing Booker.”

  “Busted.”

  It’s true. I’m still on my Booker high. Not as much as before I talked to Laz, but it’s still there. I can’t let go of this… whatever it is with Booker.

  Not yet.

  I’M SITTING IN THE KITCHEN SATURDAY MORNING, EATING A LATE BREAKFAST alone, when my phone rings.

  Mimi.

  I answer it right away—even though it’s a video chat and I’m still in my pajamas, my black curls pulled into a lazy Afro puff.

  “Good morning,” Mimi trills like she’s starring in a princess movie. She used to wake me up that way sometimes when I’d pressed snooze too long and we were going to be late for school. Even when she was younger, she liked to be up earlier than everyone else.