The Revolution of Birdie Randolph Read online

  But I think what I hate most is the tiny, everyday injustices: like how I can’t eat at the diner around the corner because she thinks it’s unsanitary. And how she stops me from giving money to the homeless people in our neighborhood because she believes it’s better to donate to shelters and food banks. I’m so used to her snatching my hand back, stage-whispering, “They’re just going to spend it on drugs and alcohol anyway,” that I hesitate now before I part with my spare change even when I’m alone.

  This isn’t the greatest act of resistance I could’ve carried out, but it’s something. I think Mimi would be proud of me.

  Having my phone is probably the only way I’ll survive the next month. Being confined to the apartment and salon is going to be torture: listening to the same marginally funny jokes Ayanna has been telling since I’ve known her; watching Mom’s prim-and-proper routine dampen the good cheer of the salon; studying for the stupid SATs when I should be lying on the beach with Laz.

  If I can’t see Booker, at least I can talk to him. What would have happened if I’d just disappeared on him, if his texts went unanswered? Laz would tell him I was grounded, but what if he didn’t believe him? I wouldn’t want him to think I’d changed my mind—that he was too much for me after all.

  A half hour after I hear my parents shut off all the lights and go to their room, I slip out to the hallway, taking care not to step on the squeaky part of the floor beneath the runner. The strip of space under Mimi’s door is dark; Carlene returned to the apartment after I’d already gone to my room. I hold my breath and get as close as I can to my parents’ bedroom door.

  They aren’t whispering. Not really. Their voices are lower but not contained. Dad sounds exhausted.

  “I don’t know what you want me to do, Kitty. She’s your sister. If you don’t want her here, you need to tell her yourself.”

  “So then I kick her out and what? Where does she go, Raymond? I don’t want to be blamed if she relapses.”

  My father sighs. “I think the most important thing is that she doesn’t relapse, not who takes the blame.”

  “I’m just saying, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Birdie starts acting out days after she shows up.”

  There’s a long pause and I lean closer, waiting.

  Then: “Carlene deserves to know her, Kitty.”

  “And I’ve worked too hard to have her ruin everything we’ve built. She’s a good girl, our Birdie.”

  “Yes, she is,” my father says, his voice softening. “And you have to trust that.”

  I NEVER THOUGHT I’D LOOK FORWARD TO SAT PREP, BUT ANY CONTACT WITH the outside world is welcome after my first week of being grounded. There’s only so much time I can spend in the salon, and I think my mother has been telling everyone they have to be on their best behavior because there’s not even a hint of a juicy conversation when I’m around.

  Mom drives me to the first study session.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I say as I buckle myself into the passenger seat. “I could’ve taken the train.”

  “I want to make sure you get started off right,” she says, but what she really means is that she wants to make sure I go. I mess up one time and she’s convinced I’m the most rebellious teenager in Chicago. She says she’ll be back to pick me up when I’m done.

  As soon as I step out of the car, I feel like I’m breathing for the first time in weeks. I gulp in air through my mouth. I don’t get much of a break having to be at the shop so often—and with my mom just one floor below me when I’m not there. I’ve been going up to the roof more, to get some space of my own when the apartment feels particularly suffocating. But it’s not enough. I miss seeing people—one person in particular.

  I’m early, so only a handful of people are sitting in the room when I walk in. My eyes scan the space, finally landing on—oh, fuck.

  Mitchell Simmons.

  My ex.

  He looks up and his mouth drops open, but only for a moment. He quickly closes it, nods almost indiscernibly, and looks back down at his desk where his workbook is already open.

  The last time I saw him was the last day of school, and I didn’t expect to see him again until we start junior year. Seriously, out of all the SAT courses in the city, he had to end up in this room?

  I choose the seat farthest from him, my heart beating too fast. I don’t have feelings for him anymore; we had a clean break. It’s just jarring to see him when I wasn’t expecting him. We went from talking every day and hanging out every weekend to acting like we’d never known each other at all.

  The instructor walks in then. A white guy who looks like he’s in his late twenties with round metal-framed glasses and pink cheeks. He nods at us and plops his messenger bag on the table up front.

  I slowly pull my workbook from my bag, thinking of the first time I went out with Mitchell. We spent a Sunday afternoon at Navy Pier, which I hated but didn’t say because I didn’t know him very well and everyone seemed so excited that we were going out. By everyone, I mean our parents. Mitchell’s mom is a surgeon at Rush and shares patients with my dad sometimes. When they found out we were at the same high school, our families went out for dinner and we’ve been pushed together ever since.

  “How was it?” Mom asked when I returned.

  I was full of cheese-and-caramel popcorn, which was honestly the best part of the day. Mitchell looked terrified the entire time we were on the Ferris wheel and sat as far away from me as possible. He only confessed to being afraid of heights after we were safely off. He looked bored the rest of the time and I was surprised when, at the end of the date, he said he’d text me later.

  “Fine,” I said to my mother, shrugging. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. That was it. Nothing about it had been exciting or extra terrible or anything out of the ordinary. It was just fine.

  “It’s your first date, Birdie.” Mom cupped my face in her hand, smiling. “You’ll remember this forever.”

  No, I probably won’t, I thought. And then I wanted to say that just because she and Dad had been high school sweethearts, that didn’t mean Mitchell and I would be together forever. But what I said was “It wasn’t a date.”

  We didn’t hold hands. We didn’t kiss. And I could tell he wasn’t trying to hold back from doing either. I had better chemistry with our toaster than Mitchell Simmons. I didn’t think he liked me at all, but he texted me that evening, as promised. And the next day and the day after that, even when we’d seen each other at school. Then I started sitting with him at lunch, ditching my old soccer friends, and that’s how we fell into a relationship.

  I slide a pencil onto my desk and try not to look at Mitchell’s dark hair and the backs of his olive-skinned arms. I try not to think about how my mother will never accept Booker the way she accepted Mitchell, and that it has nothing to do with the fact that our families aren’t friends.

  The instructor leans against the podium and holds up his hand. His name is Jared, and his voice is shockingly deep as he says we’re going to be concentrating on reading, writing, and math concepts this summer to help us with the test in a few months.

  Mitchell taps a rhythm against his workbook with a mechanical pencil as Jared talks. Not just any mechanical pencil—the vintage Cartier his mother got him for his birthday last year, engraved with his initials.

  Jared says we’ll start out talking about numbers and operations, and I’m actually happy when he passes out worksheets. Relieved that I’ll have something to focus on besides the awkwardness of being across the room from my ex-boyfriend.

  I keep my head down as I’m packing up my things after class. Still, I can feel when Mitchell passes my row. I think he pauses, like he wants to say hi, but he keeps moving and when I look up, I see the back of him walking out the door.

  Mom is waiting outside when I walk out a minute later, double-parked beside a car with her flashers on.

  “How was it?” she asks as I slide in.

  “Fine.” I pause, becau
se I usually regret telling her anything about my life. But she’s one of the few people I see on a daily basis now. I’m feeling desperate. “Mitchell is in my class.”

  She can’t even keep the smile off her face. “Oh, that’s so great, Birdie!”

  “Great? Did you hear what I said? Mitchell is in my class. My ex.”

  “I thought your breakup was cordial.”

  “I guess.” If you consider cordial being that it came out of nowhere and he did it on a Saturday night, after we’d sat through dinner and a movie.

  She turns off the hazards and flips on her blinker, watching the street in her side mirror before she starts driving. “Well, sometimes we have to be around people we don’t necessarily want to be. And honestly, I don’t know why you two broke up in the first place. You were such a good couple.”

  “But we weren’t, or we’d still be together,” I say. What we had was boring and nothing special, even though I tried hard to be a good girlfriend to him. But I was mortified when he dumped me first. I wondered if people thought that meant I liked him more than he liked me.

  “All I’m saying is we were all sorry to see you two split up.” Mom sighs like she always does when I talk about Mitchell: wistfully. “And you never know, Birdie. Maybe you’ll get back together sometime in the future.”

  “Definitely not.”

  I liked Mitchell’s brain best of all. Loved how he knew a little bit about everything and how quickly he retained facts. One of my favorite things was to test him by throwing out a random topic and seeing what he knew off the top of his head. He rarely disappointed.

  The kissing wasn’t bad, exactly. It’s just that he never seemed that into it. More like he was going through the motions. It’s even more obvious now that I know what it’s like to be really kissed, by Booker.

  Mom turns to me after she’s stopped at a red light. “Okay, Birdie,” she says, nodding.

  But it bugs me how amused she looks, like eventually I will come to my senses and agree with everything she’s saying.

  It annoys me that she thinks she knows everything about my life when she doesn’t know what I want at all.

  When we get home, Mom parks and goes straight back to the shop for her next appointment. I’m headed upstairs, maybe to sit on the roof for a while, when I see Carlene walking toward the building. She’s with someone—a man I don’t know. He’s tall and thin with dark skin, and he walks stooped over, like he’s much older than he looks. They’re both smoking, and they stop a couple of doors down, so deep in conversation that I don’t think she even sees me.

  I sit on the stoop and wait, soaking in the sun. It’s hot now, but the nasty, stifling humidity of Chicago summer still hasn’t kicked in. I watch Carlene and the man. They stop talking and take long, silent drags from their cigarettes. Then they put them out under their shoes, exchange a few more words, and hug before he walks away.

  She slips her cigarette pack into the pocket of her shorts and makes her way toward the stoop. She smiles when she sees me.

  “You look happy,” she says.

  I shrug. “I’m not.”

  “Well, you at least look like getting out of this prison did you some good.” She motions for me to scoot over so she can sit next to me. I scoot. “How was your class?”

  “Fine. Boring.” I think about mentioning Mitchell, but I don’t think I want to get into that again.

  “Well, at least it was a different kind of boring than sitting around here.”

  “I guess. Who was that guy?” He’s disappeared from our view, but I nod in the direction he walked.

  “Emmett? He goes to my meetings. AA,” she clarifies.

  It still surprises me how open she is about her recovery. “Is he your sponsor?”

  “No,” she says, looking amused that I know the terminology. “But he’s trying really hard, like me. We help keep each other accountable.”

  I wonder how often she thinks about having a drink, but I don’t ask. I don’t want her to think I’m rude, even if she is so honest about her life. I am still just getting to know her, though I already feel more comfortable around her than my mother.

  “What are you going to do now?” I feel a bit like when I was younger and always asked Mimi what she was doing. But Laz isn’t around the shop today, and I don’t feel like being in there without him.

  “Go for a run,” she says. “Want to come?”

  Running was always a challenge when I played soccer. It kept me in shape to do my best on the field, but it never got easier. Doesn’t sound so bad now, though. I guess most things don’t when you’re grounded.

  “I can’t,” I say. “The whole punishment thing.”

  “Oh. Right.” She squints out at the traffic for a moment, then stands. “I’ll be back. Stay here.”

  Where am I going to go? I watch Carlene walk into the shop, the screen door slamming and voices floating out behind her. She returns a couple of minutes later, a grin lighting up her face.

  “The warden will allow it.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “That easy, huh?”

  “I’m still her older sister,” Carlene says. “And I know how much she hates looking bad in front of people, so I made sure to ask loudly in front of her client.”

  I laugh out loud, truly joyful for the first time in a week.

  Running through our neighborhood is different with my aunt by my side.

  First of all, she’s already on a friendly basis with people I’ve seen my whole life but never spoken to. She waves at the old man who owns the convenience store around the corner; he’s smoking a cigarette out front and calls out, “Afternoon, Miss Carlene!”

  A few minutes later, my aunt drops a couple of damp dollars into the cup of the woman who sits near the entrance of the train station. The woman doesn’t look up, but she presses her grimy fingers to her lips and blows a kiss in our direction. My face burns with guilt when I think about all the times I’ve ignored her, pushing down my own instinct to help someone who needs it. All because of my mother’s rules.

  “How do you already know everyone?” I huff next to my aunt. I can tell that I’m slowing her down, but she doesn’t complain, just silently adjusts her speed.

  She laughs. “That always used to bother your mom, how easily I made friends. She said I had no standards.”

  “Was Mom ever nice to you?” Mimi and I have our moments, but she’s thoughtful about her words.

  Carlene doesn’t answer for a while, not until we stop at a red light halfway down the block. She turns to me, still lightly jogging as we wait on the corner. “Your mom’s always been kind of… curt.”

  No kidding.

  “But she shows her love in other ways. She remembers things about me that no one else knows. She’s giving me a place to stay. Even our mom gave up on me before she died, but Kitty… she’s still here, you know? I don’t need her to be nice. And to be fair, I have gotten caught up with some people I had no business being around.”

  Our feet pound against the pavement in rhythm as we move, the light wind rushing in my ears and mixing with the sound of my breath. It actually feels good to run. The fresh air flowing through my nose and burning my lungs, my legs pushing forward with purpose. It’s still not easy, and I’m drenched with sweat, but I wonder why I stopped. Quitting soccer didn’t mean I had to quit everything connected to it.

  We head south, cutting through Humboldt Park so we can take in the lagoon and the majestic red-brick field house. We’re surrounded by kids playing and people running and walking with their dogs, and I feel so free that for a moment I forget I’m grounded.

  We run until we retrace our steps to the corner of our block. I’m exhausted but sad to be back home already. I felt so comfortable next to my aunt, like when I’m with Mimi. Like I don’t need to fill every moment of silence. Like it was okay to just be me.

  “Hey, kid,” she says after we catch our breath. “How many times have you been grounded before?”

  I bite my lip as I t
hink. “Twice. Once for lying about having done my homework so I could go to a sleepover, and the other time because I took the bus to Laz’s without telling my mom. She thought ten was too young to ride by myself.”

  Carlene twists her lips to the side, thinking. “Ten is kind of young now. We rode it alone at that age, though. I was ten and your mom was eight.”

  “I thought Grandma was strict like Mom.”

  “Oh, she was lax when it benefited her,” Carlene says, laughing. “She worked a lot, and since our father wasn’t around, I had to be the one who looked out for Kitty. So we rode the bus, went grocery shopping, made dinner most nights. We were living like little adults before we got to junior high.”

  I can’t imagine her taking care of my mother. Especially since my mom seems like the older one now.

  “I think that’s why she was hit so hard by who I turned out to be.” Carlene’s voice isn’t happy or sad. Just stating the facts. “Both of them were. I used to be so responsible and then—well, then Kitty and I basically switched roles.”

  My aunt peels off her tank top, pressing it against her forehead and then around her sports bra to soak up the sweat. She walks ahead of me when we meet someone on the sidewalk and I notice a tattoo peeking out from the bottom of her sports bra.

  “What’s that?” I point to her ribs.

  “Oh.” She stops and lifts the bra a couple of inches. It’s the outline of a bird in flight, small and faded but detailed in its shading. “I’ve had this forever. Probably about time to get it touched up.”

  I squint at her. “Does our whole family have an obsession with birds or something?”

  “Seems like it, huh?” She dabs her shirt against her chest and keeps walking. “I got a bird, my friend got a butterfly. We were young. And we were both so high, we barely remember it.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “What about you? Any ink?”

  I shake my head quickly. “I could never sneak that by my mom. And I haven’t thought about it. It doesn’t seem like me.”