Birthday Blues (8 page)

"Again!" Deja demands, so they sing it again.

It's raining, it's pouring,
The old man is snoring.
He bumped his head and went to bed
And couldn't get up in the morning.

"Again!" Deja says louder. And they sing it again. And again, and again, until Auntie Dee says, "Okay, enough." Then they just skip around the room humming.

Sheila Sharpe soon arrives. Deja opens the door just as Sheila's pushing her glasses up on her nose with her index finger. The first thing she says as she hands Deja a big box wrapped in the funnies from the Sunday paper is, "Sorry, we didn't have any wrapping paper."

"That's okay," Deja says. "Thanks." She puts the big box on the table next to Nikki's much smaller flat box wrapped in silver paper and a lavender ribbon. Deja guesses Nikki's gift might be a coffee-table book of beautiful houses for her future decorating business. She'd pointed it out to Nikki the last time Auntie Dee had taken them to the bookstore.

"This is exactly what I want for my birthday," she remembers saying while running her hand over the book's slick cover.

Nikki, Deja, and Sheila go out to the front porch to watch the rain. Even Bear—poor nearly forgotten Bear—seems to be watching the rain from his post on the porch swing.

"Can we swing on that?" Sheila asks.

"Our legs aren't long enough yet," Nikki explains.

"I'll push," Deja says.

Nikki and Sheila climb on, and Deja begins to push the swing while the rain comes down harder and harder.

After a while, Auntie Dee sticks her head out the door to say, "Well, it looks like your little friends Ayanna and Rosario are heading this way. I just spoke to their mothers on the telephone."

"You think they're bringing presents?" Nikki says.

Deja shrugs. At this point, she doesn't know what to think. Nothing is as she'd imagined. It's not as good as she'd imagined it would be three weeks ago ... but it's not as awful as she'd imagined it would be last night. Even with her daddy not coming. Like Auntie said, she probably didn't send the invitation to the right address. That's the reason. Next year they'll find out his correct address and send an invitation there. Then of course he'll come. He's her daddy.

The telephone rings again. And again. A few minutes later Auntie Dee's back announcing, "Three more, it seems. Melinda, ChiChi, and Keisha."

Deja counts. Eight all together. Enough for two games.

By two thirty, there are enough girls in Deja's living room to occupy all of the card tables. Excited, giggly voices fill the room. Deja, at the Monopoly table, with Park Place
and
Boardwalk, looks around. Almost all the girls from Room Ten are there. Deja is finally eight, like most of her classmates. Only Nikki and Rosario are still seven. What a satisfying feeling. Deja throws the dice and lands on Community Chest.

It's funny how one thought leads to another thought. Deja thinks of being eight. She thinks of how powerful and strong the number "eight" sounds, while "seven" sounds soft and babyish. "Eight" makes her think of a figure eight on ice. And that makes her think of skating, which makes her think of roller rinks, which leads her to Antonia's roller rink under the pounding rain. And Antonia sitting at her kitchen window, staring at it.

She reads the card.
Get out of jail free.
She sighs heavily. Not because of what it says—that should make her smile—but because she knows what she's going to do. She's going to sit there and feel
sorry
for
Antonia.
And she's not going to have all that much fun if she feels sorry for Antonia. She sets the card down and watches Keisha throw the dice. She tries to put Antonia out of her mind. But Antonia keeps popping back into it. Does this mean what she thinks it means?

"Yes. It does," she says under her breath, and the girls at her table glance up.

But Antonia took Deja's invitations out of the cubbies.

Deja frowns. Then she thinks,
It could have been Carlos or Ralph who took the invitations out of the cubbies.

Now she's feeling even sorrier for Antonia. When Auntie Dee stops by the table to replenish the potato chip bowl, Deja beckons for her to lean down. She whispers her idea in Auntie's ear, and Auntie breaks into a big smile. "I knew you'd want to do that," she says. "I knew you'd start to feel sorry for Antonia and want to invite her."

"You did?" Deja asks.

"You're my Deja, aren't you?"

Deja feels a surprising warmth wash over her. She likes the way Auntie Dee says "my Deja."

She watches Keisha move her wheelbarrow five spaces and land right on Park Place. Ha! Deja holds out her hand while Keisha counts Monopoly money into it.
This feels great,
Deja thinks. She places the money into the right piles and looks at it. She's probably going to win. She loves winning. But she doesn't love it more than hearing Auntie Dee say "my Deja."

"My Deja" tells her that even though she doesn't have her daddy—this year—she has her Auntie Dee. And, to Auntie Dee, she is "my Deja."

Plus, there's always next year to hope for.

Karen English
has been an elementary school teacher in urban neighborhoods for many years, and she wrote these books with her students in mind. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

Laura Freeman
has illustrated many books for children. Her drawings for this book were inspired by her own childhood. Laura lives with her husband and two children in Dunwoody, Georgia.