How to Knock a Bravebird from Her Perch : The First Novel in the Morrow Girls Series (9780985751616) (27 page)

I’d brought my lunch as usual and was finishing up my third cup of coffee. The clocks said I had about four minutes to get back to my station but Helen ain’t notice. All she saw was me.

“Pecan, you listening to me?” Helen reached under the table and took my hand like it was a secret. “I know you. This ain’t how you are. There’s women like this and then...then there’s women like us. We not like this.” She looked over her shoulder at the other ladies crowded around the main tables. They’d sent her over to talk some sense into me, either that or they wanted to know if all the rumors were true. “They say you was up in his office for damn near an hour.”

“So.”

“So? So, what was you doing in there? Huh? I mean you gotta know how that looks. You only been here a few months and you get whatever hours you want—and you up in his office all the time doing God knows...You not thinking clearly. What with Ricky and the divorce and all.”

“I think just fine. Ain’t nothing wrong with how I think!”

“I’m sorry. That came out wrong.”

I’d been right about my co-worker’s assumptions about me. Was just the kind of stuff Ricky would throw at me in court. Say I wasn’t a fit mama. I took a deep breath and forgave Helen. I needed as many folks on my side as possible.

“It ain’t like that. Okay? He just like talking to me. He think of me like a daughter. It…It ain’t like that.”

I'
D
MENTIONED
TO
M
R
. B
RYER
about not having a bed and next thing I knew there was a Sears delivery truck outside my house and two real nice men came in and set it up for me. He said it was a loan and that someday I could pay him back. It was a nice enough bed. Not as big as the one I’d picked out but big enough. And every night that week I went to sleep, thinking maybe, just maybe, that would be the night I stayed asleep. But then just like always the clock would strike 2:00 or 2:15 or 2:47 and I’d jerk up outta bed like it was on fire. Only one thing on my mind. I’d sit there in the dark, listening to my house move, thinking about if I’d locked this door or locked that window. Of course none of that mattered because Ricky ain’t need an invitation to come up in my house. He had a key and I didn’t have the money to change the locks.

I
HEARD
MY
NAME
over the loudspeaker, asking me to come to the office.
 

“So...how are things?” He asked and reached out to rub my shoulder. “How do you like your new bed? Does it feel good to you?”

“It’s nice.”

“I’m glad. I’m really glad, Belinda.” And he was. It was so obvious I ain’t have to think twice about it.
 

I’d been working there for three months and made fifteen hundred dollars. I hadn’t saved a penny. Child support was slow coming.

“Yeah, um...I was thinking about—um actually I kinda wanted to talk to you about getting more hours?”

“More hours? I thought you wanted to spend as much time with your kids as you could?”

“I did—I do. I just need more money.”

“Hmm.” Mr. Bryer stood up, yanking his waistband to a higher more comfortable position and walked around behind me. His short sweaty fingers went to work massaging my shoulders. “More hours...I’m not sure if that’s something we can accommodate. If I give you more hours then I have to take them away from somebody else.”

“Oh. I ain’t mean—”

“No, now just let me think.” He sighed, leaning more so into my skin.

I ain’t mind letting him think. The harder he thought the more relaxed I got. I ain’t even care that his hands were a little wet because they were so warm, kneading my shoulders, neck, and back like they were made of flour and butter. Ain’t even come to me that it wasn’t natural for nobody’s boss to be doing that.

“I have been considering promoting a few girls...but...it would mean more responsibility. Do you think you could handle that?” The massage stopped suddenly. “Belinda?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“You’d be in charge of a few of the sales associates. Just making sure they don’t stay on break too long, that they don’t have any problems with the customers...that sort of thing. How do you feel about that?”

Wasn’t much I felt good about. I’d just about got used to doing stuff just because it was necessary. Necessary to protect my girls. Put food on the table. That had to be enough for me.

“Belinda?”

His fingers stretched down as far as they could until they were just above the round softness of my chest. He ain’t really touch them. Not really, just kinda hovered over them. His wedding ring glinted against my skin but I tried not to notice. He was my friend. Most days it felt like he was my only friend. Took me to lunch when I needed it. Gave me a place to sleep. And now he was about to give me a promotion. I was lucky to have him.

“Mr. Bryer?” His secretary poked her head into the office.
 

I couldn’t see her from where I was sitting but he jerked halfway around and his left hand slipped down the front of my blouse, resting against my boring beige bra. It wasn’t an accident I was sure. His clammy fingers wiggled against my skin, squeezing my tit like he expected to get some juice from it. I wished I could make myself disappear. Click my heels three times and be sitting some place else. How could I have been so stupid? I’d been wrong about Ricky. Wrong about Heziah. And I was wrong about Mr. Bryer. All that affection he had for me…wasn’t no parts of it in the family way. Men ain’t do the things he’d done for me without getting a little something in return. Everybody had seen it before I did. The girls in his office. Helen. I swallowed hard and glared at his desk until my tears knew better than to come pouring out.

“What is it, Mrs. Holfstein?” He answered quickly then raised his hand back to my shoulder.

“You have a phone call on line two.”

T
HE
D
EPARTMENT
OF
C
HILDREN
and Family Services sent a new woman to check up on us. She was younger than the one I’d met at the hospital but she was wearing a gray suit, just the same. She sat at my kitchen table questioning me from a list she probably used with every family she came across.

“So, you were recently promoted. That sounds promising but explain to me again, Mrs. Morrow, how your youngest daughter ended up in the emergency room a few weeks back.”

I’d already spun the damn story too many times but she sat there, asking to hear it one more time like I was suddenly about to break down and tell the truth or something. It’d only been twenty minutes or so but I was on my second fantasy. Fantasy about knocking her head clean off so she’d stop asking me all those damn questions.

“Mrs. Morrow?”

“Stop calling me that.”

Should’ve been enough I’d done the right thing and offered the woman my last cup a coffee. Had to sit back and watch as she took two little dainty sips then put it back on its saucer. Watch it get cold while she came up with one stupid question after another. She’d told me her name but I ain’t make no effort to remember it. To me she was just the gray woman, because she was covered from head to toe in it. The gray woman from DCFS come to take my kids.

“Why you here?”

“I’m here to make sure this is a safe environment for your kids,” she said without even bothering to look up from her ratty old notebook. “Now back to the hospital. You decided to leave, taking your daughter with you because...”

“She mine. Why I’m not gone take her with me? Where she supposed to go?”

“Well. You were supposed to wait until the hospital’s social worker had assessed the situation. You didn’t do that.” Her beady little eyes were just as tired as they were hard and if it wasn’t for the things coming out her mouth I would’ve felt sorry for her. “Mrs. Morrow?”

“It was an accident. I told you already. She slept in it and it got up in her skin.”

“And you didn’t notice?”

“You got kids? You notice everything they do? It was an accident!”

“I see. And the beating your other daughter received—”

“Ricky did that. Wasn’t me. Why you don’t go asking him about what he done?”

She stopped writing long enough to tip the corner of her mouth up at me. Wasn’t no kinda happiness in that smile, was more like she was laughing at me. Making fun of me. I wanted to lean across the table and slap it right off her mouth. Got to thinking so hard on it that I ain’t even hear her next question.

“Mrs. Morrow?”

“What?”

“This would go a lot smoother if you would cooperate.”

“Your coffee gotta be cold by now. You gone drink it?” I asked just as I poured it down the drain. She ain’t want it to begin with. I ain’t know why folks ain’t just say what they meant. She could’ve just said no thank you and I’d of let it be but n’all she had to go wasting my last cup of coffee.

Just then Nat came up in the kitchen. Wasn’t nothing special about that but it was something in the way she was walking. Kinda slow and bouncy-like, and in her Easter dress that was a year too small for her. She skipped in, smiling at the DCFS woman then at me. “Pick me up,” she said, throwing both hands up over her head. Ain’t matter that I was entertaining company. But that wasn’t special neither because she was the baby. It was what happened once I did that drove the social worker crazy. Nat squeezed my neck real tight, looking all peaceful in the face then said real loud, “I LOVES YOU, MAMA. YOU THE BESTEST MAMA.”

The others had put her up to it and it would’ve been cute if it wasn’t for the sinking feeling I was getting in my gut. My company wasn’t charmed by my baby. Her lips got real thin and she started scribbling real fast on a fresh page in her notebook.

“I’ll need to speak with the children now.”

“Why? I answered all your questions already. I did.”

“I need to speak with them. Alone. Would you please call them down?”

“What you gonna ask them? Stuff about...about me? Or about their daddy?”

“Mrs. Morrow—”

“I said don’t call me that.”

“Belinda—”

“Don’t call me that neither. You ain’t my friend. You can’t go around calling folks by they first name then trying to take their kids!”

That smile came back and it was probably a nervous tick or something but I ain’t wanna see it like that. Was better if she was making fun of me. That way I could let out some of the anger that lived inside me.

“Ma’am?”

“I ain’t old enough to be nobody’s ma’am.”

“I will need to take a look around the house anyway so I guess I could just go on up to them.”

“They not gonna talk to you about their daddy unless I say it’s okay. And even then...it ain’t a guarantee.”

“Fine.”

So, we both went upstairs. I took a slow drag on a fresh cigarette while she looked around, asking me if I had any weapons. I didn’t. Then she asked me why I ain’t cover the outlets.
 

“Because my girls know better.”

She sighed and went back to writing in her pitiful looking notebook. I wondered how many families she’d ruined with that notebook.

They were waiting for us by the time she got done looking around. The three of them sitting up, looking all unnatural and proper. Their feet hung down over the sides of their beds, not moving at all. Mya and Jackie on one. Nikki on the other.