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

here on the corner, begging for food and having to sleep up in alleys, do you? But if you wanna leave, go ahead. I ain’t gonna stop you.” He watched me, waiting for me to look over at the door.  
    I ain’t need nobody to tell me it was a test. He was waiting for me to slip up. I knew how Ricky thought. If I was leaving him, it was because somebody else was waiting to take care of me. And wasn’t no man going to take care of some woman and her chile if she wasn’t giving it up.  
    “Pecan?”
    “I ain’t going anywhere.”  
    “How I’m supposed to believe you? How I’m supposed to leave you alone tomorrow while I’m up at the gym? You think I wanna come home find my wife and kid gone?”
    “...No.”
    “So, how I’m supposed to know? Unless...unless you say it was all a mistake. Maybe you was just overwhelmed with all the love you got for me. That it?”
    I nodded at first but he needed to hear the words. “Yeah.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah. I just...I ain’t know what to do with all the...the love I got for you.”
    Ricky planted a kiss on my forehead then threw a clean towel into the sink. The water came out in a rush so I knew it was cold. He brought it back to me dripping wet. Since Ricky ate and slept boxing he knew all about injuries and how to make things feel better. So, I told myself I was in good hands.

Best of It

    "M AMA , LOOK .”  
    M Y BABY was always finding something to play with, didn’t seem to matter to her that it wasn’t a toy. Her baby hands slapped up against the fragile wall and it rewarded her with bits of plaster and flecks of paint. White layers on yellow on white. She watched it rain down like it was just for her. I prayed she wouldn’t think to put any of it in her mouth but she started to squat and I forgot all about the blood-stained shirt. Cold water they say will take out anything if you soak it long enough. I was just going to have to wait and see.  
    “No, no, baby.”
    She was a bit on the chubby side, even for two years old, so I always felt bad that we ain’t have money to get her more clothes as she grew. Her dresses came too short and shirts fell too high. It was a good thing she was too young to realize. Even my clothes were faded and outdated. I saw girls my age strutting down the street in bell bottoms and those shirts that barely came to their navels. Tried to imagine myself in one of those outfits, my hair kinky all the way to the end. Ricky said those girls were working their way around to being dikes. Said that girls like me, innocent and all from the South, new to the big city, said we had to be extra careful because they preyed on girls like us. I ain’t tell him that I kinda liked most of the things they said. About doing for yourself and having a voice...yeah sounded real good to me right about then. But I ain’t say anything.  
    I took Nikki on my lap and we sat on the window sill, looking down on the folks as they passed under the train tracks. I swear Nikki looked at me like I was wearing some scary kinda mask. Like I used to be her mama but had turned into something else. When she got a little excited and started banging on the window I was relieved. As long as she was focused on something else, we were good. Until one of the guys on the ground looked up. We were only on the second floor. He could see us, see me. My hands started to shake and by the time I looked back out the window he was gone. I told myself he didn’t see anything, wasn’t anything to see really. He was probably looking at the baby, not me. The only mirror we had came with the apartment. It was old and foggy, blurring most of what I didn’t want to see anyway. The bruises and swelling. But the cut that ran straight down the middle of my bottom lip, damn near split it in two. Ricky said I ain’t need stitches and I believed him because I didn’t wanna explain it to no doctor. I’d promised myself I wasn’t going to leave the apartment until my face went back to