Free The Bird Market of Paris by Nikki Moustaki

of the glass with water. My dad had been given wine at lunch in grammar school in Paris, and he didn’t understand the strange taboo Americans had about alcohol.
    I’d study their wineglasses as they sipped, making the wine last through dinner. I gulped my glassful. The wine alchemized the water into a coarse, curly feeling juice that puckered my tongue. I’d ask for another. I could manage ten glasses before my mom cut me off, then I’d spend the next hour melting cocktail straws into the candle on the table, fascinated at how they disappeared as the flame licked the red plastic.
    Just before Christmas, the year I turned thirteen, I asked Poppy to sew me a raw silk black-and-white pinstriped pleated skirt for a holiday party my parents and I attended every year at their friends’ home in Coral Gables. Poppy sewed beautiful one-of-a-kind clothes for me whenever I needed something to wear for a party or the science fair at school. I had seen the black-and-white silk in his studio and loved the way it felt, soft and nubby, with enough starchiness to keep the pleats neat. My mom liked to dress me like a little girl, in baby doll dresses; that year, even though I didn’t own a bra yet, I wanted something grown-up.
    I paired the new pinstriped skirt—which I loved—with a red sweater, white tights, and black patent leather Mary Janes. I wasn’t allowed to wear makeup, but I did have lip gloss, so I shined my lips and scrunched my hair into ringlets, appearing like a child in the mirror. I had been aiming at teenager.
    The party was held at a large home with a hacienda feel, sliding glass doors and plate glass windows overlooking a central courtyard with a stone fountain. Terra-cotta flagstones led us from the driveway to the courtyard into the Christmas party, me hopping from stone to stone as if they were a hopscotch grid. My shiny Mary Janes reflected the blinking holiday lights, and I felt fancy in the silk skirt. Other guests wore slinky gold camisoles and tailored blazers, their jewelry glinting like sunlight on water. It was a party out of a TV commercial, revelers’ heads tossed back, mouths open in laughter, almost in slow motion.
    A waiter with a tray of champagne glasses greeted us. The blonde liquid imitated the lights from the Christmas tree and sparkled red, green, and gold, blinking and bubbling. I gazed at the array of glasses, and one of my earliest memories projected onto the tray—me at five years old, holding my mom’s hand at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, van Gogh’s Starry Night hanging far above my head, feeling transported by the yellow swirls against a sea of raven blue, not having words for the vision, only awe.
    I reached for a glass of champagne.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” My mom tried to seize the glass, so I gripped it harder.
    My dad waved a hand in the air, as if to clear away smoke. “Let her have it,” he said. “It’s fine. It’s Christmas.”
    My mom looked at me as if to say, “You got away with it this time,” then released my glass.
    The champagne lit my throat and chest. I liked the way the bubbles felt on my lips and the way the glass looked in my hand, like a crystal flower. I felt imbued with grown-up-ishness.
    I assessed the situation. If I walked around the party, away from my parents, and gulped this glass of champagne, I could grab another from a cruising waiter and make it seem like the same glass. My parents were preoccupied at parties; this was going to be easy. I slipped away from my mom, drank my first glass and pinched another from a tray, toured the courtyard, and did it again. Then again. I met my mom at the buffet table and piled a red plastic plate full of spiral-cut ham and baby quiches.
    â€œIs that the same glass?” my mom asked. She squinted her eyes at me. She knew it wasn’t.
    I reeled to the bar, tended by my childhood acquaintances, two boys three years older