Free Birdie by Tracey Lindberg Page B

Maggie’s place and then from Val’s, a spark of something left the house at Little Loon. Once her mom had left, it felt like there was no air left in the house. So, she went to live with her auntie, for the first time. Auntie Val was still partying then and Bernice remembers doing most things alone in Grandetowne. Shopping forgroceries. Getting smokes for Val. Making her lunches. Walking to school.
    What is her normal, that which sits in the bed with her, was once foreign to Bernice. Her heels dig into the frayed sheets, almost imperceptibly, as she sees herself trying to make the transition from There to Here. Often, she recalls, she could hear the grandmothers whispering to her as she walked along the path to that school. For a long time she thought she was crazy, hearing voices and all, but she came to know that this was regular and normal for her. She remembers that she had stopped to buy a Coke from Lou’s! corner store. Lou, or some Lou-looking man, as always, eyed her warily. No big deal, she was used to it. Still, she is certain she had to stifle the urge to stick her tongue out at him.
    Cutting through the courthouse parking lot and looking towards the steps (where busy-looking men in business-looking suits walk quickly in and out of the doors) Bernice had always felt an increasing sense of dread every time she took a step closer to school. The courthouse was perched on top of the hill. When she reached the top she looked down at Big Valley with all of its varied splendour. The heat rose with purpose from the blackened asphalt urged forcefully into the potholes along the road.
    She could see the A&W sign to the north peeking up from behind the mall. At that time, her Auntie Val lived across the street from the restaurant. It was a drive-in then. When Bernice’s mom left she had dropped her off to live with Val, and the three of them walked over and sat in the one booth located inside of the restaurant and ordered cheap hamburgers andcoffee. The memory is fat with meaning that she can’t decipher, and as she captures the moment in her mind she hears a bird-like trill come from her throat and compete with the noise of the bakery for a place to land.
    She knows that they did not talk.
    Once they were done and got outside, Maggie had asked Bernice if she was full. She answered that she was because even if she was hungry then there was nothing that could be done about it and she didn’t want her mom to feel bad. Auntie Val offered her a cough drop, they walked across the street to the rundown apartment block (no security door or lock to impede their progress) and walked up the rickety stairs to Valene’s apartment in the Pecker Palace. It was, she remembers, a room with many doors. Instead of walls, the apartment had doors that led directly to the main hallway. She used to pretend that the doors led to exotic places: islands with palm trees, castles with hidden rooms, or caves with treasure buried within. This was hard to sustain when drunks pounded on the door mistakenly. Those times she had just wished the doors led to other rooms. Rooms with locks.
    She remembers her mom hugging her and telling her to be good. To be a good helper to her auntie. To try to fit in. In her little room at Lola’s, she knows she has never and will likely never fit in anywhere. She can feel that hug. The warmth. Resignation. There was no finality in that hug. Her mom took a last look around the apartment before leaving and said, “I’m going to make you some curtains.” Bernice had wondered anxiously when they would get the window coverings, when her mom would come again, when she would come to get herfor good. So she could go with her. To. Someplace. Some new place. Some home.
    Once she moved in with her aunt, the apartment seemed no less forlorn, but she got used to it. Every school day she walked down the hill and then turned left at the Sears store at the base of the hill. There were never exhibits in the Sears store windows,