Birdie and me running through the park, scrambling up the grassy slopes, kicking up the nighttime debris. Crushed Styrofoam burger boxes, empty wine bottles and aerosol cans, used condoms like puddles of wrinkled skin among the tufts of grass and syringes scattered everywhere. A single mud-covered sneaker with no laces, a striped red silk scarf that Birdie wanted to drape round herself until I told her it might be infected with smallpox and that’s how the Indians had died, catching it from contaminated blankets brought by the European settlers. She burst into tears and said I was lying but I told her for sure I read it in a history book at the library. Then she covered my mouth with a grubby hand and said I should stop reading so many books because they were turning me into a mean, cruel witch.
We ran back and forth across the bridge, past the joggers and the cyclists, trailing sticks along the red metal railing and making a loud clunk clunk sound. Louder than the rushing of the Saint Anthony Falls. Louder than the noise of cars and trucks roaring through the nearby city streets.
I held on to Birdie’s hand and pulled her along so fast I could hear the chesty rasp of her breathing. She was whining, complaining her tummy hurt. But I knew it was only hunger because I felt the same gnawing in my own stomach. Ahead, the city skyline rose, shimmering in the sun, rich with the promise of food and relief from the never-ending ache.
Sometimes in the summer when the tourists thronged the river walks, we stood by the hot dog vendor until he threw us a bag of chips or a hot dog just so we’d move on. We loaded them with ketchup, mustard, sweet pickle and onions. Then we sat on a bench and wolfed them down, our hands, mouths and faces sticky with ketchup, the mustard dripping down our shirtfronts.
We watched the families stroll by, the happy kids holding ice-cream cones in one hand, the other clutching the hands of their parents. Sometimes they pointed and stared at us, but I just stuck my tongue out until they started crying. Birdie placed her hand on my arm and told me to stop being so rotten. I said I was only trying to protect her and she leaned her ketchup-smeared cheek against me and kissed my shoulder. Told me she loved me more than anyone in the world, which was easy because no one else cared about us. Then she made me play Pick the perfect family and together we studied each cluster of kids and parents and decided which we’d like to go home with if they asked us. Birdie always picked the families with only one child.
Our first placement after the group home was on the other side of the Stone Arch Bridge, with Rosa Flores-Rivera, a tiny dark-haired woman who lived alone above a launderette. Her children – two sons and a daughter – were grown and lived in California. Rosa had a heart full of love to give and we were the beneficiaries.
Too bad it couldn’t last.
12
Over steaming cups of hot chocolate and a full plate of cinnamon buns Rosa told us she was lonely and missed being a mom. Birdie and I devoured the whole plate of pastries between us and Rosa didn’t say a thing.
At first, it was like heaven living there. Stretched out on the blue flowered sofa, bowls of popcorn on our laps watching The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Breathing in the clean, soapy smell that wafted upstairs from the washing machines below. Vinnie, an ex-marine, lived in the apartment next to us. He had a bad case of the shakes. Rosa said he’d seen men tortured and killed in a war in some Far Eastern country and couldn’t get the memories out of his head. He ordered pizzas or Chinese takeaway all the time. We heard the delivery boys ringing the doorbell at six o’clock every night.
Rosa cooked us food we’d never tasted before. Corn tortillas filled with beans, chicken tacos seasoned with lime and cilantro, omelets studded with red peppers and sprinkled with jalapeno cheese. Birdie and I sat at the kitchen table mouths wide open like a pair of baby birds, while Rosa’s nimble fingers conjured up dish after dish of tasty food. Sometimes she’d leave a covered dish of leftovers outside Vinnie’s place and next day he touched his hand to his forehead in a salute of thanks, but he never spoke or looked us in the eye.
I felt a strange sort of bond with him because even at that early age I understood how tough it is to look right at people – to meet their eyes. You can’t unless you’ve had many people cheering you on in your life, loving you enough to wipe the snot from your nose, or cherish the cute way your face wrinkles up when you eat a pickle. To care about your cuts, scrapes, bruises, fears and nightmares or pat your head and tell you it doesn’t matter when you wet the bed. A whole, sound person needs all of this to build up enough confidence to look a person in the eye. Looking away means you’ve already accepted your own insignificance. You don’t matter. You trust nobody. Because you’ve already realized nobody gives a damn about you anyway. Vinnie understood that. He’d already seen what humans can do to each other. He knew how crappy life could really be.
Within two months of arriving at Rosa’s, Birdie and I filled out until our cheeks were pink and chubby. Rosa scrubbed and mended our clothes, took us to the thrift stores to pick out pretty dresses that she altered on her sewing machine, and threaded ribbons into our clean, braided hair. At our new school
