Birdie Read Online Free PDF Page B

even in her room. The house got quiet soon after, and with the exception of her mother’s burdened steps across the floor (a sound she knew was a part of the post-party cleanup) there was no other sound in the house. She felt herself relax a bit and did the deep breathing that her doctor told her to do when she thought she felt her asthma coming on. There was still too much smoke in the air and the deep breathing made her feel dizzier. Still, she liked the house better this way, with just her and her mother there alone. Freda was still out at
Kohkom’
s, she spent most of her time there now, and would not be home until Monday.
    Her mom poked her head under the stairs, without knocking. “You want some Coke now, my girl?”
    She followed her mom to the kitchen, remarkably clean again, and filled up a glass. They sat at the table, it was one of their rituals, and she watched as her momma rolled smokes. Sometimes at night she would wake up to the tap tap tapping of her mom as she made sure the tobacco fell all the way to the filter. Her mom would sit up, sometimes for hours, just smoking and staring at the kitchen wall. Her silence scared Bernice, whowas dependent upon other people’s noise to fill her own quiet.
    Even through the smoke and beer fumes, her mom smelled of freshly baked bread and onions. It was a comforting smell, one of home, and it filled the room on days like today when her mom baked and froze bread, buns and bannock for the family.
    “What are you doing, all holed up in there?” She pointed with her lips to Bernice’s room and waited for her girl’s response.
    “Reading a new book.”
    “Already? Gosh, where are you gonna put all of those words, Birdie?”
    Her mom looked at her then, serious and thoughtful. Bernice, used to shrinking from attention, looked away. “You know, you’re gonna be the first one of us to go to school. I never have to worry about you, and I always know that no matter what happens, Bernice will be all right.
    “You look so much like your auntie, you are so lucky you got the looks and the brains,” her mom told her. “Good thing you didn’t get her …” Maggie Meetoos paused. “… full nature.” She laughed.
    Bernice started and covered her mouth with her hand involuntarily. She didn’t know that her mom thought she was pretty. She had always thought of Freda as the pretty one, the one who got attention. She also wondered what Auntie Val’s full nature was. Something in her ears let her know that it was not necessarily a good thing.
    “You know your auntie used to be a bookworm too?” her mom asked her.
    Two secrets. Two things she did not know. It came to Bernice that her mom was drunk. Maggie kept secrets likesome women kept canned goods: sealed and in the dark until they were needed. When her mom was drunk, Bernice tried to balance her fear with her fascination. And while it always scared her, her stomach knotting instantly and her back tense, it was a lot like sitting in the lodge: people were quite hard to make out but you couldn’t wait for what you heard next. The problem was, though, that as her mom relaxed, Bernice got more and more tense. On those rare occasions, less rare as Bernice grew up, when her mother drank to excess, Bernice would hide in the basement and read under a shoulder-high lamp near the dryer. She turned the dryer on to generate heat and to block out the noise of the adults upstairs. White noise drowning out the brown noise.
    “When you were a little girl,
iskwesis
,” her mother said, “your Auntie Valene hugged you to herself and told me that you were her daughter.”
    Maggie shifted awkwardly in her chair, as if the booze made her uncomfortable in her skin. “I’d never seen anyone so in love with another person that was not their birthchild.”
    To Bernice’s amazement, her mom’s eyes had filled up.
    “She is your
kee kuh wee sis,
your little mother.”
    Three secrets. Three. She had another mom.
    “When Val went …”