The Bird Market of Paris Read Online Free PDF Page A

star? She is yours.”
    The sky grew from plum to the color of crows, and I moved back to my perch at the window to wait for my parents. Disembodied headlights cruised down our block, and every time a quartz-halogen flash appeared, I would turn to the empty space behind me and yell, “They’re home!” But it was never them. My arms tingled and grew numb, but I wouldn’t leave the window.
    â€œ La Petite , come have a snack,” Nona said. She always called me La Petite , as Poppy called me Chérie .
    â€œWhat time was I born?” I asked her.
    She studied my face as if I were a chalkboard scribbled over with a complex physics formula. “Why do you want to know?”
    â€œBecause it’s not my birthday until the time I was born, so if they come home before then, they won’t miss my birthday.”
    She contemplated me, then kissed my head and walked away. Again, I heard angry French whispers behind me, something about my parents and “the poor little one.”
    â€œI understand you,” I said without turning around. I couldn’t speak French, but I had good comprehension for simple conversations. They switched to speaking Arabic. I understood one phrase in the entire language: bukra fil mish-mish —when the apricots bloom—the Arabic version of our less delicate maxim “when pigs fly.”
    Nona returned with a provolone sandwich and a cup of lentil soup, and I ate both, glaring into the darkness, wishing for cat vision and a magic wand.
    When I finished eating, Nona brought me a wrapped box, bigger than anything I had received for any birthday, and said it was from her and Poppy. I couldn’t believe how huge the box was, and it distracted me from the blankness outside. The box had to contain something great. I peeled the tape from the top of the box as Nona and Poppy stood over me.
    â€œRip it, Chérie ,” Poppy urged. But I wasn’t the ripping paper kind of kid. I was a saver. I peeled the tape until the paper fell away to reveal a big blue globe, the curves of its body breaching the colorful box through circular openings on four sides, as if the globe wanted to force its way out of the packaging.
    â€œThis is so you can see the world,” Nona said.
    With Poppy’s help, I removed the globe from the box and placed it on the coffee table. He spun the globe on its tilted axis.
    â€œHere is Egypt,” he said, fingering a purple country tattooed with the blue Nile, a snake winding through the desert, forming a shape like a distended stomach with an outie belly button. “You see, here, Heliopolis, where your daddy was born, and Cairo, where we lived. Chérie , now you find Greece.”
    I peered around Europe and turned the globe, but Poppy put his hand on mine. He placed his finger below an orange country and a group of orange islands speckling the turquoise sea.
    â€œShow her Corfu,” Nona said.
    Poppy’s finger roamed up the coast of Greece. “There is no Corfu.”
    â€œNo Corfu!” Nona exclaimed. “What did they do with Corfu?”
    â€œThey omitted it,” Poppy said, peering at the spot where Corfu should have been, surrounded by the blue waters of the Ionian Sea.
    â€œWhat kind of world doesn’t have Corfu?”
    â€œIt must still be there. We would have seen on the news if it sank into the sea.”
    Nona tsked with her tongue and walked into the kitchen, her clear plastic flip-flops ca-chuck ca-chucking with each step. Poppy’s finger traveled again, tracing the forty-five-degree line of longitude, and landed on a green country.
    â€œLook here, Chérie .” I squinted at the globe as he tapped on a small black star in northern France. “Paris. The best city in the world. We will go there someday together.”
    I pulled the globe into my lap and spun it, tracing my finger over bumpy mountain ranges, outlining continents, traversing oceans in seconds. I inspected