The Bird Club: Chapter Four: The boy she should have kissed.

 “Can we go?”

 

“I haven’t finished my coffee.”

“Then drink it.”

“I can’t. It’s hot.” Ignoring the eye roll, her mother asks, “Did you have a good time last night?”

April shrugs.

“Do you like Randy?” 

 

April shrugs again, wanting to grab the coffee and scald her tongue so she couldn’t talk.

“I just want to make sure... I mean, I think he has really good taste, but you’re too young for anything … uh, physical.”

“Do you mean sex?! Mom, please! I don’t like Randy that way AT ALL,” April gasps with horror while her mother laughs with relief. “Besides, I'm not doing anything like that until college.”

Evelyn smiles, happy to change the subject. “So you’re still thinking of going to college?

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

Another eye roll ignored. Or maybe she doesn’t even see them anymore.

 

“Good, because I started college funds for you and Hannah. The accounts earn more interest than the bank, but I know they are safe because your grandmother picked them out.”

“How much do we need?”

“I don’t know,” her mother says before finally sipping her coffee, though April caught the look of concern. “I’m just glad you want to go. And, of course, that you want to wait on that other thing.”

April won’t admit it, but her mother had good reason to dread that first date. This was a girl who announced suddenly in the fifth-grade that she was going steady with two boys.

“They both asked me,” she said with a grin. “And I like them both.” To herself she said, I’ll decide who I like more after my birthday.

The first boy was Bart. He lived with his grandmother, a waitress at the diner near the laundromat. The second was Mike, who lived with his parents in one of those big houses near the bluffs that so many people, including her mother, were still very angry about.

 

Bart’s gift was a book, and not just any book: One of the Black Stallion series she collected. He picked out a title already on her shelf, but she just added the new one, carefully making room right next to the other copy.

Mike’s gift was a gold necklace with a tiny heart. April didn’t wear jewelry, but found it awful exciting. Especially when she found the $18 Mervyn’s price tag inside the box.

 

Her mother frowned. “You can’t keep it.”

“But he’s rich. He can afford it!”

 

“That’s not the point. It’s inappropriate. You’re too young,” said Evelyn, though after calling Mike’s mom, the necklace stayed. April never wore it, but she loved looking at it, always carefully returning the heart to the center before closing the lid again.

 

 

After a week of recesses with each boy, April chose Mike. But it wasn’t because he had more money, it was because he was more fun. All Bart wanted to do was sit and hold hands, and April couldn’t stand spending her recess silent and still. So she picked the boy who talked and played tetherball.

Soon after choosing Mike she was invited to his house. His neighborhood felt like another planet: No hills or trees, just shiny streets lined with bright white sidewalks in front of shiny houses with bright green lawns. And once inside she felt even more alien, trying not to get dirt on their impossibly white carpet and pretending to find his wooden gun collection interesting until finally asking if they could play outside.

Where she felt like herself again while riding bikes, especially when his broke and she knew how to fix it, smiling proudly after putting the slipped chain back onto the gear wheel. But then Mike looked strange, his cheeks turning bright red as they heard his father announce to his wife, “April fixed Mikey’s bike!”

 

April never wanted to show Mike where she lived, but his parents insisted on picking her up for the school carnival. She waited for them across the street, pretending to be getting the mail.

“What are you doing out here?” Mike’s dad said when their nice sedan pulled up. She wanted to just jump in, but he asked, “Which is yours?” 

 

They were all smiling at the house behind her. April considered pretending it was hers, but didn’t have a lie ready if her neighbors came out. So she waved toward her own while looking at the asphalt, not wanting to see their faces struggle to keep smiling.

Her house didn’t seem to bother Mike, because he was a gallant as ever that day, buying her a hot dog before winning her a stuffed panda. But soon something did bother him.

 

That day he invited her to watch his baseball team, and after the game they sat under a tree, both too shy to say anything as April pulled at the grass. Finally, knowing her father was coming, Mike asked, “Can I kiss you? I mean, on the cheek?”

The red rushed up April’s neck as she dropped her head, feeling each second of silence like a pinprick until her father walked up.

It wasn’t that April didn’t want Mike to kiss her. In the car she regretted her silence, deeply curious about what it would have been like to have him lean over and kiss her. 

And now she regrets even more that her first kiss wasn’t given to that sweet boy who took down his poster of Daisy Duke before she came into his room. No, it was taken by a boy who stranded her in a parking lot.

Next week at school, Mike stopped spending recesses with April. When she finally found him playing Dungeons and Dragons in the library, he refused to come outside with her instead. That weekend, he had a friend break up with her.

Thinking the call was a prank, April hung up on the other boy twice before he could blurt out that he was calling for Mike. Who still liked her, but now liked Shayna more. 

April nodded at the phone. Not only was Shayna pretty and sweet, word on the playground was she would “do things” with boys. April wasn’t at all sure what those things were, but figured Shayna would definitely let a boy kiss her on the cheek.

At first it stung knowing Mike preferred a girl who was better at brushing her hair than fixing his bike. But soon all April felt was relief, glad to leave kisses, and all those other “things,” tucked safely in the box with her necklace.

And the next boy? She didn’t want to open it for him, either. But he came along after everything else was gone.

Chapter three

The Bird Club: Chapter Three

 

Illustration conceived and drawn by Dell Linney

Chapter Two

A donut was enough for Wilder, which was only an hour or two of walking and visiting the ocean. But it was not enough for a birding trip, which was a whole day of long, boring car rides and long, boring walks that usually ended without anyone seeing the bird they were looking for. For those, her mother had to promise at least a cheeseburger and fries. Maybe even a sundae.

“And you have to give me a ride to work later,” April said as she pulled out her clothes. 

April never liked taking the bus to her job at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, but it was especially bad on Sundays, when all the flea market goers crowded on. She could never make the whole trip without someone sitting next to her. 

Evelyn agreed to drop April off, then got up to leave, since both of her daughters were too shy to undress in front of her. This frustrated Evelyn, who used to know every inch of these people she made, so much that she would “accidentally” come into the bathroom while they showered.

“Be sure and bring a sweatshirt. It’s pretty foggy,” Evelyn told April, who did not begin dressing until she felt the stairs shaking.

Once they were walking to the beach, April was glad she came. She loves the ocean and loves how relaxed her mother is when walking. Not rushing to get ready for work, buried in a bird book or telling April what to do. When they are outside walking, they can just talk.

“Are we still going to the Japanese Gardens Saturday?” April asks. 
“Yes,” her mother says, sighing but smiling, happy that April is eager to go somewhere with her instead of having to be dragged. “Did you remember to ask for the day off work?”
“Yes,” April says, mimicking her mother’s sighing tone, and they both laugh.

They walk in silence until they reach the bay tree near the train tracks, and Evelyn tells her to pick a few leaves so she can make spaghetti for dinner.
“OK,” April says eagerly, grabbing a handful of the fragrant leaves and pressing them to her nose, thinking only of the eating part, not of her bursting stomach afterward. 
Then she tucks the leaves in her pocket and runs to catch up with her mother.
“Think we’ll get to band one today?” she asks.

April only got to band a plover once, but remembers every second of it. 
That day her mother had found a nest, so she prepared to catch the mom. She laid out three long pieces of what looked like thick chicken wire with very small holes. On each piece, she had tied dozens of little fishing line lassos. 
With the traps forming a triangle around the nest, April and Evelyn hid behind a dune. When the bird came back and walked over the traps to its nest, one of the lassos caught its leg.
The bird panicked, hopping and tugging at the line until Evelyn picked it up and cut the line.

“Here, you can hold her. Be very gentle.”
April wrapped her hands around the bird’s squirming body, trying not to squeeze too hard and hurt her, or too soft and let her go. She was surprised at how warm the bird felt under its feathers and how fast its heart was beating.
Together, they put the bird head first into a tube to secure her, then her mother hung a scale from her legs to weigh her. After recording the weight and length, she prepared for the trickiest part — putting on the band. While the bird waited in the tube, her mother chose the proper color and readied the tiny bracelet in her pliers. She steadied the bird’s leg, then quickly snapped the band in place.
Two minutes later, they released the bird and she hopped off, shaking her leg to try and kick off the band.
“Let’s go,” Evelyn said. “She’ll never go back to the nest with us here.”  

April wouldn’t have to be bribed to go to Wilder if she knew they would be banding a bird every time, but it only happened once. This morning was like all the others: walking and waiting, waiting and walking. 
But wait, the donut!

Inside the shop, April heads straight to the glass cases displaying the donuts, careful to not get too close to the cash register so the clerk won’t talk to her. She inspects each row to make sure there are no new donuts to consider, which makes her anxious. She doesn’t want to miss out on something tasty, but she also hates being disappointed by trying something she won’t like. 

Like the time she fell for the jelly donut. Seeing one with no hole, she thought it would have more cake than the others. But as soon as she bit into it she realized it was a fruit pie donut. Yuck.

Or the time she chose one of the long bars of glazed cake with all the glistening frosting that look like they give you the most donut. And maybe they do, but after a few bites of the maple bar April got sick from the frosting, just like when she had finally gotten to try cotton candy at the fair. 

For years she had watched kids fill their mouths with those fluffy handfuls of pink and blue and imagined they tasted like creamy clouds of whipped cream. But they didn’t. 
As soon as cotton candy touched your tongue, it evaporated. It was like eating air; air that immediately made everything sticky. And then all the sugar made her dizzy and gave her a stomachache. Just like the maple bar. 

So now she just looks at all the other donuts before choosing a crumb cake: a dense, moist donut sprinkled with nutty, cinnamon-flavored crumbs that keeps her stomach happy. 
And she sat happily in the donut afterglow until she discovered why her mother dragged her to the beach.

 

Chapter four.

The Bird Club: Chapter Two

Chapter One 

The next morning when her mother wakes April up it is still dark outside.

“God, mom! It’s Sunday!” 

“Want to go to Wilder with me?”

“No, I want to sleep!” April whines, rolling over to face the wall.

Every weekend Evelyn goes to a beach about 20 miles away to help count Western Snowy Plovers, a small shorebird that was nearly wiped out because their nests of tiny, perfectly camouflaged eggs are built directly on the sand to be trampled.

 

A few birds were found surviving at Wilder Ranch because its beach forces humans to come by the water, or through miles of crops after crawling under a train bridge and over fences.

 

So the only people who know about that beach are surfers or banding volunteers like Evelyn, who usually goes to Wilder on Friday mornings when April is at school. But last weekend Evelyn went on a rare overnight trip with her husband to celebrate their 20^th wedding anniversary, so she was heading out to the beach on a Sunday, when she could drag her daughter out of bed.

 

“We can go to Ferrell’s for a donut afterward,” Evelyn coos, knowing April can’t resist.

“Alllriiiight,” April grouses, throwing off the covers.

April will do anything for junk food because her mother doesn’t allow anything that tastes good in her house. No sugar, white bread or creamy peanut butter. Except on Halloween or Easter, sweets and junk food came with barfing cousins, neighbors with nose drips or kitchen duty in the school cafeteria.

 

For a couple of summers when she was younger, April’s cousins began visiting from Denmark and created the childhood of her dreams. Her father drove them to fun places like Disneyland, and her mother couldn’t stop the visitors from buying candy and giving it to April in the back seat of their van.

 

And she ate everything they gave her, until one cousin threw up her sweets on the winding road to Yosemite, filling the van with the smell of sick for the rest of the trip. Even April didn’t feel like eating candy after that.

 

Another source of sugar came with a side of snot. The next-door neighbor was a WWI veteran named Bartlett who carefully pulled up his American flag at sunrise and back down at dusk, spending the rest of the day grooming the jungle of fuchsia bushes he won first prize with every year at the county fair.

 

When arthritis took over his hands, he started bribing April and Hannah with candy to help him prune, using their small, nimble fingers to pluck off most of the fresh flower buds to prevent all but a healthy few to bloom.

 

April enjoyed pulling apart the leaves and squeezing off the buds, she found it absorbing and satisfying work. But she didn’t enjoy that Bartlett usually supervised, because he usually had a drop of snot water glistening on the end of his nose. 

 

April would be reaching for a bud and see a drop slide to the bottom center of his large nose and became transfixed, watching the drop grow and droop until it became so big she could not believe it would remain on the tip of his nose one more second. 

 

Then Bartlett would finally take out his cloth handkerchief and wipe his nose so April could relax. But it was never long before another drop began forming, and she never would have been able to stand it if she wasn’t so desperate for sugar.

 

After about an hour in the garden, Bartlett would finally lead April and Hannah into his breakfast nook, a sunny room containing a round Formica table and his smiling wife.

 

He’d put a large bowl on the table and say, “Now, you can each pick two,” and the girls would look at the bowl, hoping each time he had gotten better candy. 

 

He never had. It was always hard candies like butterscotch or mints, and all colors of small, tart suckers. Never candy bars, chocolates or even fruit chews. But it was still sugar.

The most consistent source of sweets were actually the school lunches April started getting in the fourth-grade. 

 

The day their mother announced the girls would start eating hot lunches in the cafeteria felt like Christmas Eve, with April so excited she could hardly sleep. But instead of seeing presents under the tree in her dreams, she saw the woman in the lunch line refusing to take her money.

“Sorry, hon,” she said. “Your mom called. She changed her mind.”

 

When no one stopped April from paying the next day, she picked up a tray and stepped up to the counter, feeling like Charlie touring Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory as she gazed at the beautiful mounds of exciting new foods.

 

When she got her tray safely to a table, she nearly had to sit on her hands so she wouldn’t rub them together as she surveyed her bounty.

 

In the main section of the tray was a hamburger with a white, fluffy bun that April had only eaten in restaurants, plus some even more exciting french fries to the right. Above the fries were some boring carrot and celery sticks, but in the top left, almost hidden by the bun, was the most exciting thing of all: dessert. 

 

Thinking it was just a weird-shaped donut, she bit into it eagerly and ... Yuck! The outside was good, but the inside tasted like fruit cocktail, only worse, because it was warm and dribbling down her face. Whenever she saw a fruit pie again, she just nibbled the crust off the edges, even though that brought boys she didn’t know to her table asking eagerly, “Are you going to eat that?” Until they saw the teeth marks.

Her favorite dessert was the peanut butter bar, a dreamy square of everything she couldn’t eat at home. One bite made her eat anything in the dessert section first, since Hannah’s habit of grabbing things off her plate taught April to eat whatever she really wanted right away.

 

Her favorite main dish could have been a Wonka original: A crazy mix of tostada and pizza shaped like a Stop sign. It made no sense, but the soft dough topped with sauce, melted cheese and bits of hamburger meat was delicious and fun to eat. Once she learned its name, she circled every “Fiestada Pizza” on the monthly lunch calendar so she could get to the cafeteria extra early those days before all the other kids gobbled them up.

The magic of those lunches never wore off for April, even after learning she was eating them because of something called Aid for Families with Dependent Children, which required her to work in the cafeteria. 

 

Most days, she just presented a monthly punchcard and picked up a tray with no one but the woman who gave her the card knowing it had been free. But once a week, she had to go behind the counter and spoon up food or wash dishes like the other AFDC kids.

 

She always asked to wash dishes, because then you worked in a small room near the exit door where hardly any of the other kids noticed you as they hurried out to the playground, instead of facing them as you doled out their food. And you washed alone, free to just focus on cleaning the trays, which April actually enjoyed.

 

Her favorite part was rinsing off all the food bits by pulling down the hose hanging from the ceiling and blasting the trays with a jet of hot water, smiling as even the stickiest mess slid off. Then she’d stack all the trays on their side in a rack, slide them into the big, square metal dishwasher and push the big red button to scald them clean.  

 

Working in the tray-washing room was like being trapped inside a washing machine, but April found it soothing. All the noises and movements were predictable, unlike the constant chaos created by crowds of kids. And pulling all the warm and clean trays from the machine at the end always gave her a satisfied smile.

 

Of course she never told her mother how much she enjoyed washing dishes at school, because unless her father installed a hose that hung from the ceiling and blasted hot water, April didn’t want to wash dishes at home.

But April did want sugar delivered with deep-fried dough instead of barf, snot or a hairnet. So she got out of bed and headed to her dresser.

Chapter Three

 

The Bird Club: Chapter One

Chapter One

That girl who thought her first kiss was the worst thing ever? 
April would give anything to be her again. 
That boy who trapped her in a parking lot to get it? 
April would do anything else he wanted if it meant she could go home to her mother again.

She only went out with Randy because he wouldn’t stop asking. And when some waffle cone batter spilled on her jeans the tenth time she tried to get rid of him by saying, “OK, lick that off my leg and I’ll go on a date with you.”

She figured it would be like when she dodged a boy in junior high by agreeing to go steady if he bought her a purple pony.  
“A real pony, not a toy. And it has to have been born purple, not dyed.”

But Randy was given a pony he could deliver. And that feeling as he hopped over the counter, got down on one knee and licked her leg? If that was dating, April decided it might be fun after all. 

And riding on his moped had been fun. Until he parked it and he said, “We’re not getting back on until you kiss me.”

Stupid breasts. April blamed them more than Randy for this. Before they arrived, boys like him had just left her alone.

She tried ignoring the uninvited lumps until a girl ran past April during P.E. class chanting “boing, boing, boing” with her hands cupped to her chest. Once her friend Amy explained what the girl meant, April decided it was time to get a bra.

April also decides to just kiss Randy so she can leave the parking lot. And maybe picturing the kiss between Pony Boy and Cherry in The Outsiders like she does at the bathroom mirror will help? 

She leans her face toward Randy, hoping real lips might give her tingles like the movie does. They don’t. April freezes with regret and fear as soon as their mouths touch.

“You kiss weird. It’s like you’ve been practicing on the back of your hand or something.”

How could he tell? April feels heat rushing up her neck and hopes for once it won’t turn her ears red.

“I’m just kidding.” Randy pokes her ribs with his elbow, flipping April’s shame to anger. First he forces me to kiss him, then makes fun of how I do it? I gave up a night with my mother for this?!

Weekends are the only times April can relax with her mother. Usually when Evelyn sees her in the living room she says, “If you have time to sit, you have time to dust.” Or, “Is your homework done?”

But on Saturday evenings, April is allowed to just lie on the couch and stare at the ceiling while Evelyn reads. The only light comes from the desk lamp, the only sounds the turning of pages and a spoon clinking on her metal ice cream bowl.

Thinking of her mother gives April courage, so she stands up and demands they leave. Randy looks at his watch. 

“Yeah, we probably should. And I guess I can call that a kiss.”

April would kick him in the shin if she didn’t need him to drive.

Not until Randy parks the moped again does April remember that the last person on Earth she would want to see her on a date works at the theater.

“Hey, April,” says Seth, who will be sitting behind her in Driver’s Ed on Monday after watching Randy drape his arm around April.
 
“Two adults, please,” says Randy, grandly pulling a $20 from his wallet. “Don’t think she’ll pass for 12,” he adds with a laugh, giving April’s shoulders a squeeze and making her want to die. 

At their seats April slouches down to hide from anyone else she might know, which invites Randy to put his hand on her thigh after she props her knees against the seat in front of her.

“Be careful with Randy,” she hears Kim telling her at work before he came to pick her up. “Maybe don’t wear a skirt, you know?”

“Yeah, right,” said April, having no idea what she meant until Randy’s hand perched on her leg like a smug bird, but not asking any questions because she didn’t want Kim to find out yet that she wasn’t cool. 

Kim only talks to April because they go to different schools, so she doesn’t know to ignore April like all the other cool girls.

April also didn’t tell Kim that she doesn’t even own a skirt, because no one in her house wears them. Her mother used to, but all April sees her wear now are slacks to work, and jeans or shorts on the weekends. 

And her sister Hannah? She’s even less of a girl than April.

Hannah has one skirt she wore once after spending hours of red-faced misery at the mall shopping for her junior high graduation dance, finally settling on a long-sleeved white blouse and a long cotton skirt. 

When April went with her mother to pick Hannah up, she saw her sister “dancing” in a corner of the gym with another girl,. As she watched her long hair flipping from side to side as she hopped awkwardly from one foot to the other, April knew Hannah would never date a boy. 

Evelyn must have known the same, because later she asked Hannah if she had danced with any boys.

“No.”
“Do you like boys?”
“No.”

I don’t like boys either, April thinks as Randy’s hand begins moving down her thigh.

“Is this OK?”

She wishes she could say no and push his hand away but she doesn’t, and spends so much time tracking the hand’s distance from her underwear that when the lights come on, she can’t remember a thing about the movie. 

At least she wants to go home so badly that she has forgotten to care what Randy will think of her house, though he will only see it at night, when you can’t really tell how small and old it is, or see the jungle of weeds and blackberry bushes in the front yard.

Randy parks his moped behind her mother’s little Honda station wagon in the carport and April can see inside the kitchen, which has a glass door between two big windows. Her father is sitting on the wine barrel behind one of the windows where his transistor radio gets the best reception. 

“Is that your dad?” 

“Yeah,” April says as her father moves away from the window. She wishes he’d come outside to get her, but she knows he’s just giving them privacy. 

“Kiss me. Bet you won’t kiss me in front of him.”

Just wanting to go inside, April leans toward his cheek, but he turns his head.

“No. On the lips.”

April looks at the smirk on his mouth. Nope, I’m never doing that again. She turns and runs up the brick path to the kitchen door, calling over her shoulder, “Thanks for the movie.” 

She opens the door and breathes in her kitchen, vowing to never leave her house for a date again. 

“You’re home early,” her father says.

She wants to throw her arms around his stomach and bury her head in his chest, but she just nods and bounds up the stairs to her mother, who is sitting at her desk.

 

Chapter Two