Birdie by Tracey Lindberg Page B

miming something she and the girls did in Reno last year. Bernice had heard the story already and stared at Lola, only to hear the sound of a crackling fire as wind whipped flames.
    “Okay, get me a pack of Salems, too,” Lola had said, reaching for her purse.
    “What?”
    “You said ‘cigarettes,’ kid, just like ya’ were a smoker yourself.”
    “I thought you were cutting down.”
    “Not today. Make them lights, okay?” She tried to hand Bernice a ten.
    “I’ve got money.” She had grabbed Art/Al?’s twenty-two dollars and walked next door to Ralph’s convenience store.
    The sounds of Lola and Freda’s laughter drift up the stairs. She is sensitive to sound now and wonders when that started. She has wolf ears, she thinks, smiling a bit behind her face. Maybe it’s being housed in the same small room for so long, but she feels like all of her sensepowers are sharper. She can tell when Freda is on her time. She knows, with precision, when the sun will rise and set. She can tell when Freda is sneaking up the stairs, hoping to catch her … what? Awake? Alive? In her skin?
    She knows, though,
Bernice thinks,
that I am not my self as much. Anymore.
    Accepting this as her truth, she closes her eyes and does not sleep. But. Moves.
    Freda was always the spitting image of Maggie. It used to bother Bernice that this tiny little woman had come from another mother and still was more closely related to Maggie than she could ever be. Freda was born looking like a wizened old woman and even, sometimes, resembled one now, but when she was young, her cousin and Maggie used to sit together in the lodge, the space between her mother and herself occupied by the mini-Maggie doppelgänger. While it bothered her, Bernice had accepted it as natural, that she could in no way take the space of niecedaughter next to the tiny mom whom she had eclipsed in size at age ten.
    Perhaps what was most paining was that Maggie was able to express warmth to Freda in ways that she could not to her own daughter. Bernice watched as her mom smoothed out Freda’s hair, patted her brow on occasion and took her hand in public. In this, Bernice knew her mom was demonstrating motherlove for her motherless cousin. It was warm and generous. But, she still felt like her mother’s ability to love more than one child at once was meagre. In truth, Freda was a lovable kid. Talkative, interested and light, words rushed out of her like river water on stones. Bernice, who found herself difficult to love, had always believed that her mom could not love her. Could not love BigHer. Could not find enough love within her to spread around.
    When she said as much to her Auntie Val, the bigwoman-sisterlittlemother had patted her hand. “No. Birdie. No. She doesn’t love Freda more. She loves you too much to treat you like that.”
    Bernice had never known what that meant until she found a bird, still on the ground, after hitting their picture window. She fed it and watered it, watched it for hours and prayed for it to heal. She would not touch it, though. She wanted it to find its kin and fit in again without her tainting it.
    And, in truth, Bernice harbours none of the fearanger and rage that seemed to sit on Maggie’s and Freda’s skin like a bruise. Bernice’s injury was more akin to the internal injuries sustained from a crash. They pained, were always there and could manifest at any time. For the most part, they stayed beneath the surface. Unobserved.
    Freda’s rage was more accessible and evident than Maggie’s,certainly. She had a hair-trigger temper (and later, a rye-trigger temper) that flamed and snuffed easily. While Maggie’s would burn less often, the intensity of it was so familiar to Bernice that she grew fearful when she didn’t feel it.
    There was a time when Bernice could feel that rage in her mom every day. When Freda stayed with them there was the hum of a potential anger storm. Even she could not get a read on Maggie’s rage. Bernice