“The lady?”
“My dad talks to this lady sometimes at night. He does it from his room because he thinks I don’t hear him.”
We got to the corner, and I put my hand out to make sure Birdie didn’t keep walking at the red light. While we waited for the crosswalk sign to change, I dug a little deeper.
“Is the lady a friend of his?”
“He got her from the internet.”
I had to stifle a laugh. “From the internet? What do you mean?”
Birdie frowned. “I think he’s looking for my new mom. This girl Suzie at school said her dad bought his new wife from Russia.”
My eyes widened. “He what?”
“She said that her mom said that her dad got his bride through the mail.” She shrugged. “From Russia.”
“Honey, I think maybe Suzie’s mom is saying that facetiously.”
“Fay-sheesh-ly?”
I smiled. “Facetiously. It means sort of saying it as a joke to be funny.”
“Oh. So her dad didn’t buy a wife from Russia, then? I guess that makes sense. Because if he was going to buy one, he’d probably get one his own age, right? Suzie’s stepmom is really young.”
Or . . . maybe Suzie’s dad did buy his bride. Either way, this conversation had taken an odd turn. “What made you think your dad was looking for a new wife?”
“A few weeks ago, I was listening by his door at night, and I heard him tell her he wanted to be up-front with what he was looking for—that he’s not looking to date.”
Uh-oh. “Did he say what he was looking for?”
“No. But what else would he want if he didn’t want to date the lady?”
I wasn’t touching this one with a ten-foot pole. Perhaps it was time for a change of subject. I knew from her letters that Suzie was a girl in school who had been mean to her. So I thought maybe it might be an opportunity to see how things were going in that department.
“Is . . . Suzie a good friend of yours?”
Birdie’s little face scrunched up like she smelled a rotting fish. “No way. She’s the worst.”
“Why is she the worst?”
“She makes fun of everyone. About what they wear, their hair, even the books people pick out in the library during quiet time.”
The light changed, and the three of us crossed the street. “Do you know why Suzie is mean to people?”
“Because her soul is black?”
I laughed. “Where on earth did you learn about black souls?”
“In religion class. Well, they didn’t teach us about black ones. But they said good people have pure souls. And white is kinda pure. So I figured hers must be black.”
Well, her logic was pretty damn good. But I wanted to steer the conversation back to the real reason some kids were bullies.
“Actually, usually kids who are mean don’t really like themselves. They put other people down in an attempt to make them feel better about themselves.”
Birdie guffawed at that notion. “Suzie likes herself a lot. She thinks she’s the best at everything.”
“That’s what Suzie wants you to believe. But I bet you deep down, she’s really struggling.”
“I don’t know . . .”
Clearly Birdie wasn’t sold. “Let me see if I can guess a few things about Suzie.”
“Okay . . .”
“Is she overly concerned with what she looks like? Like, is her hair always done just right, and she wears nice outfits every single day instead of just throwing on a pair of sweats and a wrinkly T-shirt sometimes, like the rest of us do?”
“Yeah. She’s always perfect.”
“And does she belong to a clique of girls, and they all sort of travel as a pack—all together?”
“Yeah.”
“Does she start rumors about people at school?”
Birdie’s head whipped to me. “How did you know that? Last week she told everyone that Amelia Aster still wears pull-up pants to sleep because she pees her pants. But she doesn’t. I’m good friends with Amelia, and we’ve had sleepovers.”
“You see . . . I knew all that because those are all the classic signs of the mean girls who don’t like themselves very much.”
“Did you have mean girls in school?”
“I sure did. And you know what I found out worked best to make them stop picking on me?”
“What?”
“Smiling.”
Birdie looked confused. “Smiling?”
“Yup. Whenever a bully said anything mean to me, I would just smile back at her. After a while, when my bully stopped getting a reaction from me, she left me alone.”
A stray cat ran out from nowhere in front of us. Unfortunately, Marmaduke saw it before I did, so I wasn’t prepared when he took off running. My hand had been looped through the leash, and he tugged me along for the ride.
“Marmaduke! No! Stop!”
He didn’t listen. I ran past six or seven houses screaming like a lunatic and trying to keep up. The damn dog was pretty fast.
Birdie caught up to me and yelled, “Nein!”