How to Knock a Bravebird from Her Perch : The First Novel in the Morrow Girls Series (9780985751616) by D. Bryant Simmons

man and a chill ran down my arms.
    “MAMA!”
    “I see you! Go on back and play now!”
    He just sorta chuckled at me and smiled at her. A real friendly sorta man, this Heziah was. Jackie waved and he waved back—proof that all this was a bad idea.
      “What you want with me? I ain’t some, some...I ain’t one of them girls that’s gonna...”  
    “Whoa. Belinda, did I do something wrong?”
    “Just say it. What you want me for? Say it.”
    Heziah’s forehead wrinkled up and I saw a flash of hardness settle in his eyes. I started to relax. I knew hardness. Hardness I could handle. But then I blinked and it all went away. He was looking at me like I was some dirty puppy trying my best to get up out of an old cardboard box. I wasn’t. I was a grown woman and I ain’t need nobody’s pity. “Stop looking at me like that.”
    “Belinda—”
    “Stop.”
    “Alright. You want the truth? Yeah, I’m attracted to you. And I had a good time dancing and talking with you. Doesn’t mean I have any designs on you or anything. We can be friends...if you want.”
    “Friends?”
    “That so hard to believe?”
    “Uhh...yeah.” I shook my head up and down, suddenly more gutsy than I’d ever been with any man. “You wanna be friends with me? Don’t no man wanna be friends with a woman. What for?”
    “If you don’t believe that then why did you come?”
    “This was your idea.”
    “But you came. I didn’t make you come here, Belinda.”  
    A gust of wind blew across the playground, taking his words up against me. Blowing through my hair and all over my stockings. His words started to sound like the truth. Jackie’d run off to play with some of the other kids but I wished she hadn’t. Wished she’d stayed put to keep an eye on her mama. Make sure I ain’t do something stupid.
    “Belinda?”
    “Guess I was looking for something.”

    L ANKY WAS THE PERFECT word for Heziah. And those rock hard eyes had me but I ain’t know it then. I just saw this man that wasn’t nothing like what I was used to and he proved me right every time I saw him—once, sometimes twice a week, for about two years. He introduced me and my girls to art and animals and books and all sorts of stuff. The girls must have thought something but they never let on. Never was nothing but nice to him. And he’d buy them ice creams and treat them real good. Make them cry from laughing so hard. He had a way of teaching without making you feel dumb. He would always talk in riddles or what he called metaphors and stuff. That’s where I learned it. His voice’d go up like it was soaring above a mountain or something then glide back down. I asked him where he got all that from. He said books. From then on he always had some old dusty book with him to prove it to us. Some had poems in them, others were just stories. He made reading fun, something none of my teachers had ever been able to do. I’d pack us some sandwiches or something that would keep and we’d meet Heziah under this great big old tree in the park near his apartment and flip one musty page after another. It got so that the girls would beg him to read something to them almost every time they saw him. Then we’d part ways and me and the girls would head back home. We never spoke of those afternoons with Heziah. It was a secret. We all knew. Knew that Heziah was what was missing from our lives.  
    I was tucking the girls in one night when they wanted me to read one of the books Heziah had given them. So we were all crowded in Nikki and Mya’s beds. The younger ones shared the room across the hall. I was nodding off like I usually did when I was reading.
    “Mama wake up!”
    “What? I’m woke. I’m woke. Where was I?” It’d been a long day, so I began the awful task of getting them to agree to go to sleep. “Ain’t y’all tired yet?”
    “No.”  
    But I thought I heard a few yawns. “We’ll pick it up again tomorrow night.” The book thudded shut and my toes went