and hopefully find her father and her sister. Part 3: "Compared to what" In Boston, Birdie uses the address on the postcard to find Aunt Dot, who now has a daughter, Taj. Aunt Dot notifies Sandy that Birdie has run away to Boston, but when Sandy and Jim come to pick her up, she refuses to leave with them. Birdie reconnects with her first boyfriend from Nkrumah, Ali Parkman, whose father Ronnie was Deck's best friend. She learns from Ronnie that her own father returned from Brazil and settled in California years earlier. Ronnie provides her with Deck's most recent phone number and address. While distraught that Deck has not tried to find her, she commits to going to San Francisco to find Deck and Cole. With financial help from her white, waspish grandmother, Penelope Lodge, Birdie flies to San Francisco. In San Francisco, she breaks into Deck's home before he arrives. Upon their reunion, Birdie finds out he lives alone and although he professes to be glad to see Birdie again, he is emotionally distant. When the topic of Sandy is broached, he alludes to her flight from the FBI, confirming Birdie's suspicions that Sandy was in little, if any, danger of being pursued by COINTELPRO. He eagerly shares his philosophy about race, a project he had been working on since the Roxbury years, that "... mulattos had historically been the gauge of how poisonous American race relations were," as part of his "Canaries in the Coal Mine" theory. His preoccupation with his theories on race over his concern for her through all the years he was absent from her life causes Birdie to express her anger towards him. Eventually, Birdie's father takes her to Cole and the sisters reunite after seven years apart. Birdie gives Cole Sandy's number and the three of them decide they will meet during the summer. Birdie decides she will remain in San Francisco with Cole and go to school there. The story ends with Birdie seeing a mixed, African American in a school bus as it drives away from her. Characters Birdie Lee: The narrator of the novel. Her birth certificate states her name as Baby Lee. Birdie is also called Le Chic by the Nkrumah Brown Sugar clique, and Pocahontas or Poca by Nicholas Marsh. Jesse (Jess) Goldman: The fake Jewish identity Birdie's mother gives her so they can settle in New