The Mutual Admiration Society(4)
I still haven’t found any information on this subject at the Finney Library, but it sure seems like being born before the time you’re supposed to be can cause a lot of weirdness to set up shop in a kid’s brain, because even I, who love her most of all, now that Daddy’s gone, have to admit that Birdie is one odd duck. And sad to say, according to this movie her and me saw at the Tosa Theatre called The Snake Pit that we thought was gonna be another one of those animal-dying movies like Bambi or Old Yeller but turned out to be about this shapely brunette who ended up in an insane asylum, my sister also greatly resembles another one of her neighborhood nicknames—“Loonatic.” (The harmless kind. Not the kind like Ed Gein, who got everyone so worked up around here after he murdered a bunch of people near our state capital of Madison and sewed lampshades and slipcovers outta their skin. Birdie would never do something like that. She can’t even thread a needle.) Sure, some days go so bad around here that it might seem like she has, but Birdie has not yet gone completely nuts.
She doesn’t have #10 and #11 on the list yet, but if she starts doing those anytime soon, we’re going to have to scram out of the neighborhood before the men in the white coats show up, which is one of the main reasons I started up The Mutual Admiration Society in the first place. To save up a lot of running-away money, because Daddy wouldn’t like it if I let our mother toss my sister into the county nuthouse, which, believe you me, is getting less far-fetched by the day.
SURE SIGNS OF LOONY
Seeing, hearing, and smelling stuff that nobody else can.
Acting more high-strung than a Kentucky Derby winner.
Wearing clothes that don’t go together.
Not understanding what’s going on in movies or television shows or the neighborhood.
Wetting the bed all the time sometimes.
Wild-streaking.
Extreme stubbornness.
Having a leaky memory and a drifting brain.
Not getting jokes and the ones they tell are lamer than Tiny Tim.
Murdering.
Drooling, when not asleep.
On my fourth and final try to get my sister up and running, I tell her what Daddy told her every morning since she was born, “The early Bird gets the worm!” And after she pops open her run-of-the-mill blue eyes that I tell her are a gorgeous Robin’s-egg blue—she loves to be buttered up, and if you can throw her name into the mix, that’s frosting on the cake—I hold up the little gift she left under my pillow last night. It’s a nickel. 1958. “Thank you, honey. It’s the shiniest one I’ve ever seen!”
After I bounce out of bed, I toss her the pile of clothes that I picked out before we turned in last night, because if I let my sister choose what to wear, she’ll slip on a pink-striped T-shirt with a pair of yellow polka-dot shorts and running around the neighborhood like that is not only #3 on the LOONY list, it’s the worst possible getup for snoops and blackmailers to parade around in. We gotta blend in. (Green is good to wear in the springtime and summer, brown or tan is best for the fall, white when the snow flies, and no matter what time of year, black or navy are our go-to outfits on night missions.) “Hurry and get dressed. We got a big, big day ahead of us,” I tell Birdie. “You’re not gonna believe our great good luck! When I was in the middle of practicing my Miss America routine last night, I heard this shouting, and then . . .” Shoot. It’s going to take forever to explain what I heard and saw while she was sawing logs and even longer for her to understand. It usually works out better if I play show instead of tell with her. “Pull your shorts up. We gotta get over to the cemetery ASAP. There’s something I really, really, really, really want to show you!”
’Cause Birdie loves our home away from home as much as me, I’m so positive that she is going to love this idea that I can’t believe my ears when she says, “I’m sorry, but we can’t go over to the cemetery this morning to look at whatever you really, really, really, really want to show me, Tessie.”
Oh, boy.
Most of the time she’s real easy to boss around, but sometimes, for some unknown reason, the kid can go more stubborn than a bloodstain on me. This better not be one of those times. I got a good feeling that today could be the start of something big and I’m not the only one who thinks so. I have what Modern Detection calls in Chapter Four “corroborating evidence.”
Daddy used to be the one to answer all my questions, but when I get stymied these days, I have to rely on the next best thing. My Magic 8 Ball. I keep it hidden in my closet so our mother doesn’t find it, because she’d blow her top if she did. It’s a sin to ask anything to foretell your future, only God’s supposed to know that, but honestly, I already got so many sins, what’s one more? Especially since after I asked the Magic 8 Ball this morning, “Will today change our whole lives?” the little white paper that floated up informed me, It is decidedly so!
“Did you forget that we go over to the cemetery every day to visit Daddy?” I ask as I wiggle Birdie’s tan shorts up to just below her protruding tummy that’s the only chubby part of her, so from the side she looks like a pelican.
“No, I didn’t forget that we go over to the cemetery every day to visit Daddy, Tessie, but we can’t go over there right now, ’cause . . .” She cocks her little head. “Listen.”