The Mutual Admiration Society(70)

“Tell ya what,” I say to Birdie. “After I straighten up the house a little, let’s take a bath and put on our spy clothes for tonight’s trip to see Mister McGinty and then I’ll stick your TV dinner in the oven.” She adores bubble baths, so I’m sure she’ll go for this idea. “You can finish watchin’ . . .”—I turn around to check what show is beginning to show up on the TV screen, “American Bandstand”—“but the second it’s over, you come right upstairs and get in the tub.”

“Roger that, Tessie,” she says with one of her irresistible smiles. “Now get outta the way, you’re blocking Mister Dick Clark.”

After I run the garbage out to the silver can—Gert’s on her back porch, rocking away and watching our house like a guard waiting to catch escaping prisoners—I finish dusting and running the sweeper across the carpet, and peek in on Birdie to make sure she’s where I left her, then I head upstairs to run the tub water. I squeeze in a few squirts of Joy soap to get it nice and frothy, and hurry into our bedroom to pick out what our mother has started calling “ensembles” out of the little dresser she wedged into our closet.

I’ve got to dig deep to find two mostly clean sets of navy T-shirts and shorts to wear on our trip over to Mr. McGinty’s shack tonight and the snooping around we got to do for the dare, so I’m down at the very bottom of the bottom dresser drawer when my hand bumps into something sitting under the white paper Louise put in there with thumbtacks that are long gone.

“Goddamnit all, Bird!” I say, because I’m sure this giant lump must be covering up some food that she hid away for a rainy day and, of course, forgot all about. I’ve come across some very disgusting things growing here and there throughout the house and considering how bad a state my tummy is already in because of Kitten’s dare, I don’t want to feast my eyes on whatever leftovers Birdie stuck under the dresser paper, but what choice do I have? Who knows how long whatever she buried under here has been multiplying? We could wake up to The Blob breathing down our necks one of these nights.

So I push the clothes to one side of the drawer, breathe through my mouth, warn my gut that it’s about to get some bad news, and slowly lift up the corner of the paper with the tips of my fingers. Sure enough, the wad is big and green and . . . and the worst horrifying, revolting Gotcha! next to the time I found the dripping, bloody cow’s brains that Daddy put under our bed on Beggars Night last year, that I’m pretty positive I’m gonna throw up! And when I get done doing that, I will reach into my back pocket, take out my stubby pencil and my TO-DO list, and draw a line through #4. Catch whoever stole over $200 out of the Pagan Baby collection box.

Q. The culprit that I, and everyone else in the parish, have been looking high and low for, is not Skip Abernathy, but my very own sister?!

A. Signs point to yes.

Damnation!

Why . . . why . . . why . . . why . . . would she . . . ?

Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute.

Could this stack of cash . . . could it be one of Birdie’s special gifts?

But it’s not fluffy like the feathers she lays around Daddy’s tombstone, and it isn’t shiny like the ring with the pink, heart-shaped stone she rested against Louise’s plate this morning, and the new nickel I found under my pillow when I was waiting for her to wake up so I could tell her about the great-good-luck murder. And they keep this dough in the collection box at church, so she didn’t find it lying on the ground like she did those gifts. No, as hard as it is for me to believe, I’m 100% sure that Birdie stole these greenbacks right out from under St. Kate’s nose.

Damnation times ten!

“Tessie?” My sister isn’t calling to me from the living room, but the bathroom down the hall, so “American Bandstand” must be over. “I’m getting in the tub now just like you told me to and yes, I turned off the water.”

I can’t let her know that I stumbled across the worst piece of evidence that could get her sent away, not to jail, but to a “home,” because she is an innocent who cannot be held responsible for what she does, so I steady my voice and call back to her, “Did you remember to take off all your clothes including your undies, honey?”

“Yes, I remembered to take off all my clothes including my undies, honey.”

The poor kid couldn’t have known what she was doing when she took the money from the church box, and she’s probably already forgotten that she did. I’m not sure that she even has a conscience—that annoying, chirping voice might be located in the part of Birdie’s brain that she didn’t get because she came out of Louise too early—but what I do know is that no matter how hard I try to hide it, my sister, who I love and know best of all and who loves and knows me best of all, is gonna figure out how scared I am if I run into the bathroom and present this stolen wad of bills to her and tell her what she’s done. Her eyes will bulge bigger and then her little face will crumple and she’ll start flapping her arms and squawking and yelling with her big opera lungs how sorry she is over and over and over and over and then she’ll ask if I still love her so many times that I almost don’t anymore and . . . and Gert won’t even need to turn on her powerful hearing aids to know that it’s time to call Louise, who I’m pretty positive would send my little sister away to the loony bin if she finds out what Birdie’s done, which she won’t, if I have anything to say about it.