But my fragile sister, she doesn’t feel the same way. Birdie doesn’t do so good with yelling, orders, or threats of any kind, no matter how much Hershey’s chocolate I jam into her mouth. If she gets too worked up, she’s going to start squawking so loud that our neighbor wouldn’t even need her hearing aids to find us.
Gert threatens again, “I’m calling your mother!”
“Keep your cool,” I whisper to the kid whose slightly bulging eyes have got more white in them than they should. “Even if she does get a hold of Louise at the station, I’ll explain to her that the reason that we didn’t answer the door when Gert knocked was because . . . ummm . . . you and me went up to church so I could confess with the other kids.” Birdie won’t figure out that I’m lying to her to keep her from going berserk, because she won’t remember that I can’t say my sins for a few more hours and she can’t tell time. “Exactly the way she ordered me to do before she left for her job.”
That famous saying about pride goeth-ing before a fall is very correct, because I’m so busy giving myself a pat on the back for thinking up that whopper that when my sister starts looking even more agitated and begins shaking her head low and slow, it takes me a second to figure out why the confession lie didn’t calm her down the way it shoulda.
I could just kick myself! It’s too late now, but I should’ve come up with a different fib about a subject that Birdie is not so dang touchy about.
Sure enough, sadder sounding than the seagulls who circled over my head on the day Daddy drowned, my sister reminds me about #9 on my TO-DO list. “Please just think about making a real confession to Father Ted before it’s too late, Tessie.”
Her and me agree on most topics of conversation, but on this particular one, the Finley sisters are more parted than the Red Sea.
Every night lately after we kneel next to our bed to say, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take,” Birdie throws her arms around my neck and cries on my shoulder.
Dying in the middle of the night must happen all the time to Catholic kids or there wouldn’t be a prayer to ward it off, so I understand why she gets herself all hot and bothered. We already lost Daddy, and my sister is petrified that she’s going to lose me, too, not just in this lifetime, but for all eternity if I should croak in the middle of night when I’m slipping my hand under her heinie every once in a while to make sure she hasn’t wet the bed, working on my lists, shadowboxing, practicing my impressions and a couple of sure-fire jokes that are sure to get the crowd going before I sing the “Favorite Things” song that I’m going to perform for the talent portion of Miss America someday in honor of our father.
Birdie is positive that instead of the Lord showing up to return my soul to its heavenly home, Lucifer will appear in our room to stab my soul with his pitchfork and drag it down to his place. The reason I haven’t been able to come up with anything yet to convince her that she’s wrong is because she isn’t. I was counting on her forgetting when I told her, but for some unknown reason, she perfectly remembers that my filthy-with-sin soul hasn’t been scrubbed clean in the longest time, since I stopped telling Father Ted my real sins in my real voice every week in the confessional and started telling him fake sins in my Shirley Temple voice, because for godssake, who wouldn’t believe anything that tap-dancing, yodeling kid told them?
FACT: I got my reasons.
PROOF: Loose lips sink ships.
Sure, priests are supposed to keep what you tell them a secret, but it’d be pretty dumb of me to confess the whole truth and nothing but in my easy-to-identify voice to a regular at Lonnigan’s Bar who is known to knock back way too many glasses of Communion wine.