FACT: Seeing a dead nun running through the cemetery is very bad. Very Virginia Cunningham loony.
PROOF: My poor little sister has finally lost every single one of her marbles.
Could this really be the awful moment I’ve been dreading?
I’ve always pictured this kid with the screwed-up brain and messed-up memory who really loves Daddy and Louise and quiz shows and me and Charlie and candy and playing cards and cat’s cradle and belly laughing at all my impressions and drifting away to parts unknown turning into a 100% raving loonatic on a dark and stormy night, not on a cornflower-blue-sky-as-far-as-you-can-see day. She’s not even doing #11 on the LOONY list—drooling, when not asleep. And she hasn’t murdered anyone, either, unless she did it during one of her wild streaks, so I can’t cross #10 off, either.
We got to hurry back home and pick up our plaid running-away suitcase, and the second thing we got to do is hit the road to California ASAP! But before those chips can fall into place, I have to get Birdie to play along, so I tell her in the voice that I’ve practiced many, many times in the middle of the night to BE PREPARED for when this day would come, “You’re safe with me, honey. Just come along quietly and nobody will get hurt.”
When my sister throws back her head, I’m sure she’s about to start raving crazy things the way a person would if they went from minor-league cracked to major-league cracked, but she surprises the heck out of me once again. Instead of letting loose of a loony-sounding, unhinged laugh like the movie gals who are locked up in padded cells make when it’s their turn to get dragged down to the steaming hot baths, she does one of her regular old belly laughs.
“That’s a very good impression of the head doctor in The Snake Pit movie, Tessie,” Birdie says, “but I got news for you. You’re the one that’s gotta screw your head on straight. I sister-promise that Sister M and M is not dead. Now”—she slips her little foot into my cupped hands—“what say we climb this fence, have a quick meeting with Charlie, and then we’ll all go up to church so you can confess to Father Ted in your Shirley Temple voice and question Kitten Jablonski to see what she can tell us about Sister’s disappearance.”
I don’t know, ya know?
It must be the Indian summer heat getting to me, because just for a second, I swear I saw something so smart beaming out of Birdie’s eyes that it made me doubt everything I ever thought about her, because never before have I heard her say so many smart things all at the same time.
Q. Could I have been wrong about her all these years? Maybe it’s not the size of a kid’s brain that makes them an egghead. Maybe a kid’s heart can make them really smart, too?
A. Ask again later.
Naw, that’d be a waste of breath, because my sister gives me the answer to those questions when I crouch down even further to give her a better boost over the cemetery fence and say, “Ready for the old heave-ho?” and she licks my cheek and says, “Ready, Frank!”
16
A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN
12:36 p.m. Well, that just goes to show ya once again how life can change on a dime. If you would’ve asked me a few minutes ago what the chances would be of my sister stumbling across another piece of evidence, I would’ve laughed and launched a loogie at you from the top of the cemetery fence.
FACT: Sister Margaret Mary is not dead.
PROOF: Normally I take everything that comes out of my Birdie’s mouth with more grains of salt than a box of Morton’s (Joke!) but she sister-promised that she saw the missing nun alive. (Obviously, it crossed my mind that what she saw was a zombie, which is a person who is dead, but still gets around. But Birdie told me that she saw our principal running near the willow tree and in every movie about zombies I’ve ever seen at the Tosa Theatre, they are a very slow-moving people.)