Sammy Keyes and the Sisters of Mercy (13 page)

I nod, so she unlocks the door and steps inside.

Now, I’d never been inside a motor home before. Not even a little one. And I wasn’t expecting to see what I saw. There was a living room—an actual living room, with couches and a coffee table and a television. And the furniture was all this kind of puffy velour with a soft pink and
white pattern like the sky in the background of an oil painting.

To the left of the living room was a dining room booth, and across from that was the kitchen. And I’m talking
kitchen
. Four-burner stove, refrigerator, microwave, overhead cabinets—the works. And humming away in the kitchen, placing vegetables from the refrigerator into the sink, is Sister Clarice.

So I’m checking all this out when Sister Abigail calls, “Bernie, I’ve got those faxes sent. Do you—” She sees me and says, “Well, what have we here?” only she’s kind of glaring at Sister Bernice and I can tell that I’m intruding.

Bernice says, “You remember Sammy, don’t you?”

I hurry up and say, “I’m sorry, I just need to wash my hands before we start stuffing envelopes.”

Abby flips down the screen of a computer, shuts off the power to a printer, and comes up from the passenger seat. “They don’t have a basin at the hall?”

Bernice says, “Lighten up a little, Sister. Sammy’s not the one that tried to break in the other night. She just wants to wash her hands.”

Clarice smiles at me from over at the sink. “Nice to see you again, Sammy. I’ll be done here in just a minute. Why don’t you have a seat?”

Now, I don’t want to sit on one of the couches—they look too puffy for someone with dog slobber on her hands. So I sit on the edge of the dining room booth and watch Clarice. She shakes the water off a freshly washed beet and carrot and puts them in a blender, tops and all. She adds a bowl of papaya slices, then cracks an egg on top
of them, but instead of putting the shell in the garbage, she puts it in the blender, too. Then she covers the whole mess with pineapple juice, puts on the lid and
vrooom!
She whips it up.

And in about thirty seconds she’s got this pink drink that looks more like a strawberry milk shake than a compost concoction. She holds up the pitcher. “Would you like a taste?”

I smile and shake my head, but she pours a little in a glass anyway and says, “Go on, it’s
good
.”

Well, what am I supposed to do? I watch her take a big gulp from her own glass, and since nothing happens to her, I pick up mine with my clean hand and take a sip.

And it doesn’t taste anything like weeds and beets. It’s
good
. So I say, “Hey, that’s amazing!”

Sister Clarice pulls a face at Bernice and Abby. “Told you so.”

Bernice laughs and says to Abigail, “Lord, have mercy, she’s a brave one.” She takes the glass from me and swishes the drink around. “Sister’s been trying to get us to try this all week.” She raises the glass in the air and says, “May the Lord protect and keep me,” then downs the drink, smacks her lips, and says, “Aah!” Her eyes pop wide open. “Say, that
is
good!”

After Abigail finally breaks down and tastes it, Clarice clears out the sink and says, “It’s all yours, Sammy.”

While I’m scrubbing up, Abigail goes back to the front of the motor home, Clarice sits in the living room to finish her drink, and Bernice ducks into the bathroom. When I’m done, I grab a paper towel from the roll and dry my
hands, and when I look around, well, there’s no trash can. So I pop open the cabinet under the sink because that’s where everyone keeps their trash can, only there isn’t one—just pipes and soap and scrub brushes. I start to open another cabinet, only Clarice jumps up and says, “Right over here, dear,” and holds out a wastebasket.

I throw out the paper towel and stand around for a minute, but without Bernice there, I feel really awkward so I go to the door and say, “I’ll just wait for Sister Bernice outside.”

Marissa and Dot are sitting on the lawn, and when they see me coming, Dot says, “What took so long? Where’s Sister Bernice?”

“Sorry. Sister Clarice was cleaning vegetables in the sink. I had to wait.”

Marissa hitches her thumb at the NunMobile and says, “My uncle has one of those. They’re amazing. The kitchen table turns into a bed, and there’s a loft above the driver’s seat. There are compartments everywhere—even under the benches and the furniture. My uncle’s has a TV in it, too—right between the front seats. It is so cool.”

Just then Bernice comes walking down the steps with a big box. “You angels ready to help in the service of the Lord?”

We follow her over to the parish hall, and when we push through the front door, who do we see? Brother Phil sitting at a table with his face in his hands. And near him, back against the wall, are Father Mayhew, Sister Josephine, and Mary Margaret.

And we stop cold, because across the table from Phil is Officer Borsch.

You can tell from the way Officer Borsch is pacing back and forth that he’s not there discussing the merits of using a crosswalk. He’s there to beat a confession out of Brother Phil.

When Officer Borsch sees me standing in the doorway, he stops pacing and sits down. And for a second it looks like
he’s
going to bury his face in his hands, but he doesn’t. He just sighs and says to Father Mayhew, “We’re not getting anywhere.” He wags his head over at us. “And now we’ve got company. Maybe we should go down to the station.”

Father Mayhew shakes his head. “The station? Is that really necessary?” He takes a step closer and says to Phil, “Son, you swear you didn’t take the chalices or the cross, but you have no explanation as to why you were going through the drawers in the sacristy this afternoon. What am I supposed to think?”

Phil shoves back from the table. “You want to know why? I’ll tell you why! Thanks to you, I’ll probably never be ordained. Thanks to you, I …” He closes his eyes tight, and says real slowly, “I just wanted to try on the vestments. I just wanted to see what it felt like.”

Father Mayhew runs his complicated eyes over him a minute. Then he says as gently as he can, “Son, you’re just not ready. Maybe someday you will be, but you’re not now. And if what you say is true, wanting to play dress-up in a priest’s clothing just serves to convince me that you have a lot of work to do before your ordination.”

After a minute of nobody saying anything, Officer
Borsch and Father Mayhew go out one door and the Sisters and Brother Phil go out another. After they’re gone, Sister Bernice shakes her head a bit and mumbles, “There’s bitter blood running through this place.” She gives us a half-hearted smile. “We’ve got a lot of work to do ourselves, girls. Let’s get to it.”

She sets up a little assembly line for us and when she’s sure we know what we’re doing, she says, “Just bring ’em along to the motor home when you’re done. And girls? Keep in mind that the Lord works in mysterious ways. He’ll find a way to help my Brothers and Sisters exorcise whatever demons possess them. Have faith.”

After she leaves, we stuff envelopes for a little while without saying much, but pretty soon Marissa and Dot are back to talking about the game and how we’re going to shut out Mr. Vince’s team on Wednesday.

I’m talking about it, too, only part of my brain’s not thinking about softball. It’s tingling and twitching, brooding about Brothers and Sisters. And it seems that the more I get to know the Family of St. Mary’s Church, the harder it is for me to tell which ones are the saints.

And which ones are sinners.

Sometime between us stuffing envelopes and me serving sandwiches at the soup kitchen, I guess God decided the church needed a good washing. At first I thought it was going to be the usual move-along-a-little-faster kind of rain, but it wasn’t. It was a downpour.

About halfway into serving sandwiches, people started cramming into the soup kitchen, wanting to eat their food inside. But there isn’t very much room, and Mary Margaret finally had to say, “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to move along. We just don’t have the facilities to shelter you.”

So they shuffled back outside, and most of them just disappeared—probably over to the mall to dry out a bit. But you could see a handful of them hanging out under a tree, putting newspapers across their strollers and carts, trying to keep all their stuff dry.

And just as I’m thinking that we’re done for the day, Holly comes dripping in. Her hair’s matted flat against her head, her sweatshirt’s soaked clear through, and her hightops squish when she walks.

Now, if this had been Marissa or Dot, I would’ve taken one look and started cracking up. I mean, she looks like a wet whippet ready to shake out and soak the walls.

But she’s not Marissa or Dot, and she can’t just shake herself dry. And I don’t laugh. I don’t even smile. I just whisper, “You want me to try to get you some dry clothes?”

She takes her sandwich. “It’s just water.” Then she turns and whispers over her shoulder, “Don’t get any bright ideas. I’m fine.”

Well, I don’t
have
any bright ideas. I want to tell
someone
about Holly, but looking around, well, Josephine’s a Sister and all, but she doesn’t seem too sisterly. And Mary Margaret’s nice, but she’d wind up doing the same thing Father Mayhew would do if I told him: call the police. And in no time they’d haul Holly back to civilization where she’d be nice and warm on the outside, and miserable on the inside.

So I didn’t tell them. I just headed home in the rain. And when I got past Mrs. Graybill and popped into the apartment, the first thing Grams says is, “Oh, thank heavens! I was getting worried.”

I almost told Grams right then and there, but she waves me straight into the bathroom. “Go on, Samantha—get out of those clothes! You’re going to catch your death of cold.”

So I went into the bathroom, and standing there in front of the mirror, dripping, well,
I
looked like a wet whippet in squeaky high-tops needing to take a good shake all over the walls. After staring at myself for a minute, I wrestled out of my backpack and checked to make sure my mitt hadn’t gotten wet, then I peeled off my clothes and jumped in the shower.

That night I dreamt about softball. Only it wasn’t a regular softball game—we were playing in the pouring rain. And when it was my turn to bat, instead of Anita, Debbie, and Tenille being the outfield, it’s the Sisters of Mercy, and they’re in habits and cleats, waving their gloves in the air, singing, “Take me … take me to the river … Wash me … wash me in the water …”

* * *

It rained all night. And by the time I was ready to leave for school, it was
still
raining, so when Grams hands me her big old black umbrella, I take it. I fly down the fire-escape stairs like Mary Poppins from a rooftop, cut across Broadway to Maynard’s Market, run all the way down to Cook Street, and before you know it, I’m sloshing my way up the school steps.

In homeroom the kids take one look at my umbrella and start teasing me, saying, “What is that thing? A tent?” because it’s big enough to keep a gorilla dry. I just laugh and put it against the wall next to all their collapsible jobbies, and in between classes, I stay nice and dry while their umbrellas turn inside out in the wind.

It finally quit raining around lunchtime, but the patio tables were too soggy to eat at so we all wound up piling into the cafeteria. Between classes kids would yell through the rain, “You were awesome yesterday, Marissa!” and she’d smile and wave, “Thanks!” But at lunch, she got mobbed. All the seventh graders wanted to tell her what a great pitcher she was and how she was going to be the first seventh-grade pitcher ever to win the Junior Sluggers’
Cup and how she’d go down in the Softball Hall of Fame and stuff like that. She was being real nice about it, saying it was a team effort and everyone played well, but you could tell that she was happy to be the star.

Then, when Danny Urbanski came over and sat with us, well, I thought Marissa was going to pop. Danny’s cute, but to Marissa, being near him’s like being on a runaway train. Her hands shake and her heart races and she thinks she’s going to die. And I swear, if he’s even halfway nice to her, she picks me off the ground and twirls me through the air.

Danny was being more than halfway nice to her. He was joking around and telling her what a great pitcher she was, and the whole time he’s talking, he’s playing with the silver ring he wears on his index finger.

When he leaves, Dot whispers, “Who was
that
?” and for the first time in days, Marissa went on and on about something besides softball.

I think Heather ditched school that day. Maybe she didn’t come because she was sick, or maybe she had a family emergency out of town, but I doubt it, because Tenille wasn’t at school either. Tenille’ll do anything Heather says, and I don’t know—them both being gone made me a little nervous. I could just see them, locked up in Heather’s room, bouncing around on Heather’s bed, smoking cigarettes and plotting ways to chop me into little pieces.

Don’t get me wrong—I had a great day without Heather. People were friendly to us all day long, and when school let out, the sun was actually shining so we had a really nice walk home. Well, over to the church, anyway.