The Falling Nun: And Other Stories by Pamela Rafael Berkman

Author:Pamela Rafael Berkman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2008-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Men Have More Upper-Body Strength

In the green twilight of the green day, in Sheila O’Rourke’s big, trashy, glittery house on the seedy side of town, which was covered with fluttery green paper decorations from Walgreen’s, among all that green, Brigid sat at Sheila’s kitchen table. She cut shamrocks from green construction paper, taping them up on the refrigerator and walls, watching Sheila cook green rice and green tamales, getting ready for the party for Saint Patrick’s Day. Sheila had hung green crepe-paper snakes in great webs from the ceiling in the living room. “He drove the snakes out of Ireland, the fucker,” she said, “but there were no snakes in Ireland, they mean the pagans when they say that, snakes were symbols of the goddess, it’s in the prayer of Saint Patrick, Saint Patrick’s Breastplate. ‘Protect me from the enchantments of women or smiths or druids.’” But Sheila liked a good excuse for partying as well as anybody else.

So Brigid cut the shamrocks from the green paper and marked them with green glitter glue, and they talked, and Sheila said, around the time that she was cutting up the green pepper to go in the green rice, “I make Boniface Tyler nervous.”

“Why?” asked Brigid. She had a crush on Boniface Tyler and liked the relief of hearing him talked about, of saying his name. She had not had a crush in some time and so was protective of this one, telling no one, not even Sheila. She was sure she had not yet given it away. She would have liked the edge of knowing how to make Boniface Tyler nervous.

Sheila put her mouth down close to Brigid’s ear; although they were alone, and looked around the kitchen as though someone might be listening, hiding among the leprechauns on the paper tablecloth or behind the keg of green beer. Outside, beyond the window, they could already hear the roars and the calls of the drinkers in the sports bars and dives on the corners. Sheila began by whispering but ended in a triumphant cackle. “I raped him!” she cried, and whooped and danced a few steps around the room.

Brigid looked at her friend. Sheila was already in her party dress, which was twenty years older than she was, ratty emerald-green crinkly satin with a green crinoline, trimmed with black velvet piping. Her black stockings were so destroyed they looked like spiderwebs, and her feet shone in cracked patent-leather dark green and silver buckled shoes, very high-heeled, sprinkled with sequins. Sheila was not pretty—she was too bony on the top, too wide on the bottom, her features too blunt with no fineness to them, her nose thick, no cheekbones to speak of. Her skin was rough with mild acne scars, her hair rough, too, from all the colors she had dyed it, dark auburn tonight and braided into a hundred long coils, each tied at the end with a ribbon. It amazed Brigid, who was herself quite diminutive and beautiful, Black Irish

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