21; so much to turn over

As the story goes on, Birdie becomes more and more paranoid and anxious that she and her mother have been found out.  As she becomes more tense and aware, her mother takes on a more lackadaisical attitude that makes me think she was lying all along.  That it was something she made up.  Like it was a game to her, and now she has found Jim and she is in love and Bernadette was right.  If she really was in trouble- that dumb woman for putting all of herself in a man, letting her daughter disappear to Mona’s for days at a time not asking who what when where why (227)– she would be more cautious or a little more concerned about things.  And OK, Jim isn’t a fed, but I still think Sandy should have discussed letting Jim in on the secret with Birdie before telling him.  I guess it was hard to talk to her, considering Birdie said she essentially wanted nothing to do with them and avoided them.

Furthermore, the fact that her mother hid Dot’s note etc.  It makes me feel like Birdie was almost kidnapped by her own mother.  It’s sad when Birdie sits there thinking that she was the unwanted one.  She was the one who neither her mother nor father fought for.  Sandy is now so absorbed in her own life- and good for her; she should have a life of her own, but she doesn’t even notice things that were crucial to her before, i.e. when Birdie takes off her Star of David necklace.

I feel badly for Jim, making such an effort and Birdie being such a B about it.  She is still young, though.  Reading over her lines about how, on 256, she says, “But you don’t understand.  You can’t be my dad.  I already have a dad.  And he was a whole hell of a lot cooler than you.  Besides, we were doing just find without you.”  Ok Birdie, aren’t you the one who said your dad paid all of his attention to Cole, and ignored you when you were around?  Your dad may have been interesting, but didn’t you say he made you feel shitty most of the time?

This section contained good words, like chintzy and sordid and tumultuous.

It was abrupt, the way that Senna decided to shift the story and have Birdie run away.  It was as if she handed the story to someone else and said, you make the decision for me; what should happen next? I did not see it coming at all.  There wasn’t much of a build up to it.  Was there?  Did I miss it?  There are so many possibilites as to what will happen next.  Who will she find?  What if Dot is not at the address on the post card.  What if she is?  What will it BE like?!