Miracle Girls (9781938126161)

by Caschetta, M. B.

  “Quick, hide!” Baby Pauly whispers. “Monsters!”

  They run up the other set of stairs at the far side of the basement.

  There is only one room in the house with a lock on it: the upstairs bathroom.

  All afternoon during commercial breaks, Baby Pauly sneaks to the upstairs bathroom to bring Cee-Cee food: a baloney sandwich, a piece of Nonna’s lasagna, a glass of milk. Whatever passes under his nose to eat.

  In the bathroom, Cee-Cee pulls out all the bath toys from under the sink and arranges them in order from biggest to smallest, then by color, then by favorite. Sitting on the counter with her feet in the sink, she braids her hair. She brushes her teeth, inspects her toes.

  Later, she can hear the television through the air vent next to the toilet.

  Anthony and Baby Pauly are watching Lucy, the one where she has bright orange hair and works at a bank like Glory. She never mentions Little Ricky. Baby Pauly and Cee-Cee think the black-and-white ones are better.

  “Hey!” Anthony grabs Baby Pauly’s shirt. “Where are you going?”

  “GOTTA PEE!” Baby Pauly pulls away.

  Upstairs, he leans up against the bathroom door.

  By now Cee-Cee is having a full-on vision; the backs of her knees are numb, her hands go rigid, her head jerks a few times. Then she is sitting inside the feeling. It is not a bad feeling at all. She wants it to last, so she holds still, tries not to breathe. It feels a little like floating in water, only she’s in dry air.

  “What’s happening?” he says. Through the door, Baby Pauly’s voice is far away.

  “Don’t you hear it?”

  “Hear what?” Baby Pauly says.

  She sings a sad slow melody that is playing inside her heart and lets it slide under the door. "I am the river of life.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I wouldn’t lie,” she says. “The rest of the message is coming tonight.”

  Baby Pauly speaks into his hand. “What else?”

  “Drink from me and you shall not thirst.”

  He is silent.

  “Enter me and you shall not drown.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Cee-Cee says. “Maybe it’s about that missing girl. Maybe she’s coming back.”

  “What about her?” He is alarmed. “Is she okay?”

  “We have to wait and see.”

  Baby Pauly goes to his bedroom and writes with crayon on a piece of construction paper. He slips it under the bathroom door, across the tiles, and presses his face to the floor, so he can see Cee-Cee’s feet through the crack.

  She steps on the message, which is in some sort of code, triangles and colored circles. “What’s it say?”

  “It says, No one ever gets found, and Glory’s never coming back,” Baby Pauly whispers. “It says, Stay in there, forever.”

  Baby Pauly is afraid of Cee-Cee’s visions and messages. He has seen them delivered in the night by the one with the fierce wings crackling and sparking like popcorn kernels busting into light.

  Enter me and you shall not drown. Cee-Cee gets in the tub.

  For a moment, there is no sound, no light, no song.

  Baby Pauly lays his head on the floor and rests, checking once in a while for signs of life, but there are none.

  For the longest time, there is nothing.

  It’s dark when Cee-Cee wakes to the sound of Uncle Moonie pounding on the front door. “Open up! I brought burgers!”

  Even through the bathroom vent upstairs, she can tell he’s in a bad mood.

  Sometimes Uncle Moonie tells stories about how to survive in the jungle by eating bugs. Or he gets up a game of poker, walking around instructing everyone how to make a good play and how many matchsticks to bet. When he takes Mrs. Patrick and Jeremy to the movies, he recounts entire plots and acts out the good parts. He can fix a carburetor by snapping it out and drying it off on his shirt. Even in a sulky mood, when he kicks out Frank’s tan recliner and stares at the TV, it’s better than having Grandma Bianco around with her oxygen tank and her flannel nightie.

  Once when Norbert and Cee-Cee found a field mouse in the yard, Uncle Moonie told them they couldn’t keep a rodent for a pet. He picked it up and looked it in the eye. “There are people in the world who eat mice for dinner.”

  Baby Pauly laughed, until he saw Moonie was serious.

  “Watch,” he said, filling a bucket of water with the hose and dropping the mouse in with a splash. “You don’t even have to kill him.”

  They watched as the little mouse swam and swam in a circle.

  “What’s going to happen?” Norbert said. “He can’t get out.”

  “He’s going to die,” Baby Pauly said.

  Uncle Moonie nodded. “It’s the best way to dispose of a mouse.”

  Cee-Cee begged Uncle Moonie to let her save it, but he just shook his head. “Lots of mice in the world.”

  But this was already Cee-Cee’s mouse. It wasn’t fair.

  “You think this is bad,” he told her. “You should see how farmers drown kittens. They hold them down in a bucket of water until they’re dead. This way, the mouse is killing itself.”

  Ever since then, Cee-Cee has kept an eye out for cats.

  Twice she’s made Glory pull over so she can pick up a stray on the road and bring it over to Mrs. Patrick, who lives far away from all the farmers and never turns them away.

  Everyone says Moonie’s bad moods are from Vietnam where his leg got blown off. Anthony says Uncle Moonie went all the way to Albany to get a plastic replacement, which may or may not be true.

  To Baby Pauly and Cee-Cee, his legs look fine. But Anthony says you have to see past the knee where he straps on the fake part. He says Uncle Moonie has a closet full of plastic legs, each with a different shoe, because the Viet Cong sliced off his leg while he was asleep. Frank says Uncle Moonie shot himself in the foot to get out of having to kill the gooks, and it got infected. Glory says there are lots of bombs buried in people's backyards in Vietnam. You never know when one of them will go off and take your foot with it.

  “We ate pizza for dinner,” Roadie says.

  Uncle Moonie grunts. “Are you going to let me in?”

  Roadie steps aside, letting Moonie shuffle over to the refrigerator to deposit the burgers and get one of Frank’s beers.

  “Hi,” Jeremy Patrick says.

  At the kitchen table, Jeremy Patrick, Roadie, and Baby Pauly are cutting out pictures of motorcycles. After Moonie arrives, they go downstairs to the basement to finish pulling apart their motorbikes, so they can put them back together.

  Moonie’s boots slap unevenly from the kitchen linoleum to the carpeted TV room. He is probably wearing Army fatigues, which is all they ever see him wear. No one knows what he wears to work because his job is top secret—Uncle Moonie is a spy, Anthony likes to say.

  People are always trying to get him to spill the beans about what he does for a living, but he won’t talk about it. He says he’s signed an agreement that bought his silence on what he does at Kodak. Once he even swore on an actual Bible that the President of the United States came to see his project. Nixon himself!

  But wouldn’t say why.

  Glory didn’t believe it. Go on, Monaldo, you’re full of it.

  Frank laughed. Probably making tourist cameras. Big Kodak secret!

  In the TV room, Uncle Moonie drops into Frank’s recliner. “What’re you watching?”

  Anthony turns up the volume. “Wrestling.”

  “Don’t you have a girlfriend yet?” Moonie asks the same questions all the time. “You’re old enough now, aren’t you?”

  Among the Biancos, the oldest son is always the favorite. That’s how it is with Moonie and Frank. That’s how it is with Anthony and Roadie.

  Everyone defends the order of things, no matter what.

  “Where is everybody?” Moonie asks.

  “Glory’s gone.”

  “Yeah,” Moonie says. “Where to t
his time? That girlfriend of hers in Buffalo?”

  “Who cares?”

  Moonie cracks up as if Anthony is the funniest guy in the world. “Seriously, where is everyone?”

  Anthony hates being questioned. “What the hell do I look like? Somebody’s mother?”

  After midnight, Roadie and Jeremy Patrick come up from the basement, sneak past the TV room and knock on the bathroom door next to Roadie’s bedroom.

  “You can’t stay in there all night, Cee-Cee,” Roadie says.

  Baby Pauly guards the door. “She has to. We’re waiting for a message.” He has a pillow from his bed tucked under his armpit and a ripped rag of a blanket wrapped tight around his fist.

  Roadie rolls his eyes. “You’re going to sleep out here?”

  “Have to.” Baby Pauly slides down the bathroom door and settles in.

  “Let them stay here,” Jeremy Patrick says. “What’s the difference?”

  Giving up, Roadie follows Jeremy Patrick to his room.

  In a few minutes, the house is quiet. Everyone is in his own bed, except for Pauly and Cee-Cee. You can hear Uncle Moonie snoring on the couch and branches scraping against the windows. A big open sky looms over the house, bringing together all the people in the world they know and love, including, somewhere, Frank and Glory.

  From certain windows in the house, you can see the famous sign that sits on the Revere Copper Works, where Glory’s father used to work. A big orange and green light flashes in and out as Paul Revere keeps taking the same midnight ride to warn that danger is coming.

  Sharing a wall with the bathroom, Roadie’s room has the best view. Cee-Cee waits until everyone has said his prayers to close her eyes.

  Tucked in bed, Roadie waits. From his sleeping bag on the floor, Jeremy Patrick also waits.

  “You think they’re all asleep?” Jeremy Patrick whispers.

  Jeremy stands up and pulls his pajama bottoms down. Roadie lifts his hips up off the mattress and takes off his pajama bottoms, too.

  “Hurry, it’s cold.” Jeremy Patrick whispers. He stands next to Roadie’s bed.

  Roadie turns his face to Jeremy’s body. “Are you ready?”

  Jeremy Patrick answers quickly. “Ready.”

  Roadie touches him.

  “That feels good.”

  Roadie touches himself.

  Jeremy Patrick shivers as Roadie puts his mouth on him.

  After a moment, Roadie pulls his mouth away and asks the next question: “Do you think…?”

  “Shhh…don’t talk…”

  Then comes the feeling, like the flapping of a thousand migrating geese lifting from the spine through the center of the body, to the surface of the belly and down, down, down, to the tunnels and vessels. They flutter through Roadie and Jeremy Patrick.

  There is a small flying away, and then silence.

  Roadie sees the sky, blinks at the stars as if he might witness himself in a constellation overhead. It ends quietly, with a slow pleasant throbbing, a prayer.

  Everything must be done properly: pajamas replaced, hands wiped, bedcovers straightened, sleeping bag zipped. People know about you, Roadie––Anthony’s words echo in his ears.

  He sits up. “Is someone there?”

  A shadow stands in the doorway of his room. Roadie gives a little yelp.

  “Gone,” the shadow says.

  The bathroom door is swung wide open, light illuminating everything.

  It’s Frank standing there, slurring. “Where is she?”

  Roadie pulls at his pajama top. Jeremy hops behind him, stumbling and yanking his pant strings.

  “Glory left,” Roadie says. “That cop took her somewhere.”

  Frank is unsteady on his feet. “What cop?”

  Uncle Moonie appears on the staircase in his old Army fatigues; now the three of them stand silently in the dim hallway—Roadie, Moonie, and Frank—as if this were a house of mirrors reflecting only one face.

  Anthony drifts out of his room, a pale ghost. “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” says Uncle Moonie. “Go to bed.”

  Frank stumbles, keeping his gaze on Roadie. “You and your little friend? You two do everything together. You sleep together. You shit together?”

  Uncle Moonie takes a step forward. “I said Jeremy could stay over.”

  “And who the fuck are you?”

  Before Moonie can answer, Baby Pauly appears in the hallway. “SHE CAN’T BREATHE!”

  “Shit.” Frank points at Roadie. “Didn’t I tell you to give her that medicine?”

  Moonie leads the way to the little bathroom with the chipping tiles, the faucet with its drip-drip-dripping, and the echo of Baby Pauly’s shriek bouncing off the fixtures.

  Moonie pulls the shower curtain away from the tub.

  “Jesus Christ,” Anthony says.

  Roadie elbows his way through to grab Baby Pauly and cover his mouth. “Shut up for a second.”

  They look in the bathtub.

  Baby Pauly sees water rising up over the edge of the tub, spilling out in rivers of ice on the bathroom tiles. His sister’s eyes bulge; she is blue, drowning. He sputters for breath, opening his mouth, but releasing no sound.

  Uncle Moonie sees the faces of the Vietnamese children he watched get torched in every village for months on end, tiny limbs and almond-shaped eyes, bodies piled in a ditch no bigger than a tub and set on fire.

  Frank sees only his daughter’s downy limbs, inhales a sudden scent of lily and roses—such soft skin—then just like that, it stops: the pounding headache, the terrible itch to drink…gone.

  Roadie sees a forest floor, dirt and mud. The trees sway noisily as Jeremy kneels by the little body. “Save her!” The wind swallows Jeremy’s voice. He turns to Roadie. “We need to do something.”

  But Roadie can’t move.

  Anthony sees nothing at all: just his sister, a stupid girl, asleep in a bathtub. She looks exactly like she does when she’s sleeping in her bed and he stands over her trying to understand what it is he’s supposed to do. Pinch her flesh until it bruises? See what it would be like to rub up against her? Somewhere deep inside his mind a tiny bell goes off; a dull paralyzing sensation comes over him. His heart stops for a moment, his body coming alive at certain places.

  Uncle Moonie pushes everyone out of the way and lifts Cee-Cee from the burning tub, as if she is the last surviving villager from his own private hell, the last person on earth he will ever save.

  “Move out!” he orders.

  They lurch toward the bathroom door.

  Baby Pauly regains his breath. “Is she alive?”

  “Of course,” Jeremy holds his hand, bringing up the rear of Uncle Moonie’s makeshift platoon. “She was sleeping.”

  Frank pulls out a bottle of pink syrup. “It’ll help. Give her to me.”

  Moonie doesn’t budge. “Go sleep it off.”

  The others wait to see if Frank and Moonie will end up in a fistfight, but instead Frank slinks toward the master bedroom, muttering to himself.

  Anthony heads back to bed, disappointed. He’d have liked it if someone got punched in the face.

  Carrying Cee-Cee down the hall, Uncle Moonie places her on top of her mattress. He stands awkwardly at her bedside.

  “Were you sleeping in there?”

  “Sort of,” Cee-Cee says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s more like floating, no words—and happy.”

  “Really?” he says. “Happy?”

  “Like riding-a-bike happy,” she says. “Or eating-ice-cream happy. But better.”

  He thinks this over. “Huh.”

  Cee-Cee sits up. “It’s easy to be happy, Uncle Moonie.”

  He sits tentatively on the edge of Cee-Cee’s bed. “Go to sleep now. Your Mother will be back tomorrow.”

  Cee-Cee nods. “All you have to do is ask.”

  Moonie looks into his empty hands. “Please just go to sleep.”

  Cee-Cee kisses his cheek and let
s him tuck her into the cool sheets.

  After she’s asleep, Moonie sits on the floor in the dark and cries.

  By morning, the storm has passed without hitting.

  Amanda feels unsettled by the strange warm front that has crossed over from the mountains through the Mohawk River Valley.

  Today she's got limited resources. Brother Joe drives, and Sister Pius sits between them in the front, barely tall enough to see over the dash.

  Amanda directs Brother Joe to drive to Pilgrim’s Pond.

  Normally she refuses to interfere in the lives of Our Lady’s parishioners, but this time the child in question is the granddaughter of Marina Petramala, a devout woman and personal friend of hers. Everyone has heard reports of the girl’s special gift, of the family’s problems, the mother’s disappearances.

  The house is big and white with crooked peaks and broken shutters, somehow more imposing in the breaking daylight.

  “You’re stopping here?” Sister Pius says, leaning forward and looking at the house. “Are you sure, Mother?”

  “Don’t they usually slam the door in your face?” Brother Joe asks.

  “I’ll be right back,” Amanda says.

  Heading up the front path, she checks her watch. It’s 7:35, a luxury to still be canvassing at this hour. Our Lady’s schoolchildren are on Christmas break. Still, Amanda will have to be quick; at the Manse, the rest of the Sisters, who know nothing of these private morning missions, have been praying now for hours. They will begin to suspect that something is going on if she doesn’t get back reasonably soon.

  Ringing the front doorbell, Amanda prepares a speech for Marina’s daughter, the girl’s mother, whom she has only met once or twice. This time, Amanda plans to wedge her boot into the door and force a conversation about Catholic school. Perhaps she can offer a scholarship so the parents will at least consider the option. Amanda would like to see personally to the child’s spiritual and educational needs.

  She rings again, and at last a small boy answers the door. He stares up at her.

  “Hello, there,” Amanda says. “I’m a friend of your Nonna’s.”

  “I saw you on TV,” the boy says. “Nonna’s not here.”

  Amanda crouches down to look him in the eye. “Where’s your mother, honey?”