“I don’t know.”
She smiles and rubs his cheek. “What’s your name?”
“Pauly Bianco.”
“I’m here about your sister, Pauly.”
The little boy touches the buttons on Amanda’s coat as if considering the situation; then he takes her hand and leads her through the sleeping house, around piles of clothes, toys, boxes of pizza, over books and papers, and up the stairs. Arriving at a little bathroom at the end of the hall on the second floor, Amanda stands on the cracked bathroom tiles before an old claw-foot bathtub.
“There she is.” The boy points into the tub where the little girl is sleeping with a blanket tangled around her legs.
“Why is she sleeping in there?” Amanda whispers.
“She can’t sleep in her bed.” Leaning against Amanda with a warm and reassuring weight, the little boy yawns and stretches. “They talk and wake her up at night.”
“Who does?” Amanda studies the girl: long tangle of black hair, dirty clothes, sleeping face, some kind of stuffed toy tight in her grip. She looks like any other neglected child, and yet a light feeling comes into Amanda’s heart, buoying her up, a sense of hope perhaps.
“The angels,” Pauly Bianco says.
Climbing into the tub, he sticks his thumb in his mouth and sits on the edge. He yawns and curls up next to his sister.
Amanda covers both children with the blanket.
She is tempted to pick them both up and carry them out of the house, but instead she kisses the little boy’s cheek and passes a hand over the girl’s head.
She must pay close attention to what she does and how she does it, or all will be lost. She’s worked too hard to make mistakes now. Christ’s Most Precious Wounds have many eyes, she knows—some more prying than others.
“I’ll come back another time,” she says.
The little boy waves the fingers of his sucking thumb at her and closes his eyes.
Pulling the door partway closed, Amanda makes her way back through the mess and lets herself out of the house.
Cee-Cee listens to snow drop off the roof.
A big warm sun has risen over Route 177, and suddenly everything is melting. It is a long time before anyone else in the house will be awake.
Anthony is the last one up. Some mornings his trouble starts before he even gets out of bed, but today he feels like he’s got himself under control. He gets dressed and goes downstairs, looking for Glory.
Even before he realizes she’s not back, it happens: his skin starts to shrink the way it does on bad days. He feels his flesh popping at various angles: joints and bones, elbows and feet. It’s as if an invisible crank were being turned from the inside, making him smaller, tighter. Now he blinks, darting his eyes around the kitchen.
It’s only nine o’clock, and already the pressure is too much.
“Stop it.” Frank lights a cigarette at the breakfast table. “You’re making me nervous.”
Anthony is grateful for the smoke; it makes him feel like he’s sitting at a bar, somebody else entirely, not a kid with shrinking skin.
Frank pours glasses of orange juice and bowls of cereal for Baby Pauly and Cee-Cee. “Eat up, you two.”
Three of Anthony’s toes jump up off the kitchen floor, then settle back down. A tingle in his spine derails his thoughts; he twists, concentrates on speaking clearly.
“When’s Glory coming back?” Baby Pauly says.
“Soon,” Frank musses Pauly’s hair. “Christmas gives that woman bad ideas.”
“She usually calls by now to tell us where she is,” Anthony says. “Unless she’s leaving you again.”
Frank picks a piece of tobacco off his tongue and breathes out some smoke, as if his lungs were on fire. "She’ll be back today. Mark my words.”
But Anthony is nervous, and whenever he gets nervous, Frank tries to give him advice. Relax! he’ll say. Make friends with some athletic kids at school. A cheerleader will fix this, or a girl on the track team.
Anthony can’t see how getting rejected by a popular girl is going to help him.
Now Frank puts an arm around Anthony’s neck, wrestling him into a half-hearted choke hold, his version of a hug. It’s an old routine from when Anthony was little, and he and his father were close.
“It’s going to be okay.” Frank sighs. “You need another outlet is all; find a girl; wet your dipstick. I’m telling you.”
His father’s reassuring touch and the smell of tobacco let Anthony relax. Maybe there is a way out. He just has to see the signs and know their meaning.
Roadie and Jeremy Patrick interrupt his thoughts. The two boys push each other up the basement stairs and knock into the walls, laughing.
“Act like men, not schoolgirls,” Frank says when they appear.
Roadie stops short in the kitchen archway. “Why are you still here?”
“There’s food in the fridge.” Frank gets up. “Your mother will be home later.”
Anthony closes his eyes, imagining his mother walking through the door.
“I believe you,” Cee-Cee says, looking up from her Lucky Charms.
“Atta girl!” Frank says, winking.
Anthony’s stomach contracts, then hurts. He can’t leave things up to Frank to fix; he has to be the one to figure out how to get Glory back.
From the door on his way out, Frank gives Anthony a nod. “Have a little trust, will you?”
Anthony is afraid of what will happen if his mother doesn’t return. Something bad. He knows this for sure.
He watches Jeremy Patrick and Roadie pour coffee into matching mugs.
At least no one has to go to Nonna’s. When they were little and Glory pulled a disappearing act, they sometimes ended up staying at Nonna’s house for weeks. God camp, Frank used to call it. You'll either come home batty or a believer.
Nonna is a maniac for Jesus.
She knows everything there is to know about the saints: who was shot through with arrows, whose skin peeled back, whose bones pulled out, who got nailed to a tree, head chopped off, stoned, or impaled on a stake. She loves to rattle on and on: This one was raped; that one starved and murdered.
The thought of it makes Anthony want to pinch somebody, hard.
By lunchtime, the sun is shining brilliantly, melting snow off the roof, creating new slime and mildew. Anthony feels the stuff creeping up his legs: mold. Even when Glory scrubs the walls and sprays Lysol, he can still feel it growing on him. He scrubs his hands and lathers his legs. At the slightest hint, he takes off his jeans, walking around carefully in his underwear.
Glory disappearing for days is a bad sign. The weather getting warm is a bad sign. His shrinking skin is getting worse. Things are going very wrong. He has to do something to fix it, to bring his mother back. He tenses his arms to stave off a twitch.
Then a little bell goes off in his head: they’ll get out of the house for a while and get some air. They’ll go deep into the woods where he will find an answer.
Anthony’s shoulders ache. His ears burn. “Pauly, go get Cee-Cee’s coat.”
Baby Pauly looks up from playing and scrambles to the hall closet.
Anthony points at Roadie and Jeremy Patrick. “We’re going for a walk in the woods.”
“Why would we do that?” Roadie asks, looking up from the sink where he is washing dishes from breakfast. Jeremy waits at his side to dry with a hand-embroidered dish towel.
“An adventure,” Anthony says. "Besides, it’s warm out there.”
Jeremy Patrick looks out the window and sees that the storm has passed; the sun is shining. “It looks muddy.”
Roadie is nervous. “I’m staying here.”
Anthony is suddenly calm. “Nope. Everyone's going…even you two ladies.”
Dropping the bowl he is washing, Roadie lunges across the kitchen. Anthony grabs his neck, wrestling him to the ground. The contact feels good. He wants his brother to punch him hard; maybe that will fix things. But Roadie twists to get away.
Shoulders pinned, Roadie flails his hands, sending suds into the air. Anthony draws back, landing a solid punch on Roadie’s nose with a dull popping sound. The release of knuckles into the soft cartilage instantly stops the noise in Anthony’s head—a relief.
Baby Pauly returns dressed for the cold, carrying Cee-Cee’s coat. Seeing the small smudge of blood under Roadie’s nose, he stops short.
“Say it,” Anthony demands.
Roadie presses his lips together.
Jeremy Patrick makes a low gurgling sound in his throat, wrings his hands.
Cee-Cee appears in the doorway.
Anthony pulls his arm back to punch Roadie again, but Baby Pauly rushes forward, hot tears springing from his eyes. “UNCLE, UNCLE, UNCLE, UNCLE.”
Everyone stops what they’re doing.
“Okay, okay,” Anthony gets up. His head feels clear now, his body loose. “Shut up, Pauly. It was just a game.”
Anthony looks down at Cee-Cee and reaches out to touch her arm very gently. “We’re just horsing around.”
No one seems able to move, except Cee-Cee. She goes to the phone and dials a number.
“Mary Margaret, please,” she says.
There is a long pause.
“Hello. It’s me.”
Baby Pauly takes a step closer and looks into his sister’s face.
“Yeah,” Cee-Cee says into the receiver.
Roadie and Jeremy look at one another, then at Baby Pauly.
“Yeah…the missing girl. I can find her.” Cee-Cee listens to the voice on the phone. “Right. Norbert, too…Okay, goodbye.”
She hangs up the phone.
Roadie stands up, brushing himself off and pinching his bloody nose. Jeremy Patrick gets him a Kleenex.
Taking Cee-Cee’s coat out of Baby Pauly’s hands, Anthony kneels down. He pulls the little wooden pegs through the big green loops, and smiles. “Want to make snow angels with me?”
“No,” Roadie answers. “She doesn’t.”
“Let’s play cards instead,” Cee-Cee says. She holds up a small deck of cards with mice dressed as kings and queens.
“I want to make a snow angel.” Baby Pauly hops on one leg to the door.
Anthony stands up. “Time to go. There’s a game we can play outside; it’s like cards.”
Anthony is going to fix everything, especially himself.
Roadie puts his hand on Cee-Cee's cheek, barely touching the baby hair that grows there.
“No,” Cee-Cee whispers.
“It’ll be okay.” Roadie tries to believe it himself. “I promise.”
In the woods, everything is melting.
They walk single-file through the thicket of trees behind the house. Cee-Cee goes first, with Roadie steering her shoulders. Bringing up the rear are Jeremy Patrick, Baby Pauly, and Anthony. When they get further into the woods away from the house, Jeremy Patrick pulls ahead and starts breaking twigs to mark the path.
“Cut it out, boy scout,” Anthony says. “This is far enough.”
They are a few yards into the woods where a circling of trees has made a small clearing. In the woods behind the house, the snow is melting earnestly.
Overhead, a warm breeze blows.
Baby Pauly looks around at the half-thawed forest, eyeing the melting clumps of snow, a checkered pattern of brown and white as far as the eye can see. Little nervous rivers run between his muddy boots.
“We can’t make snow angels in this!” he says. “What’s the game? What game are we going to play?”
Jeremy Patrick unzips Baby Pauly’s coat. “It’s warm out here.”
Baby Pauly starts rooting around in some bushes like a small animal. “I’ll go find the snow!”
The sun is warm on their skin.
When Cee-Cee closes her eyes, she can suddenly see all the missing girls in the Mohawk Valley and beyond. It’s part of the message: they are buried in wheat fields and stashed behind train tracks, or sprawled at the bottom of the canal. Could have been you, one dead girl says, smart-mouthed. But instead it was me! A live one tied up somewhere in a basement cocks her head: But, guess what—you’re next!
Cee-Cee tries to focus, but a terrible headache rises from the back of her neck, as if someone has struck her there. She should take her medicine, but Mrs. Patrick took away the little pink bottles. In the thicket overhead, the branches are picked clean as bones, no longer swaying. Now she steps back until her heels butt up against the fat oak tree.
In the woods, everything is silent. Even the trees stand still.
Above her in the branches, Jesus appears with an entourage of adoring virgins who surround him, fawning and cooing. They watch what happens below, nodding at one another and holding hands. They are all the teenage saints who ever were, older than Cee-Cee, and happier because their fate is complete. They dance in the wind, mutilated and proud: Sassy St. Lucy with her eyes plucked out. Pretty St. Ursula with the arrows stuck through her skin. St. Agatha with her tiny budding breasts sliced off and served up on a plate. St. Hypatia lynched for being good at math. Maria Goretti who was stabbed eleven and three times rather than submit to rape, as tough an Italian girl as any. The little queen, St. Catherine, Bride of Baby Jesus, holding a book, a wheel, and a sword. There’s Thecla, Julia, Dotty, Maura, and Philomena. There’s Raisa, and Quiteria with her sisters. And all the others: God’s favorite girls, miraculously joyful, the littlest gems. Spewing teeny-bopper adoration, they shine and point their eyes toward Jesus, who reigns above, a movie star in sunglasses.
Jesus focuses on Cee-Cee.
Everyone suffers, He says. Even I suffer. I suffer for you.
Cee-Cee bares her teeth. She does not remember how to smile.
Feeling a distant pain rip through her middle, she ascends to the trees to join the littlest saints in song. There is an awful calm and a crossing over. The whole time, Jesus keeps His kind, loving eyes pinned on the action; He will cry for Cee-Cee, but he has already saved the world as much as He can by hanging on that cross. Now the most He can do is offer a little comfort.
From far away Cee-Cee hears a voice: “KIDNAPPER!”
There is the sound of fighting, then the sound of nothing.
Almost done, Cecilia Marie! the pretty little martyred saints sing. Almost a virgin like us!
Below on the ground a girl is sprawled and broken. Cee-Cee sees that the saints are singing to the poor thing. She joins in, singing and floating above in the trees. The broken girl on the ground has turned herself into a tree, her little arms growing brittle as branches, her little legs rooting into the ground, wooden and strong. Her pulpy heart bangs itself senseless in the wooden cage of ribs. She could easily be chopped down, compressed into a piece of paper.
Cee-Cee sways with the hundred faithful virgins as they cling to the air and hum hallelujah. Cee-Cee hums too. She doesn’t even worry about that poor girl lying in the snow, hair fanned out around her head like a black halo on the ground; she knows there’ll be a resurrection; isn’t there always?
One minute longer! they sing.
They all hold Cee-Cee’s hand and sing together: Now we are all the same: Virgins! Brides of Love.
Below, there is shouting.
“I DON’T LIKE THIS GAME!” Baby Pauly comes running back to the circle of trees. “STOP!”
He looks up at his sister flying in the air; she waves at him and he waves back. He looks down at the girl, also his sister, lying in the mud; she doesn’t move, and he cries. “YOU KILLED HER!”
From far away, Cee-Cee hears footsteps coming down the path toward them. The pain subsides. The hymn gets softer, until everything stops.
“THE MAILMAN IS COMING!” Baby Pauly shouts. “THE MAILMAN WILL SAVE US!”
Baby Pauly runs as fast as he can, tripping over branches and roots, picking himself up from mud puddles. He is trying to run to the house for help, but instead takes a wrong turn and heads further into the w
oods toward Pilgrim’s Pond.
In the air, his floating sister buzzes above him, following him like a yellow light through the trees. She will keep him from getting lost. She will keep him safe. At the pond he stops to catch his breath. Ice drips from the branches where Cee-Cee hovers, beating down on him like the sun. But there is only so much a person can do without a body.
The pond expands and breathes.
Beneath Baby Pauly’s feet is the sound of ice cracking.
It turns out not to be the mailman at all.
Instead it is sweet, slow Norbert Sasso limping through the woods. All morning he’s begged his mother to let him put on his new school clothes. In January he is going to a special place for people like him. He has cut through the woods to show Cee-Cee how he looks in his new school’s uniform. Tears stream down his face as a cold wind picks up from Canada and sweeps across the fields and through the trees behind him.
The uniform—blue pants with a dark stripe and shiny shoes—does not disguise his slack mouth and oddly shaped eyes. It only makes him look more like himself.
Norbert stomps unsteadily, stumbling across the circle of boys.
Anthony sneaks up from behind him. “What do you want, Fat Norbert?”
“What’s wrong with Cee-Cee?” Norbert wrestles him aside. “Why is she lying there?”
“A stranger hurt her, Smelly,” Anthony says. “We chased him off, but now we can’t find him.”
Norbert swings around, agile for his size despite his too-short leg. “Don’t call me that!”
“The guy might still be out here somewhere,” Anthony says. “You’d better go home to your Mommy. He’s been kidnapping people like crazy, and he just might come after you.”
When Norbert comes over to play, Glory always says, Poor dumb bunny. He stands around with his white socks and greasy hair while Glory scratches under his chin where his hair sprouts unevenly.
In the growing cold, Norbert examines his little friend; when the girl on the ground opens her eyes, it is Cee-Cee looking through them. She gazes at beautiful Norbert, who is stuffed like a sausage in the pretty blue fabric. His nose drips. Sweat runs down his face.
He bends to touch Cee-Cee’s coat, covering her legs. Eyes burning against the chilly wind, he makes a noise with his mouth, the thick squeal of something gone wild.
Miracle Girls (9781938126161) Page 5