Miracle Girls (9781938126161)

by Caschetta, M. B.

  Cee-Cee’s head is always bent over a notebook, her hands are always shuffling a small deck of cards, marked with blue ink, her hair is always tangled. She looks like a runt. Still, the girls at Our Lady Junior High take their miracles seriously; they wave shyly at Cee-Cee through the window on their way home from school.

  Today, they get their first good look at the new presentable Cee-Cee in the flesh. She is scrubbed clean, skin perfectly porcelain, hair held back loosely with a tie, but brushed to shine. The color of her eyes seems to prompt the most excitement; a fleet of notes go sailing back and forth in the front row.

  Golden, the notes say.

  Sensing a new wave of energy, the classroom grows restless.

  Paper ruffles, pencils tap. Mouth-breathers flip in their seats until Mary Margaret, the school’s shining star of bad girls, can’t stand it any more.

  “Shush up!” she says. “Let her speak.”

  Cee-Cee sputters and starts over. “The Ecosystem.”

  Sandy Sorrentino blows a spit bubble. “You said that already, EcoSpasm.”

  “I’ll knock you, Scabby,” Mary Margaret warns, then whips back around.

  “Continue, please,” says Sister Edward.

  “In our precious water supply––ponds, rivers, and streams,” Cee-Cee says, “there's a universe of unexplored beauty that gets destroyed every day with toxic dumping.”

  Sandy pops an eye open. “Walk on water if you’re so great.”

  Father Giuseppe squeezes Sandy’s shoulder, causing a few of the slower students to giggle from the back rows. Someone else slings a rubber band, a bright yellow butterfly of elastic that Mary Margaret catches midair.

  Sister Edward taps the desk again. “Who wants to go to the principal’s office?”

  Sandy droops his lids to half-mast.

  “With a microscope and a drop of water,” Cee-Cee says, “you can see many important life-sustaining organisms.”

  “Orgasms.” A whisper, a wind, a ventriloquist’s trick.

  Sister Edward’s sigh is tragic. She is too tired to make a real effort and inspects her gold band instead; everyone knows it is a wedding ring from Jesus.

  The Sisters and Brothers, guests at the back of the room, shift and nod, encouraging Cee-Cee to finish. All in a row, the pretty girls, Black-Eyed Susans, bow their heads, listening intently. Miracle Girl, they call Cee-Cee behind her back.

  Cee-Cee clutches a jar of pond water, pointing out the finer details of a homemade poster showing disruptions in the food chain. This is the water that saved Baby Pauly, the water that kept him alive. She wants to mention that this is the reason for her choice of topics, but she cannot bring herself to say his name in public.

  When her presentation is over, everyone applauds.

  Mary Margaret whistles through her fingers and shouts. “Bravo! Bravo!”

  “Spazospasm!” Sandy shouts, equally impressed.

  Father Giuseppe and Amanda file out of the room with the other adults, leaving Sister Edward to do her thing.

  Cee-Cee pitches forward into an awkward bow.

  Marking a red B+ in her book, Sister Edward looks up just in time to notice that Cee-Cee has doubled over, an unexpected moan escaping her lips. Then without warning, she hands her jar to the Sister and drops to the floor like a stone.

  Later, the school kids at Our Lady Queen of Sorrows will say something magical happened at the end of Cee-Cee’s presentation. But there is a difference between a miracle and a collapse. Cee-Cee knows this for a fact even if they do not.

  After class, Mary Margaret catches up in the hall. “Awesome report! The Big Wigs were impressed.”

  Cee-Cee seems to be on her own today without the Sisters as escorts or the Brothers shooing people out of her path when she needs to use the girls’ room. It’s made her feel self-conscious.

  “Driving me crazy,” Cee-Cee says. “I didn’t think they’d ever let me into the classroom.”

  Words flow from Mary Margaret’s lips. “It was hard getting to you. I have morning detention after vespers, a total drag, so I could sometimes see them putting you through the ringer if I peeked in the window. They got all sorts of weird stuff in that conference room. Ever notice? Maps and blueprints, photographs. People say Sister Amanda makes bombs in a secret room behind the chapel and sells them to the peaceniks to fund some sort of mission.”

  “That’s what Sister Edward says,” Cee-Cee says. “That she’s up to something.”

  Mary Margaret’s eyes light up. “Maybe it’s true.”

  Faster than Cee-Cee can open her mouth, Mary Margaret fires more questions. “Do you miss your family? Do you always faint like that? Do you want to sit together in the cafeteria? Don’t listen to Sister Edward; I mean she’s creepy, but she’s basically harmless. Don’t get on Sister Robert-Claude’s bad side; it isn’t pretty.”

  Except for Mary Margaret, Cee-Cee already feels a little doomed.

  The Junior High itself is a Catholic mish-mash of local kids funneled together from separate grade schools. Around every corner, on every wall, the paint is chipping, the floors are scuffed, and the windows need cleaning. God hangs judiciously here and there with outstretched arms on wooden crosses. Our Lady’s campus is cramped with its steepled church and dreary administrative offices in The Manse. Father Giuseppe lives with Brother Joe and Brother Ignacio at the Rectory. For the Sisters of Christ’s Most Precious Wounds, there’s an entire separate living space.

  Unlike at home, here Cee-Cee can do no wrong.

  If she refuses to pray, the Sisters praise her for being humble.

  If she doodles in her notebook, they say she’s artistic and all want to see what she’s writing.

  If she mopes, they think she’s deep in meditation.

  The most anyone ever disciplines her is when Sister Amanda kneels by her desk and holds out her hand for Cee-Cee’s gum or urges her to join in with the others at recess and music class.

  It’s important be a part of things, Sister Amanda says. It’ll help you feel better.

  But Cee-Cee’s focus is gone; she can barely even see Sister Amanda’s pretty face. Her classmates float in and out of her peripheral vision, which is syrupy and slow. A strange block of light blurs her view. It’s as if a hole has been drilled into the back of her head and things keep falling out of it.

  Whole days go by in a jumble of headaches. The words get stuck in her throat.

  Secrets creep down the hallway toward her ears, but Cee-Cee cannot decode what they mean:

  “The Mother General's cell was raided again.”

  “When?”

  “At Vespers…Brother Joe suspects an inside job. Someone’s leaking information.”

  “Judas Iscariot! We’d better tighten the ship.”

  “Keep it under your habit, Sister. We’ve got a school to run.”

  Luckily, Brother Joe still makes time for her. He is one of the bright spots in her day, amazing to look at with his sleek forehead and wide smile.

  He keeps an eye on her.

  “Lonely?” he asks.

  Cee-Cee watches his nose crinkle when he lights up a cigarette.

  Sometimes after school, they sit together in his office chewing gum or playing gin rummy. He shows off his calendar with a different European automobile for every month.

  “Aren’t they beauts?” he says, flipping past February and landing on March.

  Cee-Cee looks through his stack of Car and Driver Magazine, asking about the poster with the big black fist. Sometimes he puts a bright African Kenta cloth over her shoulders like a cape.

  “Someone’s got to bring a holy message into this world,” he says. “Might as well be you.”

  Cee-Cee pretends he cheers her up. “The messages have dried up.”

  He pats her arm. “Must be part of the plan.”

  Sometimes he leaves an orange in her locker as a surprise.

  The only other people who speak to Cee-Cee are popular blue-eyed Maureen and Mary Ellen McNulty. Once in
a while they stop her in the school cafeteria to get a closer look.

  They are identical in almost every way except coloring.

  “So you’re the new girl?” says the blonder sister.

  When they raise their hands in class, it’s like seeing double.

  “Ever played three-card monte?” Cee-Cee says.

  The twins look down their noses at her.

  “I have a twin,” Cee-Cee says. “But he’s a boy and a year older than me.”

  “We know,” they answer in unison before walking away.

  But that’s all.

  Now, in the hallway, Mary Margaret grabs Cee-Cee’s pond water. “Watch this!” She runs with her twin braids swinging. “Scabby Sorrentino, wait up!”

  Seeing her rush him with water sloshing unevenly from the open jar, Sandy Sorrentino ducks, but not fast enough to avoid the wave of pond scum splashed down his front. Sandy sputters and groans, soaked all the way down to his Catholic-school loafers.

  He grins. “You slut!”

  Sandy has no neck, which makes him even shorter than the girls. The rest of him is pretty bad too: a pockmarked face, Ringo Starr haircut, and small white hands.

  Mary Margaret wrings out his school-issued necktie. “Lay off, Scab. Cee-Cee’s my best friend, see?”

  Cee-Cee inspects the jar, now empty except for a green smear of algae around the rim. “Best?”

  “Of course.” Mary Margaret leads her to the gymnasium. “How come you fainted?”

  “I don’t know,” Cee-Cee says. “It just happens.”

  “Sister Pius says you’re like Saint What’s-His-Name, the one who was so holy he used to faint and levitate all the time. She’s a dwarf, you know. Hey, should I take you to the nurse’s office?”

  Cee-Cee would like it if Mary Margaret never stopped talking.

  Mary Margaret flips her braids. “I don’t know what your old public school was like, but they get bent out of shape around here about everything: gum, cigarettes, cursing. And forget about boys; they don’t allow kissing of any kind in this prison. I got caught once and you’d think I’d murdered someone.”

  Cee-Cee fingers Mary Margaret’s colorful neckerchief around her own throat; all the girls trade them to spice up their drab uniforms.

  “Scabby’s the worst! He deserves to drown.”

  Cee-Cee is caught up short on the image. Luckily, Sister Edward appears from nowhere before she can find anything to say.

  “Who’s responsible for this mess?”

  Cee-Cee glances around at the bland yellow hallways, a desert about to give way to an oasis, to Mary Margaret herself, who shimmers alive with heat and light. She is a summer rain after years of crawling through sand.

  “Everybody’s got something,” Mary Margaret whispers. “With me, it’s the dead brothers and sisters, lots of them.”

  The second bell rings.

  “This mess?” Sister demands. “I’m waiting.”

  “My fault!” Mary Margaret says. “I slipped and spilled some of Cee-Cee’s pond.”

  Brother Joe arrives in his robes and rubber boots to mop up the mess. He smiles at Cee-Cee and winks, humming.

  “We will see you after school, Miss Cortina.” The punishment for most school infractions is ten light lashes with a belt and ten Hail Mary’s. It’s the only rule Father Giuseppe insists be enforced at the school.

  “Right-o, Sister!”

  Mary Margaret says it isn’t bad. Sister Amanda stands in the office making sure Brother Ignacio goes easy with the belt. Afterward, you have to go see Father Giuseppe in his office and say confession, but then Sister Amanda comes in and holds you close while they have their millionth fight about the belt as a form of reprimand.

  Sister knows how to turn up the guilt: Should not every precious child be protected from bodily harm, Father G.?

  Pulling out her schedule, Cee-Cee locates her next class.

  Mary Margaret salutes, disappearing into the locker room, her sharp face back in the doorway a moment later. “We still have a sacred mission to find You-Know-Who, right?”

  Cee-Cee nods.

  “When are you sleeping over? This weekend? Want to?”

  More than anything, she wants to say, but Nonna stands in the way. “I’m working on it…not easy.”

  The third bell rings.

  Mary Margaret flashes a pointy-toothed grin. “We’ll see about that!” She disappears a final time.

  After school in the girl’s locker room, Mary Margaret shows Cee-Cee the pale spider scratches from Brother Ignacio’s belt. For a brief shining moment, Cee-Cee understands Mary Margaret’s secret wish that she press a small white finger into each of her wounds and heal them. A tiny miracle just for her in the name of best friends forever. If only it worked that way.

  Cee-Cee says, “I don’t see anything.”

  Mary Margaret pulls her shirt up higher. “Right here.”

  “Does it hurt?” Cee-Cee marvels at the steep price of devotion.

  Mary Margaret grins. “Worth it!”

  Roadie stands outside in the cold waiting for his sister.

  Some mornings he skips school entirely and makes his way through the wheat fields to the Catholic junior high. The nuns who teach there are methodical, throwing open the back doors at ten every day to let the children loose for morning recess. At least there’s something reliable: the opportunity to see his sister, talk with her, make sure she’s okay.

  The Sisters shout encouragement, hustling along after the children. “Get the blood flowing, people! It’s good for the heart!”

  Roadie prefers to look away from their strange holiness, weird shoes, veils with dresses cut to the knees, which are fat or knobby. During recess the Sisters stretch, eat fruit, take orderly laps around the blacktop, while the children play ball or skip rope. The nicer ones smile and point to Cee-Cee; others shoo him away, frowning.

  Roadie is careful not to show up too often.

  Today three sturdy Sisters stand under the eaves, rolling cigarettes. They don’t seem to notice any of the cutups on the playground stealing hats and tugging scarves, smart alecks who deserve a good thrashing. The imposing women don’t glance up at Roadie but stay in a tight huddle, whispering and breathing smoke. Roadie dodges past them, heading for Cee-Cee, who is much smaller than the other sixth graders.

  Usually the girls are jumping rope, which Cee-Cee likes because she’s the best at it. But today, a group of girls surround her laughing and talking. One of them braids her hair; another holds her hand.

  Maybe Cee-Cee hasn’t been entirely ruined.

  Seeing him at the jungle gym, she peels away from her friends, not even checking over her shoulder to see what the Sisters are up to.

  Roadie pats her shoulder, awkwardly attempts a hug.

  “Weird that it’s so cold out,” he says. “Should be warmer for the end of March.”

  Cee-Cee puts her hands in her coat. “I guess.”

  “Things all right?” It’s the only thing he ever manages to ask.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s okay at Nonna’s?”

  “It’s nice.” Cee-Cee says. “She lets me practice on her.”

  “Nonna?”

  “She’s always amazed when I pick out her card.”

  Roadie smiles.

  “She doesn’t know it’s just a trick,” Cee-Cee says.

  They stand in the cool morning breeze, not knowing what else to say.

  “Pauly moved his thumb last week.” It’s the best Roadie can do, all he has. “The nurses asked him to—and he did it.”

  “I heard.”

  Roadie wishes he could say he’s sorry, but he doesn’t know where to start. “Glory thinks it’s a sign that he’ll come back.”

  She stares at the ground.

  Roadie backpedals. “The doctors say it’s probably a twitch, though.”

  Cee-Cee shrugs. “I better get back.”

  “Can you tell me again before you go,” Roadie looks past the school, past No
nna’s house, to the horizon beyond. “What the lady said?”

  “She said you are loved.”

  “She said me—my name specifically?”

  “Yeah, she said you and the others like you—you’re God’s special ones.” Cee-Cee scuffs her shoes on the pavement. “’Cause it’s harder for you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “She loves everyone, Roadie.” The bell rings, and Cee-Cee’s classmates line up at the door. “That’s the thing people don’t get. We’re all special in some way.”

  Roadie takes a couple of blank notebooks out of his book bag and gives them to his sister. “I can get more for you next week.”

  “Thanks,” she says, taking them in her arms.

  “Oh,” he says, pulling packs of Wrigley’s gum out of his pocket. “These too.”

  She smiles and takes the gum. “Double the flavor.”

  “Yeah,” he says sadly. “Double the fun.”

  Helpless, then, he watches her walk away.

  Later, leaning against the concession stand at Romeville Free Academy, Roadie shivers in the cold. He worries that the frozen months are here to stay, that the longest winter of his life will never give way to spring. He watches the morning sun glint off all the parked cars in the high school lot: windshields, hoods, tire rims. He knows which vehicles belong to the teachers and which to the upper classmen. He knows who takes off at lunch and doesn’t come back. When someone leaves the headlights on, Roadie reports it to the office secretary, who makes an announcement over the loud speaker. It’s like paying something back. Roadie hopes it counts.

  Mostly he watches. Standing outside the school, he waits, watches, and waits some more. Jeremy Patrick stopped coming to school on his motorbike weeks ago. Now he takes the school bus, or gets rides with his mother, or hitches with his new friends. Roadie knows because he has become an observer.

  No more surprises.

  If done right, watching will save the world, and he will never again be caught by surprise in the woods. He will never again freeze and let terrible things happen. He is determined to be alert, to face down every single moment of the rest of his life, hoping that one day his redemption will come. He will repent and be forgiven. He will return to his old self, or better yet, a new improved future self.