Miracle Girls (9781938126161)

by Caschetta, M. B.

  “No, we decided!” Frank shouts. “It was our idea to send her to Glory’s mother…that was our decision. Now that she’s…passed, we get our kid back.”

  “They would have taken Cee-Cee away anyway,” Moonie says. “That was the arrangement.”

  The cop who ruined his life appears and steps forward ominously.

  “I’m the Mother General, here, Mr. Bianco, a close friend of your mother-in-law’s; I believe we’ve met,” the nun in charge says. “I’d like to offer to have Cee-Cee stay here with us for a while until things get straightened out legally. I’m sure you will agree that given the circumstances it would be better than having her placed in a foster home. Father Giuseppe will call and make arrangements.”

  She nods at Cee-Cee, who wiggles free from her father’s embrace and steps back inside the circle of Wounds. Frank feels a terrible pain surge through him. Is he having a heart attack? The absence of his daughter, his old life, feels stronger in this instant than in all the weeks she’s been gone.

  “Kneel and pray,” Cee-Cee says to him.

  “What?”

  Behind him, the circle of men get down on their knees, crossing themselves and praying for mercy in one swift motion.

  “Mr. Bianco, we’re going to leave now.” The nun turns to the kneeling addicts. “Please excuse the interruption, gentlemen. Carry on with your important work of recovering. We include you in our prayers always.”

  The flock of nuns moves back toward the door, carrying off his child.

  “She’s not one of you!” Frank shouts.

  This causes several of them to bow their heads.

  “Father Giuseppe will call the girl’s mother and explain what has happened.”

  Frank is hardening into a block of cement, pain subsiding. Watching the tender white backs of his daughter’s knees as she is led away, he has to stop himself from crying out.

  “The officer will accompany you across the street, Mr. Bianco.” The last nun prods him toward the door. “I believe the ambulance and coroner have some matters to discuss with you.”

  Moonie presses on Frank’s shoulder, leading him out of the room. The cop trails behind.

  “Why is it always you?” Frank asks the cop.

  Vinnie doesn’t take the bait, just continues to follow them out.

  A hard idea starts to form inside Frank, a pit in the middle of soft fruit. He will find a way to work around Glory. He will save them all from this and further humiliation.

  He is the father. His son must be spared.

  Dinner at Christ’s Most Precious Wounds is a sparse Lenten meal.

  Cee-Cee stares at the clear soup and stale bread. She is not hungry, but she manages a couple of spoons and a nibble.

  After the Sisters take turns reading from The Imitation of Christ, Amanda stands and clears her throat.

  “Miss Bianco is a member of Sister Edward’s Gifted and Talented sixth grade class and a fine student at Our Lady,” she says. “She is also a grandchild of the late Marina Petramala, whom some of you knew was a personal friend of mine. She will be staying here with us until further notice.”

  Cee-Cee looks up from her string game, a piece of colored yarn that she weaves into different shapes. She shows the Sisters a perfect inverted Cat’s Cradle, holding it up for all to see. (“Purrfect,” Mary Margaret would say.)

  The Sisters clap politely, nodding and whispering to one another.

  This is followed by a lively discussion about Nixon. Sister James suggests writing a play to explore the political climate.

  “The children can perform it at the Easter pageant!” she says.

  Sister Robert-Claude smirks. “We’ll call it Nixon Crucifixion.”

  Some of the Sisters chuckle into their hands.

  “What will we protest when all the U.S. troops are home from Vietam?” Sister Eugene asks.

  Their Mother General is nonplussed. “As long as there is poverty and starvation, there will be wars for us to protest, I fear.”

  A light bulb goes off for Sister James. “Einstein said enforcing vegetarianism would be the best way to promote peace!”

  For comment, everyone turns and looks to Sister Eugene, the resident cook.

  “Well, I did happen to see a lovely recipe for vegetable cassoulet in Women’s Day,” she says.

  Sister Edward gives Cee-Cee a meaningful look.

  After the discussion, the Sisters all head to the chapel for evening prayers, and Sister Pius leads Cee-Cee down a long hallway to a spare room.

  In it are one desk, one window, and one bed.

  “This is your cell…bedroom; we all have one. It’s where we sleep,” explains the Littlest Wound. “You must be exhausted!”

  Cee-Cee studies Sister Pius’ oddly shaped face and bright green eyes as she motors around, pointing out the tiny sink in the corner of the room and the window latch.

  “I’m on one side of you, and the Mother General is on the other,” she says. “So if you need anything, just call out. The walls are thin.”

  From nowhere Sister Pius produces a cotton nightdress, slightly too big for Cee-Cee, but good enough. “I’ll send Sister John of the Cross to pick up your things.”

  “My notebooks.”

  “You really do like to write!” Sister Pius says. “I’ve never been good at it myself.”

  Cee-Cee wishes she had her notebooks now. “They help me figure things out.”

  “Yes!” Sister Pius smiles. “I think that’s exactly what God does for me. Maybe writing is your way of praying.”

  Lifting her arms, Cee-Cee lets Sister Pius undress her and help her into the night dress.

  When she is all settled in the little bed, Sister Pius perches near the headboard. “Any questions?”

  “Can I visit Baby Pauly?”

  Sister Pius pats Cee-Cee’s hand. “Brother Joe is Our Lady’s finest chauffeur. You’ll surely come to love his sporty bright-colored car as much as he does.”

  “Nonna let me visit every day.”

  “I think that can be arranged.”

  “Can I sleep with one of the cats?”

  Sister Pius seems uncertain. “We can ask Sister James, but I don’t see why not.”

  “Can it be Calliope?” Cee-Cee chooses the cat that is ink-black, the color of her own hair.

  When all is said and done, tears push against the back of Cee-Cee’s eyelids. “I’m alone.”

  Sister Pius embraces her. “It is an essential truth that all of us are alone, and yet not alone. Not alone because we are children of God. And God is always with us.”

  Cee-Cee cries for herself anyway.

  Too tired to care about the stiff sheets and hard pillow, the smell of lemon Pledge in the room, Cee-Cee lets her eyes close.

  Sister Pius sings a lullaby.

  A little later, Amanda pokes her head in the door. “Everything okay?”

  Sister Pius whispers: “A little weepy.”

  Cee-Cee struggles to wake up to see Sister Amanda’s pretty face. “Rise up…you nation of girls…”

  “Yes, yes, but sleep now.” Amanda kisses Cee-Cee’s forehead. “Time enough tomorrow to change the world.”

  When Sister Amanda looks up from her papers where she is working under a single desk lamp in the office, she smiles as if she’s been expecting Glory all along.

  “Mrs. Bianco, I’m sorry about your loss.”

  Glory holds up a hanger, flapping a little dress in Amanda’s direction. “For Cee-Cee to wear tomorrow?”

  They stand face to face.

  Glory can see the woman is sizing her up.

  Everyone does these days; everyone looks at Glory with disdain.

  A couple of times when there were still crowds clamoring for Cee-Cee to perform another miracle, Glory stomped out onto the porch in her bathrobe and slippers and yelled at them. What she saw, though, was something amazing right on her front lawn: faith growing, like a yellow-headed dandelion. Mothers held up their deformed babies, daughters carried their
sick parents, women beat their breasts and knelt in the snow, praying to the Queen of Heaven, asking Cee-Cee to heal the world, stop the war, give the Indians back their land. A gaggle of women even help up signs that said Martyrdom is anti-woman. Pass the ERA.

  Glory wanted to ask them what they knew that she didn’t.

  What have I missed? She ended up staring into the crowd of worshippers and protesters, all of them believers in something. What am I missing?

  Other days, she was so frustrated with the noise and trash on her lawn that she wanted nothing more than to throw rocks at them. What right did they have? This was her life! Her house! But the thought of child-welfare workers in disguise restrained her rash impulses. She stayed at home, made dinner for her remaining children, and tried not to fly off the handle. When she backed out of the driveway, she ignored her urge to run people down.

  Little boys fell into ponds all the time, didn’t they? Strangers appeared out of nowhere to harm little girls.

  She’d used the money to buy a bus ticket to Saratoga Springs for no reason at all, other than she had once been there in the summer to see the horses race. She checked into a motel. Frank and his drinking had been driving her nuts. The kids at home without school for a week would wear on her last nerve.

  She remembered what it was like running away to Marion Patrick’s when she’d wanted to marry Frank and her parents got in the way. How bewildered she’d felt coming home and finding her mother still droning on at the kitchen table about priests and nuns, her father hobbling around with the same small bag of garbage in his hand. To her surprise, neither her departure nor her return had caused an electrical surge, a spark in the circuitry.

  The house itself had not burned down.

  Not so mighty now, your heart? her mother had said.

  A year later, when they were good and ready, they gave their permission for Glory to marry Frank.

  Otherwise, it was as if she’d never left.

  Now it was the same with her own family. Glory never got the perfect response from them either, whatever that was. In truth, she didn’t even know. And yet, she has become something of a repetitive wind-up version of herself, stuck in her own desire to escape and return, escape and return. How is it that being gone always amounts to no more than never having left? How has she gotten so caught up in the click and hum of her own heartbreaking redundancy? A successful, life, she knows would never have come to this.

  Could this tragedy have happened to any mother? It didn’t even matter, did it? It had happened to her while she was somewhere else.

  “I wasn’t very close to my mother,” Glory says suddenly. She is embarrassed to hear it come out sounding confessional rather than defiant. “But I loved her.”

  “Of course you did,” Sister Amanda says kindly. “No one here questions that.”

  The gentle tone cracks Glory open a little. Sister Amanda pushes a box of tissues forward on her desk.

  What is a person without a mother? Glory wants to ask.

  Sister Amanda tilts her head. “What I admired about your mother most was how fiercely protective she was of her family, especially Cee-Cee.”

  “There’s such a thing as too much protection,” Glory says. “She suffocated me when I was a girl.”

  “There’s also such a thing as not enough protection. Balance is tricky.” Sister Amanda strains to be kind. “I guess that’s the thing we strive for.”

  Glory looks into her opponent’s eyes. “How old are you?”

  Sister Amanda barely reacts to the sudden shift in the conversation. “In my thirties.”

  “I had a house full of children when you were barely getting started,” Glory says.

  “We have a lot in common, Mrs. Bianco.” Sister Amanda clasps her hands in front of her chest. “I’ve had 100 school children under my roof for quite some time.”

  You think it’s the same? Glory wants to say.

  “What was your own mother like?” Glory asks. “Did she suffocate you?”

  “I’m afraid I grew up in an orphanage,” Sister Amanda answers.

  Then you don’t really know! Glory wants to shout. You have no right to judge!

  Instead a wave of sorrow wells up. Glory has to surrender her child to this over-stuffed orphan, and her own mother is gone forever, making her an orphan, too.

  “It must be a shock,” Sister Amanda says. “And a terrible sorrow.”

  Glory pulls herself together. “My daughter will come home where she belongs. I’ll see to it.”

  Sister Amanda smiles. “I’ll be sure she wears the dress tomorrow.”

  “The state shrink told me that Cee-Cee is making the whole thing up,” Glory says, “that she wants to have a perfect family, like the Holy Family: a virginal mother, an all-powerful father, a brother who sacrifices everything to save her.”

  It’s a manifestation of her most deeply held wish, he had said, an unpleasant little man with a beard. To Glory it seemed like a crock.

  “I suppose everyone is entitled to a theory,” Amanda says.

  Glory stops at the door. “You think it’s true about Cee-Cee, don’t you?”

  “Cee-Cee is a very bright little girl.”

  “But you actually believe God talks to her through angels and visions and messages.”

  “God speaks to all of us, Mrs. Bianco.” Sister Amanda clasps her hands in front of her chest. “Some are just better at listening.”

  First thing in the morning when Cee-Cee opens her eyes, she sees her black wool dress hanging off the doorknob. She moves Calliope off her chest and stands up. Slipping the dress on, she finds a note in the pocket in Glory’s handwriting. Home soon! It says. A promise, or threat.

  At breakfast, Cee-Cee eats a dry slice of toast.

  “Sick children should be in bed!” Sister Edward scolds.

  Frowning, Sister Eugene intervenes. “Leave the girl alone, Sister Edward. She’s adjusting to our way of life.”

  Sister Robert-Claude barely looks up from her plate. “As I recall, Edward, you cried for three weeks when you were first here.”

  Cee-Cee feels sorry for Sister Edward, who doesn’t know how to make friends. When she feels better, she’s going to show her how to wow people with a card trick or two; that always helps break the ice.

  Sister Edward defends herself: “Tell me you don’t wonder why this child, of all children in the world, is given visions of angels and Our Lady! Why is she the one?”

  Sister Alouicious, who rarely speaks at all, answers with a quote: “St. Paul wrote ‘the poor things of this world hath God chosen, things that are nothing.’ ”

  “At least she’s Catholic,” Sister Robert-Claude offers.

  Cee-Cee corrects her: “God doesn’t care if we’re Catholic or not, as long as we pray.”

  “Sacrilege!” Sister Edward’s jaw drops. “Do you have any idea what you’ve said?”

  Cee-Cee shrugs. “Only what I’m told.”

  “You are a confused child,” Sister Edward says. “Therefore your message is confused, and therefore this whole charade is unreliable. That which is received is received in the manner of the receiver.”

  Several Sisters look around the table with raised eyebrows.

  “A simple error from an erroneous mind,” Sister Edward continues. “Plenty of lost souls have made false predictions.”

  Sister Robert-Claude says, “Oh, poppy-cock! All saints start out and end up human! As flawed as you or me.”

  “Are we comparing her to a saint now?” Edward shakes a finger at Cee-Cee. “I think this Little Miss should have her head examined! Along with the rest of you!”

  After a long pause, Sister Eugene says, “Joan of Arc was stark raving mad, Sister Edward…but no one disputes that she saw what she saw.”

  The other Sisters nod firmly.

  End of conversation.

  After the plates are cleared, and more prayers are said, Christ’s Most Precious Wounds walk Cee-Cee silently through the building to the courtyard. As they
near the church, a few of the Sisters start to fuss with Cee-Cee’s hair and dress. They smooth her braids, re-tie her ribbons, pinch her cheeks for color.

  Fixing Cee-Cee’s collar, Sister Eugene asks the question on everybody’s mind. “Perhaps you want to sit with us during your grandmother’s Mass?”

  “I don’t think so,” Cee-Cee says. “Glory will want me to sit with the family.”

  “Okay, then stand here and wait for the hearse.” Sister John of the Cross deposits Cee-Cee on the top step. “But if you change your mind, I’ll leave an open seat for you next to me.”

  Outside, under the old church archway, Cee-Cee watches the Precious Wounds make their way through the church. They pass Nonna’s ancient Italian lady friends dressed in black, who clatter and sigh, complaining that no one speaks Italian any more. They liked it better when masses were in Latin. “Regazza dei miracoli,” they whisper when they spot Cee-Cee standing in the doorway. “Regazza dei miracoli.”

  Cee-Cee scans the crowd for blue jackets, a nervous tick that will last a lifetime. She counts seven in all.

  The hearse drives up, then Glory’s station wagon, followed by Grandma Bianco’s Cadillac and Uncle Moonie’s truck. These vehicles release the remaining members of Cee-Cee’s family: Grandma Bianco with her oxygen tank; Frank and Moonie dressed in dark suits; Glory with a little black hat that has a net to cover her eyebrows; Anthony and Roadie wearing clip-on ties.

  Frank seems not to notice Cee-Cee standing there, or maybe he’s still mad at her for going with the Sisters and not putting up a fight. Uncle Moonie pats Cee-Cee’s head.

  Roadie drifts over. “Hi.”

  “Remember the missing girl, Roadie?” It’s the first time she’s used his name since the woods. “Eileena Brice Iaccamo? Remember?”

  “Yeah.” He seems relieved to talk about something normal. “Her brother thinks she lives in a rusty freight car at the old dead train cemetery.”

  “I saw her yesterday here in the chapel. She’s alive!”

  “People tell ghost stories, Cee-Cee. It’s probably not what you think.”

  Glory teeters up the stone steps in high heels, shooing Roadie away. “Take Grandma Bianco to a seat up front, then come back and help get Nonna out of that hearse.” She sniffles, taking Cee-Cee’s hand. “You look nice in that dress, baby.”