Miracle Girls (9781938126161)

by Caschetta, M. B.

  “Give me that thing.”

  They hand it over, rolling slowly forward, waving out the window.

  At the edge of the lot the car squeals to a halt. “Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people!” the two girls shout out the window.

  Vinnie shakes his head, thinking of the missing Iaccamo girl who’s always on his mind.

  He watches them drive away, as he turns the squad car around and hightails it toward Al’s. He’s only a few minutes late.

  But then it dawns on him. How could he have missed it?

  Shit, he thinks. That was her.

  Vinnie no longer cares what people think. He is going to solve this case after all. He has smiled into the face of his own future.

  Freckles, beautiful nose, pretty eyes.

  And better still: His future smiled back.

  Sister Edward is jumpy.

  Something big is about to happen, something special; the air is charged. Even Christ’s Most Precious Wounds seem prickly with anticipation this evening, as they fast for Lent in earnest, starving themselves for the reparation of human sin and Holy Week, which is just around the corner.

  Sister Edward is determined to solve the mystery of Amanda’s activities. Orphans: she’s sure it’s some sort of code. But what? What kind of army is she training? What kind of military business is she up to?

  Maybe the Bianco girl has something to do with the general nervous state of affairs. Maybe she knows more about Mother General’s secret army than she’s let on.

  After school, when Sister Edward went to speak with the girl in her cell, she was intercepted. Sister Pius snatched Edward’s pile of papers, homework for the week. “I’ll deliver these.”

  “I’d like to see my student,” Sister Edward said. “I need to explain the week’s spelling list.”

  “Impossible, Sister. The girl’s contagious, been sick all week.”

  “Preposterous!” Sister Edward blurts. “I saw her this afternoon walking in the garden with Mother General!”

  “Yes, but she overdid it, and now she’s feeling ill again.” The Littlest Wound’s smile is impenetrable. “I only know what I’m told, Sister.”

  Sister Edward has seen Brother Joe don his sunglasses and sweep the girl off Our Lady’s campus. “Men are immune, I suppose?”

  “Doctor’s appointments. Plus the child insists on visiting her brother. We make Brother Joseph wear a mask. No need to expose the whole school.”

  Exasperated, Sister Edward slips off to the Manse, heading for Father Giuseppe’s office to call the police station one last time. If the line is busy, she’ll hang up. If Officer Golluscio is out, she will not leave another message. If he is there, she will ask to speak with him, the right of any citizen.

  The switchboard operator sounds vaguely suspicious. “Whom may I say is calling?”

  Sister Edward decides to remain cryptic. “A witness to a crime.”

  During a long pause, Sister Edward paces the length of the telephone cord behind Father Giuseppe’s desk.

  “Officer Golluscio.” His voice is sudden and strong.

  Sister Edward stutters. “Do you know who this is?”

  “I got your note on my car after the funeral.” Another pause. “Are you sure you saw her?”

  “It was her, Vincent.” Sister Edward likes how his name feels on her lips. “I saw her with my own eyes; I spoke with her, but she ran off like a scared rabbit.”

  “I knew she’d show up,” he says. “I think I saw her too.”

  A charge of electricity runs through Sister Edward. “We must be the only two people on earth…besides the Bianco girl.”

  “What’s she got to do with it?”

  “Just happened to be there.” Edward speaks carefully. “The Iaccamo girl came around asking for the Mother General on Saturday. I believe she’s somehow involved.”

  “Involved in what?”

  “I’m not sure: explosives, I think.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  Sister Edward wants to tell him about the FBI and her years of suspicion: about the Mother General being up to no good. “There was mention of an army—also of orphans, but I think it was code for something.”

  “So your head nun is a criminal?”

  Sister Edward smiles at his mistake: nuns are cloistered; Sisters are not.

  “The Mother General receives a great many letters from antiwar movement leaders, especially that radical priest from Utica.”

  “I don’t see how this involves the girl.”

  “There’s a connection. Why else would the missing Iaccamo girl come here?”

  “I don’t know,” Vinnie says.

  “Can you come to Our Lady tonight? They’re in a peace circle all evening; I can slip away.”

  “Outside the church?”

  “Yes, seven o’clock.”

  “Okay,” he says. “Tonight.”

  Our Lady Queen of Sorrows quiets down after the dinner bell.

  Sister Edward’s stomach growls, a reminder of her brothers and sisters around the world who are hungry every day, not just once a year, because Easter is coming. While the others gorge on two spoons of spicy rice, Sister Edward abstains. I like to feel closer to God, she announces, taking her seat but leaving her bowl empty.

  Sister Edward says a quick prayer for the starving, watching as several of Christ’s Most Precious Wounds stream into the conference room for their monthly peace circle meetings.

  Others head off to the chapel.

  Brother Joe is nowhere to be found. His car has been missing all day.

  Sister Edward pokes around the main room. A newspaper’s front-page story hints at Nixon’s precarious position; not sure what to think of him, she prays for his strength in leading the country.

  After everyone has gone about her business, Sister Edward glides through the hall, trying to make as little noise as possible. Near the end of a long corridor, she taps three times on a door.

  “Come in,” Cee-Cee says.

  Sister Edward finds her at the little desk, pen in hand, several cats perched on her desk. “Feeling better, Miss Bianco?”

  “Not bad, Sister.” Cee-Cee crosses her arms over her chest. “Thanks for asking.”

  “Shoo,” Sister Edward tells the cats who skitter away. “Filthy animals.”

  “I’m kitten sitting for Sister James,” Cee-Cee says. “I think they’re actually pretty clean.”

  Sister Edward perches on the edge of the bed. “You’ve missed a lot of school. Perhaps some tutoring is in order.”

  “I’m all caught up.”

  “Are you now?” Sister Edward says. “Then what, may I ask, are you writing?”

  Cee-Cee looks down at the open page. “Notes.”

  “On what topic, please?”

  Cee-Cee stares, wide-eyed, thinking of something to say.

  Sister Edward holds out her hand. “May I see?”

  “I can’t show you this one.”

  “Are you disobeying me?”

  Cee-Cee closes the book. “You can look at one of the others if you want.”

  Sister Edward fingers the stacks of notebooks. Picking one off the nearest tower, she opens to a page in the middle, scanning quickly. It’s mostly nonsense: the scribbles and doodles of a child, part of a memorized poem, several drawing of trees, a list of vegetables, spelling words, homework assignments, games of tic-tac-toe and hangman in Brother Joe’s handwriting. Wads of discarded gum stick several pages together.

  A note on one page says:

  Magic Twenty-One: Separate deck into three piles, count to eleven.

  Another says:

  Please, please, please, please, please. Help me.

  “This is what you write?” Sister Edward closes the notebook. “Not exactly The Story of a Soul, is it?”

  Cee-Cee shuffles through a separate pile of notebooks until she finds the one she’s looking for.

  She rips out a page and holds it for Sister Edward, wh
o takes it and reads the words. For a long moment, all Sister Edward can do is stare at the sentence in the child’s scrawl. “You wrote this?”

  Cee-Cee nods. “It came into my head and went down on the page.”

  “You copied it from a book?”

  “No, I wrote it, but not all sentences turn out good like that one.”

  “Well,” Sister Edward corrects. “They don’t all turn out well.”

  Sister Edward feels an urgent need to be under the open sky, to breathe and wander, to mull over how a child of ten could have insight into the particular nature of her personal loneliness or the course of her vocation.

  “So this is what you’ve learned?” Sister Edward asks. “Poetry and predictions.”

  “I learned a great new card trick called Double Cross. Also to pray.”

  “For yourself, I suppose?”

  “For you, Sister.” Cee-Cee pins her eyes on Sister Edward’s face. “For people who are lost.”

  “And you’ve been assigned to do this? Pray for us poor lost souls?” Sister Edward says. “Why? As a demonstration of your great gift, so that God will appreciate your looming sainthood?”

  “Praying doesn’t help God appreciate me, Sister.” Cee-Cee bounces a rubber ball attached to its paddle a few times. “It helps me appreciate God.”

  “Anything else you’d care to share?”

  “I can teach you to walk on your hands if you want.”

  Furious, Sister Edward gets up and leaves the room without another word. She slams the door behind her, feeling bewildered and yet slightly moved.

  It’s not until she’s halfway down the drafty hallway that she realizes she’s forgotten to ask the girl about the Mother General.

  In the Garden of Olives, Jesus shed 62,700 tears and 98,600 drops of blood to wash away the sins of the world. He received 607 strokes with the whip, 100 precious wounds by the thorny crown, and carried the cross 320 steps to Calvary—all so the world would be saved. And yet Sister Edward still feels she is owed.

  Not lavish praise for her personal sacrifices, not public recognition, but a simple nod, a word of thanks, a sign that she’s on the right track.

  The terrible silence from within rises again. It makes Edward wonder if an unsmiling sixth grader in a plaid pinafore could in fact be a sign from God.

  Despite the mildness of the night air, she wraps a shawl around her shoulders. A breeze kicks up from nowhere, hinting at a rainstorm. She crosses from the living quarters past the empty schoolhouse, across the parking lot and alongside the church, toward the stone path that leads to the Manse where she and Father Giuseppe often share an after-dinner tea together in his office.

  When Father is out of town, Sister Edward usually feels a bit unmoored. But tonight she’s glad he’s in Albany.

  The FBI wants bombs. The insistent young agent who has been her contact all these years keeps trying to convince her to sweep with a metal detector—your duty to country! She had to laugh: The only country Edward’s ever known has been Our Lady Queen of Sorrows.

  The grounds are peaceful, separated on the north side by an ancient curving wall. Edward runs her hands along the mossy surface, using the old stone structure to guide her way, touching the rough gray and yellow stones as a blind woman might. She tries to imagine all the nameless, faceless Wounds who came before her. A humble schoolteacher, Blessed Sister Rosalie Votarro, born in 1870, founded the order after suffering from stigmata. A silent-screen actress from Niagara Falls became famous for arriving by bicycle to answer God’s calling; according to legend she was wearing only a strand of pearls and a pair of white bloomers. Countless humble souls once walked these paths anonymously—unknown, long-suffering women of devotion. Like Sister Edward.

  The trail of spruce needles is worn, difficult to follow.

  Sister Edward walks in her simple lace-up shoes as she’s been taught: eyes down, hands inside her sleeves. Absently she pats the pocket of her modest skirt, feeling for the notebook page:

  The person who carries the story forward is the sinner who is saved, the lost one who finds love.

  Your turn. Don’t blow it.

  She reads the words and shakes her head, folding the page back up and putting it away.

  Something about the evening feels different somehow—the soft air, the promise of a rainstorm, her purpose. And there’s Officer Golluscio, too. Tonight goodness and rightness step with her. Reaching the end of the path, she crouches behind a bush to spy on the Mother General’s peace circle.

  Sister Edward hasn’t felt this many strong emotions since her youth as a veiled postulant, when the very idea of chastity aroused her soul and scared her to death: the notion of an interior life detached from the body, severed from all things physical, pure and untouched and yet—what? Lonely. She’s been so long dead—to her flesh, to her faith, to herself—that for a moment she doesn’t recognize the sound of her own heart beating rapidly in her chest.

  There is a faint rustling nearby. It fills her with panic.

  Sister Edward throws herself down in the cool evening grass so as not to be seen. Being prostrate induces a calmer state. Christ’s Most Precious Wounds used to require public humility, even for something as simple as dropping a fork at dinner. Pray for me, my Sisters, that I receive penance for this unnecessary racket, this error in silverware. Those days, things were clearer. Sister Edward had to kiss the floor, kneel down, say a prayer, lie before the community on the cold dining room tiles and ask forgiveness.

  Even the sweet-smelling azalea bush cannot hide Edward’s sudden defiance.

  She stands, hoping the rustling is her officer, fearing that it is the FBI, dreading that it may be the Mother General.

  How could she explain herself now?

  But it is only Sister Pius carrying a plate across the courtyard. From the wafting air, Sister Edward suspects the Littlest Wound has been baking cookies for the peace circle again—a Lenten indulgence no Mother General should allow.

  As Sister Edward moves out of the bushes, she sees the police officer striding toward her in the dark.

  “Thank God,” she says. “It’s you.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know…something.” Sister Edward’s heart thumps double-time. She stands close enough to smell his cologne.

  A twitch of a smile crosses his lips. “Let’s talk in the squad car where it’s safer; I’d like my partner to hear your theories.”

  Following behind with her head bowed, Edward swallows her disappointment. What had she thought this was, a date?

  At the far end of the parking lot, a police car sits in the dark. Officer Golluscio introduces Sister Edward to a smallish man with a square head.

  “Al, this is the witness I was telling you about.”

  Sister Edward shakes the man’s hand, admiring his uniform, the same one her own officer is wearing.

  From the back of the squad car someone leans forward and rattles the mesh screen dividing the back seat from the front, startling Edward.

  It’s a boy, raging like a caged animal.

  “This is your criminal?” she asks.

  A second boy leans forward at the first boy’s side; light from the parking lot shines on his familiar face. “We told you we haven’t seen his sister.”

  Al Carpi leans in and shows the first boy his teeth. “Your sister’s dead, Liam. You probably fucked her and killed her yourself.”

  “Watch your mouth, Al.”

  “Shut up! Shut up!” the boy shouts.

  “Well, someone killed her. Who’s to say it wasn’t you and your buddy?”

  “Don’t talk that way about Eileena!” the boy screams. “She’s not dead!”

  Sister Edward doesn’t like the other officer one bit. “The young Mr. Iaccamo is correct; I saw his sister very recently.”

  Everyone goes silent.

  “I fucking told you!” Liam explodes. “She’s not dead; she’s fine!”

  “Let us out of here,” the other boy
says. “We told you what we know.”

  “Shut your whiny asses.”

  The second boy is the brother of Cee-Cee Bianco. He waits for his sister every so often on the playground. Sister Edward starts to say so when her officer abruptly slaps the top of the car.

  “Watch your mouths in front of the lady!” he shouts. “No more noise.”

  Sister Edward blushes. No one ever calls her anything but Sister.

  “You’re not prisoners,” Officer Golluscio says somewhat officially. “I just need your help.”

  Liam sniffles. “Tell that asshole to shut up about my sister, then.”

  “Al,” Vinnie says. “Shut up about his sister. She’s not dead.”

  Al sighs. “Says who? You and the nun?”

  “I saw the girl in a lime green Pinto myself.”

  “Lime green?” Sister Edward says. “That's Brother Joe’s car!”

  She and the officer lock eyes.

  Mary Margaret and Norbert see the distant lights of Romeville. They trudge past the high school and down the long hill to Our Lady Queen of Sorrows Junior High. They shuffle through the high grass in the soft evening air and stop outside the first old church building they see.

  All week long, the Sisters have said Cee-Cee’s been sick, but Mary Margaret knows better. Minimal snooping has revealed that her room is in one of the wings where the Sisters all sleep, but which room?

  Sister Robert-Claude hasn’t let anyone close enough to figure it out.

  The Sisters are tight when they’re keeping a prisoner, grouchy when they start fasting. So Mary Margaret has decided to take matters into her own hands. She’s got Norbert with her for protection.

  Holding Mary Margaret’s crying baby brother, Norbert rocks back and forth from his good leg to his bad. For reasons unexplained, he has applied a large smear of purple lipstick to his mouth.

  “Shhh! Brother-Boy, quiet down!” Mary Margaret says. “We’ve got to look in every window.”

  They peer into window after window, without seeing anyone, until at last, they find a room with something happening in it. Inside, the Sisters crowd around a table. Every surface is piled high with maps and papers, things Mary Margaret has seen pinned to the wall during detention. She has never seen the large poster of a blonde man with little round glasses, the word Bonhoeffer at the bottom.