Miracle Girls (9781938126161)

by Caschetta, M. B.

  Roadie and Cee-Cee have no words to explain the police, the FBI, the S.W.A.T. team from Albany, the canvassing of Our Lady for bombs and bullet casings. They don’t even try.

  Standing next to Roadie, Anthony makes a demand. “Well?”

  “Cee-Cee breathed for Baby Pauly,” Roadie says. “I saw it happen.”

  Anthony looks around the room nervously. “What are you talking about?”

  Frank watches Baby Pauly’s chest rise and fall. “If she could really help him, he’d be walking and talking by now.”

  Without the chugging machines, Baby Pauly seems small, as if the coma has compressed his little body.

  Squeezing in, Cee-Cee pulls off her shoes and climbs on the bed.

  “Time to wake up,” she says, nudging her brother gently.

  Baby Pauly’s dark eyelashes flutter.

  “Did you see that?” Glory whispers. “He moved his eyes.”

  Moonie grabs Glory’s hand. You can hear a pin drop, which means you can hear the machines above the other beds in Baby Pauly’s room, as well as the beeping and talking and footsteps in the hallway, all sorts of distant clanking sounds—as close to silence as a hospital gets.

  And just like that, Roadie sees his moment approaching. Why has he spent so much time worrying over nothing, he wonders, when here it is, so amazingly clear? Redemption!

  He clears his throat: “I have something to say about what happened in the woods.”

  “Shut up!” Anthony says, twisting a knuckle into Roadie’s arm.

  “What are you talking about, Roadie?” Glory says.

  “There was no man in a blue ski jacket,” he says. “We made it up—I made it up—to cover for what really happened.”

  Everyone keeps half an eye on Baby Pauly’s chest.

  “Liar!” Anthony says. “Why would anyone believe you?”

  Cee-Cee looks at her family, a sad little huddle of ruin; they will never understand what has happened, or what is about to happen.

  “Anthony did it,” she says. “There’s something wrong with him.”

  Glory tries to decode Cee-Cee’s face, the words she is saying.

  “She’s not lying,” Roadie says. “It was Anthony.”

  “Cee-Cee’s crazy,” Anthony is shaky. “And you’re…”

  Glory brings her hands up to her trembling mouth. “But that would mean that he…”

  Frank grabs Roadie by the neck. “What’s the matter with you? Why are you saying this?”

  Frank looks like he’s going to kill Roadie.

  Then, on second thought, he lets go of his son’s neck, patting him on the back. He walks over to Cee-Cee and bends down, saying in her ear: “Honey, you know I love you, but this goes too far.”

  Cee-Cee looks at him, feeling his sadness. “I’m telling the truth.”

  Resigned, Frank walks out of the room, a lost man in an unfamiliar place.

  Moonie crosses his arms. “You need to be careful what you two are saying. An accusation like that could ruin a person’s life.”

  Anthony blinks so many times in a row that he decides in the end it’s better just to keep his eyes shut.

  Glory throws herself across the bed desperate to get ahold of Roadie. “Why are you saying this terrible thing? Why can’t you let just one of my children be okay?”

  Roadie lets her hang on him and cry.

  A part of Glory would like to stand up and walk over to her oldest son, to slap him hard across the face with the back of her hand. She would like to see the small welt from her wedding ring rise on his cheek. She would like him to stand there, not rubbing away the sting, not crying at all. She would know that he has waited his whole life for a slap to stop him from becoming a terrible person.

  “I should kill you for this, Anthony Gerard,” she would like to say and send him to military school. But she cannot do any of this. She just stands very still trying to make herself believe that such a thing could never be true. This is the reverse act of faith Glory will perform every day for the rest of her life. Until Cee-Cee is old enough to make her own escape.

  There are places other than here, Cee-Cee thinks. Places for girls like Mary Margaret and me.

  She wonders what Canada looks like.

  She hopes Sister Amanda will help them.

  After all, at this point, what are two final missing girls?

  These are the three stages of Baby Pauly’s coma: shock, rage, surrender.

  Shock is pain, raw nerves—an eyeball exposed to light. Pauly’s body clamps down, eyes go blind. There is lung-fire and people in a blur like a flock of birds. They peck at his organs, threading their wires. They flock by his pond: black as crows. They blot out the sun, their voices an overwhelming crescendo.

  Inside, where no one can reach, Baby Pauly is screaming. The worst part of rage is the thirst. Luckily, it only lasts for a second.

  Then, without warning, the brain shuts down. The self goes into hibernation: a swollen frog, asleep, untouched, tucked into the mud, all that’s left of him. Which is not much. There’s no ruffle, no whisper, no sister, no light.

  Surrender is a straightjacket. If he could form a word, it would not be Yes or Me, or even I. It would be—What?

  What is a person who has no thoughts?

  The only option in sleep is to be relinquished. Not whole. Nobody’s twin. Nobody’s brother.

  What’s weird about waking up, it turns out, is that the stages of entering the coma are the same as leaving the coma, only reversed: surrender, rage, shock.

  Baby Pauly bursts to the surface and opens his eyes. He sees her first, the prettiest bright light he’s ever seen.

  He makes a signal to indicate he’d like to stop screaming now. He listens to the air. He isn’t screaming at all; he is making exactly no sound. He has moved exactly no muscles except his eyelids. His brain is sluggish, not exactly awake and not the same as before. It is difficult to understand what is happening until he sees himself reflected in a pair of eyes, his sister’s.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” Cee-Cee says.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to the W.K. Rose Fellowship Committee, the Fine Arts Work Center Summer Program, the MacDowell Colony, the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Prize Committee, and the good Sisters at Genesis Spiritual Retreat Center and Wisdom House for fellowships, grants and quiet places to write.

  I am grateful to the following people who offered encouragement, fodder, and good advice: Rosemary Ahern, Laurie Arbeiter, Claudia Ballard, Ginger Barber, Cynthia Bargar, Diane Bartoli, Sally Bellerose, Nancy Blaine, Maryanne Bragg, Blanche McCrary Boyd, James Cassese, Meryl Cohn, Mark Collins, Karin Cook, Frank Carbin, Beverly Coyle, Sally Cooper, Risa Denenberg, Andy Dollard, Martha Ertman, Ann Imbrie, Leigh Feldman, David Freudenthal, Amy Gallo, Marti Gabriel, Ellen Greenfield, Evan Harris-Hamada, Marie Howe, Jezra Kaye, Dan Kempton, Diane Lederman, Eric Lee, Sharon Lerner, Max Lewis, Anne Lopatto, Kirstin Manges, Lourdes Mattei, Judy Nichols, Toby Olson, Maureen O’Neal, Carolyn Patierno, Robert Sydney Phelps, Paula Pressley, Susan Ramsey, Rose Rubin-Rivera, Paul Russell, Alice Ruvane, Ralph Sassone, Ira Sharkey, Christopher Schelling, Oona Short, Jean Stafford, Kate Stafford, Mark Taylor, Mary Newman Vasquez, Nancy Warren, Erin White, Henry Williams—and each member of all the writing groups I’ve had in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Provincetown, and Northampton.

  I am indebted to my friend Helen Eisenbach who edited this novel for fifteen years and never stopped believing in it. I thank Risa Denenberg for all the stories and for passing the St. Cecilia relic along to me. I am in awe of what Victoria Barrett and Engine Books manage to accomplish so whole-heartedly on behalf of writers and fiction and literary publishing. And I rejoice every day for the grace of having an amazing, literary spouse, Meryl Cohn: thank you for all your love, guidance, patience, and support.

  about the author

  MB Caschetta is the recipient of a W.K. Rose Fellowship for Emerging Artists, a Sherwood Anderson Foundation Writing Award, and a Seattle Review F
iction Prize. Her work has appeared in the Mississippi Review, Del Sol Review, 3:AM Magazine, New York Times, and Chronicle of Higher Education, among others. This is her first novel.

  Book Club Discussion Guide

  To whom does the title refer? Who are the Miracle Girls and how are they miraculous?

  Miracle Girls is a book filled with gritty reality as well as magical realism. How do the magical moments in the book serve to offset the brutality of the world in which the novel is set? When does the magic occur? What purpose does it serve narratively, metaphorically, and literally?

  The book is divided into three parts: The First, The Second, The Third. What do the section titles refer to? (The first what? The second what? The third what?) What do you suppose the author meant to suggest?

  What miracles are performed in this novel? How are they perceived? Are all miracles good ones?

  How are matters of spirituality viewed in the book? Which characters believe that Cee-Cee is a miracle girl? Which characters are skeptical? How does each character’s faith (or lack thereof) relate to his or her redemption?

  How does Cee-Cee use her visions to survive her childhood? How does she interpret them? How do some of the other characters in the novel interpret her visions? Do you suspect that she is a traumatized child, or a visionary, or both?

  Glory reports that the shrink thinks Cee-Cee’s religiousness is her attempt to create a perfect family by conjuring up the Holy Family: an all powerful father (God), a loving mother (the Virgin Mary), and a self-sacrificing brother (Jesus). In what way is this true? In what way is this not true?

  What do you think the author is trying to say about religion? How should it be viewed? How does it give hope to the hopeless? How does it give power to the already powerful? How is it simply part of the mix of the flawed humanness of the characters?

  How does Cee-Cee’s family act when they are confronted with the truth about Anthony? What does this mean for Cee-Cee’s future?

  What do you think will happen to Cee-Cee and Mary Margaret? What is the plan Cee-Cee hatches on the last page or two? Do you think she will succeed in escaping? Do you want her to?

  What do you think of Glory and Frank as parents? What do you think of Nonna? How are the adults in the novel portrayed?

  Roadie believes he failed his family by not saving Cee-Cee and Baby Pauly from what happened in the woods behind the house. Why does he feel it’s his responsibility to save them? Was it? Does the narrative arc of his character indicate that Roadie is ultimately redeemed? How?

  Is Anthony an evil character, or just a screwed up kid? What do you make of a boy who rapes his sister? Why is he so confused? How do Roadie and Jeremy Patrick become complicit in the crime against Cee-Cee?

  Who is the stranger in the blue ski jacket? Who is the Romeville Snatcher? How is it true that in fact that entire community is as responsible for the missing girls of Romeville as a single criminal would be?

  Does Cee-Cee save Pauly in the end? Or is it a coincidence that seems filled with meaning given the Bianco family’s Catholic surroundings? Who in the book is ultimately redeemed?

  How do certain historical events in the backdrop of this novel set the stage for the larger thematic issues? What significance does the Vietnam War have to the Bianco family? How has it personally affected Uncle Moonie? Sister Amanda?

  What about the breaking of Watergate? How does Nonna react to the news from the radio?

  What impact do NASA discoveries have on Vinnie? How does it encourage his belief in the idea that even a screwed up investigation can be made right?

  Cee-Cee Bianco is deeply connected with several characters. For instance, she is “twins” with Baby Pauly. How does this play out in the novel?

  How is Cee-Cee connected to Eileena Brice Iaccamo? Though she is but a ghost of a character, is Eileena Brice Iaccamo a shadow self of Cecelia Marie Bianco? In what ways? (Hint: look at their names if you are good at anagrams).

  Why do you think we never find out what happens to Eileena Brice Iaccamo? What do you hope is her fate? What do you suspect has happened to her? Why?

  What is Cee-Cee’s connection to Mary Margaret? What’s happening in Mary Margaret’s family? How does this parallel the other tragedies in the novel? What is the state of child welfare at this time and in this world of the novel? Do you think Cee-Cee has saved Tiger?

  Sister Amanda defends her “Underground Orphan Peace Army for Girls” as her duty to God. Do you agree with her? Was she right to undertake such a radical act? In the 1970s, certain bombings and kidnappings were sometimes justified as essential to furthering peace. What do you think of that idea with the benefit of an historical lens?

  What do you end up thinking about Sister Amanda and her mission? Do you think she has a moral imperative to do what she can to save girls? Or is she a criminal caught up in a time of radical politics and subversive activism?

  What is the significance of Sister Amanda telling Cee-Cee that everyone gets one hundred mothers? Is it an excuse to justify her actions? Or is it in some way true that we get more mothers in our lives than just the ones we are born to, or the ones who raise us?

  When Glory asks Sister Amanda if she believes that God speaks to Cee-Cee through angels and visions and messages, Sister Amanda answers that God speaks to all of us, but some are better at listening. Do you believe that? Is that the point of view of the novel, or merely the character?

  Is Vinnie a good cop? Is he competent? How does his romance with Sister Edward unfold? How does their love change them both?

  The epigraph at the beginning of the novel suggests that the book is based on Chaucer’s “Second’s Nun Tale,” which tells about the life of St. Cecilia. What do we learn about the saint in the novel? How is Cee-Cee like her namesake saint, “a virgin martyr who survived a burning bathtub and three bloody whacks to the neck”? How does the novel compare and contrast to Chaucer’s classic poem structurally and thematically?

  If Sister Amanda is the first nun, and Sister Edward is the second nun, how could Miracle Girls be seen as a tribute to Chaucer’s “Second Nun’s Tale: The Life of Saint Cecilia?”

  What does Cee-Cee’s written message to Sister Edward mean? How can Sister Edward “mess it up”? What is her mission according to the note? Does she fulfill it by carrying the story or telling the tale? How do we know?

  Which characters are redeemed by the events of the novel? Which characters stay the same? Which characters defy redemption?