Miracle

by Kimberly Shursen

  After she put the vacuum away, Charlie went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, letting the cool air wash over her. She filled a glass with ice and then took out a pitcher of freshly squeezed lemonade.

  Sipping the cold sweet drink, she looked out the window over the sink and saw Mira in the sandbox.

  Mira’s expression looked intense and her lips were moving as if she was talking to someone. Maybe she was singing. Charlie took out a plastic mug from the cupboard, filled it with ice and lemonade, and went out the back door, the hot humid air taking her breath away. She’d try to keep Mira in this afternoon, as heat strokes weren’t just for the elderly.

  As she neared the sandbox, Charlie heard Mira chattering loudly. Curious as to what she was saying, she went to the side of the house so Mira wouldn’t see her. Only a few feet away, she couldn’t hear what Mira was saying, but it was clear that Mira was having a conversation as she would pause, as if listening, before talking again. She seemed too young to have an imaginary friend, but it was probably common for an only child.

  “Thought you might be thirsty.” Charlie started toward her.

  “Hi, Mommy,” Mira said cheerfully. “Building a castle.”

  Charlie sat down in the thick carpet of grass, watching Mira smooth out a blob of sand. “I love castles.” Charlie held out the mug to Mira.

  “Me, too.” Granules of sand dropped from Mira’s hand when she took a long sip of lemonade.

  “I thought I’d heard you talking to someone.”

  “I was just talking to my new friend.” Mira wedged the mug into the sand beside her.

  “A new friend?”

  “Well… not that new.”

  “The one you said you dreamed about last night?”

  “Uh-huh.” Mira started to fill a red plastic pail with sand.

  Using her big toe Charlie pushed off one sandal and then the other, grateful for the thick umbrella of thick branches shading them from the scorching sun. “So, what’s your new friend like to do?”

  “Oh… she likes everything I do,” Mira told her, not looking up. “I’m showing her how to make a castle.”

  “Does she have a sand pile too?”

  “No.” Mira topped the pail of sand over the top of the budding castle. “But she says she’s gonna get one.”

  Charlie leaned over and flicked a grasshopper off her thigh. “So what kinds of things does she like that you do?”

  Mira poked her finger in and out of the lopsided sand structure, leaving indentations that Charlie assumed were windows. “She doesn’t know ’bout a lot of things. So I’m teaching her.”

  “That’s nice of you.”

  “Uh-huh.” Mira stopped what she was doing and looked at Charlie. “I’m hungry. When’s Daddy gonna be here?”

  Charlie tilted her head back and saw that the sun was almost straight overhead, and then looked to the fields. “He should be coming in soon. Guess we need to make lunch.”

  “Can we have corndogs?” Mira jumped up and stepped out into the grass.

  “Sure.” Charlie stood and slipped into her sandals. “We have some batter left over from last week in the fridge.”

  “She’s never had a corn dog,” Mira said nonchalantly as they walked to the back door.

  “Your friend? How come?”

  “Mommy, she lives in a different place than we do.”

  Mira was talking about her new friend as if she were real.

  “Honey.” Charlie sat down on the bottom step that led up to the landing of the back door. She patted her hand on the concrete next to her, signaling Mira to sit next to her. “You know your friend is imaginary, right?”

  “What’s ’maginary?” Mira plopped down.

  “You know how when you play with your dolls that you pretend they’re real?” She put a hand over her chest. “Like us?”

  “You mean the girls?”

  Charlie nodded. “Yes. You know the girls are dolls and not real, but it’s fun to pretend.”

  Mira’s face balled into a confused expression. “But my friend can walk and talk and do stuff with me.”

  “I had an imaginary friend when I wasn’t much older than you,” Charlie said.

  Mira’s blue eyes grew wide. “You did?”

  “I did. I’d talk to her on rainy days when I couldn’t go outside and play.” She turned to Mira. “Or when I was sad or lonely.” When Mira didn’t respond, Charlie asked, “What does your friend look like?”

  “Oh”—Mira put her hand on top of her head—“she has the same color of hair as me.”

  “Is she taller or shorter than you?”

  “I dunno. The same, I think.”

  Charlie was quiet for a few seconds, gathering her thoughts. “The difference between real and imaginary is, like, if we asked your friend to have lunch with us to have corndogs, she wouldn’t be here except in our minds.”

  Mira wrinkled up her nose. “She’d be like in my brain?” She giggled. “That’s silly. Kids don’t live in brains.”

  “Sometimes they do, if they’re pretend friends.”

  Mira set her chin and glared up at Charlie. “She’s not pretend.” She crossed her heart with her fingers. “I promise.”

  “How about we go make lunch for Daddy?” The conversation was going nowhere. Maybe Clint could explain it better. “I think I hear your daddy coming.”

  When Clint came in the back door, Mira was at the counter standing on a chair next to Charlie. Charlie turned and flashed Clint a look.

  “What?” Clint put his hands out to his sides. “Did I do something wrong?”

  Charlie cocked her head toward Mira and rolled her eyes, silently telling him something was up with Mira. “Nope.” Charlie turned back around. “Just happy to see you.”

  “Good, ‘cause I don’t enjoy being in the doghouse.” He started for the half bath off the kitchen to wash up.

  “Daddy,” Mira said, “you’re too big for Hank’s doghouse.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Clint said, coming back into the kitchen. “If your mom got mad at me, she just might stuff me in there.”

  Mira looked to Charlie with a concerned expression. “Can Daddy fit in Hank’s house?”

  “Your daddy’s talking about a different kind of doghouse.” She looked into the pot of oil on the stove and saw the corn dogs were getting brown. “Hank’s doghouse is a lot easier to get out of than mine.”

  “You help Mom make lunch?” Clint asked Mira.

  “Yep.” Mira smiled from ear to ear.

  “Yes, you did.” Charlie covered a hand with a mitt and transferred the corn dog from the boiling oil to a platter. She placed the plate in the middle of the table. “Warning,” Charlie said. “These are hot.”

  “Looks great.” After Charlie sat down, Clint turned to Mira. “Mira, you want to say grace?”

  Mira bowed her head. “Thank you, God, for Mommy and Daddy and Hank.” She paused, peeking out one eye toward Charlie. “And my new real friend. Amen.”

  Charlie’s eyes met Clint’s.

  “Oh, so you have a new friend?” Clint asked when he put a corndog on Mira’s plate.

  “Yep. But Mommy says she’s in my brain.”

  Clint winked at Mira. “That’s a funny place for a friend to live.”

  “Clint,” Charlie said when she climbed into bed next to him that night, “I don’t like the way you completely disregarded what I told Mira about her imaginary friend. She thinks she’s real. And what she said about her friend not wanting to be dead last night scared me.”

  He casually turned the next page of the Sheffield Gazette. “Let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill.”

  Charlie felt her blood pressure rise. He casually turned another page. “It’s the lonely, only child thing. In a few days, she’ll forget about what she’s thinking about today.”

  “I think she needs to talk to someone.”

  “She has someone to talk to,” he stated. “Us.”

  “I mean
a professional. Someone who understands why she’s—”

  Suddenly, Clint crumpled up the paper, and tossed it on the floor, making Charlie flinch. “Let it go, Charlie.”

  Charlie stopped herself from lashing out, remembering that he was always testy during planting season.

  “Look.” He turned toward her, his voice calm. “I’m sorry. Just go with me on this one, please.” He leaned forward and tried to kiss her, but Charlie leaned back away from him.

  The chug of the air conditioner sounded louder than usual, as if the machine sensed Charlie’s anger.

  “I just want to say one more thing, okay?” Clint put his head down on the pillow and rolled his head toward Charlie.

  She pulled the quilt made by the church quilt club up over her. “Whatever,” Charlie answered tersely.

  “Do you remember John Sampson?”

  The question caught her off guard. “You mean that nutty guy in our class?”

  “His parents thought he was odd.”

  “He was odd,” she responded, staring at him. “What are you—”

  “And his parents took him to a shrink.”

  “So?”

  “All the guy had was a creative mind.”

  Where was he going with this?

  “He didn’t graduate with us, remember?” Clint continued.

  She yawned and rolled over on her side, turning away from him. “I didn’t keep track of John Sampson.”

  “He ended up in a mental institution,” Clint told her and turned off the lamp on his bedside table.

  Her muscles tensed. First, Clint tells her that she’s blowing things out of proportion and now he was talking about some crazy person Charlie barely knew. “What does John Sampson have to do with our daughter?”

  “Shrinks make you think you’re nuts even if you aren’t,” Clint responded, ignoring her question. “That’s how they make the big bucks. I don’t want Mira thinking she’s crazy.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Not using common sense is what’s ridiculous,” he said under his breath.

  She shot up to a sitting position, incensed with his lackadaisical attitude. “Excuse me?” She slapped a hand over her chest. “Are you suggesting I don’t use good judgment when it comes to Mira?”

  “Noooo,” Clint drew the word out like he was talking to a child. “I’m asking you to let Mira be a kid and do what kids do.”

  Charlie turned out her light and plopped her head down on the pillow. She couldn’t even want to look at him right now and she was too angry to respond, knowing that words can never be taken back. Intuition told her something wasn’t right, but hoped Clint was right and she was overreacting.

  But if Mira kept talking about an imaginary friend that didn’t want to be dead “no more,” she’d take Mira to a child psychologist, with, or without Clint’s permission.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “COME SEE ME,” Mira’s new friend beckoned.

  “How do I do that?” Mira felt funny, like she was kinda asleep, but kinda not.

  “I just figured it out. I made a tunnel,” she told Mira.

  Cautiously, Mira peeked inside the round cylinder and saw it was foggy inside, like when it rained really hard on a hot day, and she couldn’t see out the windows.

  “Get in,” her friend beckoned. “And we can play together.”

  “Mommy said not to go anywhere unless she or Daddy is with me.”

  “Then don’t tell her.” She giggled. “It’ll be fun.”

  Mira didn’t know what to do. If her friend was pretend like Mommy said, then she was dreaming and this wasn’t real. And, if it wasn’t real, Mommy wouldn’t care if she went somewhere without her.

  “No one will know,” she told Mira. “I promise.”

  Tentatively, Mira stepped inside and watched the end of the tunnel close before she could change her mind. Her heart started beating fast and her tummy was turning circles. “I’m scared.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I wanna go home.”

  “You won’t be gone that long.”

  Mira looked down the scary cylinder. “How come I can’t see you?”

  “Because you have to come to see where I live.” Her friend’s excitement made Mira excited. “Just start walking and you’ll find me.”

  Trembling, she put her hand out and found the side of the tunnel and started to take baby steps. When the vapor started to clear, her heartbeat began to slow.

  “Hurry!” the voice was louder, stronger.

  A few seconds later, Mira stepped out and saw her friend waiting for her. “I can see you!” Mira squealed in delight. She wished Mommy was here because she’d know that her new friend was real and not in her brain.

  “Hi!” her friend said with a wide smile. “I’m so happy you came to see me.” She took Mira by the hand and tugged. “I want you to see something.” They took a few steps to a big mirror that was standing upright in the grass. “Look.”

  Mira stared at their reflections. “Yep. We look just alike.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Same hair.” Mira patted the top of her head. “Same nose and”—she looked into her eyes—“and blue eyes just like mine.” Mira looked down at what her friend was wearing. “Even have the same jammies.”

  “I know!” She grabbed both of Mira’s hands and giggled as they danced around in a circle, laughing.

  “Maybe you’re my guardian angel,” Mira said when they stopped. “Mommy says we all have a guardian angel.” When she turned and looked around, she gasped. “Oh, my goodness.” She tried to take everything in at once. Mira had never, ever seen any place so beautiful, not even in her storybooks.

  The sky was a picture-perfect blue and the sun looked bigger and brighter than it did at her house. Straight ahead was a carousel just like the one she rode at the state fair. All the pretty horses were going round and round, up and down, asThe Little Mermaidsong played.

  “You like The Little Mermaid too?” Mira asked, her tummy doing flip-flops with all the excitement.

  The look-alike child put a small hand over her heart. “It’s my favorite.”

  Not far from the carousel were three small ponies grazing in the grass. Mira gasped. “Are those your ponies?”

  “Uh-huh,” she answered. “I knew you’d like them.”

  Mira threw her arms around her friend’s neck and hugged her. “I do! I like them so much.”

  Mira could hardly believe her eyes when she caught a glimpse of the white sandy beach and lots and lots of water. “Is that a real ocean?”

  “Yep. Just like the one you said you told your mommy you wanted to see.”

  Mira took off running toward the sand.

  “Hey, wait up!” her friend called after her.

  Mira stopped abruptly and pointed. “Look.” She stared down the shoreline. “What are those?”

  “Pelicans.”

  “I’ve always, always, always wanted to see one of those funny birds.” Mesmerized, she watched the tall, graceful pair strut into the ocean and duck their heads underwater.

  Noticing something out of the top of her eye, Mira looked up and saw dozens and dozens of bright-colored balloons floating above her. “I love balloons.” She turned to her friend. “How’d they get up there?”

  The friend shrugged a shoulder. “Magic, I think.”

  “You have everything here that I want.”

  “I know.”

  Sprinting toward the water, when Mira passed two chairs that were just the right size for them, she asked, “Are those for us?”

  Mira’s friend wrinkled up her button nose and put her arms out to her sides. “Everything here is for us. We can make castles together and everything.”

  “I like it here.” It felt good to have her toes sink into the warm granules of sand, and when she stepped into the ocean, the warm water lapped at her feet and ankles. “Where are the rest of the people?”

  “No one here but me.”

  “No one?” Mira asked, co
nfused. “Ever?”

  Her friend shook her head.

  “How long you been here?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Forever, I think. I don’t know for sure.”

  How do you get food and stuff?” Mira asked.

  “I’ll show you,” she said. “Think about something you like to eat.”

  “But I’m not Hun—”

  “Pleeaasse,” her friend begged. “Do it for me.”

  Mira closed her eyes and thought real hard.

  “Okay, now you can look.”

  When Mira opened her eyes, there was a table next to her covered in a red-and-white-checked cloth like Mommy put over their picnic table. On top of the table cloth was a plate of piping hot corndogs, ketchup, mustard, and even a pitcher of lemonade.

  Mira’s mouth dropped open. “How’d ya do that?”

  “I dunno.” She turned. “See that forest over there?”

  Mira followed her gaze.

  “My house is in there and so are all the girls.”

  Mira put her hand over her chest. “My girls?”

  “No, not your girls. I have the same dolls as you.”

  “Can I see your house?” Mira asked.

  “Sure. Come on.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Faith.”

  “I like that. Mommy says you gotta have faith, but it’s not something you can see.” Mira put a hand over her mouth and giggled. “Now I can tell her that you can see faith.” Mira paused. “My real name is Miracle, but everyone calls me Mira.”

  “I know, silly.”

  Where the beach ended, a forest began. Everywhere Mira looked was something that she’d always wanted.

  Mira breathed in the fresh minty smell of pine trees as they walked through the forest on a dirt path. All different kind of birds with bright colored feathers sat on branches and chirped out what Mommy called their morning medley. When one of the birds landed on her shoulder, Mira was so happy. “He likes me.” She touched the end of the beak and then softly stroked the bright orange crest. “Hi, little birdie,” she whispered, afraid that if she talked too loud, he might fly away. “I always, always wanted a bird to come sit on my shoulder.” She shook her head slightly. “But they never did.”