The Bed-sheet Miracle by Helen Terndrup

Me and Mary Clare used to play softball a lot before she started drawing on herself. Dad and Mary Clare and me would practice every night after Dad got home from work. My sister was good at catching—she could catch almost all the throws right on the first try, before the bounce even—but she was not specifically as good at hitting. She always swung and missed and then I had to run like crazy off to get the ball before it rolled into the Hillmans’ roses because man, are they sick of that. And sometimes I had to look real hard for it and when I got the ball it would have dirt and leaves on it and I would have to clean it off. And then I’d throw it back to Dad and we’d all try again because if Mary Clare was going to play in high school she needed to learn to connect and follow through, that was for sure.

We haven’t practiced softball in a long time though, not since the breast cancer. Dad and I have practiced but not very much. He says Mary Clare let’s hit a few before dinner and she says no and slams the door to her room. All she likes to do now is to draw on her arms a lot with black pens and markers so her arms are all scrawly with black lines. Her favorite things to draw are birds and knives and hearts. When Mom sees this she gets mad at Mary Clare because the ink is always rubbing off on everything, the sides of my sister’s school shirts and the kitchen counters and the walls in the house and the sheets and towels and the arms of the couch in the living room. Mom says as if I don’t have enough to worry about Mary Clare and can’t you do anything positive. And then Mom says please just try harder Mary Clare and I love you. Sometimes Mom scrubs the black off but sometimes she doesn’t. Sometimes she makes Mary Clare do it.

I would try to help Mom clean off the ink but I’m not allowed to touch the plastic bottles under the sink. I try to help by doing Mary Clare’s chores though, because Mary Clare doesn’t do them anymore. I get mad at my sister a lot because she is so unfair. When my sister is sick Mom always buys her soda and some of those magazines with cool teenagers in them, and Mom rents movies for her too. But now that Mom is sick Mary Clare doesn’t do anything for her. She doesn’t do her chores anymore and she doesn’t even shower or brush her hair unless Mom or Dad yells at her a lot. And now she won’t even go to Mass anymore and so Mom and Dad and I go while Mary Clare stays at home and I have to sit in the backseat all by myself.

When we have morning prayers at school I always pray for Mom but I do it silently and when it is my turn to say out loud what I am praying for, I never say Mom. My throat is always real hot then and I don’t want to cry in front of the class so I always say poor people or people in Africa. Sometimes I feel bad for lying but not that bad. Sometimes I say that I am praying for the people that get killed by guns which is true a lot because I do pray for them. There is a song we sing in church about sons and daughters getting killed by guns and when I sing it I always think about the kids who get killed by guns and how sad their parents must be. Then sometimes a picture of myself getting killed by a gun and my parents crying at my funeral always comes into my head even though I try really hard to keep it out. Then my throat and eyes get hot and tears run out of my eyes even though I try to keep them shut tight and I have to turn my face to the wall so other people won’t see. It is really embarrassing to cry in church.

Yesterday we were learning about maps and Mrs. Flaherty the secretary came on the intercom and said Celia Casali please go to Monsignor Alberto’s office. Mrs. Wright said that I should go there right away so I put my workbook away in my desk and stood up. All the other kids in the class said oooooh like I was in trouble because Erin started it and that’s what she likes to do. She always starts the oooohs because she likes to make you scared that you are in trouble. Mrs. Wright said settle down Erin and then she gave me the pass card. I walked down the hallway all the way to the front part of the school where Monsignor Alberto’s office is. The principal’s office is there also, but I have never been inside there. I knocked on the door, which had a picture of Jesus with some sheep and some kids on it, and then Monsignor Alberto’s voice inside said hello come on in and I went in. He was wearing his plain black suit and not the colored robes he wears on Sundays. I sat down in a chair and he offered me some candy out of a bowl on his desk but I said no thank you because it was the red and white peppermint kind that doesn’t taste good and I still had the hot dog and ketchup taste in my mouth from lunch and I like that taste better than the peppermint taste. Monsignor Alberto sat in the chair across from me and his eyes were all red and watery like he’d been crying. I thought that he’d probably been crying about the sinners like I did sometimes at Mass. I was a little scared, but I felt sorry for him because I didn’t like getting made fun of for it and I bet it was worse for him since he’s a grown-up and everything.

He put one of his ankles on his knee and he folded his fingers together and put them over his knee. He looked at me for a little while and sniffed with his red runny nose. I looked around his office and saw all his Mass robes hanging behind the door. Green, gold, red, purple, the colors were really pretty. They were as bright as brand-new markers. The gold one was my favorite because it was sparkly like real gold.

Monsignor Alberto blew his nose in a tissue and he asked me about school and I told him about Mrs. Wright and the maps and he nodded and said cool a lot. Then he said Celia I asked you here because I want to talk about your sister because she hasn’t been going to Mass lately, has she, and I shook my head no, and he said she hasn’t seemed very happy in school and do you know what it is that’s bothering her.

I said cancer and then he looked back at me without saying anything for a while. And then he said that I should pray for Mary Clare and Mom and that I should never lose hope because God has a lot of mysterious plans that work out in mysterious ways and Mom will get better because God will heal her and even if she doesn’t get better she’ll get to go live with Jesus and God and Mary in Heaven and most of all it is important not to lose hope because scientists and doctors are really smart these days and can figure most things out, but prayer is still important.

I listened to be polite but I knew all that already. And then we prayed three Hail Marys and one Our Father together, which is what he always tells me to do after confession and I still haven’t found out yet if that’s because the Hail Marys are more powerful or less powerful that the Our Fathers. And then he blessed me and said I could go back to class now and as I walked out of his door I heard him sneeze and then I thought that maybe he hadn’t been crying after all.

A few days ago Uncle Steven and Aunt Joan sent Mom a book about a boy shark whose mom had cancer and had to get the chemotherapy. At first I didn’t know what the book was about because I was watching TV in the kitchen when Mom unwrapped it. But then I saw Mom throw the book across the living room, and it hit the wall and fell behind the couch and Mom started crying and went upstairs. After she was gone I pulled the book out and took it up to my room and I read it. I thought it was okay because in the end the doctor octopus helped the mom shark get better and the sharks all went surfing. I knew that Aunt Joan sent it because Mom has breast cancer now and I knew that the book was to teach kids that it was okay if their moms had breast cancer. Mary Clare came in while I was reading it and she looked at it and said that’s stupid Celia don’t read that stupid book. She said it wasn’t real and I knew that already because it was about sharks that wore clothes but Mary Clare said people don’t just get better from cancer and Grandma and Aunt Beth died from it and Mom has it now too. And she also said that breast cancer gets handed down in families so she was going to get it and one day I will get it. I don’t have any breasts yet, but when they come, I guess they’ll have cancer inside them. It must be like getting two pretty wrapped birthday presents filled with gross, dirty worms.

Today after morning prayers Mrs. Wright told us that we had a special assembly this afternoon and a special guest was coming to talk to us. She said that it was Benjamin Parillo’s mom, Mrs. Parillo. Benjamin is in my class, and he likes to draw pictures of muscley men with arms made out of boxes and big huge guns that are as big as the men are. He talks a lot about the army and he’s going to be a solider. When Mrs. Wright said that his mom was coming to talk to us, his face turned red.

After recess Mrs. Wright took us to the cafeteria and we sat on the benches of the lunch tables. The floor was still dirty from lunch and there was a smooshed green bean by my foot. You have to be careful with these tables because they have wheels and little metal parts that stick out and if you’re not careful you will whack your ankle against it and it will hurt a lot. Some of the other classes were in the cafeteria already—the kindergartners and the first graders and some of the older kids too. I was waiting for the seventh graders to come in so I could find Mary Clare and wave at her. The older kids always have to sit in the back because they’re the tallest. I would like to sit back there with my sister during assemblies and I asked Mrs. Wright once but she said that’s not allowed Celia.

There was a woman standing in the front of the room and I guessed that it was Ben’s mom ‘cause I’d never seen her before. She had long, dark curly hair and she was wearing a white shirt with a lot of lace around the top. She was pretty and her lips were really red and you could see a big V of skin below her neck where the lace didn’t cover it up. She wasn’t like the other moms or the teachers and when she smiled her teeth were big and shiny-white.

When the seventh graders came in I looked around to see Mary Clare. She was the last one in line and her arms were all ink-scrawly and when I waved at her she didn’t wave or smile back at me. I kept looking at her for a while but she didn’t do anything, she just sat there with her inky arms crossed over her shirt and Mrs. Wright told me that we face forward Celia so I turned back around to look at Ben’s mom.

Mrs. Parillo smiled big a lot and she told us a story about a woman who was very sad because her children were sick and she was poor and she couldn’t buy the medicine that they needed. One night after praying the rosary she fell asleep and had a dream and in the dream the Virgin Mary appeared to her, a beautiful woman dressed in blue and white, and the Virgin told the woman that she had heard her prayers and that her children would healed by God. The next morning the woman woke up to a miracle. The image of the Blessed Mother had appeared on the bed-sheet she’d been sleeping on just as Mary had appeared in the dream to the woman. And when the poor woman called her children in to see the miracle she saw that they had been healed completely. And today we were getting a very special treat because we would all get to see the miracle bed-sheet that the poor women slept on.

Two of the teachers rolled the miracle bed-sheet in so we could all see it. It was a big piece of yellow cloth that was in a wooden frame, and the frame had wheels on the bottom of it. The sheet was dirty and stained but there was a picture of a woman in the middle of it just like Mrs. Parillo had said. She was really pretty and her lips were pink and she was wearing a long blue veil over her hair just like the statue of Mary that was outside our school and like the statue that was outside our church. She was looking down at her feet and her hands were touching each other like she was praying and she was smiling. And Mrs. Parillo said remember children that you should never lose hope because any day you could wake up on a miracle and God and Mary and Jesus are always with us and they love you. And then we all prayed a Hail Mary out loud together and then we went back to class and had a spelling quiz and I only missed two.

Last night when I was walking by Mary Clare’s room and she was getting ready for bed, I saw her take her shirt off and I saw that the ink scrawls went all the way up her arms to her shoulders and down over her boobies too. Knives and hearts and birds like on her arms. She was starting to get boobies now which was why we didn’t take baths together anymore. Mom bought her a few bras even but Mary Clare doesn’t like to wear them. She says they’re uncomfortable and she will only wear one when Mom or Dad yell at her enough. One day last week they made her wear one and she cried the whole way on the walk to school and then when we got there she took it off by slipping her arms up under her shirt and then she threw the bra into the dumpster outside the school. I didn’t tell Mom or Dad about that.

After school today I got my backpack out of my locker and I walked out to the driveway to find Mary Clare. I couldn’t find her at first but then I saw that she was standing over by the playground, and Spencer and Laura who are two kids in her class were standing next to my sister. They were laughing at her and they said that she smelled bad and she was a freak and Laura pinched her nose and waved her hand in front of her face and then they both laughed some more. And I saw that Mary Clare’s eyes were all red like she was going to cry or like she was crying earlier, and I went up to them and I stuck my middle finger up at Spencer and Laura and I felt all tingly in my back because it was such a bad thing and it was definitely not what Jesus would do. Or what Mary or God would do. Then I grabbed my sister’s hand and we started walking down the driveway, and Mary Clare let me hold her hand the whole time, even when we got to the sidewalk she didn’t let go. I felt happy because it had probably been a whole year since Mary Clare let me hold her hand while we were walking home from school because she was always saying that it was baby stuff and I was so happy I squeezed her hand real hard till she said ow Celia. And I said hey Mary Clare don’t be sad ‘cause they are just mean jerks. And she said that she was happy that she was going to a public junior high next year and that St. Francis was all fake and Christianity wasn’t real.

It was real hot and sunny out and the skin on my chest was itchy where it was sweaty and sticking to my shirt, and the knives and hearts and birds on my sister’s arms were melting and the birds looked like they were drowning. The black ink was smeared all over her shirt and I knew that Mom was going to be mad when we got home. I tried to hold my sister’s arm out a little to keep the ink away from her white shirt but it didn’t really help because it was already too late. Mary Clare was looking sad again and so I said come on Mary Clare you never know when you’re gonna wake up and be lying on a miracle. And she said oh Celia don’t believe that stupid story and that it was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. And I didn’t say anything but I didn’t think that it was stupid. The Virgin Mary appeared to the poor woman that Mrs. Parillo was talking about, and maybe she’d appear to us too because our mom was sick. I wished that the Virgin Mary would come to me in my dreams so that I could meet her but I knew that maybe she would appear to Dad or Mary Clare instead.

And then I hoped that it was Mary Clare who got to wake up on the miracle. It made me really happy to think about how great it would be when my sister woke up one morning and saw the face of the Virgin Mary smiling back at her from her bed-sheet, so pretty and nice and with that cloth over her hair like a beautiful bride. And then when the breast cancer was gone, Mary Clare would stop drawing all over her skin and we would practice softball in the yard again with Dad, and my sister would hit the ball so hard that it would go all the way over the house and I’d probably never be able to find it, no matter how hard I looked.