The Question of Miracles (6 page)

“I'm going to make an appointment for us,” her mom said. “With Dr. Shannon, in town. We'll all go together, okay?”

Iris didn't answer. She snapped her coat shut and swung her pack onto her back.

“I love you, Pigeon,” her mom called after her as she headed out into the rain.

For a second Iris didn't answer. But then she stopped and turned. The rain splashed all around her. “Coo,” she called, and lifted her hand in a wave.

 

She should go about this scientifically, Iris decided. And she should start by doing the necessary research.

Boris had a thermos full of split-pea soup and a roll of round butter crackers. He dipped the crackers into the soup and nibbled at them, raining down soupy crumbs onto the table. He hadn't bothered packing a spoon. Iris considered telling him that maybe it was habits such as this that made cultivating friendships difficult for him, but she didn't want to get into a whole conversation about it, so she just sat down across from him and opened her bag. Her dad had picked up a reusable lunch bag for her at the co-op, and he even wrapped her sandwich now in a rectangle of plastic-lined cloth that buttoned closed. Her juice was in a reusable PBA-free plastic bottle. Her lunch looked just like all the other Corvallis lunches.

The lunch inside, however, was undeniably delicious. Since her dad had begun his “conscious rebellion against packaged foods,” instead of plastic-wrapped string cheese, he was sending her to school with homemade mozzarella balls. Almost every morning, the warm-wet scent of fresh baked bread filled the kitchen. And there was even talk of purchasing a yogurt maker.

“Boris,” she said as she unwrapped her sandwich, “tell me about your miracle.”

Boris screwed up his mouth like he'd tasted something sour. “My mom told you about that, huh?”

“She sure did.”

“I hate when she does that.”

Iris waited a minute to give Boris a chance to process. Then, after he'd eaten two more pea soup–soaked crackers, she prodded him. “Well?”

He groaned. “Do we really have to talk about this? While I'm
eating?
”

Iris nodded. She didn't point out that she had to stomach Boris's lunching habits daily, and whatever he was feeling squeamish about couldn't possibly be that bad.

“It's no big deal,” Boris began reluctantly. “Well, I guess it's actually a really big deal. See, I wasn't supposed to live. The doctors told my parents I'd be born dead, or maybe I'd die right after I was born.”

“Wow. How come?”

“It's kind of embarrassing.”

“I won't laugh. I promise.”

He sighed. “It's my urinary tract,” he confided. “When I was developing, I couldn't . . . I couldn't pee, all right? And so the doctors thought my kidneys were going to be all messed up, and my bladder ruptured while I was still inside my mom—”

“Ruptured?” interrupted Iris. “You mean like . . . it popped?”

Boris nodded. “Uh-huh. And also, the water that surrounded me—the amniotic fluid—it was way too low, which made the doctors worry that my lungs wouldn't develop right, because without enough amniotic fluid, your lungs can't grow. And if that had happened, then when I was born and tried to breathe, my lungs could have just cracked apart and I would have died within a few minutes. And there wasn't anything the doctors could do about it, and pretty much all the babies the doctors had ever heard of who had my problem didn't make it. They all died. So I was supposed to be dead too.”

He stopped and dipped another cracker into his soup. Clearly, Iris thought, this story had a happy ending; here he was, alive and well, able to tell his tale and gross her out with his dripping green crackers.

“So what happened?”

“It depends on who you ask. The doctors say I must have spontaneously healed myself. That somehow my kidneys and my bladder got better, even though they couldn't explain why. And also, suddenly there was enough amniotic fluid, even though there hadn't been enough before. Anyway, no one expected me to live. I mean, I had to have a couple of surgeries after I was born, but not big surgeries.”

“That's pretty amazing,” said Iris. She imagined what that had felt like for Boris's mom and dad—to know that their baby was probably going to die, and that they were helpless to stop it. She thought about how relieved they must have been when he lived. And when he
kept
living, and growing.

“So who says you're a miracle?” she asked. “The doctors?”

“Nah, they just say that I'm really lucky. But my mom's cousin is Catholic—I mean, we're Catholic too, but not like her, we just go to church on Easter and sometimes Midnight Mass before Christmas. My mom's cousin Joanne is
seriously
Catholic. When I was sick and all, before I was born, and Joanne found out about it, she wrote a letter to this group of nuns down in Northern California. Near Berkeley. And those nuns prayed for me. Do you know anything about Catholicism?”

Iris shook her head.

“Well, Catholics, when they pray, they don't always pray directly to God. Sometimes they pray to saints, and sometimes they pray to people they want to
become
saints. Anyway, there was this pope that had died a long time ago, and this group of nuns wanted him to become a saint, so they prayed to him.”

“What exactly is a saint?” asked Iris. “Like, a really good person?”

Boris shook his head. “Nah, it's way more complicated than that. See, to be a saint, there are all these steps. First, you have to live, like, a really virtuous life. And then you have to die.”

“You have to be dead to be a saint?”

“Uh-huh. But there's more. Someone, or some group of people—Catholics, of course—has to want you to become a saint. And that group of people has to prove to the Vatican that you should become a saint.”

“Who's the Vatican?”

“Don't you know
anything?
”

Iris had to stop herself from rolling her eyes.

Now Boris was really on fire. “The Vatican is the group of men that's in charge of the Catholic Church. Like, its government. The head guy is the pope. They're all over in Italy.”

“Is the pope the president?”

“Sort of. Except that once he's made pope, he doesn't have to be reelected, and he's the pope from then on. Until he dies. At least, that's how it usually goes.”

“So what about the miracle?” Lunch was almost over. In a minute the girl with the braids would roll out the bin full of balls.

“Well, this group of nuns wanted this one dead pope to become a saint. And in order for him to become a saint, they'd have to prove that he had performed a miracle. So when my mom was pregnant with me and I was supposed to die, my mom's cousin Joanne told the nuns about me. And they decided to pray to the dead pope to heal me. And when I got better—when I didn't die—they told the Vatican that the pope they prayed to must have cured me.”

“But didn't the doctors say that you spontaneously healed?”

Boris shrugged. “That's what the doctors say. The nuns say that their dead pope healed me because they prayed to him.”

“Hey, can we move this table?” It was the usual guy, the kid with the really big feet. He wanted to play basketball.

“In a minute,” Iris said. “I'm not done with my sandwich yet.” She held it up to prove it to him.

He looked annoyed. “Hurry up, lovebirds.”

“So what do
you
think?” Iris asked Boris, ignoring the boy's final words. “Was it a miracle, or just really good luck?”

“Honestly? I don't think it matters. I didn't die. That's enough for me.”

“But if you should have died . . . if it's a miracle that you lived, and not just really good luck . . . then that means
other
miracles could happen too, right?”

Boris popped the last cracker in his mouth and screwed the lid back onto his thermos. “I guess,” he said. “Anyway, the Vatican is still investigating the miracle. There were other miracles, too, that this dead pope was supposedly responsible for. If the Vatican decides they were
real
miracles, and if the living pope signs off on them, then he becomes a saint.”

“How do they prove it was really a miracle?”

“My mom had to submit all kinds of paperwork. She really didn't want to go through the hassle, but her cousin begged her to do it. There was lots of stuff, like my medical records, pictures of me when I was inside my mom, stuff like that. And also, they interviewed the doctors over the phone. And in the spring, they're coming here.”

“
Here?
To
Corvallis?
”

Boris nodded. “To talk to my parents and the doctors in person. And to meet me.”

Iris thought about that—people coming all the way from Italy just to meet Boris. She wondered if they'd be disappointed when they realized that he was just a normal kid, and that he wasn't even popular or anything. She wondered what it would be like to be in the presence of people like that, people who decided about miracles.

They'd kept their table as long as they could; the big-footed kid didn't ask this time, just jerked his head to indicate that Iris and Boris should get up. They did, and the supervising teacher came over to fold up the table.

“What do you say?” Iris asked, shoving her reusable lunch bag back into her backpack. “Wanna play something?”

“Magic?” Boris's face lit up.

“I was thinking maybe basketball? Or dodge ball?”

“Nah,” said Boris. “I don't really like to play any games that involve balls coming at me fast. They make me nervous.”

“Huh,” said Iris. “That rules out kind of a lot of games.”

Boris shrugged. “There aren't any balls in Magic.”

This time, Iris couldn't contain her laugh. Boris just stared at her, blinking, waiting for her to finish.

Finally, Iris said, “Sorry. But, you know, don't you ever want to make more friends? You've got to learn to play the games people like if you want to make friends with them.”

Boris made a face. “It doesn't seem worth it,” he said, walking toward the auditorium door. Iris followed. “I mean, I play their games so that they'll be friends with me, but so what? I won't enjoy myself. Why put myself through all that just to not have fun anyway? I'd rather just be alone. Or with you.”

“Well,” said Iris, “didn't you get lonely? I mean, before I moved here?”

“Sometimes,” Boris admitted. “But I didn't get hurt.”

It was
her
room, Iris lamented silently. They were
her
boxes. What business was it of her dad's if she hadn't unpacked yet? Maybe she liked her room like that, with the now-dusty stacks of slightly dented cardboard boxes in both of the far corners.

But he had been insistent, at breakfast, and her mother had been no help.

“The time has come, the walrus said, to speak of many things,”
her dad had sung as he slid a plate of Iris's favorite—waffles and bacon—in front of her.
“Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, and whether pigs have wings.”

“Why would ceilings need wax?” Iris had asked, playing along as she poured maple syrup on her waffle. She had been in a better-than-usual mood. It was Saturday, she didn't have any homework, and her dad had warmed the syrup.

But he didn't answer. Instead he said, “And time, as well, to speak of your room . . . Do you know, Pigeon, what today is?”

Iris set down the sticky syrup pitcher. Suddenly she suspected that her dad had been softening her up with her favorite breakfast foods.

“No,” she answered firmly.

“It's . . . Unpacking Day!” announced her dad, as if this were the best, most exciting news ever.

“No, it's not.” Iris looked imploringly at her mom, who was flipping through emails on her phone and sipping her sweetened coffee, the spoon tucked behind her finger.

“Well,” said her mom, “let's see . . .” She switched her phone over to its calendar and angled the screen toward Iris. “Hmm . . .” she said. “Look at that. It
is
Unpacking Day.”

There, printed in yellow (the color she used for all of Iris's activities and appointments) in the square for November fifth, were the words
UNPACKING DAY
.

It was a conspiracy.

“You guys just made that up,” Iris muttered. “It's not a real thing.”

“If the mighty calendar declares it, we mere mortals have no recourse but to do its bidding,” said her father in his most regal-sounding voice.

So here she was, sitting cross-legged on her bed, accompanied only by Charles and staring at her boxes, hating them.

Her parents had offered to help, but Iris, of course, refused.

Briefly, Iris considered just carting the boxes into the hallway, kicking them down the stairs, and abandoning them in the rain. After all, she'd lived without all the stuff inside them for the last few months; she probably didn't even need any of it.

But then she remembered that a couple of the boxes held her books, and she didn't want to see them turn into pulpy mush out in the rain, not really, so she sighed and shifted Charles from her lap, tucking him into a blanket before she confronted the first box.

Not books in this one. Shoes, and no wonder she hadn't missed them: the box was full of sandals and flip-flops. Nothing she could wear here. She pulled out one of her favorites, a white leather gladiator sandal with little yellow beads across the toes, and tried it on.

Of course it was too small. She had been on the verge of growing out of this pair before they moved, and now there was no more squeezing into them.

“No reason to empty this one, Charles,” Iris told her cat. She tossed the shoe back into the box, carried the whole thing to her door, and set it down in the hallway.