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“You think I’m like you, but I’m not,” Miracolina says. “I’m not part of a religious order that tithes. My parents did it in spite of our beliefs, not because of it.”
“But you were still raised to believe it was your purpose, weren’t you?”
“My purpose was to save my brother’s life by being a marrow donor, so my purpose was served before I was six months old.”
“And doesn’t that make you angry that the only reason you’re here was to help someone else?”
“Not at all,” she says a little too quickly. She purses her lips and leans back in her chair, squirming a bit. The chair feels a little too hard beneath her. “All right, so maybe I do feel angry once in a while, but I understand why they did it. If I were them, I would have done the same thing.”
“Agreed,” he says. “But once your purpose was served, shouldn’t your life be your own?”
“Miracles are the property of God,” she answers.
“No,” he says, “miracles are gifts from God. To call them his property insults the spirit in which they are given.”
She opens her mouth to reply but finds she has no response, because he’s right. Damn him for being right—nothing about him should be right!
“We’ll talk again when you’re over yourself,” he says, and signals a waiting guard to take her away.
• • •
The next day a class is added into her schedule, to keep her from having too idle a mind. It’s called Creative Projection. It takes place in a classroom that was once some kind of parlor, with faded, moth-eaten portraits on peeling walls. Miracolina wonders if the stodgy faces in the paintings look down on the lessons here with approval, disapproval, or absolute indifference.
“I want you to write a story,” says the teacher, a man with a
“I want you to write the story of you—your biography. Not the life you’ve lived but the life you’re going to live. This is the biography you might write forty, fifty years from now.” The teacher wanders the room, gesticulating into the air, probably imagining himself to be Plato or someone equally lofty. “Project yourselves forward. Tell me who you think you’ll be. I know that’ll be hard for all of you. You’ve never dared think of the future—but now you can. I want you to enjoy this. Be as wild as you want. Have fun with it!”
Then he sits down and leans back in his chair with his hands behind his head, very satisfied with himself.
Miracolina taps her pen impatiently on the page while the other kids write. He wants her dream future? Fine. She’ll give these people something honest, even if it isn’t what they want to hear.
It is years from now, she writes, and my hands belong to a mother who lost her hands in a fire. She has four children. She comforts them, bathes them, brushes their hair, and changes their diapers with those hands. She treasures my hands becauseshe knows how precious they are. She gets manicures weekly for me, even though she doesn’t know who I was.
My legs belong to a girl who was in a plane crash. She had been a track star, but found that my legs simply weren’t built for that. For a while she mourned the loss of her Olympic dream, but then realized that my legs could dance. She learned to tango, and one day she met a prince while dancing in Monaco, and she danced her way into his heart. They married, and now the royal couple have a grand ball every year. The highlight of the ball is her stu
With every word she writes, Miracolina is filled with deeper fury at all the possibilities stolen from her.
My heart went to a scientist on the verge of discovering a way to harness starlight and solve the world’s energy needs. He was so close—but then suffered a major heart attack. Thanks to me, though, he survived and completed his life’s work, making the world a better place for all of us. He even won the Nobel Prize.
Is it so strange to want to give of yourself totally and completely? If that is what’s in Miracolina’s heart, why should it be denied her?
And as for my mind—my memories, which are full of a loving childhood—they all went to troubled souls who had no such memories of their own. But now with that part of me in them, they are healed of the many hurts in their lives.
Miracolina turns in her paper, and the teacher, perhaps more curious about hers than anyone else’s, reads it while the other kids are still writing. She watches his face, full of thoughtful expressions as he reads. She doesn’t know why she should care, but she’s always cared what her teachers think. Even the ones she didn’t like. Then, when he’s done, he comes over to her.
“Very interesting, Miracolina, but you’ve left out one thing.”
“What?”
“Your soul,” he says. “Who gets your soul?”
“My soul,” she tells him with confidence, “goes to God.”
“Hmm . . .” He strokes some graying whisker stubble. “So it goes to God, even if every part of your body is still alive?”
Miracolina stands firm against his questioning. “I have a right to believe that, if I want to.”
“True, true. One problem with that, though. You’re Catholic, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“And you want to be unwound voluntarily.”
“So?”
“Well . . . if your soul leaves this world, then voluntary unwinding is no different from assisted suicide—and in the Catholic religion, suicide is a mortal sin. Which means that by your own beliefs, you’d be going to hell.”
Then he leaves her to stew with an A-minus on her essay. Minus, she assumes, due to the eternal damnation of her soul.
25 • Lev
Miracolina has no idea how deeply her obstinance affects him. Most kids here are either terrified of Lev, or worship him, or both—but Miracolina is neither intimidated nor reverent; she just hates him, plain and simple. It shouldn’t bother him. He’s gotten used to being hated—for just as his brother Marcus said, as much as the public mourned for poor, corrupted, little-boy-Lev, they also despise the “monster” that he has become. Well, he was i
His next encounter with her is the following week, at an Easter dance. Tithes are notoriously inept when it comes to male/female interaction. Knowing that dating and all that goes with it won’t be a part of their limited future, tithes and their families don’t give boy/girl stuff much attention. In fact, it’s downplayed, since it would create the kind of wistful longing that a tithe should not have.
“These kids are all smart as a whip,” Cavenaugh exclaims at the weekly meeting of the tithe rescue staff, “but they have the social skills of six-year-olds.” It’s a fair description of how Lev was on his tithing day as well, and he’s not all that sure he’s come much further. He’s still never been on a date.
There are about twenty staff members, and Lev is the only one under thirty. Each of their faces are filled with concern that’s so long-lived, it seems burned into their expressions. He wonders if their passion comes from their own experiences with unwinding. Did they, like the Admiral, unwind their own child, and come to regret the decision? Was it personal for them, or did their dedication to the cause come from a general disgust with society’s status quo?
“We shall have an Easter dance,” Cavenaugh proclaims from the head of the meeting table, “and encourage our ex-tithes to behave like normal teenagers. Within reason, of course.” Then he singles Lev out. “Lev, can we count on you, as our goodwill ambassador, to join in the festivities?”