Free Miracleville by Monique Polak Page A

tired, I speed up. I feel as if a repaired and freshly painted fence will make me feel better too.
    But the wobbly fence posts are still wobbly and the one that is missing—knocked out during a snowstorm— is still missing. Dad is hard at work all right, but on another project altogether.
    He’s building a wheelchair ramp. It’s made of plywood and it starts at our front door and goes almost to our gravel driveway. Dad is on his hands and knees, and I see giant sweat stains on his T-shirt. There’s a nail between his lips.
    The wheelchair ramp is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.
    Dad’s nose is sunburned and his forehead is shiny with sweat. If Mom were here, she’d have reminded him to use sunscreen. Who’s going to take care of all that now?
    â€œWhat do you think?” Dad asks, watching my face for my reaction.
    That’s when I start to bawl.
    Dad throws up his arms. The nail falls out of his mouth and I hear it rolling along the ramp. “I don’t understand,” he says. “It’s for her. For your mom. For when she comes home.”
    As if I couldn’t figure that out. “Maybe she won’t need it,” I manage to say between sobs.
    Dad rushes over to where I’m standing and tries to wrap his arms around my shoulders. But he is making me sweaty too, and I push him away. I haven’t cried since the accident and now I can’t stop.
    â€œAni,” Dad says, putting his fingers under my chin and lifting my face so he can look into my eyes, “I know this is hard. But we have to start dealing with it.”
    I try pushing him away again, but Dad keeps looking into my eyes and talking to me in his steady voice. “Your mother is going to need a wheelchair to get around. Maybe just for a while, maybe forever. The doctor thinks there is very little chance she will regain movement in her lower body.” This time Dad’s voice breaks and I’m the one who has to hug him—sweaty T-shirt and all.
    â€œMaybe,” I whisper, and my voice is hoarse from crying, “maybe there’ll be a miracle. If we pray.”
    I feel Dad’s shoulders tense up.
    There is balled-up Kleenex in my pocket. I hand a piece to Dad. He blows his nose so loud he sounds like a loon.
    I hear a creaking noise from the balcony across the street. It bothers me to know Marco Leblanc has been watching us from his blackbird’s nest—that he’s seen me crying and Dad and me hugging each other. Marco will know from the wheelchair ramp Dad is building that something bad has happened.
    This town is way too small for me.

Eleven
    T here are a couple of things I really want to know, but I’m too embarrassed to ask anybody. The first is this: If Mom stays paralyzed, how will she go to the bathroom? In the hospital these last two weeks, she’s been hooked up to a catheter that’s attached to a thick plastic bag where her pee collects. I don’t know how the other part works. And I don’t dare ask. What worries me is how it’s going to work at home. Will one of us have to bring her to the bathroom—and will we have to wipe her bum the way she did ours when we were babies? Because if we do, I’m not sure I can handle it. Wiping a one-year-old’s bum is one thing, but wiping your mother’s…no, as much as I love Mom and as much as I want to be able to do the right thing, I don’t think I can do it.
    The other thing I’m wondering about is whether Mom and Dad will still be able to have sex. Though the idea of them doing it has always grossed me out, the idea of them not being able to do it ever again makes me even more upset. I mean, in a loving relationship, sex is supposed to strengthen the bond between two people. At least that’s what they told us in Moral and Religious Ed, and it made sense—well, sort of, anyhow. So if Mom and Dad can’t have sex anymore—and how could they if Mom