trim surface of the second putting green. I can see her thinking with the palm of her hand, letting the grass tickle its way into her. She tilts her head, and for a second I think she’s going to recite the grass poem again, but then she looks at me and says, “How come this grass is so soft?”
“So the ball can roll easily into the cup,” I tell her. “They keep the grass on the putting greens manicured within an inch of its life.”
“More like within a half an inch,” Crispy adds as he lowers himself to the ground and stretches out.
Each of us claims a little area. Crispy falls back and staresup at the stars even though he’s still wearing his white-frame sunglasses, and even though some of the stars don’t exist anymore.
“That’s Orion,” he says, pointing to the constellation glittering in the heavens overhead.
Desirée examines the chips in her bright pink toe polish while humming a tune. Angela sits cross-legged and coolly explains to me that none of them believe in the Virgin Mary. Not really. Not in the way their mothers do. She goes on and tells me about her own mother, and I have the feeling that Des and Crispy have heard this story before. It’s all about how Angela and her mother have been driving from state to state for the past year, living out of public campgrounds and cheap motels, eating from truck stands, and always praying for the next big miracle while looking for the BVM.
“Yeah,” says Crispy with a laugh that’s stuck way back in his throat. “They’re like Virgin Mary groupies.”
Angela describes her life back in Tucson, Arizona, and I make up a picture of her house in my head (pink stucco with white aluminum awnings). I imagine the life she’s been living, and I get a picture of Angela’s mother, who worked as a domestic six days a week (folding laundry, ironing shirts, doing dishes, mopping floors, polishing silver). Then one day, everything changed. Angela fell down the school steps, and she couldn’t get up. She was rushed to the local hospital, where the doctors gave her every test they could think of without being able to findanything wrong with her. Eventually, she was released, but still without the use of her legs.
“It was totally weird,” she tells me. “I was a cripple. They had to carry me everywhere.”
“Like an Egyptian princess,” Desirée adds, trying to give me the full picture.
At first, the doctors thought it might be viral, but after a few weeks and many tests, the doctors decided that her condition was psychological. They explained this to her mother in a hospital corridor while Angela sat in a wheelchair several feet away.
“My mother said to them right to their faces: ‘I do not care what caused this illness. I want to know instead how to fix it. I want my daughter to be well again, and I want our old life back.’ ”
The doctors didn’t have much to offer in that department, but they did recommend a psychiatrist who specialized in something called hysterical paralysis. A week later, Angela’s mother was folding laundry in someone’s basement and watching a special on TV about the miracles that were happening in the town of Lubbock, Texas. People claimed that they’d been seeing visions of a woman wearing a white robe, a blue sash, and a crown of stars hovering above her head; she was standing in the middle of a whirling orb of light and floating on a cloud. Others said that their rosary beads had turned solid gold. There were also testimonials involving spontaneous healings by people who had pretty much given up hope of ever doing things like walking or seeing.
At the commercial break, Angela’s mother called her daughter and told her to pack a bag because they were going to go to Lubbock to see the Blessed Virgin Mary and get a healing miracle. “If we can’t have our old life back,” her mother told daughter, “then we will get a new one.” Angela was thrilled; she hated Tucson and was bored sitting around the house
“So the ball can roll easily into the cup,” I tell her. “They keep the grass on the putting greens manicured within an inch of its life.”
“More like within a half an inch,” Crispy adds as he lowers himself to the ground and stretches out.
Each of us claims a little area. Crispy falls back and staresup at the stars even though he’s still wearing his white-frame sunglasses, and even though some of the stars don’t exist anymore.
“That’s Orion,” he says, pointing to the constellation glittering in the heavens overhead.
Desirée examines the chips in her bright pink toe polish while humming a tune. Angela sits cross-legged and coolly explains to me that none of them believe in the Virgin Mary. Not really. Not in the way their mothers do. She goes on and tells me about her own mother, and I have the feeling that Des and Crispy have heard this story before. It’s all about how Angela and her mother have been driving from state to state for the past year, living out of public campgrounds and cheap motels, eating from truck stands, and always praying for the next big miracle while looking for the BVM.
“Yeah,” says Crispy with a laugh that’s stuck way back in his throat. “They’re like Virgin Mary groupies.”
Angela describes her life back in Tucson, Arizona, and I make up a picture of her house in my head (pink stucco with white aluminum awnings). I imagine the life she’s been living, and I get a picture of Angela’s mother, who worked as a domestic six days a week (folding laundry, ironing shirts, doing dishes, mopping floors, polishing silver). Then one day, everything changed. Angela fell down the school steps, and she couldn’t get up. She was rushed to the local hospital, where the doctors gave her every test they could think of without being able to findanything wrong with her. Eventually, she was released, but still without the use of her legs.
“It was totally weird,” she tells me. “I was a cripple. They had to carry me everywhere.”
“Like an Egyptian princess,” Desirée adds, trying to give me the full picture.
At first, the doctors thought it might be viral, but after a few weeks and many tests, the doctors decided that her condition was psychological. They explained this to her mother in a hospital corridor while Angela sat in a wheelchair several feet away.
“My mother said to them right to their faces: ‘I do not care what caused this illness. I want to know instead how to fix it. I want my daughter to be well again, and I want our old life back.’ ”
The doctors didn’t have much to offer in that department, but they did recommend a psychiatrist who specialized in something called hysterical paralysis. A week later, Angela’s mother was folding laundry in someone’s basement and watching a special on TV about the miracles that were happening in the town of Lubbock, Texas. People claimed that they’d been seeing visions of a woman wearing a white robe, a blue sash, and a crown of stars hovering above her head; she was standing in the middle of a whirling orb of light and floating on a cloud. Others said that their rosary beads had turned solid gold. There were also testimonials involving spontaneous healings by people who had pretty much given up hope of ever doing things like walking or seeing.
At the commercial break, Angela’s mother called her daughter and told her to pack a bag because they were going to go to Lubbock to see the Blessed Virgin Mary and get a healing miracle. “If we can’t have our old life back,” her mother told daughter, “then we will get a new one.” Angela was thrilled; she hated Tucson and was bored sitting around the house
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