Finding Miracles

by Julia Alvarez

  Everyone twisted around to look at us.

  “What are you doing here?” they all seemed to ask at the same time.

  While Mom and Dad explained and Pablo went off to hunt down some more lounge chairs, I headed for Kate. It took her a second to acknowledge I was there. “What’re you guys doing back?” she asked, like she didn’t care.

  “We missed you too much,” I said. So she wouldn’t think I was teasing her, I added, “It’s not the same without you, you know.” No response. It was like a Shakespeare soliloquy talking to my sister these days. Sometimes I’d ask myself, why keep trying? But then I’d hung in there with Happy, and Kate was like Mother Teresa in comparison. “So, can I scoot in beside you, sister-for-life?” I invited myself.

  She didn’t say anything, but she did make room for me.

  “Has it started yet?” I asked, glancing up. The stars looked pretty awesome already. I couldn’t imagine a meteor shower topping this sight.

  “Not yet,” she murmured. “Though Nate keeps screaming every few minutes that he’s seen something.”

  “Ah, family,” I sighed.

  “You said it,” Kate sighed back, like she was Mother Teresa. But she was smiling. I was sure of it, even if I couldn’t really see her face in the dim light. She was my sister, I knew her moves. I could tell a smile from a scowl. I could sense she was starting to trust that love was going to hold us together after all. Give or take a few bumps.

  Suddenly, attendants were hurrying around, snuffing out the torches. We looked up.

  “Hey!” we all seemed to cry out at once. The light show was starting.

  one last milagrito

  A WEEK LATER, late afternoon.

  The wedding party is standing in my favorite cove, which has turned into a wind tunnel. All day, the weather has been sunny, mild, and glorious. But by midafternoon, the wind picks up. Grandma’s white caftan blows out dramatically behind her, suddenly looking a lot like the train of a wedding gown. Poor Eli’s hair, the little he has that he plasters down over his bald spot, is standing straight up. He looks like an overgrown baby with a cowlick on top. We can barely hear each other talk above the howl of the wind. When we try to light candles, they’re blown out. Instead of rice, we are pelted by droplets of water as the waves crash to shore. I start to feel this panic feeling, like the time Happy came to Vermont and I worried she’d blame the cold weather on us.

  But here is a little miracle. Camilo is serving as our justice of the peace—despite Dulce’s fervent prayers that Happy will have a last-minute conversion and be married by a priest. Just when we’re about to mutiny and take this party indoors, the wind dies down enough for us to hear Camilo pronounce in his broken English that Eli and Happy are man and wife.

  “So what are we gonna call you now?” Nate pipes up. As always, out of the mouth of the baby in the family comes the question no one else can get away with asking. We’re all assuming Eli will now be Mr. Kaufman.

  “What do you mean?” Happy swoops down and hugs her precious grandson. “You keep calling me Grandma!”

  “No, Ma,” Aunt Joan explains. “Natie means, are you going to keep your name or what?” From the depths of her big purse, her cell phone starts ringing.

  “What on earth!” Grandma’s mouth drops open in disbelief. “I didn’t think that I needed to make an announcement at my own wedding for cell phones to be turned off.”

  “Hello! Hello!” Aunt Joan is hollering into the tiny mouthpiece, but she can’t pick up a voice. “It was probably Stan wanting to congratulate the bride,” she explains, folding up her phone and putting it away. Grandma can’t get mad at that. “Anyhow, Ma, are you going to be Mrs. Kaufman or Mrs. Strong?” Good old Aunt Joan, all-around bigmouth and family troublemaker.

  “I actually like your Spanish way of doing things,” Happy says, smiling graciously at the Bolívars. “The woman keeps her name but then adds her husband’s name, right? Katherine Kaufman de Strong. Sounds like a title, very European. Don’t you think so, sweetie?”

  “Indeed,” Eli agrees. I guess he’s Grandpa Eli now.

  I decide to speak up. “While we’re talking names, I want to make an announcement.”

  “Are you going to get married, too?” Nate cries out.

  If I weren’t so tanned and Pablo so dark, everyone would see us both blushing.

  “Silly!” I dismiss such an incredible thought. “I just want you guys to know that I’m taking back my original name, Milagros. I mean, everyone who wants can keep calling me Milly, but I’ll also answer to Milagros.”

  Kate lets out one of those breaths like a fire-breathing dragon in a cartoon. Here we go again, I think.

  “I’m calling you Milly, period,” she states, folding her arms. “That’s. Your. Name.” Each word is like the gavel of a judge in court.

  I fold my arms right back at her. “It’s actually up to me to decide what my name is, Ka-ther-ine.” I draw out her name, which I know she dislikes, though with her namesake present, she can’t act too disgusted. If all these people weren’t around, I’d go on to tell Big Sister for Life that she can stop bossing me around. We’re probably the same age, as it turns out.

  “I’m really sick of you disowning us!” Kate starts to cry. How did this get started? Even if it’s sort of crazy for my grandmother to be getting married by a former revolutionary on a windy beach in a Third World country, this is still supposed to be a wedding.

  “Any other announcements?” Dad tries to joke. But no one laughs.

  “I’ve got an announcement,” Nate pipes up again. “Anybody got a knife or a safety pin?”

  “A knife?” Happy looks surprised. “A safety pin?”

  “Yeah!” Nate is too caught up with his idea to explain.

  It turns out Happy has a safety pin on her corsage, and Mrs. Bolívar has a stash of anything you can think of in her purse. Soon we have half a dozen safety pins.

  “We can disinfect them with the candles,” Nate goes on excitedly. He is a boy possessed. On his sweet, freckled face I see the same wild look as in our inventor grandfather’s portrait that hangs in Happy’s living room. “This summer in camp we all became blood brothers. It’s a Native American tradition. An ancient Native American tradition.” Nate’s voice is growing desperate. He can tell from the looks he’s getting that his great idea is not going to get patented here. His bottom lip starts to tremble. “Come on, everybody, it doesn’t hurt, really!” Tears form in the corners of his eyes. “I mean, that way we can all be blood family.”

  “Oh, sweetheart,” Mom says, hugging Nate. She glances helplessly at Dad, then over at Kate and me. Our baby brother doesn’t miss much. He has obviously picked up on all the tension lately, the talk about adoption, birth parents, blood family, disinheritance. How can we refuse him?

  Besides, his doting grandmother is totally won over. “I absolutely insist that we close the ceremony with this ancient tradition.”

  Dad’s a little worried. I can tell what he’s thinking. The safety pins can be disinfected, but what if someone’s blood is carrying an infectious disease. Camilo and Riqui are young men, and this culture is not exactly known for male chastity. “We assume everyone’s clean?” He makes a joke. “If anyone knows any reason we should not be blood family, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

  No one confesses to anything. I’m sure most of the people here don’t even get what Dad’s worrying about.

  And so we do it, but in a wimpy, reformed Native American fashion, so as not to have to prick ourselves however many times. The safety pins are distributed, one pin-prick each, a droplet, which we pass around the circle. Eli starts. He touches Happy, who touches Nate, who touches Dad, who touches Mom, who touches Kate, who turns to me. It’s the moment I’ve been dreading as I followed the touch going around the circle.

  “Hey,” she says, touching her finger to mine, “sisters forever?”

  I answer her by bursting into tears just as she bursts into tears. We look like we’r
e mirror images of each other. When we pull apart, I can tell from her runny mascara that mine has probably smeared, too. The cousins are full of glances. It is kind of hard to have a reconciliation in front of your whole family.

  When I turn, Pablo lifts his hand to meet mine. I feel my whole body tingle, as if he were touching all of me. Finally, Pablo pulls his gaze away and turns to touch his mother, who passes it on to his father, to Aunt Joan, to the cousins, then on to Riqui, Camilo, Dulce, finishing with Esperanza—a lucky sign, I think, seeing as her name means hope.

  Actually, in my head the circle doesn’t stop here at all. The spark gets passed on to Em and Jake and Dylan and the kids at Ralston this fall who’ll raise enough money so that Doña Gloria’s great-granddaughter can go to school and learn to write down the stories of Rosa and the colonel and Alicia and Manuel and Javier and Dolores. On and on, the spark gets passed, person to person, to the tune of Alfie singing, “May the circle be unbroken.” The way I figure it, with six-plus billion people in our human family right now, that many sparks sure could make a whole lot of light.

  “We’re blood family!” Nate proclaims. Everybody cheers.

  The tide is coming in. The waves have already soaked the hem of Grandma’s caftan. Time to go. Dinner and cake at their house, the Bolívars insist! But before we leave the beach, Pablo and I look at each other. We have one more thing to do. We climb quickly before everyone starts to holler that we’re going the wrong way. Hurry! Hurry!

  At the monument, we stand for a minute, looking out at the sea. Tomorrow I’ll be leaving this country with some of my family. The Bolívars will follow a few days later. But even when they join us in Ralston, part of me will always be here in the little country where so many milagritos have happened.

  “Pablo! Milly! Milagritos!” Everyone is calling for us to come.

  Before we go, we read the inscription: “On this spot, the noble martyrs fell and with their blood gave birth to a new nation.” But also on this spot, Grandma got married. Pablo and I fell in love. Little moments, dark and light, to put in the box. Someday, I’ll write them down in a story—one way to keep my promise to Doña Gloria!

  I close my eyes. “La bendición,” I whisper. I’m not sure to whom or to what. All I know is I need a blessing to take home with me.

  The sun’s going down fast, but just before it sets, there’s an angle where it hits the sand and the water. For a moment, when I open my eyes, there is a little more light on the beach.

  acknowledgments

  Over the years, I’ve been blessed with the light of so many children! Among them, my two stepdaughters, Sara and Berit. Your faith, patience, perseverance, tolerance have been a blessing, have made us all into a family.

  To my nieces and nephews, from your tía who loves you like a second mamá. And to my first grandchild, Naomi. I can’t wait till you start reading, so we can share books!

  To my godchildren from the motherland, Quisqueya, la bendición: Estel, Anamery, Rosmery, Miguelina. And to my comadres, whose hard lives make raising these children so difficult! Gracias for the honor of allowing me to help you.

  To Lizzi, what a gift you have been to me! Your example and your story have been an inspiration. And to you, Marisa Casey, gracias for your wonderful e-mailed notes and anecdotes! And special thanks to your mami, Filis Casey, and the work her agency, Alliance for Children, has done and continues to do to help connect children with families in which they can flourish.

  To my teenage consultants, Tori Vondle, Ellie Romp, Geetha Wunnava. And to my advisor on eight-year-olds, Nicolas Kramer, who is already ten but “remembers being eight.” Thanks for the video game info.

  To my helper, Amy Beaupré-Oliver, thanks for finding needles in haystacks, and for threading them for me, too. And to Marianne Doe, and the teachers and principal of Middlebury Union High School, who let me hang out in your classrooms and ask questions. How do you do it, day after day, year after year? Your tireless devotion to the young people of this community enriches us all.

  To my favorite librarians, Fleur Laslocky, Carol Chatfield, and Joy Pile, willing to help me find the answers to the little questions my characters ask.

  To my editor, Andrea Cascardi, madrina/godmother of this book, always believing I can do more and, somehow, bringing it forth. To Erin Clarke, for being the second madrina, ready to step in and help. To my cousin, Lyn Tavares, always so willing to proof-read mi español. And to my guardian agent, Susan Bergholz, who puts in more hours than any agent or guardian or angel I know! ¡Gracias de nuevo!

  Without my compañero, the house of words would be built on the shifting sands of loneliness and self-doubt. Gracias, Bill, for the life together that makes the writing flower.

  In Spanish the word for raising children is criar, just a vowel away from crear, to create. To raise compassionate, peace-loving children is a creative and loving labor. To the mothers y madres, fathers y padres who struggle to master this art. May all our children find their own stories so that they can create lives of meaning, purpose, and promise.

  Always y siempre, for you, Virgencita de la Altagracia, madre, nurturer, and helper to all who struggle to crear y criar and, thereby, fill the world with a little more light. ¡Mil gracias!

  finding miracles

  JULIA ALVAREZ

  A READERS GUIDE

  In the novel’s opening chapter, Milly claims to be allergic to herself. What does she mean by this? Give some examples of moments when this “allergic reaction” occurs and explain what causes it.

  Early in the novel, Milly confesses, “The point is: I totally pass as 100 percent American, and as un-PC as this is going to sound, I’m really glad” (p. 12). Why do you think Milly is so afraid to reveal that she’s adopted? How would you react to such news from a classmate?

  When the Kaufmans go to the Bolivars’ apartment to watch the election results, Pablo is noticeably troubled, leading Milly to comment that she’s never seen anyone her own age so distraught over politics. The most important election in her life so far is the one for Ralston’s student government. Do you feel similarly shielded from political worries? Do you follow elections, locally, nationally, or globally? Are there political issues that affect your daily life?

  In chapter five, Happy reveals to Milly that she, too, is a kind of orphan. What does she mean by this? Is Happy making a valid comparison?

  During her stay with the Bolivars in her birth country, Milly gets a vision of family life—especially in terms of extended family—that is very different from her own. The easy affection of Tía Dulce, for example, is a far cry from Happy’s reserve. What other differences do you notice in the family routines and attitudes?

  Why is Kate so negative about Milly’s trip with the Bolivars? Are her concerns justified?

  The importance of names—both the ones we are given and the ones we choose—is central to the novel. How is this theme reflected in the stories of both Milly and Happy?

  At one point, Pablo tells Milly, “Some say let us forget the past and build the future. Others say we cannot build the future without knowing the past.” Kate— and, to some degree, Milly’s parents—seems to advocate the former strategy, but Milly isn’t convinced. What do you think? Is it always better to know the historical truth, or does a focus on the past keep us from moving forward? Does Milly find what she’s looking for in her birth country? Is it worth the worry it causes her family in Vermont?

  What do you think Doña Gloria means when she tells Milly and Pablo that she’s counting on them to “bring more light”? Do they fulfill this request? How?

  IN HER OWN WORDS

  A CONVERSATION WITH

  JULIA ALVAREZ

  Q. Most of your previous novels deal with immigrants from or residents of the Dominican Republic. In finding miracles , though, you choose to leave Milly’s birth country unnamed. Why?

  A. I really did not want to specify Milly’s birth country. My point was to underscore the fact that throughout the second half of th
e twentieth century, Latin America was rife with dictatorships, police states, horrible repressive regimes. (In the late 1970s, for example, only three countries in Latin America had freely elected governments.) Thousands upon thousands of people lost their lives, and the verb form “to be disappeared” entered our vocabulary. People who protested, many of them young students, were rounded up, tortured, killed. Many children were left orphans or lost their childhood altogether. By not specifying the country, I thought I would make it harder for readers to dismiss how pervasive this situation was. (“Oh, that only happened in Guatemala or Chile or El Salvador.”) This was mass genocide, not over in Nazi Germany or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, but right here in our American hemisphere, with dictators and regimes often put in place and supported by our very own United States. A dark period in our American history that we have still not fully faced.

  What was hard was inventing a geography and culture that could be any number of Latin American countries but none specifically!

  By the way, at first my editor felt it would not work to leave Milly’s birth country unnamed. Most times I listen to her (and she is usually right!), but this time, I held fast to my original notion. It just so happened that as I was working on finding miracles, I read Ann Patchett’s wonderful novel Bel Canto, which takes place in an unspecified Latin American country. It turned out to be one of my favorite novels. I mentioned it to my editor as “proof” that it could be done. Of course, by then she was convinced that I could pull it off.

  This, too, I’ve learned as a teacher and mentor of young writers when they ask me, “Can such and such be done . . . ?” or “Is it okay to . . . ?” I tell them: anything is possible in a story if you can pull it off, if you can get away with it!