Sister Elise Marie sends her pale blue eyes up one row and down the next.

Checking.

That cold gaze doesn't miss a thing. I hold as still as can be and cross my ankles neatly like I'm supposed to with my knees crunched close together.

Sister stands behind her square wooden desk underneath the big metal crucifix on the front wall. Her hands disappear into those wide black sleeves she looks like a crow with its wings folded watching us from a telephone wire. Sister Elise Marie is so tall she scares everyone. I bet she's taller than my daddy even though daddy is way too short for what a man should be. A clanking wooden rosary comes all the way down to the bottom of Sister's long black skirt, like a kidnapped snake. Inside the white wimple that covers her forehead and part of her cheeks and the bottom half of her chin, Sister's face looks fat, like there's too much skin stuffed inside all those tight bandages.

We wait, so quiet we can hear tock tock from the round clock hanging over the top of the crucifix. Time will pass, will you? Sister has written her slanting nun's handwriting that I can't copy no matter how many Palmer's looping exercises I do. Any second now, Sister will tell us who gets to be the Virgin Mary.

"Pay attention, boys and girls," says Sister. "As soon as you're all sitting up properly looking straight ahead at the final agony and suffering of Jesus, I will announce the name of our next Virgin Mary." She tries to smile, but it looks like her mouth doesn't have enough room to move sideways.

"First, let us reflect on our Blessed Mother who intercedes on our behalf in times of need with her ever merciful son, Jesus." I have to wonder why Mary needs to help us out all the time if Jesus is as merciful as everyone says. Maybe He's more like His father than His mother. This is not the kind of question Sister likes. "Who can tell me what we mean by 'Immaculate Conception?' " she continues.

My hand shoots up. I like showing off.

Sister searches for another raised arm, finds none and finally nods in my direction. "Yes, Samantha." People who don't like me very much call me Samantha. My real name is Sam except for Daddy. He calls me Sammy, and I call him Daddy, never Dad.

"The Immaculate Conception refers to the creation of Mary in her mother's womb without the stain of original sin." I can recite perfect catechism in my sleep. Sister seems a little disappointed. She doesn't like it when someone answers one of her trick questions right off the bat.

"That is correct, Samantha," she admits, trying to regain the upper hand. She wants us to think she's as omniscient as God. That means God is a know-it-all, something I'm never supposed to pretend to be. Otherwise Mommy will say who do I think I am and don't like a smarty pants. "Unfortunately, children, many, many people think Immaculate Conception means the virgin birth of Jesus, one of God's miracles for which we have no explanation." She rolls her suffering nun's eyes to heaven, where they are stopped by the muddy stain on the ceiling.

"Gold allowed Our Blessed Virgin Mary to become the only human in the history of the world born without original sin since Adam and Eve were created in the garden of Eden. That way, her soul would be pure and spotless when she bore the Son of God to save mankind from sin. Let us pray." Then she lowers her head, clasps her hands and launches a quick Hail Mary.

We follow along, "... full of grace, the Lord is with thee ..."

I'm sharp as all get out, but I know the Virgin Mary will not be men. This is one contest where brains don't count. I am not near pretty enough to be the Virgin Mary. I wear thick glasses and my stick straight hair is chopped off at my ears so Mommy doesn't have to wash it so often.

My daddy is not rich enough for me to be the Virgin Mary. Daddy has a good job on the assembly line at Lockheed but not good enough. We live on a street where all the houses look alike, except for their color, with flat roofs and three bedrooms. Ours is avocado green.

And my mother is not Catholic. She's not anything.

So for all those reason, I will be one of God's little angels. I have been a little angel of God ever since first grade like all the other losers who don't get speaking parts in the St. Mary's Christmas pageant. I know the rules. I am a fast learner my teachers tell my parents. I have learned not to care that I will never get chosen to be the Virgin Mary even if the Holy Madonna herself tried to intercede on my behalf.

The only thing I care about right now is that I have forgotten my public library copy of 'Cherry Ames, Flight Nurse.' Sister doesn't like us to check out books from the public library. But the school library only has books that tell about the lives of the saints. They all end the same way. They die. For Christ. From getting shot full of arrows, burned at the stake, heads cut off, even breasts like St. Agatha. I don't have any breasts yet, so I can't imagine what that feels like. A lot of the girls already have breasts that poke out straight from underneath their white blouses and make their buttons puck halfway down their front. The Virgin Mary has breasts but you can't see them under the blue veil she wears like a hooded cape over her hair and around her shoulders. You have to know they're there. The saints die being martyrs for God and go to heaven. Then they don't have any more adventures.

Cherry Ames has shiny dark curls and bright red cheeks. That's why everyone calls her Cherry, like she was a flavored soda or a ripe fruit ready to be picked. She wants to be a nurse so she can save people. She studied hard in nursing school and thought she wasn't going to earn her cap, but at the last minute someone remembered they forgot to put her name on the list and bobby pinned the starched crown of organdy lace on her chestnut curls and said congratulations! Her cheeks burned even brighter with pride and the doctor said wipe off that rouge right now, young lady, but Cherry just dimpled in the cute way she has. She doesn't need to wear rouge or lipstick because she is so pretty all by herself.

Now Cherry Ames goes around being a nurse anywhere you can think of and saves people and solves the mystery at the same time. I would like to save people. I want to save people on airplanes and spend three days in New York before the plane goes back the way it came. And Paris. And Bangkok. Wherever Cherry goes, there's a mystery. I want to wear a perky white cap that tells people I'm special because I'm a nurse and only nurses wear those kinds of caps and fly around the world saving people.

The classroom is stuffy and hotter than normal today because Sister Mary Thomasina has brought in her sixth-graders to listen to Sister Elise Marie's announcement. St. Mary's is like Noah's ark with two of each class. We're lucky we don't have to go to public schools that are so crowded where there are lots of disadvantaged kids and the teachers are atheists who don't believe in God and don't care about your souls at all.

Outside the smudged windows, hot sunshine beats down on the asphalt playground that is really the parking lot people use when they come to Mass on Sunday. We play four square or kickball at recess. We have to be careful not to slip in our hard-soled saddle oxfords or we'll scrape the skin off our knees and elbows. The light is too bright to look at straight. It falls through the panes in diamond patterns onto the scuffed-up black and white linoleum that always hurts when you kneel on it to say the rosary after lunch. The way the sun beams bounce in front of your eyes makes it look like there's water shining on the floor. The same thing happens when we're driving in the car on a summer day and it looks like there's a huge puddle steaming on the black pavement right in front of you. Daddy says that's called a mirage, something you think you see that's not really there at all.

The kids from Sister Mary Thomasina's class have to sit on the floor in the aisles between our desks and can barely see. It doesn't matter. Sister Elise Marie is the school principal, so she gets to say. After she announces the name of the new Virgin Mary, Sister Elise Marie will pick three boys from Sister Mary Thomasina's class for the wise men and two other boys from either class for St. Joseph and Michael the Archangel. There aren't any other parts for girls, and that's when I always raise the lid of my desk like I'm looking for a lost ink cartridge or eraser. I don't want to catch the eye of Sister Elise Marie at the wrong time. I for sure would rather be a little angel of God than a goat or a sheep or the back half of a donkey.

Sister Elise Marie clears her throat. "Attention, class." She makes a sound like she's gargling mouthwash. "Attention, please." She pauses and takes another stab at smiling. "This year, the Virgin Mary will be ..." her eyes search the room one more time, like she's still trying to make up her mind. I know better. Ever since second grade, Rayleen Larkin and I have laid bets on who was going to be the Virgin, and I've won every time. Rayleen can't figure out how I do it. Rayleen is my best friend at St. Mary's. That may not be the right way to say it. She's the only one who will talk to me. And I'm the only one who talks to her. No one else wants to take the chance.

Rayleen's so fat the knife pleats in her green plaid skirt pull all the way apart across her butt. She's too lazy to do even third-grade arithmetic. When we take turns reading out loud, Rayleen makes so many mistakes Sister sends her to the first-grade room. "If you insist on reading like a first-grader," says Sister in the chilly way she has that makes the tiny hairs on your arm stand right up and pay attention, "then we'll treat you like one." No one really likes Rayleen, but we feel kind of sorry for her when Sister is extra mean.

No one likes me either. "Samantha has poor skills in deportment and citizenship," writes Sister on my report card. That means I'm weird. I'm not allowed to play after school or have sleepovers or go to birthday parties. No one wants to sit with me at lunch, and except for Rayleen, I don't talk to anyone. I'm lucky I'm the smart one. Things are so easy for me, Mommy likes to say. I always want to tell her she's wrong. I'm never lucky and nothing is easy for me. I don't let much get by me. I watch. I figure things out. I can tell a mirage when I see one.

"It's simple," I tell Rayleen, "process of elimination." All the mothers but mine are Catholic so that doesn't really count in your favor. And any girl who thinks she might have a crack at being the Virgin is extra nice to Sister, especially right before Christmas. So deciding who's kissing up the most won't help either. That leaves the pretty girls with long hair who don't wear glasses. Usually there's more than one, although not always and that makes my job easier.

Then you have to calculate how rich they are. Sometimes the richest girl might not get it if someone else's daddy donated more money to Father O'Shaughnessy's building fund for a new church when everybody knows he really can't afford it. But all the kids who go to St. Mary's are rich except for scholarship students like me and my sister. My sister has terrible grades and a bad attitude, but they let her stay because I'm so bright and we think I might have a vocation. If I grow up to become a bride of Christ, I want to join the Maryknoll order and travel to Africa and save the heathen children who die before they get baptized and have to spend eternity in Limbo on account of now one brought God's grace to them in the nick of time.

"But what if Laura Callison's daddy and Sharon Lynott's daddy both gave lots of money to Father O'Shaughnessy?" asks Rayleen.

"Then it's a toss-up." I can tell she doesn't have any clue about human nature because she doesn't read Cherry Ames like I do. Cherry Ames has a sixth sense about the secrets in the sick bay at the exclusive girls' summer camp built on the shores of a dark lake way out in the lonely woods where she was hired right after graduation. Her hunches always turn out to be right.

"You have to use your intuition," I explain. By this I mean you have to guess which pretty rich girl will most likely not stay a virgin after she's been the Virgin Mary because so many boys will want to make out with her in the back row of the movie theater and she might let them go too far by the time she's in junior high. In other words, which one is most likely to turn into a slut and have to go to a "boarding school for nine months," or spend a semester traveling Europe with an aunt you never heard of?" The truth is the Virgin Mary always gets pregnant by her freshman year in high school. Everyone knows this, but Rayleen doesn't put two and two together. She can't do fractions and percentages without special tutoring.

This year, I've pegged Sharon Lynott. Her red braids are so long she can sit on them. Her daddy has the biggest house in town up on Overlook Drive, and her mommy has raised seven girls and a boy who all go to St. Mary's. Some of them are twins. Sharon plays the piano for the school choir, and I've seen her flirting with the touch football players after school. When she's there, the boys all hang around the fence trying to talk to her through the wire and forget all about their practice.

Sister's eyes circle the room for the last time and stop at Sharon's desk. She sighs. Cherry Ames solves the crime every time, I think to myself, and turn sideways to catch Rayleen's attention. I glance back up at Sister just in time to see her eyes leave Karen's tidy desktop and settle on Rayleen. My heart stops beating for a second and then goes Thud! Thud! like it's trying to jump out of my chest. "Class, I would like to introduce you to the Virgin Mary for this year's Christmas festivities," Sister points a long white finger at Rayleen sitting in the last row near the coat closet. "Rayleen Larkin, please stand and accept our best wishes."

Sister closes her eyes and zips through a quick sign of the cross, covering all the bases in a five-second sprint. "InthenameoftheFathertheSonandtheHolyGhostAmen," tagging her forehead, breastbone, left shoulder and right shoulder with two fingers. Then she begins to clap politely, and the rest of us try to follow along, only because we have to or else. We twist around in our desks to stare at Rayleen. She's covering her face with her hands, her messy brown hair falling in clumps over her knuckles. Between her fingers, her freckles are all splotchy and red from tears of joy. She mumbles something, but no one can make out exactly what it is. "Thank you, Sister," I think she's saying. "Oh, thankyou, thankyou, thankyou," real fast, like a novena chant.

I can tell by her stiff back and straight braids that Sharon Lynott is trying to be brave. I bet she's crying too. Serves her right for expecting so much, I think, as snotty as I can be. I have a feeling Sharon's going to go ahead and get herself pregnant anyway.

Rayleen! Of course.

Sharon should have known she wouldn't be picked this year. We all should have known. Especially me with my Cherry Ames intuition, my sixth sense that can figure out what's what before anyone else has a clue. Rayleen might be too fat to keep her shirt tucked in her waistband. She might be as dumb as a public school kid who doesn't share the benefits of a Catholic education. She might not have any friends in the whole world except me and that's not saying much. But Sister picked Rayleen Larkin to be the Virgin Mary for one unbeatable reason. Rayleen's mother is in a hospital bed hooked up to an oxygen tank on the third floor of St. Ignatius Loyola Medical Center dying of lung cancer, and it's the least Sister can do.

I lie like a rug to anybody I can think of. I always lie to Mommy, even when I don't have to, to keep in practice, sometimes to Sister to make my life easier, even to Daddy when he doesn't need to know something. But I always tell myself the absolute God's truth. Right now, I tell myself, I am crazy jealous of Rayleen.

Cancer eats you up from the inside, and there's no cure. And I'm crazy jealous because I suddenly realize the wrong mommy has cancer.

We have two kinds of breakfast, cornflakes with sugar sprinkled on the top floating in a bowl of cold milk and soft-boiled eggs. On soft-boiled egg mornings, Mommy sets a timer for exactly three minutes so the eggs will cook just right and sets them on the their fat end in a little bowl that looks like half an egg shell. Then she taps the top of the egg with her knife, ever so gently so it won't crack the whole egg, and breaks off the top. The runny egg yolk inside the shell bobs around like a big piece of yellow snot in the kind of white phlegmy stuff Grandpa Frye hacks into his handkerchief. Cissy and I wait at the table, hoping for one of God's miracles. But Mommy stands behind me and my sister with her hands on her hips to make sure we eat the whole thing. "Eggs are good for you," she warns us.

My strategy is to take a deep breath, squish a whole piece of bread in the egg cup and swallow it quick. I know when to fight and when to quit. Not Cissy. In her nearly 10 years on this earth, Cissy hasn't learned a thing. Even though she is only a year younger than me, I have to take care of her like she's a 2-year-old.

Cissy wet her pants for a long time after she was supposed to be using the toilet. Mommy used to take her clothes off and safety pin a dish towel around her bottom to look like a baby's diaper and lock her outside. "Mommy, mommy, let me in," Cissy would cry and pound on the door with her little fists balled up tight and promise never to wet her underpants again and Mommy would holler at her to shut up or she would have to spend the night on the doorstep. Anybody walking by could see Cissy standing there just about butt naked except for the dish towel and sometimes they laughed, even the grown-ups who should have known better.

After awhile, when the right amount of time had gone by, I would open the door and slip her inside so Mommy could pretend she hadn't given in. I never knew how long Mommy would keep her out there. I don't think Mommy did, either. With me around, she didn't have to find out. I just knew I had to get Cissy back in before Daddy got home from his long day at work and found her like that. Cissy still wets her pants when she gets real nervous but tells me first so Mommy doesn't have to find out and I can get her dry panties and put the dirty ones in the bottom of the laundry hamper.

This morning the eggs are gooier than normal. I bet Mommy didn't set the timer for the full three minutes. "Mommy, I can't eat this," Cissy says. "I feel like I'm going to throw up just looking at it." When Mommy's open hand slams into the side of Cissy's head, Cissy's glasses fly off her face, leaving a big red streak on the bony part of her nose. Sometimes Mommy will hit me too if she doesn't like the way I combed my hair or if the orange juice gets spilled on her fresh mopped floor.

Soft-boiled egg mornings usually end this way. Cissy cries and hiccoughs and begins putting slimy spoonfuls of egg into her mouth. I've seen her hold three and sometimes four spoonfuls in her cheek like a chipmunk stealing acorns before she finally swallows. She gags and holds her napkin over her mouth. Nothing comes back up this time. I can't help her. I've already eaten my slice of bread and I don't get another one because food isn't free and we never know where our money goes. Cissy doesn't think about using her own bread or maybe she'd rather eat it all by itself afterwards to soak up the last trails of egg snot sticking to her tongue.

Daddy sits at the end of the table hiding behind his newspaper. He knows better than to interfere with Mommy when she's disciplining the girls. If she goes back into the kitchen to pour more juice, I hiss, "Daddy!" at him. Quick as anything, he slides his empty egg cup out from behind the paper to Cissy's place mat and pulls hers into the cave of the Times Observer. He eats it all up and never says a word.

The china egg cups are part of a matching set Mommy bought on sale at Macy's and you can't tell them apart. When Mommy comes back with the juice glasses, she seems a little surprised to find out Cissy has eaten all her egg. "Don't forget your bread," she says and leaves it at that. She's not as keen as she thinks she is, but I never let my guard slip when it comes to Mommy.

I don't know why we're all so afraid of her. If I could answer that one question, I probably wouldn't be. Daddy says don't try. "Your mother is like a force of nature," he says. "When the wind's blowing hard, all you can do is duck low and hide out in the bunkers." I guess that's why Daddy likes his newspaper so much. It's a kind of bunker he can take with him wherever he goes.

Mommy is barely 5 feet tall. Another year or two and I will pass her, says Daddy. Mommy keeps her black hair shaved like a man's, shingled, she calls it, because that's how Joan Crawford wore her hair in one of her movies where she was a lawyer. That was in the days before women got to be lawyers. "I would have made a good lawyer," Mommy says to me when she watches Perry Mason on Thursday night, resting her aching feet on the marble-top coffee table no one else can touch. Since I'm growing up so fast, she likes to talk to me like I'm her friend. She laughs, short and hard like a bark. "You're not the only smart one in the family."

Mommy's not fat like Rayleen but she has a big stomach. If she weren't so old, you might think she was pregnant. She wears flowered housecoats that button up the front from the hem to the neck and an apron all the time even though she hates to cook. That's why she makes us eat every last bit of the soft boiled egg, because she worked so hard to make a good breakfast for us and we'd better appreciate it. She keeps her bedroom slippers on most of the time because her bunions hurt.

She says she was too old to have babies when she did, way past 40 when I was born. "A lot of good kids did me," she says to let us know how we've ruined her life. Daddy ruined her life, too, because he never got the kind of job a man should have to give his family a few of life's luxuries instead of having to scrimp and save all the time.

On cornflake mornings, things are wonderful. Cissy and I would eat cornflakes every morning. Daddy loves to eat and doesn't much care what. Mommy says cornflakes aren't real food. We don't get cornflakes as often as we get soft-boiled eggs. So far, Jesus has not had a lot of spare time to answer my prayers, but on cornflake mornings, I feel like he hasn't forgotten about me altogether.

I learned to read the Sunday funnies by the time I was 4, and one cornflake morning, I read the words Betsy Cornflake Doll on the back of the Kellogg's box. I read that if you sent in four box tops and two quarters, you would get your very own Betsy Cornflake Doll. She stood 12 inches high and had a pink-and-white checked bonnet that matched her pink-and-white dress. Daddy drew a line on a piece of paper with a ruler to show me what 12 inches was. There was a picture of Betsy Cornflake Doll with bright blue eyes and a sweet mouth that looked like a kiss. I never asked Mommy or Daddy for toys because we didn't have a lot of money like other people. This was different. I never wanted anything in my whole life like I wanted the Betsy Cornflake Doll to hold and love for my very own. "Daddy, please," I whispered one night right before I said my bedtime prayers for him. "I need two quarters."

Mommy didn't let Daddy have any extra money because she needed every spare dime to make ends meet, but he said he would skip his Danish during coffee break for the next week. I knew it would take forever to get four box tops. So I started begging for a bowl of cornflakes after I finished my soft boiled egg. Daddy started eating two bowls instead of one saying he was extra hungry for some reason, and sometimes I sneaked into the kitchen and stole handfuls of cornflakes out of the box. I was so afraid I wouldn't collect the four box tops before the Kellogg's people ran out of Betsy Cornflake Dolls. I couldn't keep a secret as big as Betsy Cornflake Doll from Mommy. I showed her the box tops I had cut out before the boxes got thrown in the trash. I told her I had saved the quarters from my last birthday dollar that Grandma gave me. Mommy surprises me sometimes. She looked at me like I had done something special, like she was proud of me, like maybe I would get somewhere in the world. "Hmmmnnn," she said, thinking so hard she got a crease between her eyes. "I suppose we can call it your birthday present."

Mommy put the four box tops and the two quarters into a white envelope and in neat black letters printed the name Betsy Cornflake Doll on the front and the address the cereal box said to send your money to. She let me take the envelope down the driveway by myself and put it in the dented silver mailbox before the mailman got there. I put up the red flag and waited. "It won't be here for weeks," Mommy said. "No use getting your hopes up too soon."

Mommy was right like always. I waited and waited. Every morning at 11 o'clock, I walked down the concrete path that went from our front door across a narrow strip of lawn to the sidewalk and sat right down next to the mailbox. Sometimes I tossed rocks at mud puddles. Sometimes I imagined the clouds in the sky were different animals, a giraffe, an elephant, a flying horse. Sometimes I spread myself flat on the grass and pretended to sleep so Mommy wouldn't holler at me to get back in the house this minute. Sometimes I talked to Betsy Cornflake Doll like she was already here. "Today, we ate cornflakes for breakfast," I would tell her. "You're going to love cornflakes because the people who make them named them after you."

The mailman always stopped to say "Hi" and "Sorry, not today." I thought he would be happy when Betsy Cornflake Doll arrived because that would be one less box he would have to carry in that big old leather bag on his shoulder. "Don't worry," he said, all serious like this was a problem he had given some thought to. "Betsy Cornflake Doll won't be too heavy for me to carry. The day Betsy Cornflake Doll arrived, he carried a long narrow box in his hand. The package was covered with brown paper but the mailman knew who was inside because the name Kellogg's Cornflakes was printed up in the corner. "I didn't want her to get crushed underneath all those letters," he winked. He waited while I tore off the wrapping. Betsy was lying in her own white box with plastic on the front like a window so I could see her face.

She was as beautiful as the picture on the Kellogg's box had promised. I could tell she loved me as much as I loved her and wanted me to get her out of that box right away. "Thank you," I said to the mailman, remembering my manners at the last minute and ran inside to show Mommy. I was so happy I threw my arms around her squishy stomach and hugged her real tight. Mommy didn't like me to try to kiss or sit on her lap anymore since I was getting too old for that sort of thing. She acted surprised when I hugged her and hugged me back, a little bit. Then she spanked me once for mussing her dress and got a scissors to cut the tape for me.

Betsy Cornflake Doll had plastic arms and plastic legs and underneath her ruffly sunbonnet, a plastic head with the curls painted on in yellow. Her eyes were painted on too, the same color as the sky, with black eyelashes. Her lips were cherry red, like it said on the box. Her arms and legs flopped back and forth because her middle part was soft and filled with stuffing. When you took her dress off, it looked like she was wearing a baby's T-shirt. I promised Betsy she could sleep with me every night and I would never leave her alone and I would never yell at her or hit her with the yard stick or lock her in the closet and I would share my cornflakes with her and not make her eat runny eggs. We would be best friends and we would go everywhere together. "I love you with all my heart, Betsy," I whispered in her ear before we went to bed.

Her lips, as red as ripe strawberries, kissed me back. "I love you too, Sammy," they said.

Rayleen's mother looks like all the other mothers who dress up in high heels and velvet hats with veils covering their eyes for high mass. Mrs. Larking drove Rayleen to school in a blue station wagon and wore her hair piled on top of her head like a donut with lots of hair spray to keep it there. I need to ask Rayleen how did her mother wind up with lung cancer? I didn't know anyone else who had gotten sick with cancer. Not even Grandpa Frye who was so old he practically creaked when he got up from his rocking chair.

At lunch, the sixth-graders sit in a row on a long bench nailed to the pink plaster wall of the Community Hall. You have to be careful where you sit because you can only talk to the person on either side, and if they don't like you, you may as well be sitting by yourself. Rayleen still eats with me. I give her half my bologna sandwich and all of my Hostess chocolate cupcake. She has a hard time getting filled up. I don't feel like eating much anyway on soft-boiled egg days. The egg sticks to the inside of my stomach and keeps anything else from tasting good. Now that she's going to be the Virgin Mary, Rayleen doesn't have to be my partner in four square, but even the Virgin Mary won't get free cupcakes from the other girls.

"She smokes," says Rayleen, tears leaking out of her round gray eyes. "The doctor talked to daddy about it and said her cigarettes probably started the cancer growing." Rayleen can't keep from crying every time someone starts talking about her mother. I don't understand at all. If Mommy had cancer, I wouldn't be crying whenever the subject came up. Seems to me like cancer's a fact of life you've got to learn to live with. I can tell Rayleen's not going to be my friend much longer now that she's the Virgin Mary, even with the Hostess cupcakes, so I have to get information while I can.

"How much did she smoke?" I ask, trying to act innocent. Fortunately, Rayleen is dumb as a rock and can't catch on to someone like me. "Did she have a cigarette in the morning with her coffee, and maybe one after dinner while she watched 'What's My Line?' " That wouldn't be very many. A lot of mothers must smoke that much.

Rayleen shook her head, tossing greasy strands of hair across her face. Up close, you could see where zits were popping out under her bangs. I almost laughed but remembered we were talking about cancer. Rayleen Larkin was going to be the first Virgin Mary at St. Mary's with an acne problem, and even Sister Elise Marie couldn't do a thing about it. "She smoked all the time," Rayleen is whispering so soft I have to lean real close to hear. Her breath was smelly, like a tuna fish sandwich that should have been thrown out three days ago.

Rayleen wipes her eyes and sits up a little straighter so the spaces between the buttons on her blouse don't gap open so much. For some reason, she seems to feel better talking about all this. "She had a cigarette first thing every day, even before she scrambled eggs or made the toast. She smoked when she was driving us to school and she kept a lighted cigarette in an ashtray right next to her while she ironed Daddy's shirts and my school blouses."

I hand her the Hostess cupcake with the wrapper already torn off. When Rayleen eats cupcakes, she takes huge, gulping bites. On a good day, she only needs three or four bites to finish off the whole thing, frost and all. Today, she crams the entire cupcake into her mouth in two chunks. Sometimes, I have a hard time feeling any sympathy for Rayleen. "Daddy says she's always smoked," she mumbles, spitting crumbs at me when she tries to talk. "She smoked cigarettes before they were married."

Once the cupcake is gone, Rayleen starts crying again, letting the sticky tears drip all the way down to the white frosting caked around her lips and bits of chocolate stuck to her chin. I see plainly what I have to do.

I never stopped loving Betsy Cornflake Doll. I tried to take good care of her like I promised, most of the time, whenever I could. But I made mistakes. Once I was old enough to go to first grade, I had to be at school all day. I wanted to carry Betsy Cornflake with me to the bus stop and wave good-bye to her from the window. I rode the city bus because the Catholic kids weren't allowed to use public school buses. The city bus was silver, like a train, and so big it took up the whole block when it was stopped. It said Peerless Bus Company on the side. Mommy couldn't take me to school like other mothers because she didn't know how to drive a car and maybe I would like to fly a plane. I didn't tell her that flying a plane would be the most exciting thing I could think of. I knew she wanted me to feel as afraid of planes as she was of cars. That's why she never went anywhere during the day while Daddy was at work and we were at school.

The first morning of first grade, Mommy and I walked to the corner holding hands. Rays of sunshine warmed the bright morning as we walked and Mommy said I hardly needed my sweater. When the bus came, I asked Mommy to hold Betsy Cornflake up so she could see in the window. "Then she can say good-bye to me too."

Mommy raised Betsy Cornflake high in the air and wiggled her arms. Sometimes she made Betsy say "Bye-bye, Sammy" in a high, squeaky little voice that came right through the open part of the window.

"Bye-bye, Betsy," I giggled. "See you later, alligator."

"In a while, crocodile," Betsy squeaked back. Mommy used to make me laugh.

The bus driver, a lady with tight gray curls all over the top of her head, always let Mommy finish making Betsy Cornflake say good-bye before she waved, pulled the door shut and drove away. Some days Mommy made Betsy say other things in the same funny voice. "I'm so sorry, Sammy," she'd squeak. "You did such a bad job making your bed this morning I have to go away for awhile. I might not be here when you get home. I don't think you love me enough 'cause your bed is still messy."

Or, "You're a bad girl, Sammy. I don't want to live with you anymore. You're a bad, bad girl. I'm going to find some other little girl who is good to live with."

At school, my stomach ached so hard on those days I had to ask Sister Maria Leticia if I could go into the bathroom to throw up. I was smart enough to know Mommy could do mean things to Betsy Cornflake when I wasn't there to protect her.

Once, Betsy Cornflake hung her head and let her arms fall straight down. "I might die today, Sammy. You don't love me. I might have to get buried in the back yard in a deep hole and covered with dirt so you'll never find me." Mommy always made Betsy Cornflake say these words in the same high, squeaky voice that was supposed to sound like the way a doll might talk, even though dolls didn't really talk, at least not out loud so you could hear them with your ears.

As soon as I got off the bus, I ran all the way down the block to my house, the hot sun burning my face. "Where's Betsy?" I shouted from the hallway.

Mommy was in the kitchen, starting dinner. "Why, I don't know, Sammy," she answered, sounding surprised that I would ask. "I'm making a cake for dessert. Chocolate. Your favorite. You can lick the bowl when I'm done if you want."

"Cissy can have it," I said and began looking. If I was lucky, Betsy Cornflake would be sitting on my pink flowered bedspread where she was supposed to be. This time, I couldn't find her anywhere. Mommy beat the cake batter with her plastic spatula, counting to a hundred. Her face scrunched up with the effort underneath the raggedy underpants she wore over her hair all day to keep it clean. "Cissy's being punished," she said.

I balanced on the edge of my metal chair we kept behind the kitchen table next to the wall and took the bowl from Mommy after she poured the batter into the round cake pans. The vinyl seat had a big rip in it that Mommy had covered with scotch tape. I hadn't changed out of my uniform skirt and the edges of the scotch tape scratched the back of my bare legs. The kitchen was warm because Mommy was heating the oven to the right temperature for the cake. Drops of perspiration rolled down her forehead. I was afraid to look at her. Mommy had sewn yellow curtains with ruffles for the kitchen window over the sink. The curtains were pretty and had orange and black butterflies on the bottom. Monarchs, Daddy had told me.

Then he told me a story about how farmers used butterflies to predict the weather. If the first butterfly of the season was white, he said, it would rain all summer. If it was dark, there would be thunderstorms, but if it was yellow, summer would be filled with warm days and bright sun, and the corn would grow tall and healthy.

Outside the window, the afternoon sunshine still bounced off the backyard patio. I dreamed for a minute of strapping on my roller skates and turning the tiny silver key I wore on a string around my neck good and tight so I could fly down the street. Instead, I carefully used one finger to lick blobs of chocolate batter from the inside of the blue glass mixing bowl. My hand shook. I was afraid that I might spill chocolate on the yellow tablecloth that matched the curtains.

"Now, if you're very good and very quiet this afternoon," Mommy said, "maybe I will be able to help you find Betsy Cornflake Doll before bedtime." She put the pans in the oven and gently closed the door so the cake wouldn't fall. I watched the sunshine fade from the patio while I sat at the kitchen table.

"I have to pee, Mommy."

"Well, maybe you should have thought of that sooner, shouldn't you have?" She smiled at me and brushed the bangs out of my eyes. "We need to think about giving you a haircut soon."

I sat and waited and waited and sat and thought about Betsy Cornflake Doll being hidden away in a dark place. I crossed my legs and wondered if I was ever going to come and save her.

"I'll pay you back. I promise," I tell Cissy. By now I know better than to make promises I can't keep, but Cissy's the only one of the two of us that can hang onto her money. We don't get a regular allowance because Mommy thinks children shouldn't be paid for doing chores when they live for free in a nice house and eat nourishing food and wear good clothes. Mommy keeps all the money in the house and gives Daddy two dollars a week. She spends the rest herself, but Daddy is not allowed to ask how. He doesn't seem to care and if he has an extra nickel or dime, he gives it to me and Cissy. I buy Pay Day candy bars and dime bags of Fritos whenever I get the chance. Cissy hoards hers and sometimes counts it to see how much she's got. Cissy opens her door and hands over 50 cents. Cissy doesn't talk much anymore. She stays in her room for hours. I bring her books from the library I ride to on my bicycle and take them back two weeks later. In between, I don't think the covers ever get opened.

"Thanks, Cissy. This real, real important." She blinks and rubs her eyes like she's been sleeping. She acts like she doesn't care about why I need it and closes the door again. Night comes earlier now and shadows fill the hall where I'm standing. I have just enough time before it gets dark to ride my bike down the brand new Jiffy Mart they opened next to the Union Avenue branch library where I get my Cherry Ames books. The bicycle was a Christmas present to me and Cissy when I was in third grade, my first two-wheeler. Cissy never even tried to learn how to ride it. It is still bright blue with only a rust spot here and there. It has three gears and a white straw basket attached to the handlebars. It takes me everywhere I want to go. The traffic on Union Avenue doesn't scare me anymore, and I can go more than two miles without getting tired.

The Jiffy Mart sells everything you need, boxes of little white donuts, strings of Slim Jims, Coca Colas and Root Beers. Shelves and shelves packed with stuff you can't find at the Van de Kamps grocery store where Daddy drives Mommy to do her shopping every Saturday morning. "Are you Mr. Jiffy?" I ask the man behind the counter. "I need to buy some cigarettes."

He laughs and squints his eyes behind his glasses like he's thinking real hard about what I want. "No, I'm Mr. Miller. I named the store Jiffy because you can get in and out so fast nobody'll figure out you've been here." He scratches his ear for a second and then his chin. "A little girl like you shouldn't be smoking."

"They're for my mommy," I answer.

"Hmmnnn? You sure?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die, and Scouts honor too." I smile sweetly. The words feel like a lie even though I know they're all true.

"Well, what does she like? Winstons, Camels, Lucky Strikes, probably not those, pretty strong for a lady. How about something filtered? Old Gold?"

I think for a second. What I want to ask him is which kind causes cancer faster. I know better than to say that. "Old Gold," I nod. "Her favorite kind." No one would believe a mommy smokes unfiltered cigarettes like the guy who walks a mile. I am approaching what Sister calls a near occasion of sin. So I quick add, "Mommy says I can buy some candy cigarettes for me and my sister."

He smiles back, the kind of smile that tells me he would like a good little girl like me for his daughter and pokes around underneath the counter. His friendly bald head shines like it's been polished. "Here we go, Pall Malls for the little ladies in the family." The candy Pall Malls come in a bright red box, exactly like the real ones. Perfect.

I have a plan. The candy cigarettes are the red herring. That's a suspicious character who shows up just to throw you off the trail. "I bought some candy cigarettes for me and Cissy, Mommy," I will say. "And the nice man who works there said I could have these for you. He said he was giving them away to new customers." Then I will hand her the Old Golds and shake out a candy cigarette from the red box. "Let's all smoke our cigarettes together." Then we will light up, me and Cissy sucking on our sugar sticks so hard the orange paint at the end will look like it's glowing. Mommy will smoke her cigarette and then another and another until the whole pack is gone and she asks Daddy to buy her some more because she can't stop.

I hand the man my coins, exactly the right amount, thank him politely and walk as fast as I can outside to my bike. The pack of cigarettes burns my fingers like they're already lit up and spreading cancer in the air. I throw them in the basket and start pedaling for home. The cellophane wrapper on the cigarette box sparkles like a piece of broken glass in the last of the day's sun. Every time the front tire hits a rock, the box of cigarettes jumps up and down in the basket, like it's trying to get out but can't.

I used to daydream about me and Cissy living alone with Daddy, eating cornflakes for breakfast every single day and having picnic dinners in the park. We would laugh out loud and not be afraid we'd get smacked if we made too much noise because Daddy would be laughing with us. The thought of her dying doesn't make me sad, not the least little bit. If Mommy died tonight, I honestly don't think I'd cry one tear for me.

What scares me is what I realize I've been forgetting about all along. Mommy isn't Catholic. If she smokes these cigarettes and gets cancer, she'll go straight to hell for all eternity.

And I will have sent her there.

One day, probably because I hugged her so tight all the time, Betsy Cornflake Doll ripped open in the middle of her soft tummy. Sawdust stuffing started falling all over Mommy's clean linoleum floor in the kitchen. "Look what you've done," Mommy yelled. "Give me that doll!" Before I had time to say good-bye, Mommy yanked Betsy Cornflake Doll out of my arms and threw her in the waste basket under the sink. "Clean up that mess."

The last time I saw Betsy Cornflake Doll she was covered with coffee grounds and leftover tuna casserole. Clots of mushroom soup spotted her face. Underneath the shreds of tuna fish and potato chip crumbs, I could see her red lips, not as red as they used to be, but still waiting to be kissed. "Mommy, no. It's dark in there. She'll be scared. She won't be able to breathe. She'll think I don't love her anymore. We can sew a patch on her so she won't leak. Please, Mommy, please. Don't throw her away."
"For heaven's sake, Sammy," she said, her hands on her hips like she couldn't understand the big fuss I was making, "it's only a doll." What Mommy never had, I finally figured out, was imagination. That explains why she wasn't a Catholic. She didn't believe in heaven any more than she believed in hell.

I knew Mommy would beat me with whatever was handy if she caught me, but I waited up in my room till I thought everyone was asleep. I tiptoed down the dark hallway to the kitchen. I opened the cabinet door under the sink ever so slow so it wouldn't creak and reached into the waste basket to rescue Betsy. Then the light went on, blinding my eyes suddenly. Mommy was standing in the doorway, her huge breasts sagging under that faded, dirty nightgown she always wore. "What do you think you're doing?" she said, her voice calm and cold. I wished she were hollering instead. She grabbed my hair and pulled me so hard I fell backwards onto the floor. Without looking at me again, she dragged the waste basket out from under the sink and carried it to the back porch. She opened the door, dumped it upside down into one of the big trash cans and clamped the lid shut.

"Don't you ever try to sneak something past me again." She slapped me hard to make sure I heard her. "The garbage man will be here in the morning. I intend to stay here all night if I have to, so don't try to pull any more stunts like this one." She sat down at the kitchen table and crossed her arms. "Now get to bed."

I thought about writing a letter to the garbage man asking him not to take Betsy Cornflake Doll away. I thought about waking Daddy up and asking him to help me. I thought about praying to Jesus. I thought about Mommy being dead, her insides spilling out from her big fat stomach, her ugly face and ugly breasts stuffed into a cold, metal garbage can where there was no light anywhere.

A week before the Christmas pageant, Rayleen's mother dies. Sister tells the boys to tuck in their shirts and the girls to bobby pin their beanies in place so they won't fall off. Then we march two by two downtown to the Place funeral home to say a rosary for Rayleen's mother. "Remember, children, no talking," clucks Sister, rattling her rosary beads to put the fear of God in us. A warm sun shines in a pretty blue sky that doesn't look like someone has died. The funeral home is a long way, and before we're even halfway there, my green wool sweater begins to itch and rub my neck. All the girls are trying to walk with Rayleen because she is special today. The boys aren't so afraid of Sister and lot of them run ahead and play punching games. No one talks to me. That's A-OK with me because I have to think about what being dead means.

It means you either go to heaven, which is somewhere up in that blue, blue sky, or straight to hell, which lies right under our feet and the ground could open up any moment when we're not looking and swallow us all up. We already know Rayleen's mother is in heaven with God because she was such a good Catholic and received Extreme Unction in plenty of time before her soul left her body.

Heaven and hell last forever and ever, says Sister. You don't want to wind up in hell because you can't ever get out, like in purgatory when your sins have been cleansed by fire. In hell, you burn and burn till you're black and hard like a hot dog left on the barbecue grill, and still you burn some more. God has arranged things so your flesh doesn't disappear entirely and you get to feel the pain for all eternity. Eternity, says Sister, is like the fly that brushes a mountain top with its wing once every thousand years. The time it takes the fly to wear away the whole mountain is only the first instant of eternity, while you beg for the cooling water of God's forgiveness and receive none. Once you go to hell, it's too late. God never forgives anybody who's already in hell. That's why I don't ever, ever eat meat on Fridays, even by accident, which is a mortal sin that could send me straight to hell if I didn't get to confession on Saturday.

The inside of the Place Funeral Home feels like a church even though it looks like a fancy living room with heavy drapes shutting out all the daylight. It is cool and dark after the hot sunshine outside. We kneel in rows in front of the big white coffin. The lid is all the way up. I've never seen a dead person before. I'm surprised that Rayleen's mother looks like she always does, with more make-up is all, like it's a special occasion. She looks like she's fallen asleep right after getting her hair done at the Woman's Day Beauty Salon. She doesn't look sad, only tired.

Rayleen slumps over in the front row. Her head is bent so low it's almost in her lap. She keeps twisting the rosary beads through her fingers like she wants to break them apart. She cries and cries so hard she can't say her Hail Mary's. "I wanted her to live long enough to see me be the Virgin Mary," she kind of stutters because she's swallowing the tears running down her cheeks while she's trying to talk.

Sister kneels down right next to Rayleen. "Your mother will see you, Rayleen," Sister actually smiles all the way across her face. "Don't you know that God is going to give her a front row seat in heaven the night of our Christmas pageant so she can watch her beautiful daughter play the part of the Virgin Mary?"

Beautiful? Rayleen?

I guess Sister knows what she's doing. You don't go to hell for venial sins like small white lies. That's why I'm not afraid to use them all the time.

Rayleen finally stops crying and wipes her eyes with the handkerchief Sister pulls out of her skirt pocket. "I know Mommy's in heave now, Sister. I know she's happy that she doesn't have to get any more of those pills and shots. I know she wants me to be happy too." Sister puts both her arms around Rayleen and hugs her. Her wide black sleeves fall like the shadow of an angel's wings across Rayleen's shoulders. Rayleen put both her arms around Sister's veil and hugs her back like she's an aunt or a grandma.

I can't bear to watch. I didn't think you were allowed to touch nuns. What kind of sin is that?

After the cold-blooded murder of Betsy Cornflake Doll, I started sleeping with my teddy bear. I never gave him a real name, just Teddy. Sometimes when I got home from school, Mommy would ask me if I knew where Teddy was. "I'll look for him later," I'd say. "I'm going for a bike ride."

I'd hang up my white blouse on a padded hangar so it wouldn't wrinkle and I could wear it again tomorrow, slip on my favorite pair of faded red pedal pushers and run out to the garage before Mommy could stop me. I would ride and ride down those long, endless flat streets with their rows of flat-roofed houses like colored pencil boxes lines up on a shelf where it was easy to go forever with no hands because you could balance with your hips and legs and back, straight up, shoulders squared. I would ride for the pure pleasure of the wind blowing through my hair and to feel my legs getting stronger as I pumped and pumped through streets that looked like a maze in a puzzle book and made you get lost until you figured out where you were and got back on track. I would ride until the sky turned dark and the yellow street lights came on at every corner to show me the way home.

I never got another doll, and I never forgot about Betsy Cornflake and what it felt like to love somebody with your whole self. Daddy couldn't save me, but I still love him. That's how I know Betsy Cornflake still loves me from her home in doll heaven, which Sister would say is a sacrilege, but I know has to be as real as the heaven Rayleen's mother is in. Even if doll heaven is in my heart, Betsy Cornflake will live there for all eternity.

The night before the Christmas pageant, I sneak out to the kitchen again, only this time Mommy doesn't catch me I am so quiet. I push the pack of Old Gold cigarettes all the way down to the bottom of the trash underneath the coffee grounds and empty cans of green beans and half-eaten dinner rolls where no one will ever find it. God might send Mommy to hell one day because she did not take Him up on the chance to know Jesus even though He was offered to her on a silver platter. But God will have to do that without any help from me.

Mommy is not the type to beg forgiveness of anyone, even if she burns for two eternities. I guess if she's going to be forgiven, God will have to do that too. I can't. Sister would say that means I'm not a good enough person. Some things can't be helped. I decide to give Cissy the rest of the candy cigarettes. She loves anything sweet. Someday, I'll pay her back the 50 cents I owe her too.

The little angels of God have to dress themselves because Sister is busy safety pinning the front end of the donkey to his rear. We wear white choir robes and halos made out of coat hangers covered with silver foil we use every year. Bits of the silver foil have flaked off, so I turn the halo around and around until all the bald spots are in back. Sister was right. Rayleen is the most beautiful Virgin Mary ever. Another one of God's miracles for which we have no explanation. Her eyes shine like stars underneath the lacy blue veil you can tell right off belongs to the Mother of God because it's what She wears on all the holy cards.

Daddy will arrive at church early so he gets a good seat to take a picture from. He will jiggle the camera at the last second, and the picture will be blurry. "Your father," Mommy will say, "can never do anything right." Daddy will take the black and white print down to the photo shop anyway and ask to have it blown up big enough to fill a picture frame. The new picture will be even fuzzier, grays and whites, dark and light all swirling and swirling around the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus. To make things clearer, Daddy will take his gold plated ball point pen from his shirt pocket and draw a circle, like a second halo, around my head, back row, third from the left. That way, anyone looking at the picture will be able to tell right off the bat exactly which little angel of God is me.