Gabriella Louisa Rodriguez, child of miracles, lies on her back following the color red with a rosary on her forehead. She loves red. That's where her eyes always go, how people know she's alert. Her mama sits at the foot of her bed and her tia Lucy holds the rosary beads to Gabriella's forehead. Lucy wears a bright red sweater--loose knits and a thick, folded turtleneck--and although Gabriella's head doesn't move, her eyes follow those thick, loose weaves as if they hold the secret to how the world will end. Though this is one of the things Gabriella probably already knows. Her tia removes the beads and clutches them to her chest, praying harder. She's looking for a miracle. She's looking for a miracle that only Gabriella can give her. Gabriella and Jesus, that is. Gabriella Louisa Rodriguez and the Lord Jesus Christ, what a team.

Gabriella's hair is deep brown, almost black, like wet soil, like soiled coffee grounds. If she could stand, it would probably fall to her knees, at least. Lucy takes a lock of hair gently in her hands and arranges it across the girl's shoulder, down her chest, past her waist. She does the same with both sides of Gabriella's hair, until it looks flowy and smooth as if underwater, as if she's swimming in it. Gabriella's eyes move with Lucy's sweater, following the red: right, left, right, left. Lucy kisses the girl's palm and turns to her sister-in-law: If anyone can help my husband, it's your girl, she says. If anyone can make him better, it's Gabriella. Lucy leaves.

Gabriella's mother sighs. Everyday someone comes to her daughter for a miracle--her daughter, the fourteen year old child who has been in bed for seven years, who cannot speak, who cannot move, who needs mucus suctioned from her lungs with a tube when they fill too full.

There's this: Gabriella didn't ask for the job. Seven years ago, just months after her accident, Gabriella's family sat praying over her bed. The door was closed. Nobody came, and nobody went, only Gabriella's mama, her papa, her two brothers both too young to understand. And when they opened her eyes, on the statue of Jesus on her headboard, blood red oil pooled in the Lord's palms, and his eyes, once closed, were opened. A miracle.

There were other things. Everyone the family knew brought their candles, their Madonnas, their Christus statues. And every time they left, the blood red oil would pool in the palms of Jesus or of Mary, the candles would light, communion wafers would disappear from offering bowls. The Virgin would appear as a silhouette on the curtains, on the backs of people's hands. And Gabriella's hair would grow longer.

Next, they brought their sick. Grandmothers with bad hearts, babies so hot with fevers they hurt to touch, brothers and friends with broken limbs, broken hearts, sinners who couldn't bring themselves to see priests. They'd bring something red: a hat for Gabriella to watch, a feather dipped in dye to spread across her chest. Some brought food--strawberries, cherries, boxes of Red Vines, washed beets with their tops still on. Children brought crayons and Legos, small jars of Wet and Wild fingernail polish in the brightest magenta.

Gabriella's mama closes the door after Lucy leaves. She knows how this will go. Her girl, her fourteen-year-old girl with the body of a seven-year-old, with her arms and legs of different lengths, her mouth straight across like a conductor's baton, will stay where she is until the next person comes. Lucy's husband--her brother--will probably get better. They usually do. But Gabriella will lay still, unhealed, untouched by her own oils. She moves her girl's hair out of her face, away from her cheeks where Lucy spread it. She runs a comb through it, all the way to its ends, a pain to keep clean and untangled but never cut for fear the miracles will stop. Gabriella is Sampson, a modern-day Sampson, her power in her hair.

Above her daughter's head, Gabriella's mama notices an empty space in front of Jesus' feet where this morning there were wafers and now there is nothing. She notices oil, clear this time, on His feet and hands. There are times (times like now, when she needs to put the brush back on the night stand and insert the vacuum-like tube into her daughter's throat to clean out the evil that is building up against Gabriella's lungs) when she finds herself wanting to take the statue into her hands and send it flying through Gabriella's bedroom, in the air over the letter and pictures from people all over the country, picture of dying children, sick mothers, cards that say, Please, can your girl touch my child's photograph, the handwriting of my mother, can you say a prayer for my grandfather over Gabriella's bed? We need a miracle. She wants to throw the statue against the window on the other side of the room. What would break open then? What oils, she thinks, would appear then, Jesus? Gabriella's mama gets angry, because He picked Gabriella but He won't heal her. The girl remains quiet, brittle, unable to grow, 'dead to the world' the doctors say, and everyone who comes to her leaves on two feet, all smiles. To hell with all of them, Gabriella's mama thinks, then immediately regrets it.

There is a knock at the front door, and she leaves the room to answer it. Now Gabriella is alone, free to do what she likes. Does she know she's alone? Her eyes move--slowly--to the red blanket folded at the foot of her bed. Maybe she's cold. Maybe she wants it around her. Maybe she's thinking nothing.

Maybe she's thinking of the last time she was alone and could move freely (or was that a dream?). She remembers water and refreshing cool. It would have been a hot Phoenix night, she would have been seven years old, she would have been barefoot. Can she still remember how sharp the cement was under her feet, or is that her slippers pushing against the safety rail on her bed now? She remembers putting her feet in, a blue and white bikini (her first one, she recalls, her chest under it not even two bee stings yet, just straight and flat), her family inside asleep. And then she was in the water, and then she was caught under the pool cover, pounding on it with her fists, and then there was too much water even to swallow, too little air even to scream.

But she might not be thinking anything at all. She might not even be there, anymore, in that misshapen body.

Gabriella's mama is back in the room now, a woman at her side. The woman is obese, rotund, barely able to fit through the doorway, all white pillowy flesh. She has in her hand a Taco Bell sack, probably from a lunch stop down the street. Her hair is short and blonde, curled in all the wrong places, peppered with thin bald spots. Gabriella, honey, this is Mae Kirtland, here from Tennessee to see you. The woman isn't wearing any red, and Gabriella stares straight ahead. Her lungs are sounding hard again--something rattles in them as if caught, and her mama hopes she can wait until Mae leaves to suction Gabriella's throat again.

Mae speaks, her accent thick and strange: Should Ah say something to her? What should Ah do? Gabriella's mother only shrugs her shoulders, suggests that maybe Mae prays. But Mae doesn't pray. Not yet. She sits down next to Gabriella, barely able to maneuver her vast flesh beside the bed. Ah heard about you on the news, she says. Had to come see you cause Ah think you're the only one who can help my little boy. She holds a picture in front of Gabriella's face: no red. Gabriella's eyes don't move. But Mae says, as if response to a question, Kidney failure. He's hooked up to them machines all the time. Gabriella doesn't move.

And then, before Gabriella's mama realizes what's happening, before Gabriella herself can even blink, Mae Kirtland is leaning over the child, the flesh of her huge white arm wiggling like rubber over Gabriella's face. She takes a pair of scissors from her purse and with one snip cuts a lock of the child's hair--more than a lock, really, a good six inches--and sits back down. Gabriella doesn't move.

Gabriella's mama feels the breath leave her body. She feels the air in the room like a weight on her shoulders that she's taking somewhere. Her daughter's hair hasn't been touched for seven years. She yells for Mae to stop, but she's too late. Mae's already sitting down again, and she looks up startled when she hears the scream, raises her eyebrows in horror as if to ask what mortal sin she has committed.

But Gabriella's mama can't tell her. Six inches of her daughter's hair fall along the back of Mae's palm, and in the other she holds a picture of her son--sick, like Gabriella, tubes everywhere, his eyes pale dimes against his face, but alert and smiling for the camera. Oh, sweetie, Ah'm so sorry, Ah didn't think, Mae says. She's crying. Ah only thought if Ah could bring a piece of her to him. Ah've seen on the news, you know, the stuff y'all have done with her. Ah'm so sorry. Mae Kirtland crosses herself and looks down at Gabriella, whose breathing has grown more strained. She stands to leave. Gabriella doesn't move.

***

After Mae is gone, after Gabriella's mother has removed the liquid from the gaping hole in her daughter's throat, she looks at her child, now unbalanced and off kilter, one side of her hair shorter than the other. She thinks about trimming the rest of her hair, but she can't. So what if the miracles stop? She finds herself thinking. She doesn't know if she ever believed them in the first place. And the thought of the smiling boy, the yellow, smiling, tube-laden boy, holding a lock of her daughter's hair. Well, maybe Jesus will touch him, too. Maybe this boy can fix Gabriella.

But Gabriella is beyond fixing. Her mama knows that. Maybe Gabriella knows that too. And Jesus, with his oil filled palms, must know too. So her mother does cut the rest of her hair, makes it even all the way around. She holds small strands up against the photos of sick relatives, the letters from strangers, the Madonna statues on the night stand. She thinks she might mail them. What a burden to be responsible for miracles.

And around the room more oil appears, more oil than ever, in the most bizarre of places. On the knobs of Gabriella's dresser. On the windowsill. On the bag from Taco Bell, a remnant of Mae Kirtland minutes since gone.

Gabriella Louisa Rodriguez, child of miracles, lies on her back, thinking or no, remembering or no. She might be thinking to herself: what a trick I've pulled. Me and Jesus, that is, what a trick we've pulled. Gabriella Louisa Rodriguez and the Lord Jesus Christ, what a team we make.