As an adult, Callie reflects on her parents’ strained relationship during her middle school years. While they tried to keep Callie and her sister Mona out of their quarrels by only arguing in Shanghai dialect, their father had a tendency for violence, once throwing a vase out the kitchen window. Mona did not worry about her parents’ relationship, but Callie found herself having nightmares that she believed were God’s attempts to communicate with her. Patty, a friend of Callie's from Catholic school, said that soon enough, Callie would be able to perform miracles, and the girls discussed miracles they wanted to carry out. When Patty’s father left her family, Callie and Patty did everything they could to convince God to bring him back home, giving up gum, Slim Jims, ice cream, looking at flowers, and looking at boys. Callie also used her precious malachite beads to pray. Patty’s father ultimately came back a month later, sick with dysentery. In the present day, Callie returns home to her apartment, which she sublet to a couple while on vacation in the mountains. The couple accidentally left behind a list of things they were praying to God for, and Callie finds the list touching. She thinks back to the peak of her parents’ fighting, a day they shouted at each other over the family’s financial stress. Callie’s father ended up physically attacking her mother and throwing her out the window of their bedroom, only to panic at the realization that he may have killed her. Surprisingly, Callie’s mother did not break any bones, and the blood on the scene was caused by a shard of glass piercing her head. After the incident, Callie lost her precious malachite beads, which rolled into a sewer, and cried for the rest of the day. At night, she had a vision where a man told her that her beads would eventually return to her. Mona told everyone at school about Callie’s vision, causing Callie to be ridiculed and lose her old desire for saintliness.