he closet so she can go to the bathroom. Again, Mairin turns on the radio, then the public address system so the music is broadcast through the building. While Bernadette listens, Mairin looks through the desk. She finds a skeleton key and pockets it. Other nuns arrive to turn off the music. 

Later, Angela tells Mairin the girls enjoyed the music. Mairin shares what she overheard. The other girls ask Mairin to teach them self-defense.

Angela sits in the Mother Superior’s office with Gran, discussing her future. Gran is upset that Angela is pregnant. The Mother Superior tells Gran that Angela must have seduced a man. Angela wishes she could keep and raise her child, but the nuns and Gran decide otherwise.

Denise offers Angela moral support; she knows the doctor has raped other girls. Janice sneaks a book from the bookmobile that describes pregnancy, and Angela reads it eagerly. It helps her to understand what is happening in her body. She dreams of naming a daughter Alice. 

The girls watch all the ways Mairin tries, and fails, to escape, enduring punishment each time. Angela thinks, “Mairin never stopped believing in possibility” (164).

Fiona, returned from her stay at Aunt Cookie’s, finds that her school uniform does not fit her postpartum body. She found the process of childbirth painful and difficult, but she felt an immediate and powerful love for her baby. She spent every moment she could with her baby before she had to give her up. 

Now that she is home, people treat her differently. She is upset that Mairin never wrote to her but goes to her friend’s house to pick her up for school. Mrs. Davis answers the door and greets Fiona with tenderness. Mrs. Davis says that Mairin became troublesome and they took her to the Home of the Good Shepherd. Fiona guesses Mairin was sent away because of Colm.

Deirdre, Mairin’s mother, looks at a small baby’s bootie and a candle that she keeps in a drawer. Colm demands she pour his coffee. While he rants about Fiona, Deirdre recalls how, back in Limerick, she got pregnant and was forced to give up the baby. She’d learned her baby boy was adopted by a couple who lived in Buffalo, New York, so she saved up and traveled there. 

The adoption records were sealed, and Deirdre, despondent, thought about dying by suicide at Niagara Falls. There, she met Patrick O’Hara. She loved him and their life together, and when he died, she sank into grief. She thought Colm would help her and realized too late what kind of man he was. He blames her for the fact that they never had children. Deirdre also worries about Liam, who is waiting to be shipped out, and reflects that there are many ways to lose a child.

Sister Bernadette prays for Mairin and for Angela, who is taken to St. Francis to deliver her baby. Bernadette is glad to think the baby will go to a good home, and she is saddened when Sister Gerard tells her the child was stillborn. Sister Gerard gives Bernadette a packet of papers to put in the safe. In them is a record of birth for the child. Bernadette thinks this is curious but doesn’t question the Mother Superior.

At night, Mairin thinks about her former life, Fiona, and her brother. Helen whispers their secret signal, an invitation to play mahjong. Mairin agrees, as “[t]he game was a secret rebellion, a way to do something normal in this awful place” (185). 

Angela returns from this hospital, looking gaunt and shaken. She describes what she remembers, but she was drugged. Her grandmother signed the papers giving up parental rights to her child. Angela laments that she never got to see her child. To cheer her up, Mairin uses the skeleton key to unlock the door that locks them into their dormitory. She goes to the office and turns on the radio, then the PA system.

In June of 1969, Niagara Falls goes dry. It is considered a miracle, and the nuns organize a field trip for the girls. They leave on the Fourth of July. Mairin is aware of how other people regard them and looks for ways to escape. She thinks about her father and tells the others that the project of building a dam to stop the falls has been planned for a while. Mairin tries to tell a park ranger they’re being held against their will, but the ranger says, “You girls should be grateful that the good sisters are looking after you” (196).

The girls take a picture in the photo booth. Helen notices the West Point marching band is playing, and Angela sees an exhibit booth for the library. Mairin watches the hippies protesting the war and sees an ad for the Heyday Farm Commune. Angela suggests that once they are all free, they should make a pact to meet at the Falls every Fourth of July. Odessa says she wants to go to California and be part of the music industry. Mairin asks a man driving a bread truck if he’ll give them a lift, but then she gets a bad feeling about him and changes her mind.

On the way home, their van passes another van with Flynn’s business name and number on the side. Mairin tries to open the emergency exit, but it’s stuck. 

That night, as the girls talk, Mairin reflects on how they have become friends. She decides they need to work together to escape. She’ll find the money that Sister Gerard is giving to St. Apollonia, they’ll steal street clothes, and they’ll escape in the library bookmobile.