The Same Stuff as Stars (15 page)

“Ah, ginger snaps!” the old woman exclaimed. “Let's get in there and get us something to eat. Have you ever tried to eat that pig slop in the school lunchroom?
Bleeeh.”

Bernie giggled with delight. “Me and Grandma throwed our whole lunch in the garbitch!”

“Oh,
Bernie.”
Well, anyway he was happy. It couldn't have gone too badly.

She gave Grandma some warmed-over coffee and a piece of toast and made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with milk for Bernie. The milk looked so cool and inviting, she poured herself a glass and drank it quickly, feeling guilty about downing milk she ought to save for Bernie.

“You need any school supplies, Bernie? I got to run to the store and get me some.”

Bernie looked at Grandma. Did he expect her to remember what he was supposed to bring the next day? “Nah,” said Grandma. “They got more junk in that room than they know what to do with now. We ain't spending our Social Security check for none, are we, Bernie boy?”

“Nah.” They both began to giggle.

Angel cleared her throat. “I'm sorry, Grandma, but I'm going to have to borrow some of your money. Verna will pay you back later.” The old woman snorted in disbelief, but what else could Angel do? She'd given Grandma all the rest of her taxi money for the phone calls, and she had to have the supplies. “You want to walk to the store with me, Bernie?”

“Nah. I'm too tired. Me and Grandma need to rest, right, Grandma?”

She was relieved, really. She could go so much faster without him, and she wouldn't have to use even more money to buy him a treat. But as she walked down the road, she kicked the dust. He had always depended on her up until now. He'd always chosen to be with her over anybody else around. She almost felt like crying.

 

 

FOURTEEN

If it hadn't been for the stars, she might have given up trying. Going to school was like running through a minefield in a war movie. She had to keep up the lie that her mother was home but the doctor had ordered her to bed because of severe back trouble, so she wasn't able to take phone calls or to come in for a conference. She avoided all the other kids like poison. That was the easy part. No one was dying to be buddies with her.

She tried not to let it rub her raw that Bernie and Grandma were thick as thieves and treated her like she was some stern parent when she tried to make them eat their vegetables or practice reading—Bernie, that is. She didn't try to make Grandma read, but Grandma was no help with Bernie. She just giggled and acted silly when Angel was trying to help him, which made him all silly, too.

So she couldn't have stood it without the nights of starry skies. She would wait until Bernie and Grandma were asleep, pinching herself to stay awake, no matter how tired she was, and then sneak out to the old pasture. The star man was always there before her, lost in the heavens. She would wait beside him quietly, not daring to disturb him, until suddenly he would begin talking about the sky.

“There's old Draco the Dragon, his tail slinking around, dividing the Big Bear from his little brother. Want to see?” Then he'd adjust the telescope to her height and let her look. When she would squint and squint and still not be able to see what he was talking about, he would make her look at the naked sky and point out the constellation. “Okay. Find Dubhe in the lip of the Big Dipper and look toward the North Star—Polaris.” She obeyed. “Now, the tip of the dragon's tail is just between Dubhe and Polaris. Then it snakes around and takes a sharp bend”—he drew it in the air with his pointed finger—“and ends in another sort of dipper. That's the dragon's head. See the bright star at the end of its snout and the star beside it? In ancient times those were called the dragon's eyes. But the beautiful double star is on the top of its head. You need to see that through the telescope.” And then, with unbelievable patience, he would help her find the pair of beautiful pale-yellow stars in Draco's head.

Angel could not remember it all, of course. She would go back to bed and lie there in the dark, head spinning, too tired to look up anything in her beloved book, too excited to sleep. It had taken more years than she could conceive of for the light from those stars to reach her eye. To her they were the most magnificent, the most wonderful, things she had ever seen. When the stars sent that light rushing toward the earth, she, Angel Morgan, wasn't even alive, wasn't even going to be
born
for ages and ages. She shivered. To the stars she was not even pond scum. Not even a speck of dust. Not even...not even...She tried to think of something smaller than nothing, but she couldn't imagine it.

***

Three weeks after school began, Megan Armstrong, who hadn't spoken to her since the first day of school, came strolling over to where Angel sat eating her peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the back corner of the lunchroom. “It isn't true, is it?” she said in a snooty sort of voice.

It took a few seconds for Angel, who had been lost in the stars, to realize that Megan was talking to her. “Huh?”

“It isn't true that your father is the Wayne Morgan who robbed the Cumberland Farms in Barre a few years ago?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” Angel wasn't faking. She really didn't know what Wayne had or had not done. Nobody had ever said.

Megan gave a twisted smile and sniffed. “Just wondering,” she said. “It was in the papers a while back. The guy was sent to jail...for a long time.” She studied Angel's face, which Angel willed to be blank. Finally, Megan turned away. Angel watched her go back to her usual table to report.

So the word was out. Somebody's mom or dad or grandparent had a long memory. Vermont was a small state. Morgans were known around here, for good or bad. It had taken just three weeks. The girls were whispering and giggling and stealing glances at her. She stared back. She wasn't going to let them think they could humiliate her. How many of them knew that the star Rigel was 545 light-years from earth? They probably didn't even know what a light-year was. Or that to the stars at the farthest rim of the universe they weren't even going to be born for billions of years. They weren't anything more than she was. Less than pond scum, less than dust, less than nothing at all.

Still, she wished they hadn't found out quite so soon. Before, she was nothing in their eyes, but now, though still less than nothing, she was as visible as the sun. Which she bet they didn't know was 93 million miles away—the closest star. Which was a fiery ball that would burn you up if you got too close. She put all of Megan's gang into a spaceship and shot them straight at the sun.

Somehow she got through the day, trying hard to ignore the fact that all conversations stopped abruptly when she walked past, as eyes sidled toward her. It wasn't as if it hadn't happened before. She ought to be used to it by now, shouldn't she? If she just weren't so tired. But she couldn't both sleep and see the stars, and she couldn't stand the days without the nights of stars.

The afternoon dragged through to the final bell. She hunched into a corner of her bus seat, willing herself not to look or listen to the other kids on the bus, yet unable to ignore the buzz and the stares.

At her stop, she hopped off and ran up the driveway, the sob that had choked her throat since lunchtime threatening to explode. She wouldn't cry. She wouldn't. They weren't worth crying about.

Grandma was sitting rocking in the kitchen. Angel wanted to run past her, go upstairs and throw herself down on her bed, but something in Grandma's face stopped her.

“What's the matter, Grandma?”

“I don't know. Something.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I knowed, I could tell you, couldn't I? I just said I don't know.”

Angel could feel her flesh crawl. She caught Grandma's fear. Something was happening, but she didn't know what it was. Dread was hanging over the house like dense fog on a mountain road.

“Where's Bernie?” she blurted out.

“At school.” There was a pause. “I reckon.”

Angel focused her mind on the elementary school. She willed herself to see Bernie there, straightening up his desk, saying goodbye to his teacher, walking out of the building, getting on the bus. In her heart she knew that wasn't the real Bernie, who would have resisted doing whatever every other kid did, but a different Bernie, a kind of robot Bernie, the kind that she could control in her imagination and make do the right things, the kind of Bernie she could make come home safe and happy.

“I guess I'll go wait for the bus.” It was another forty-five minutes before it was due, but she needed to keep mental watch over the bus through its whole route, from the school door to Grandma's mailbox.

Grandma leaned back in the rocker and shut her eyes. She looked like something was paining her. That was it. The bad thing. Grandma felt sickly. She was an old lady. That was natural for old people, wasn't it? They had so many parts that didn't work so well anymore.

“Okay, Grandma?” she asked softly. “I'm just going out to the mailbox and wait for Bernie, okay?”

The old woman nodded without opening her eyes.

In light-years it was nothing, but in feeling time it was forever before she heard the shifting gears and saw the yellow bus coming over the brow of the hill. She waited, hardly breathing. If a doctor had put a stethoscope to her chest, he probably wouldn't even have detected a heartbeat. The bus rumbled past where she stood. It didn't slow, much less stop.

“Bernie!” she yelled at the back of it. She ran a few steps down the road behind it. “Bernie!” Unbelieving, she watched it bumping and rattling out of sight, heading for the corner, turning onto the paved road.

She raced back to the house.

Grandma sat up, eyes wide. “Where's Bernie?”

Angel was fumbling through the phone book. Why hadn't she kept the school number?
You always do that. Keep the number by the phone in case of emergency.
She was breathless now. The line was busy, of Course. She slammed down the phone.
Oh Lord, I've forgotten the number.
Another fumble through the phone book. Another dial. At last that impatient voice of the secretary. “Chesterville Union Elementary School.”

“Where's Bernie?” she blurted out, realizing too late that it was the wrong thing to say.

“Excuse me? Who did you want to speak to?”

She forced herself to be quiet a minute and took a deep breath. “This is Mrs. Verna Morgan. My son, Bernie, didn't get off the school bus just now—”

“Hold on a minute, please. I'll check.”

“What she say? What she say?” Grandma was on her feet, wild-eyed, her head shaking.

“Shh. She's checking.”

“Phht.” Grandma made a funny sound with her lips. “Who is this?” the secretary demanded.

Angel kept still.

“I'm asking because, according to the sign-out sheet, Mrs. Verna Morgan came by at twelve thirteen
P.M.
and picked Bernie Morgan up. It says here ‘Doctor's appointment in Burlington.'”

 

 

FIFTEEN

Grandma fell back into her rocker as though someone had smacked her in the face. “Doctor's appointment, my stuffed cabbage.”

What was Verna doing? “Kidnapping! She kidnapped her own kid!” Angel was walking back and forth. She banged into a chair, sending it crashing to the floor, and didn't bother to pick it up. “She kidnapped Bernie! She didn't want me to know she was taking him. She didn't even come to get his clothes! I would have given him Grizzle. I would have.” The tears were coming so hard now that she couldn't see where she was going, and she hit her hip against the edge of the table. She welcomed the pain. It gave her an excuse to cry all the more. What she didn't say—couldn't say out loud—was,
Why just Bernie? Why did she take Bernie and leave me behind? Doesn't she love me, too? Oh, Mama, I need you, too.

“Sit down, Angel, before you break something past fixing.”

She was suddenly ashamed. She went over and picked up the chair. “I'm sorry.”

“I don't mean the danged chair. I mean you. Come here.”

She went over to the rocker. Grandma had her skinny little arms out. “Here, in my lap, baby.”

Even though she was almost bigger than the old woman, Angel sat down on the bony lap. The arms felt like sticks around her shoulders, but it didn't matter. She let go against them. She couldn't remember if she'd ever sat on anyone's lap and felt herself held and rocked.

“That Verna is a first-class bitch.”

“No,” Angel felt obliged to defend her mother. “That isn't it. She—she probably doesn't have enough money to take care of two kids, and Bernie's the baby. He needs her more than me.”

Grandma snorted. Angel could feel the vibration of it through her ribs. “You're more of a mother to that boy than Verna ever was.” It was like something Verna herself had said. But Verna must have forgotten who it was that really took care of Bernie.

Maybe she'd changed. Maybe now she would remember to make him eat all five food groups and wear his hat when it was cold outside and—Angel began to cry again, but softly this time.

“There, there,” Grandma patted her. “I didn't mean to get you all roiled up. She'll probably bring him back by tomorrow. Ain't just anybody knows how to handle that little pricker bush.”

Angel stood up. She needed a tissue badly, and although she liked the thought of Grandma's lap, it was about as comfortable as cuddling with kindling. She went into the bathroom and got some toilet paper to blow her nose, not daring to look at herself in the streaky mirror. She knew she was a mess. “Grandma,” she called from the doorway. “How about I make us some tea?”

“Well, that sounds downright civilized.”