The Same Stuff as Stars (16 page)

After the tea, even though it was still afternoon, Angel made supper for the two of them. They didn't talk much. They tried not to look at the place where Bernie should have been sitting. Grandma even ate her broccoli without complaining. Angel started to say something about it, but she could feel the tears start as she formed the sentence in her mind, and kept quiet. She washed the dishes and left them to dry beside the sink.

“I think I'll do my homework upstairs and then go on to bed,” she said.

Grandma nodded from the rocker. Trying to be a comfort seemed to have worn her out.

Angel lay on her stomach under the bare bulb and opened
Know the Stars.
It was a page she'd read so often she could almost recite it.

 

Polaris (stress on
LAR
) is the only star that never changes its place in the sky, at least not so that you can notice it. It always stays put while the other stars and constellations are moving....

 

That was what she needed—a Polaris, a North Star, that never moved. Something steady so that she could always find her way. But what about Bernie? She'd been his Polaris, hadn't she? When everything else had changed, at least he'd had her. Now he had Verna, who switched around faster than a whirling planet. She wished she knew how to pray. She wanted to pray for Bernie, for Verna, even for Wayne.

Wayne. He was her daddy. He never would have run off with Bernie and left her behind like Verna had. It wasn't his fault the police had thrown him in jail. He didn't even do it, whatever it was they said he did. He'd never even smacked her when she was little. He'd bought her Grizzle and given her her name, Angel. Did a man who named his baby girl Angel sound like somebody who would go off and commit a crime?

Even as she crept down the stairs, even as she took the phone off the hook, even when with her finger shaking she yanked around the dial the numbers she had memorized without ever meaning to, even until the moment the voice at the other end answered—something in her stomach warned her not to go ahead, her whispery voice as trembly as her body.

“This is Angel Morgan. I need to get a message to my daddy, Wayne Morgan. Just say...just say Verna's come and took Bernie off. Just tell him that.”

She hung up the phone and went to the kitchen door to look out. She could smell frost in the air and hear the wind wailing in the changing leaves. It was a night of no stars.

***

Like a sleepwalker, she stumbled through the next day at school. She hadn't wanted to go at all. She'd wanted to stay by the phone, in case. But Grandma made her go. “It's like sitting in the garden watching cabbage come to a head. The phone'll never ring long as you're waiting beside it. Ask me. I know about such things.”

She spent most of lunchtime in the bathroom and was still there in the stall when a group of girls swept in. “What did she say when you asked her about the robbery, Megan?”

Angel froze as Megan's voice answered the question. “Oh, she pretended she didn't know what I was talking about, but my grandma told my daddy and he told my mom that she's Wayne Morgan's girl. Grandma even had the clippings. She saves everything, and Daddy was in grade school with Wayne Morgan, so she thought he'd be interested.”

Angel strained to hear the details. They might think she was pretending, but she really
didn't
know. It made her feel the fool to have Megan Armstrong know more about her daddy than she did.

“Did he shoot somebody?”

“He said he didn't, but the clerk had a bullet in him, didn't he? One of those guys in the ski masks shot him, and the other guys said Wayne Morgan did it. So it was two against one. They shouldn't ever let somebody like that out of jail.”

But he didn't do it.
Angel broke out in a cold sweat.
Wayne wouldn't hurt anybody.
But how did she know? She hardly knew her own daddy. It had happened when she was five, and all she could remember before that was the yelling. There must have been good times, too. Yes, when he bought her Grizzle. She remembered how happy she was when he gave her Grizzle. Verna had snorted something like “Blue bear? I swear,” but Angel had loved it from the first. It was the only present he had ever given her, although for a while Verna would give her something and say “It's from your daddy and me.” She had stopped saying it years ago. There hadn't been many presents, just the toys they got from the Salvation Army Santa Claus. That hardly counted.

The girls were still whispering, but whether about Wayne or something or somebody else, she didn't know. She wished they'd leave so she could come out of the stall. She read the dirty words and looked at the pictures scratched into the back of the door. You'd think the school would paint them over. Then again, some were dug deep in the door, so they'd probably show through the paint. She wished she had something with a sharp point, so she could scratch something nasty about Megan Armstrong on the door. Something that would last for years.

“Megan, shh! There's somebody in there.”

“What of it?” Megan's voice answered. “Hey, you in there. You're not supposed to eavesdrop.”

Angel stayed still, but she was seething inside. She'd been here when they came in, hadn't she?

“You scared to come out?” It was the voice of one of Megan's gang, Heather Somebody-or-other.

There was a giggle. “Hea
-thur!”

Then suddenly Heather's head appeared under the stall door. The eyes went wide and quickly disappeared. “It's her in there!” she whispered fiercely.

“Everything I said was true. It was in the newspapers.” Angel could almost see Megan tossing her bouncy curls.

“Let's get out of here,” someone said. She could hear them scuffling out into the hall, whispering and giggling as they went. Angel was almost glad. For a few minutes she was able to think how much she hated those girls instead of the fact that Bernie was gone.
Gone.

***

She slumped onto her bus seat with something like relief. The worst day of her life was coming to an end. Soon she'd be home. It was strange to think of Grandma's house as home, but it was. Home with a hole bigger than a moon crater, now that there was no Bernie in it.

“It didn't ring,” Grandma said. She wasn't in her rocker. She was standing by the hot plate. “I'm fixing me some tea,” she said. “You want some, too?”

Angel nodded. “Then I think I'll walk up to the library.”

Grandma stiffened. “It's getting dark early,” she said. “Tomorrow's Saddidy. Wait till tomorrow. Then you'll have time to shop, too. We must be out of one of them precious food groups by now.”

Angel giggled despite herself. “You're catching on, Grandma. I'll have you trained yet.”

They drank their tea in the darkening kitchen, their bodies in knots, fighting to keep from turning to stare at the phone. She'd always tried to defend Verna, always tried to see her mother's side of things, but it was hard to do this time.

***

She woke up in the night. She couldn't quite remember the dream that had awakened her. Someone—Bernie, she thought—had been crying, but the only fragment of the dream that had stayed with her was the sight of the pickup pulling away with Bernie's arm sticking out the window on the passenger side. “Pull in your arm, Bernie,” she'd yelled. “How many times do I have to tell you? Get your arm out of the window!” She sat up, her throat as hoarse as though she'd been yelling out loud instead of in a dream.

She could still hear the crying. After countless nights of negotiating that black staircase, she was like a skillful blind person in the dark, making her way down to the kitchen and around the furniture until she reached the bedroom door. She leaned her head against the wood. Behind it she could hear the shuddering sobs of a broken old heart.

 

 

SIXTEEN

There had been a hard frost in the night. The pasture was kissed with white, and beyond it the woods were a bonfire blaze of sugar maples. It might have seemed beautiful, if anything could look beautiful when her heart was so full of fearfulness and loss. When Angel reminded Grandma at breakfast that she was going to the library, the old lips trembled, and the old woman sniffed and blinked as if to hold back threatening tears.

“Is that okay?” Angel asked.

“Since when did you start needing permission from me?” The words were harsh, but Angel knew they weren't meant to be.

“I can go later.”

Grandma threw out her hand. “No, no, go. Go on.” Then she mumbled something Angel couldn't quite make out.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Grandma held some kind of grudge against Liza Irwin, that was plain, but Angel couldn't bring herself to ask what it was. She had enough problems of her own right now without digging into Grandma's unhappy past.

It was a cold morning. She wore her winter jacket. Had Bernie been wearing his when Verna picked him up? She hadn't dared check his things to see if it was missing. In August she'd not thought about mittens when she'd packed. Even though she was always nagging Bernie about wearing a hat, she never wore one herself. Today she almost wished for one. Her ears hurt from the cold, and it was barely fall—more than a month until Halloween.

Verna had taken them trick-or-treating last year. It had been fun—mostly. Bernie had gotten wild. He always did when he had too much sugar. Verna just laughed when Angel said that, and when Angel tried to make him save some of his candy for later, Verna called her a party pooper. So he ate way too much and began zooming around, screeching, acting like a crazy thing until Verna lost her temper and smacked him. Then he screamed and screamed and couldn't be shut up or calmed down for anything.

She mustn't think about things like that. Verna would've learned her lesson by now. She'd be a great mother, and Bernie himself was doing way better these days. Why, he'd be so happy to be with his mama again that he'd behave so well he'd never even meet the social worker at his new school.
You got to take him to school the first day, Mama. You got to see he gets settled in good. That'll get him off on the right track. It's important to start out right
in a new place.
Even Grandma in her crazy way had given Bernie a good start here.
You wouldn't want Grandma to do better than you, now, would you, Mama?

She lifted her eyes from the road and looked at the trees beside it. Could anything on earth be so beautiful as a sugar maple in the fall? She took a deep breath. The smell of frost was in the air. See? She wasn't going to stew about Bernie all day. She was going to trust that Verna had turned over a new leaf and was starting out as a first-class mother. But much as she tried, it was hard to pull her mind away from what had actually happened. Just like a kidnapping. Verna'd gone to the school and yanked him out and driven away, never even stopping at the house to get his things.
I would have given him Grizzle. He couldn't even say goodbye to Grandma, let alone me. She didn't want to hurt my feelings. That's why she did it that way. Because she was afraid that if she had to tell me that she could take only one kid, I'd cry or complain that she was leaving me and choosing Bernie. But I would've understood, really I would've. Bernie is the baby. I wouldn't have cried. I'd have said, “Sure, I understand.” And she would have said that as soon as she was on her feet she'd come and get me, too. Wouldn't she have?

She had to stop thinking. She was long past the broken house where they'd stopped for directions that first day and almost to the village. She had to get herself under control. She was swollen with tears trying to bust out, and she didn't want to be boo-hooing in front of Miss Liza, not to mention in the middle of the general store. Well, she wouldn't be buying another box of those expensive Sugar Pops. That would help with the bill.

Funny, it was the thought of
not
buying Sugar Pops that burst the dam. She stood in the middle of the road and sobbed. Finally, she pulled a ratty tissue out of her pocket and blew her nose and wiped her eyes the best she could. Oh Lord, they were nearly out of tissues. She'd have to buy more. She concentrated on making a mental grocery list, so that by the time she got to the library, she was feeling if not better, then at least not on the verge of exploding into a Mississippi flood.

“Why, Angel, dear, what on earth is the matter?” Miss Liza asked the minute she saw Angel's puffy face. So Angel blurted it all out, how Verna had come and taken Bernie away. Soon they were sitting side by side on the low children's chairs in the picture-book section. Miss Liza had her head bent sidewise and her sharp little bird eyes on Angel's face, following every word of the long recital of events. “I'd just like to know where he's at and that he's okay,” Angel said finally.

“Of course you would,” Miss Liza said, handing her a fresh tissue. “So would I.”

“But we can't call Welfare,” Angel said quickly. “They won't know where they are, but if they think Verna is acting crazy, they'll hunt her down and take him away.”

“Are you sure?”

“They did it before.” Angel blew her nose. “She had a hard time getting us back.” She needed to remember that—that Verna had fought like a wildcat to get them back. Bernie hadn't been much more than a baby the first time, and the last time Welfare had put them in two different foster homes. Home, ha! More like a reformatory. Angel had gotten whacked every time she'd turned around. She told the social worker, too. She heard one of the social workers say that Bernie had cried the whole two months they were separated. Maybe that's why Welfare gave them back to Verna in the end, because they'd made a mistake, putting her and Bernie into bad situations. She didn't tell Miss Liza all this.