The Same Stuff as Stars (7 page)

“Okay,” Verna said, straightening up. “Pajamas, bathroom, bed. And make it quick!” By the time she finished the order they could hear her heels clicking on the stairs.

Angel's clothes were folded neatly in her suitcase, so she found her pajamas at once. She was ready to go down while Bernie was still churning stuff around in the big brown case. “Stop that, Bernie! You'll mess everything up.”

“No, I won't,” Bernie said. “It's my stuff and I can mess it up all I want to. Here they are. See? You didn't think I could find them and I did. So there.”

They crept down the stairs.

Verna was sitting in a kitchen chair, smoking a cigarette. Grandma was still rocking. Didn't she ever do anything else? “We got to go to the bathroom,” Angel said.

“Well, hurry,” Verna said.

“Mama, I forgot me and Bernie's toothbrushes.”

“Didn't I tell you to check the bathroom? Sheesh. Can't you remember nothing? You're eleven years old, Angel. You got to be responsible.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Well, go on. Get through in the bathroom. We'll worry about toothbrushes later.”

***

Something woke her up. It was pitch dark with no streetlight to shine through the window. There was the sound of a car. No—the sound of a balky pickup engine starting. Angel sat up in bed. Suddenly, she realized that the clothes in the big suitcase were all Bernie's. Verna hadn't brought any of her own clothes. She listened until the noise of the motor died away in the distance.

 

 

SEVEN

Angel tried to tell herself that Verna had just gone to run an errand. That was it. She'd gone to get some Sugar Pops. Bernie loved Sugar Pops. Wouldn't Verna want him to have something special, since he never got his milk shake and supper was only canned peaches and beans, which he hated? It would take her a long time to find a store that was still open. She might have to go all the way to a big town like the one where they had all the fast-food places. Little towns wouldn't have supermarkets that stayed open all night. Angel ought to get some sleep. It would be an hour or so before Verna could get back. No reason to just lie here and worry.

She didn't bring any clothes.
Of course Verna had brought clothes. They were just in another suitcase, not mixed up with Bernie's. Why would she pack her things with Bernie's? She'd want to keep them neat and—Well, Angel hadn't actually seen another suitcase, but that didn't mean there wasn't one. There'd been plenty of time for Verna to pack one and put it in the back of the pickup when Angel was busy packing or seeing to Bernie.
How come she left the pots and pans behind? How come she didn't bring the almost-new TV?

Angel flung herself over and yanked the quilt up to her neck. Even though it was summer and the room was hot, she felt cold. It was one thing to leave your kids in an all-night diner by mistake. It was something else to leave them in the country on purpose. That would be too much like Hansel and Gretel.
She's gone back to pack everything up and clear out of the apartment. She couldn't do that with Bernie hanging on to her and whining. That's what it was. Why, she'll be back by nighttime tomorrow
;
or by the next day at the very latest.
Yeah, and what was that about “one week at the most”?
Okay, maybe a week. It takes a while to really move out of a place you've been in for nearly a year.

Angel turned to the other side. It was no use. She wouldn't be able to sleep. Well, at least Bernie was still asleep. He didn't know Mama was gone. Oh Lord, what would happen when he found out? She wouldn't tell him. When he woke up tomorrow, she'd just say that Verna had to go to Burlington to clean out the apartment and that she'd be back soon. Meanwhile, she wanted them to be good and help their great-grandma.

Maybe they should just call the old lady Grandma. She was really Wayne's grandma, not hers and Bernie's, but Great-grandma took so long to say and sounded funny anyhow. Bernie seemed to like her—well, as much as Bernie liked any stranger. At least he wasn't scared of her. Angel had thought at first he might be. Good thing she'd remembered in time and hadn't told him the rest of the story of Hansel and Gretel. She wished she hadn't remembered it herself. This house wasn't made of gingerbread, that was for sure. Somehow she had to persuade Grandma to buy something besides canned peaches and pork and beans. She didn't seem to care a mosquito bite about proper nutrition, and since Bernie wasn't going to eat the beans, he'd only be eating one of the five major food groups. A little boy was likely to get sickly and die eating only canned peaches.

Shoot, Verna would be back long before that. She'd come with huge grocery bags full of good, nutritious things to eat.
You're nothing but a worrywart, Angel
That's what Verna always said, and Angel did worry too much. She knew that. But she couldn't help it.

Maybe she should check Verna's bed. How could she be sure that was Verna's pickup she'd heard, anyway? It might belong to the guy she and Bernie had seen in the yard. Grandma must have known who he was. She wasn't worried a bit about someone prowling around. That was it. The truck she heard belonged to Grandma's Santy Claus. What was the matter with the old woman that she couldn't just say right out who it was? You had to admit she was a little weird—not scary weird, but old-lady weird.

Angel turned over in bed again. She really couldn't sleep. Maybe she should check Verna's bed and, if it was empty, go downstairs just to make sure Verna wasn't down there or outside smoking a cigarette or something. It was stupid to get all upset over nothing. And it
would
be nothing. Even if she had forgotten them in the diner that time, Verna wasn't going to run off and leave them like some silly teenage mother who didn't care. She loved Angel and Bernie, even if she did get mad at them sometimes.

You couldn't blame Verna for getting mad. She had a hard life. Wayne was in jail, so she had to earn enough money to take care of all three of them, and it wasn't easy getting a good job when you were a high school dropout with two kids and your husband was in jail. She was bound to get tired and worn down and lose her temper. Anybody would.

Angel slipped out from under the quilt and tiptoed around Bernie's bed. He had thrown his covers off and was sleeping on his back with his mouth open, making little squeaky noises. Angel pulled the quilt up and patted his shoulder. He grabbed the quilt and turned over with a big sigh.

At the door across the hall she peered in. The bedclothes were flat on the double bed. No Verna there. She patted around for the stair rail and felt her way carefully down the almost black staircase. The kitchen was dark and empty. Grandma had gotten out of her rocker and gone to bed. Maybe Verna had gone outside. Lots of times she went outdoors to smoke, especially when Angel reminded her of the dangers of secondhand smoke.

She crept over to the door. The floor creaked. She stopped, but there was no noise from behind the closed door to what must be Grandma's bedroom. She turned the knob of the kitchen door and pulled. See? It wasn't locked. If Grandma wasn't expecting Verna back soon, she would have locked the door, wouldn't she?

Verna was nowhere to be seen. There was no sign of the pickup, either. Angel walked farther out into the yard, just to make sure. And then for no reason at all she looked up and gasped.

She had never seen such a sight in her life. The sky was alive with stars. Some places were just great splotches of brilliant light. There wasn't just one star to wish on, there was a whole sky full. They blinked and gleamed as though they were inviting her to send a million wishes up to them.

First, I wish Verna would come home right now this minute. Or at least by morning. Second, I wish Bernie's evil wish would go away and Daddy would really come home and we'd all be happy and live in a real house in a real town.
She moved away from the house, passed the hulking shape of a shed, and gingerly picked her way across the junk-filled yard, then through a gap in a broken-down fence and out into a field. She shivered in her thin pajamas, realizing too late that she should have put on her sneakers. The ground was rough and uneven, and it pricked and poked her feet, but she couldn't help it. It was like she was enchanted, like the sky had put a spell on her. She forgot about Verna, about Wayne, even about Bernie, and just stood there with her head bent back to her spine, staring.

“Beautiful, isn't it?”

Angel jumped. The man was right behind her, towering over her. He was taller than Wayne. She turned around. She couldn't see his face clearly, but it was framed by a shaggy beard and unkempt hair.
Santy Claus.
A little flip of fear twanged against her stomach.

“Don't you love it?”

She couldn't say anything at all. His head was back now, looking at the sky. He had the huge thing she had thought of as a bazooka in his big left hand. “Come with me,” he said, straightening up. “Let me show you something.”

Angel knew better than to follow strangers. Good Lord, they lectured about it at school all the time. She shook her head. “No. No, I have to go in,” she added, in case he couldn't see her shaking her head in the dark. “Right now.” She turned to go, careful not to touch him as she passed.

“I was just going to take a close look at Jupiter,” he said. “I bet you never saw Jupiter through a telescope.”

So that was what the bazooka was: a telescope. She
was
tempted, but no kid with any sense would let someone she didn't know—“I gotta go in,” she said again, but she was no longer moving in that direction.

“You don't remember me, do you, Angel?” How did he know her name? “When you were just a tiny thing, I held you up so you could look at the stars through my telescope. That was my old telescope. I've got a better one now.”

Something stirred inside Angel. Was that the good thing that had happened to her here? There had been a fight, and she had run out—out of the trailer and into the field. Someone had been there who picked her up and took her to see the stars. She remembered it as a dream with an angel sent from God when she was small and frightened.

“Yes, I do. I remember,” she said.

She followed the tall man out into the middle of the pasture. There were no trees, no buildings, no animals or people there—only the earth and the sky. He put the telescope down on its long skinny legs and twisted little screws until he had it standing firm. Then he put his eye to a little short tube on top and moved the long tube slowly until he said, “Okay, here she is. In all her splendor, Angel. I think she wants to show off for you tonight.” He stepped back. “Now, put your eye right here.” He indicated the end of the long tube. “That's it. Do you see it?”

She didn't see anything but black. “No,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

He bent his own eye to the tube and twisted a knob on the side. “Now try,” he said.

“Oh,” she breathed, “ooh. It's got four babies!”

He laughed. “Those ‘babies' are really moons. Poor old earth only has one, but Jupiter has a whole string of them and a lot of dust as well. My 'scope isn't powerful enough to show more than those four.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “You see that great big splotch of light over there?”

She hated to take her eye away from the telescope to look, but she did because he asked her to. “Yeah?”

“What do you think that is?”

“I don't know,” she said. “A really huge star?”

“That's what it looks like, but it's a cluster of stars. Not just one. And do you know how far away they are from you right now?”

“A thousand miles?”

“No. More like millions of miles. We're not even looking at stars. We're looking at the light from stars so far away it takes the light from the nearest star about two million years to travel from that star to your eye. And that light is going at 186,000 miles a second.”

She felt dizzy when she put her eye to the eyepiece again. How could she believe what he was saying? It wasn't stars she was seeing at all—just the light of stars zooming like fury to get to the earth but taking forever because it was so far to go.

She stepped back, moving her eye from the eyepiece and the overwhelming thought of light streaming down from fiery worlds whirling in space beyond all human view. “It's scary,” she said.

“What's scary?”

“How big everything is—how far away. I'd just be like an ant to that star.”

“Nah. Not nearly that big,” he said. “The whole world isn't that big.”

“You mean we're like nothing? The whole world is like nothing?” It frightened her to think of herself—her whole world—like less than a speck in the gigantic sky, like nothing at all.

“Yeah, we're small, but we aren't nothing,” he said. “Want to know a secret?”

“What?”

He reached over and pinched her arm.

“Ow,” she said. It didn't hurt so much as surprise her. “See this?” he said, lifting her arm up where he'd pinched it. “See this stuff here? This is the stuff of stars.”

“What do you mean?”

“The same elements, the same materials that make those stars up there is what makes you. You're made from star stuff.”

It didn't make sense. “They're burning in the sky, and I'm just standing here, not shining at all.”

“Well, yes, but that doesn't mean you're made from different stuff. Just that something different is happening to those same elements. You're still close kin to the stars.” She was trembling out there in the August night in nothing but her pajamas, but it wasn't because of the cold. “I better go in,” she said. “Bernie might wake up and miss me.” She started picking her way back toward the house, turning only when she got to the cluttered safety of the yard. She could see the tall shadowed form standing there, watching her, like a person from a strange dream.