"It got so I began to lay on my blanket whenever I was unhappy or Momma made me mad. I'd just wander off to my room, spread the blanket out on the bed and spread myself over it, folding my legs and closing my eyes. Then I was gone and I didn't hear anything, not Momma's stream of complaints or drunken laughter or shouts at Rodney. I was gone.
"When I came back, I felt refreshed, lighter. Rodney would tell me he had shaken me to tell me something and I didn't open my eyes. He said he shook me hard and finally, he gave up. Once, he did it and just sat on the floor waiting and when I opened my eyes, he said he had been watching my face and I had been smiling so much. He wanted to know why. I didn't want to tell him so I just said I had had a good dream."
"That's all it was anyway, right?" Jade asked, looking to Doctor Marlowe, "a dream? She didn't go anywhere."
Doctor Marlowe hesitated before responding and looked at me as if she was deciding whether or not to bust my bubble.
"It might have been more than just a dream," she said. "It might be a form of meditation. I meditate myself," she confessed.
"I really don't know what that is," Misty said. "I thought it was the same as dreaming."
"No. When you dream you are really still in a conscious state but the mind is being bombarded by different images you don't control. Dreams are more or less random. You can deliberately think of things, but there's no guarantee you'll dream about them after you've fallen asleep. Meditation is a higher form. In meditation, you deliberately set out to put your mind on another plane, another level. What Star was doing was concentrating so hard on her desire to leave her surroundings, she took herself to a higher plane and the result was it relaxed her. People meditate to avoid stress."
"Can we do that, too?" Jade asked.
"Yes. After we've all had an opportunity to talk, we'll discuss ways to relieve the tension and stress you're all experiencing and one of those techniques will involve some meditation. I'm not suggesting it's the cure-all, but it can help."
"I always did feel better," I emphasized. The others looked at me with envy. "Sometimes, I wished I never came back," I said.
Doctor Marlowe's face grew darker, her eyes more intensely on me.
"There's always that danger," she said. "We're here to make sure that doesn't happen." She looked at the others. "To any of you."
Maybe it was the way she said it or the way the others looked after she had said it, but suddenly it occurred to me how serious all this was, how we were all walking along the edge of different cliffs and how we could misstep and fall or deliberately fall into our own private oblivion. The atmosphere in Doctor Marlowe's office suddenly seemed heavier, all of us lost for a moment or two, thinking about our personal danger. I didn't know Jade's story or Cat's yet, but I looked from face to face and saw an identical terror in their eyes. I saw the concern in Doctor Marlowe's too and I remembered what Granny had said when she had dropped me off this morning.
"You're too young to become someone's lost cause, hear?"
I hear, Granny, I thought. I hear.
They were all waiting for me to continue. I took a breath and did so.
"I was listening closely to you yesterday, Misty, when you started talking about how you felt about your father's girlfriend and about going to his apartment when you knew she was there with him and what it was like for you," I said "But at least you could choose to go or not.
"I was about fifteen by now. One afternoon when I came home from school with Rodney, we saw suitcases and a couple of boxes in Momma's room. She wasn't there. Rodney looked at me and I thought first, maybe it's Daddy. Maybe he's finally come back.
"Rodney couldn't remember him, but I could, of course. Lots of times I have come here and talked about how I felt about my daddy, so I guess I should talk a little more about him. I told you how I was always hoping that he would return and how I always hoped the phone was ringing because he was on the other end ready to tell Momma he was on his way.
"We all talked about hate here, maybe me more than anyone yet. Maybe Jade and Cat are going to say a lot more when their turn comes, but my granny isn't wrong when she says hate is a two-edged sword. Yeah, you stick it in someone, but you're sticking it in yourself at the same time. That's what the minister said in church one Sunday when I went with Granny. She kept shifting her eyes at me as he preached about driving the hate out of your heart before it rots the good in you.
"Nothing made me hate my daddy more than his leaving us, and nothing made me want him more. When I was little and we had some good times, I remember him carrying me on his shoulders. I remember holding on to his hand, feeling how tight and strong a grip he had, and I remember never being afraid as long as he was with us.
"After he left and me and Momma and Rodney went anywhere, I couldn't help but feel this empty
place beside us. Sometimes, I'd forget and think Daddy just walked away for a moment. He will be standing right next to me soon. Of course, he wouldn't, but that didn't stop me from glancing to the side and thinking about him.
"Momma's a tough little woman. I don't think too many people, including men, would want to tangle with her. She could be a wildcat, so it wasn't that I was physically afraid. I just felt . . . like we were less, if that makes any sense;' I said.
Misty looked like she understood more than the other two. Jade turned her eyes from me and Cat stared at the floor.
"What I mean is it didn't help me just to have another man come into our house. It didn't make me feel better or safer. If anything, I think it went the other way.
"But that's what those boxes and suitcases meant: Aaron Marks was moving in to live with Momma. I could smell him in the room already.
" 'Whose is that?' Rodney wanted to know. 'Are we moving away, Star? Did Momma pack us up?'
" 'No Rodney. We aren't moving anywhere. We're stuck here.'
"About two hours later, the door opened. Momma and Aaron came in, both laughing. I was mashing up some potatoes for Rodney to have with his hamburger. Momma was dressed in her Sunday clothes and Aaron was in a suit with the tie loose. He was not quite as tall as my daddy and much wider in the hips with a little paunch. His head was rounder and his hair was thinner, showing a lot more forehead, which I thought made his eyes look larger. He had a nose with a bump in it because it had been broken a few times. He had tried to be a prizefighter when he was younger and ended up being one of those sparring partners that gets his head beat in regularly, which was what I thought accounted for his dull, dumb face and empty eyes.