The Same Stuff as Stars

“We don’t have enough money,” Angel said as quietly as she could.

“Okay, then, how ’bout a candy bar.”

“I can’t, Bernie.” If only she’d put the taxi money in her socks. It hadn’t occurred to her that she would need emergency money out here in the country where there wasn’t a taxi for miles around.

The clerk looked at her as though she felt sorry for her—no more money and a little brother who couldn’t understand. Maybe she’d feel sorry enough to throw in a candy bar or something, but “Have a nice day, kids” was all she said when she smiled and handed Angel the few pennies of change, pushing the small bag of groceries across the counter at her.

Angel grabbed Bernie’s hand and dragged him out of the store and down the steps. At the bottom, she put the bag on the ground and took out the Sugar Pops. She opened the box and handed Bernie a handful. “Here,” she said. “It’s just like candy.”

“No, it’s not,” said Bernie, but he began eating it anyway, sucking each bit until it dissolved in his mouth. It kept him quiet for almost five minutes. Oh Lord, what am I going to do if Mama doesn’t come back tonight?

Mama didn’t come back that night—or the next night.

“You promised!” Bernie accused her. “You said she’d be right back.”

“I know, Bernie. I don’t know what’s keeping her.”

“She’s never coming

back. Never. Never. Never.”

She tried calling their old number. Grandma’s phone was an old black one attached to the kitchen wall. It was a dial phone with numbers in a circle instead of buttons to push. She knew it was long distance, and she felt bad about using Grandma’s phone for long distance, but she couldn’t help it. She had to try. The phone just rang and rang. The third day someone answered. It wasn’t Verna. It was the machine operator voice saying, “This is no longer a working number.” That meant Verna had settled everything, moved out, and was on the way back! “See, Bernie, I told you. She’ll be here tonight.”

***

But she wasn’t back that night, or the next. Still, she’d promised Grandma—“No more than a week.” The week passed. No Verna. They’d run out of Sugar Pops, since Bernie ate them for every meal, not just breakfast. Angel made herself eat the other sugared stuff at breakfast and ate peanut butter sandwiches for the rest of the meals. Grandma was content with beans and canned peaches. It didn’t seem the time or the place for Angel to explain about the five major food groups and how even older adults needed to have a balanced diet.

She made the milk last almost the whole week, rationing it out on breakfast cereal and never drinking it otherwise. Bernie didn’t care about milk anyhow. He was content to eat his Sugar Pops dry at lunch and supper. He regularly asked for soda, but it was more to annoy her than a real request. Angel knew he didn’t really think a Pepsi was going to magically appear in the fridge. But those dry, sticky peanut butter sandwiches made Angel long for a tall glass of cool milk herself. She’d never thought of how much she liked milk before. She dreamed about milk. It was almost like people lost in the desert imagining they see an oasis.

To top it all, it rained every day that week. What was she going to do? Bernie was nagging at her every minute. If only there was a TV. Who cared what Ms. Hallingford thought about TV rotting little minds? Angel was about to lose her own mind with nothing around to keep Bernie quiet. Secretly, she searched the house, including the closed-up sitting room, every room but Grandma’s bedroom, but she couldn’t find a set. She made no progress in her venture into astronomy. Bernie claimed whenever she pulled the book out that it made him wheeze.

Finally, on Saturday morning, when there was still no Verna, she went to the phone before anyone else was awake. She put her index finger in the 1 and dragged it heavily around until it stopped. Then she let go, and when the 1 was back in place, started on the 8, laboriously pulling her finger around all ten numbers, calling the only phone number besides her own that she had ever memorized, the one she’d carried around, like the taxi money in her pocket, for emergency use only.

“I need to speak to Mr. Wayne Morgan,” she said to the operator who answered. “This is his daughter. It’s an emergency.”

TEN

The Swan

The operator wouldn’t call Wayne to the phone. She took Angel’s number and said she would give him the message to call. But the phone didn’t ring. Come to think of it, she hadn’t heard the phone ring the whole time she and Bernie had been at Grandma’s. Maybe it didn’t work. Maybe Wayne was trying and trying to call back, but the phone was broken and he couldn’t get through.

When a whole day and evening had passed and still no call, Angel finally blurted out her worry to Grandma. She waited the next morning until Bernie had gone into the bathroom. She shut the door firmly behind him, held tightly on to the knob behind her back, and said quietly, “Grandma, I think your phone’s broke.”

“Nothing wrong with that phone. Just old. Not one of your fancy-dancy kinds, but it works fine. What’s the matter? You trying to make phone calls without asking?” She had been. Long distance, too. “I shoulda asked. But I had to call Daddy.”

“Wayne? You tried to call Wayne at the jail?”

“Yes, I did. I should have asked you, but I was so worried about Mama not coming back—”

“So that’s why he called last night.”

“He called?” Her voice went up to a squeak. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You was asleep. Besides, the dang fool tried to call collect. I ain’t accepting charges for no long-distance phone call. The woman said would I accept a collect call from Wayne Morgan, and I said, ‘Not on your stuffed cabbage. If that boy wants to call he can do it on his own nickel, not his poor old grandma’s.’”

“Grandma! I need to talk to Daddy!”

“What about?”