The Same Stuff as Stars

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

Consider the Heavens

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.

“The other thing is...” Angel needed to word this carefully. “When Bernie doesn’t show up at school on Monday, well, they may give it a few days, but then they’re going to start calling and asking where he’s at. Then what do I do?”

“That is a problem,” Miss Liza said.

“Grandma—they won’t talk to me, probably—Grandma can lie and tell them he’s sick for just so long before they’ll send someone out to investigate.” She wished she hadn’t said that about Grandma lying, but Miss Liza didn’t remark on it.

“Are you thinking they might take you away, then?”

“It doesn’t really matter about me.”

“Yes, it does,” Miss Liza said.

“I do need to stay on here for Grandma. You wouldn’t believe what she eats when nobody’s looking out for her. And she hardly gets out of her chair. She didn’t get any exercise at all until she started walking Bernie to the bus stop and back. Now...well, if I’m not there to make her get out of that rocker...She really needs me.”

Miss Liza smiled and patted Angel’s knee with her crooked, brown-spotted hand, the veins standing up like blue ribbons under the papery skin.