The Same Stuff as Stars

As the days went by and Bernie didn’t come home, didn’t call, her life took on a sort of pattern. In the morning she would get wood from the woodpile outside the kitchen door and make a fire in the big iron stove, bringing in enough extra wood so Grandma could keep warm all day while she was gone. Then she’d make breakfast for herself and Grandma, usually just cereal. At school, the whispers about Wayne had died down, and she was mostly ignored, which was fine with her. Just fine. She had learned to do her homework in the afternoon, in case it was clear that night. She didn’t want homework hanging over her head. The days were getting short, so she usually had supper fixed by five o’clock, knowing that Grandma would go to bed soon afterward.

She hoped it would be warm at night, as the star man had told her not to come out if it was below freezing. “I’m having a little trouble getting over this cough,” he said.

“You ought to wear a hat,” she said, “and quit smoking.”

He laughed. “Keep at it, Angel. You may reform me yet.”

So when it was cloudy or freezing, she spent her evenings studying her star book and trying to memorize the names of all the bright stars and the constellations. In the section on autumn stars there were two north views of the sky and two south views. On the left, there was a picture that looked like the actual sky looking north or south. On the right, the constellations were connected like those connect-the-dots books. It helped a lot to have the connect-the-dots pictures. You had to admit that the real sky looked like God or whoever had picked up a bucketful of different-sized jewels and just flung them out against the dark.

Of course, the stars didn’t know their names. They didn’t even know they belonged together in a picture of a bear or a horse or a woman chained to a rock, waiting for a whale to swallow her up. That was all in people’s imaginations. People had turned the stars into pictures and stories to make them seem more manageable. Otherwise, all the immenseness would just sweep a person away like a giant wave. What is man? Even when people hadn’t known about galaxies millions of light-years away, hadn’t even known about light-years, the stars had been awesome.

When they had library period at school, the reading teacher usually took her to shelves with the easy books. She wasn’t sure why. She could read well enough, but one morning just before Halloween they had a sub, who let Mrs. Coates, the librarian, take charge. There was no way Angel was going to choose those silly little stories for herself, but she didn’t know how to find what she wanted, so for a minute she just stood in the middle of the floor.

“Can I help you find something, Angel?” It was Mrs. Coates. “What kind of book are you interested in?”

“I—I like books about stars,” Angel blurted out.

“Oh. Then I have the perfect book for you,” Mrs. Coates said and started over to the picture-book section. Angel hesitated. At least Ms. Bridgeman, the language-arts teacher, didn’t try to make her read picture books. Mrs. Coates bent over, picked a book off the shelf, and stood up. Angel had yet to move, so Mrs. Coates called over to her, “Angel, trust me, you’re going to love this book.”

The title of the book was Starry Messenger, and it was written and illustrated by someone named Peter Sis. Ever since she’d fallen in love with H. A. Rey, she had paid more attention to authors. On the cover of Mr. Sis’s book was a man looking through what had to be an old-timey telescope. He was on the porch or balcony of a tower. Painted on the tower were animals, which she soon realized represented the constellations. She opened the book to see a star-splattered night over a deep-blue cityscape. Only one light shone in the sleeping city. It was a window in a tower. In the window was the man with his telescope pointed at the sky.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Angel breathed the word. “Can I take it out?”

“Of course.”

Angel didn’t go to the checkout desk. She plunked herself down in the nearest chair, never closing the book.

The man in the tower was named Galileo Galilei. It was as if she’d been named Morgana Morgan or Angel Angelina. It was a little bit silly, but the man himself was not silly at all. He was a “famous scientist, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, physicist.” Whew. A man who knew everything but who thought he had to prove how he knew it to other people, and he did it by making the first telescope to be aimed at the stars. He wanted to prove that the sun was the center of the universe—not the earth, as most people believed.

This made the authorities so angry that they put him on trial and then locked him up in his house with someone guarding him. It was exactly like putting him in jail for the rest of his life. Finally, they had to admit he was right, but Galileo Galilei had been dead for 350 years when they said so. They gave him a pardon. That was the crazy part. They forgave him for their own mistake. It didn’t make sense.

Yes, it did, in a funny kind of way. Wasn’t she always wanting Verna to forgive her? Didn’t Verna have some apologizing to do herself? Not to mention Wayne. Why should she feel like apologizing to Wayne, especially if he really had robbed that convenience store and shot that clerk like they said? Maybe kids cost so much money... No.

It was not her fault that Wayne had robbed that store. She hadn’t asked for anything. If Verna had tried to make him feel he had to have more money, well, that was Verna’s fault, not hers. Wasn’t it?

“Angel! Stop daydreaming! It’s time to go back to class.” Megan Armstrong was standing over her, trying to see what book she was lost in. Angel tried to put her arm over the book to hide it. “It’s a picture book! You’re not checking out a picture book, are you?” She made sure all her friends could hear her.

“I’ve already checked it out for you, Angel,” Mrs. Coates called from the desk. “If you need any other books on astronomy, just let me know, all right?”

“Astronomy?” Angel could tell Megan was impressed.

“Thank you, Mrs. Coates,” Angel said, ignoring Megan’s open mouth. “If you have another one on Galileo Galilei, would you save it for me?” She moved past Megan into the line that was forming at the door. She could hear Megan and the others buzzing behind her, but this time she wasn’t embarrassed. She knew they were trying to figure out how someone like Angel knew about astronomy and Galileo Galilei.

The star man would love this book, but how could she show it to him in the dark? Even if she borrowed Grandma’s huge flashlight, the beam was hardly enough to make out the details in the pictures, much less read the print and the funny way the artist had written other stuff around the pages in script. Starry Messenger was gorgeous, almost as wonderful as the sky itself. It made H. A. Rey’s Know the Stars look poor and homely. Still, the two books had one thing in common: she never wanted to have to return either of them to the library.

She hid the book inside her notebook and read it the rest of the day. By the time she got off the bus, she had read the story at least twice and had read nearly everything that was written in script in the illustrations as well. It was almost as exciting as seeing Andromeda. She wondered if Galileo had been able to see that through his homemade telescope.

Out of habit, she checked the mailbox. It was empty except for a flyer urging Occupant to go to a sale at the Wal-Mart in Berlin. Fat chance! She balled up the flyer in her hand. She wondered if they’d had advertisements in Galileo’s time. She knew they had had a printing press, because Galileo’s own book had been published. But they sure as heck didn’t have Wal-Mart flyers! She giggled.

She caught herself dancing up the driveway and made herself slow down. If she was too happy when she walked through the door, Grandma was likely to ask how come. Then she’d either have to lie, which got complicated, or show her the book, which would take an explanation, an explanation that would have to include not only Miss Liza but the star man. She’d never mentioned the star man to Grandma. And the longer she waited the harder it got. What would Grandma say if Angel told her about him. If Grandma thought at all, she would probably wonder what a little girl was doin

g out with a grown man after dark. “Looking at the stars.” Even though that was the honest and total truth, it didn’t sound believable somehow.

Grandma was sitting in her chair in the near dark. Angel flipped on the switch by the door. “I’m back, Grandma.”

Grandma blinked in response to the sudden light. “Well, I ain’t blind or deaf yet. And no, the drat phone ain’t rang all day.”