The Same Stuff as Stars

by Katherine Paterson

  “It isn’t true that your father is the Wayne Morgan who robbed the Cumberland Farms in Barre a few years ago?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Angel wasn’t faking. She really didn’t know what Wayne had or had not done. Nobody had ever said.

  Megan gave a twisted smile and sniffed. “Just wondering,” she said. “It was in the papers a while back. The guy was sent to jail...for a long time.” She studied Angel’s face, which Angel willed to be blank. Finally, Megan turned away. Angel watched her go back to her usual table to report.

  So the word was out. Somebody’s mom or dad or grandparent had a long memory. Vermont was a small state. Morgans were known around here, for good or bad. It had taken just three weeks. The girls were whispering and giggling and stealing glances at her. She stared back. She wasn’t going to let them think they could humiliate her. How many of them knew that the star Rigel was 545 light-years from earth? They probably didn’t even know what a light-year was. Or that to the stars at the farthest rim of the universe they weren’t even going to be born for billions of years. They weren’t anything more than she was. Less than pond scum, less than dust, less than nothing at all.

  Still, she wished they hadn’t found out quite so soon. Before, she was nothing in their eyes, but now, though still less than nothing, she was as visible as the sun. Which she bet they didn’t know was 93 million miles away—the closest star. Which was a fiery ball that would burn you up if you got too close. She put all of Megan’s gang into a spaceship and shot them straight at the sun.

  Somehow she got through the day, trying hard to ignore the fact that all conversations stopped abruptly when she walked past, as eyes sidled toward her. It wasn’t as if it hadn’t happened before. She ought to be used to it by now, shouldn’t she? If she just weren’t so tired. But she couldn’t both sleep and see the stars, and she couldn’t stand the days without the nights of stars.

  The afternoon dragged through to the final bell. She hunched into a corner of her bus seat, willing herself not to look or listen to the other kids on the bus, yet unable to ignore the buzz and the stares.

  At her stop, she hopped off and ran up the driveway, the sob that had choked her throat since lunchtime threatening to explode. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t. They weren’t worth crying about.

  Grandma was sitting rocking in the kitchen. Angel wanted to run past her, go upstairs and throw herself down on her bed, but something in Grandma’s face stopped her.

  “What’s the matter, Grandma?”

  “I don’t know. Something.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If I knowed, I could tell you, couldn’t I? I just said I don’t know.”

  Angel could feel her flesh crawl. She caught Grandma’s fear. Something was happening, but she didn’t know what it was. Dread was hanging over the house like dense fog on a mountain road.

  “Where’s Bernie?” she blurted out.

  “At school.” There was a pause. “I reckon.”

  Angel focused her mind on the elementary school. She willed herself to see Bernie there, straightening up his desk, saying goodbye to his teacher, walking out of the building, getting on the bus. In her heart she knew that wasn’t the real Bernie, who would have resisted doing whatever every other kid did, but a different Bernie, a kind of robot Bernie, the kind that she could control in her imagination and make do the right things, the kind of Bernie she could make come home safe and happy.

  “I guess I’ll go wait for the bus.” It was another forty-five minutes before it was due, but she needed to keep mental watch over the bus through its whole route, from the school door to Grandma’s mailbox.

  Grandma leaned back in the rocker and shut her eyes. She looked like something was paining her. That was it. The bad thing. Grandma felt sickly. She was an old lady. That was natural for old people, wasn’t it? They had so many parts that didn’t work so well anymore.

  “Okay, Grandma?” she asked softly. “I’m just going out to the mailbox and wait for Bernie, okay?”

  The old woman nodded without opening her eyes.

  In light-years it was nothing, but in feeling time it was forever before she heard the shifting gears and saw the yellow bus coming over the brow of the hill. She waited, hardly breathing. If a doctor had put a stethoscope to her chest, he probably wouldn’t even have detected a heartbeat. The bus rumbled past where she stood. It didn’t slow, much less stop.

  “Bernie!” she yelled at the back of it. She ran a few steps down the road behind it. “Bernie!” Unbelieving, she watched it bumping and rattling out of sight, heading for the corner, turning onto the paved road.

  She raced back to the house.

  Grandma sat up, eyes wide. “Where’s Bernie?”

  Angel was fumbling through the phone book. Why hadn’t she kept the school number? You always do that. Keep the number by the phone in case of emergency. She was breathless now. The line was busy, of Course. She slammed down the phone. Oh Lord, I’ve forgotten the number. Another fumble through the phone book. Another dial. At last that impatient voice of the secretary. “Chesterville Union Elementary School.”

  “Where’s Bernie?” she blurted out, realizing too late that it was the wrong thing to say.

  “Excuse me? Who did you want to speak to?”

  She forced herself to be quiet a minute and took a deep breath. “This is Mrs. Verna Morgan. My son, Bernie, didn’t get off the school bus just now—”

  “Hold on a minute, please. I’ll check.”

  “What she say? What she say?” Grandma was on her feet, wild-eyed, her head shaking.

  “Shh. She’s checking.”

  “Phht.” Grandma made a funny sound with her lips. “Who is this?” the secretary demanded.

  Angel kept still.

  “I’m asking because, according to the sign-out sheet, Mrs. Verna Morgan came by at twelve thirteen P.M. and picked Bernie Morgan up. It says here ‘Doctor’s appointment in Burlington.’”

  FIFTEEN

  Polaris

  Grandma fell back into her rocker as though someone had smacked her in the face. “Doctor’s appointment, my stuffed cabbage.”

  What was Verna doing? “Kidnapping! She kidnapped her own kid!” Angel was walking back and forth. She banged into a chair, sending it crashing to the floor, and didn’t bother to pick it up. “She kidnapped Bernie! She didn’t want me to know she was taking him. She didn’t even come to get his clothes! I would have given him Grizzle. I would have.” The tears were coming so hard now that she couldn’t see where she was going, and she hit her hip against the edge of the table. She welcomed the pain. It gave her an excuse to cry all the more. What she didn’t say—couldn’t say out loud—was, Why just Bernie? Why did she take Bernie and leave me behind? Doesn’t she love me, too? Oh, Mama, I need you, too.

  “Sit down, Angel, before you break something past fixing.”

  She was suddenly ashamed. She went over and picked up the chair. “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t mean the danged chair. I mean you. Come here.”

  She went over to the rocker. Grandma had her skinny little arms out. “Here, in my lap, baby.”

  Even though she was almost bigger than the old woman, Angel sat down on the bony lap. The arms felt like sticks around her shoulders, but it didn’t matter. She let go against them. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever sat on anyone’s lap and felt herself held and rocked.

  “That Verna is a first-class bitch.”

  “No,” Angel felt obliged to defend her mother. “That isn’t it. She—she probably doesn’t have enough money to take care of two kids, and Bernie’s the baby. He needs her more than me.”

  Grandma snorted. Angel could feel the vibration of it through her ribs. “You’re more of a mother to that boy than Verna ever was.” It was like something Verna herself had said. But Verna must have forgotten who it was that really took care of Bernie.

  Maybe she’d changed. Maybe now she would remember to
make him eat all five food groups and wear his hat when it was cold outside and—Angel began to cry again, but softly this time.

  “There, there,” Grandma patted her. “I didn’t mean to get you all roiled up. She’ll probably bring him back by tomorrow. Ain’t just anybody knows how to handle that little pricker bush.”

  Angel stood up. She needed a tissue badly, and although she liked the thought of Grandma’s lap, it was about as comfortable as cuddling with kindling. She went into the bathroom and got some toilet paper to blow her nose, not daring to look at herself in the streaky mirror. She knew she was a mess. “Grandma,” she called from the doorway. “How about I make us some tea?”

  “Well, that sounds downright civilized.”

  After the tea, even though it was still afternoon, Angel made supper for the two of them. They didn’t talk much. They tried not to look at the place where Bernie should have been sitting. Grandma even ate her broccoli without complaining. Angel started to say something about it, but she could feel the tears start as she formed the sentence in her mind, and kept quiet. She washed the dishes and left them to dry beside the sink.

  “I think I’ll do my homework upstairs and then go on to bed,” she said.

  Grandma nodded from the rocker. Trying to be a comfort seemed to have worn her out.

  Angel lay on her stomach under the bare bulb and opened Know the Stars. It was a page she’d read so often she could almost recite it.

  Polaris (stress on LAR) is the only star that never changes its place in the sky, at least not so that you can notice it. It always stays put while the other stars and constellations are moving....

  That was what she needed—a Polaris, a North Star, that never moved. Something steady so that she could always find her way. But what about Bernie? She’d been his Polaris, hadn’t she? When everything else had changed, at least he’d had her. Now he had Verna, who switched around faster than a whirling planet. She wished she knew how to pray. She wanted to pray for Bernie, for Verna, even for Wayne.

  Wayne. He was her daddy. He never would have run off with Bernie and left her behind like Verna had. It wasn’t his fault the police had thrown him in jail. He didn’t even do it, whatever it was they said he did. He’d never even smacked her when she was little. He’d bought her Grizzle and given her her name, Angel. Did a man who named his baby girl Angel sound like somebody who would go off and commit a crime?

  Even as she crept down the stairs, even as she took the phone off the hook, even when with her finger shaking she yanked around the dial the numbers she had memorized without ever meaning to, even until the moment the voice at the other end answered—something in her stomach warned her not to go ahead, her whispery voice as trembly as her body.

  “This is Angel Morgan. I need to get a message to my daddy, Wayne Morgan. Just say...just say Verna’s come and took Bernie off. Just tell him that.”

  She hung up the phone and went to the kitchen door to look out. She could smell frost in the air and hear the wind wailing in the changing leaves. It was a night of no stars.

  ***

  Like a sleepwalker, she stumbled through the next day at school. She hadn’t wanted to go at all. She’d wanted to stay by the phone, in case. But Grandma made her go. “It’s like sitting in the garden watching cabbage come to a head. The phone’ll never ring long as you’re waiting beside it. Ask me. I know about such things.”

  She spent most of lunchtime in the bathroom and was still there in the stall when a group of girls swept in. “What did she say when you asked her about the robbery, Megan?”

  Angel froze as Megan’s voice answered the question. “Oh, she pretended she didn’t know what I was talking about, but my grandma told my daddy and he told my mom that she’s Wayne Morgan’s girl. Grandma even had the clippings. She saves everything, and Daddy was in grade school with Wayne Morgan, so she thought he’d be interested.”

  Angel strained to hear the details. They might think she was pretending, but she really didn’t know. It made her feel the fool to have Megan Armstrong know more about her daddy than she did.

  “Did he shoot somebody?”

  “He said he didn’t, but the clerk had a bullet in him, didn’t he? One of those guys in the ski masks shot him, and the other guys said Wayne Morgan did it. So it was two against one. They shouldn’t ever let somebody like that out of jail.”

  But he didn’t do it. Angel broke out in a cold sweat. Wayne wouldn’t hurt anybody. But how did she know? She hardly knew her own daddy. It had happened when she was five, and all she could remember before that was the yelling. There must have been good times, too. Yes, when he bought her Grizzle. She remembered how happy she was when he gave her Grizzle. Verna had snorted something like “Blue bear? I swear,” but Angel had loved it from the first. It was the only present he had ever given her, although for a while Verna would give her something and say “It’s from your daddy and me.” She had stopped saying it years ago. There hadn’t been many presents, just the toys they got from the Salvation Army Santa Claus. That hardly counted.

  The girls were still whispering, but whether about Wayne or something or somebody else, she didn’t know. She wished they’d leave so she could come out of the stall. She read the dirty words and looked at the pictures scratched into the back of the door. You’d think the school would paint them over. Then again, some were dug deep in the door, so they’d probably show through the paint. She wished she had something with a sharp point, so she could scratch something nasty about Megan Armstrong on the door. Something that would last for years.

  “Megan, shh! There’s somebody in there.”

  “What of it?” Megan’s voice answered. “Hey, you in there. You’re not supposed to eavesdrop.”

  Angel stayed still, but she was seething inside. She’d been here when they came in, hadn’t she?

  “You scared to come out?” It was the voice of one of Megan’s gang, Heather Somebody-or-other.

  There was a giggle. “Hea-thur!”

  Then suddenly Heather’s head appeared under the stall door. The eyes went wide and quickly disappeared. “It’s her in there!” she whispered fiercely.

  “Everything I said was true. It was in the newspapers.” Angel could almost see Megan tossing her bouncy curls.

  “Let’s get out of here,” someone said. She could hear them scuffling out into the hall, whispering and giggling as they went. Angel was almost glad. For a few minutes she was able to think how much she hated those girls instead of the fact that Bernie was gone. Gone.

  ***

  She slumped onto her bus seat with something like relief. The worst day of her life was coming to an end. Soon she’d be home. It was strange to think of Grandma’s house as home, but it was. Home with a hole bigger than a moon crater, now that there was no Bernie in it.

  “It didn’t ring,” Grandma said. She wasn’t in her rocker. She was standing by the hot plate. “I’m fixing me some tea,” she said. “You want some, too?”

  Angel nodded. “Then I think I’ll walk up to the library.”

  Grandma stiffened. “It’s getting dark early,” she said. “Tomorrow’s Saddidy. Wait till tomorrow. Then you’ll have time to shop, too. We must be out of one of them precious food groups by now.”

  Angel giggled despite herself. “You’re catching on, Grandma. I’ll have you trained yet.”

  They drank their tea in the darkening kitchen, their bodies in knots, fighting to keep from turning to stare at the phone. She’d always tried to defend Verna, always tried to see her mother’s side of things, but it was hard to do this time.

  ***

  She woke up in the night. She couldn’t quite remember the dream that had awakened her. Someone—Bernie, she thought—had been crying, but the only fragment of the dream that had stayed with her was the sight of the pickup pulling away with Bernie’s arm sticking out the window on the passenger side. “Pull in your arm, Bernie,” she’d yelled. “How many times do I have to tell you? Get your arm out of the
window!” She sat up, her throat as hoarse as though she’d been yelling out loud instead of in a dream.

  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.