Stars in the Grass

by Ann Marie Stewart

  Reverend Davidson assumed the podium and opened his Bible with the rustle of onionskin pages. I loved that familiar sound. The scripture reading for that Sunday was about Mary Magdalene’s arrival at the tomb and how she didn’t recognize Jesus.

  “Did Mary Magdalene go to the tomb to find a risen Lord?” the minister said. “No, Mary Magdalene came to anoint a dead body,” he said. “Mary was so certain Jesus was dead that she didn’t recognize the resurrected Lord when He appeared in front of her.” What about us? Would we be able to recognize Joel in heaven?

  Heaven frightened me. Each time I imagined on and on and on with no end, my stomach rolled and I felt dizzy. There was something good about day and night and seasons and stops and starts. What would it be like to spend eternity without any control over time? I tried to picture the happiest day of my life and imagined it going on forever. Was heaven like that?

  And what would we be like in heaven? Would Joel be a kid and me an old lady? I sighed and Dad looked at me and mouthed, What? I shook my head and looked down. Maybe we could talk about it later. Then again, maybe not.

  “In what ways are you returning to tombs with gloom in your heart when we can claim victory on Easter Sunday?” Reverend Davidson concluded, his voice rising in power and volume. I wasn’t sure he needed a mike.

  Mrs. Tangan was listed for special music and I looked down the pew toward Matt and we both rolled our eyes. Mrs. Tangan’s hair was ratted so high, a bird could have lived inside, which might have explained her high soprano warble. We used to mimic her on the way home from church, increasing the vibrato with each verse. Today she sang her annual special music selection, which began with “Low in the grave he lay,” a dark and ominous verse that erupted into the happy chorus “Up from the grave He arose!” and an ascent that scaled a full octave. “Hallelujah! Christ arose!” Mrs. Tangan sang, beaming.

  Reverend Davidson’s message about Mary Magdalene was just about as good a message as he had ever delivered. It was Easter Sunday and my greatest hope was that it had resurrected something in Dad.

  “Can you girls put the napkins on the table?” Mom asked when we got home. Rita and I began folding each pale blue square, setting one at each plate.

  “That rose and gravy song was kind of interesting,” Rita said, a teasing lilt to her voice.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, taking the bait.

  Rita smiled playfully. She was the nicest friend anyone could ask for, but she was mischievous, and because we sometimes read each other’s minds, it just happened.

  “Up from the GRAVY a ROSE!” we belted at the same time but different pitches, loudly and proudly, until Miss Mary Frances reprimanded us for not respecting Mrs. Tangan’s God-given talent and courage. After that, even the sight of Mom’s potatoes made me bite my lip.

  “Uncle Troy, would you say grace?” Mom asked.

  Uncle Troy looked at Dad and then around the table and bowed his head. At his “Amen,” I cased out my favorite dishes.

  “So, what did you think of Reverend Davidson’s message?” Miss Mary Frances said. “And please pass the scalloped potatoes,” she added with equal importance.

  “Thank goodness we’re not having gravy,” I whispered, and then Rita and I got to giggling. Miss Mary Frances frowned.

  “It was nice to have the focus on a woman,” Miss Patti answered, smiling at Miss Mary Frances and then shaking her head at the two of us. “Seems to me that the men always get the most press in the Easter story, but this story is really about a woman,” she explained as she passed the hot cross buns to her right. “Can I get anyone some jam?” she asked. “That’s why Mary Magdalene’s my favorite.”

  “How about you, Matt?” I asked, looking down the table. “Who’s your favorite?”

  “Judas,” he said without missing a beat.

  “Seriously, Matt.”

  “Okay, then maybe the guys around Jesus on the cross,” he answered.

  “Which one?” I persisted. “Please say the guy who goes to paradise.”

  “That one.”

  Maybe there was hope for Matt yet.

  “I like Peter,” Miss Mary Frances piped in. “Even though nobody bothered to ask me,” she scolded, and then paused so we’d have a chance for a follow-up question.

  “Why Peter?” Mom asked politely.

  “Because Peter hung around,” Miss Mary Frances said. “He denied Him, yes, but he stuck closer than those other cowardly disciples.”

  Miss Mary Frances always had a fresh way of seeing things.

  “But don’t forget John,” Uncle Troy said. “Jesus asks him to be Mary’s son.”

  “As if anyone could replace Jesus,” Mom said.

  “John is Jesus’ beloved friend. That’s what I’d like to be.” Uncle Troy spoke honestly.

  “This is nice,” Miss Patti said. “I think I could go to church if people were allowed to ask a few questions like we’re doing right now. And I think I might listen to someone who didn’t act like he had all the answers.”

  “Those potatoes look delicious, Renee,” Dad said, changing the subject and offering Mom a smile. “Could you pass them down?” That triggered the gravy song, and I forgot Miss Mary Frances’s warning and started humming it until Rita kicked me under the table. Dad took two heaping helpings on his plate; he had obviously missed Mom’s cooking as much as Matt had.

  The room went quiet as we all enjoyed our favorites except Rita, who seemed to be trying to decide what she wanted next. “I guess it’s not so bad to lose someone if He comes back in three days,” she said. Quiet Rita. The one-who-rarely-talks-Rita, piping in with some deep thought, when before all she could hear was gravy and roses. I nearly choked on my hot cross bun.

  Dad, who had been strangely quiet about anything except food, nodded an unspoken understanding.

  “Now that’s a thought, Rita,” Miss Patti said to fill the space widening the table like a leaf added for holiday dinner.

  “But I think even if we knew the plan, it’d still be hard to watch someone suffer and die,” Dad concluded.

  Even Miss Mary Frances was silenced. Uncle Troy took another bite so he wouldn’t have to say anything. Mom took the empty ham tray to the kitchen, and I pointed to the ambrosia salad that barely made it back around the table to me as everyone served up generous portions.

  “And what’s next on the church calendar?” Miss Patti asked from her end of the table. That could be taken a lot of ways.

  “Ascension, then Pentecost,” Dad answered from the head of the table. “The gift of the Holy Spirit.”

  “The one Jesus called the Comforter, am I right?” Patti asked, looking straight at Dad. She was right and she knew it, and her point was not lost on any of us.

  “They lose the Son and gain the Comforter?” she repeated. I remembered Pentecost as tongues of fire now aptly demonstrated over Easter dinner.

  Miss Mary Frances’s eyes widened, Uncle Troy cleared his throat into his napkin, and Rita hummed our song as Mom passed the ham for another round.

  “And the beginning for the Church,” Miss Patti added, to my surprise. By her firm tone, this was not a definition but an encouraging proposal.

  My Easter was about being lost and found. It was about a Comforter. About hope and life, and the birth of a Church, and resurrecting dreams even when nobody quite knew how. But we were together and we were talking. And something about that felt—for now—almost good enough.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Mom opened the mail, sorting bills into one pile, dumping junk mail in the trash, and saving handwritten envelopes for last. With her head bent over and her face in deep concentration, I noticed for the first time that she had some gray hair. Matt and Dad watched the news side by side on the couch. Matt looked like a younger version of Dad, without all the creases.

  “Grandpa and Grandma are coming,” Mom announced, letter in hand.

  “Yeah!” I squealed, then stopped in disbelief. “Really?” I didn’t ask the obvious
question. Why would they come now?

  “You’ve gotta be kidding. They never come,” Matt said, turning from the news.

  “They came once,” Dad corrected. “After Abby was born.”

  “They say they’re coming for your birthday,” Mom said, looking toward me.

  “No, they’re coming because we’re so messed up,” Matt corrected.

  “Matt!” Dad scolded.

  “He’s right. They’re coming to fix us,” Mom agreed.

  “They’d better hurry,” I said, and then everybody laughed.

  “Do they know Abby and I don’t live here?” Mom asked. Dad kept watching the TV. Soon Grandpa and GramAnna would see that everything was broken.

  “You could come home for a week,” Matt suggested.

  “Matt has a point,” Dad said.

  “Not now,” Mom said simply.

  Not now. Not now. Then when?

  “I’m glad that new counselor’s been helping Matt, but we’re not all at the same place,” Mom pointed out.

  Matt was seeing a new counselor? I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or worse. He was getting help; that was a good thing and it probably explained some of the positive changes I had seen in him, but what did it mean for me? Would somebody make me say why I had weird feelings and strange thoughts and anxious “whatifs” about bad things that could suddenly happen to us?

  “We can’t work on things when we’re not together,” Dad said.

  “But we weren’t working on things when we were together, either,” Mom pointed out.

  “It’s about the job, then. You won’t come home until I go back.”

  “No, I don’t care about the job anymore,” she explained. “If you can’t do it, then find another career. A new minister would give the church an opportunity to start over, and maybe we could restart and move on, too.”

  “Seems like you already have,” said Dad.

  “Maybe I have,” Mom agreed. “I don’t want to be the same person I was. I can’t.” She didn’t apologize; Mom stood tall, her voice confident and persuasive. “Now maybe you should go seek that pastoral counseling the elders were talking about.”

  “Would that really change anything?”

  “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I don’t know.”

  Though I had always wanted to be done with nine so I could have a double-digit birthday and hold up both hands and answer, “Ten!” I no longer wanted a celebration and I told Mom that.

  I also told Mom I didn’t want a lot of friends over or a cake or games or even lots of presents to open. Unfortunately, Mom didn’t get it. She hadn’t gotten to do Joel’s fourth; and for his sixteenth, Matt said he just wanted money or a car, and we all knew that wasn’t going to happen since we were still borrowing a used loaner to get around.

  And so on May fourteenth, when I came home from school, nine girls screamed, “SURPRISE!”

  Mom had planned a bowling party. My first time bowling. Ten years, ten bowling pins, and ten girls. She had it all worked out: Rita, Melody, Phyllis, Marci, Barbara, Maureen, Kris, Linda, Tonja, and me.

  “But it’s not my—” I began.

  “Not yet. I had to do it early so it’d be a surprise!” Mom hadn’t looked this excited for a long time. She gave me a big hug and then scooted us out the door to caravan to the Spare Room, the only bowling alley in town. Oh joy, I thought. Hadn’t she heard me? Didn’t she understand? I didn’t want a birthday.

  The boy at the counter rolled his eyes as we shouted out our shoe sizes. At first I thought he deliberately gave us the dumbest-looking shoes on the rack until I realized everybody had clown shoes. Barbara and Rita looked down at their feet and started tapping away. My shoes were too big, but I didn’t care.

  “Once my uncle Ed took me bowling!” Tonja bragged.

  “Have you ever knocked them all down at once?” Linda asked.

  “That’s called a strike,” Marci explained knowingly. She had brought the pink bowling ball her grandparents had given her last Christmas.

  “This is gonna be fun!” Barb said, taking my hands in hers. I didn’t share her enthusiasm, and headed down to the end of the bowling alley where Mom had the #10 station decorated with streamers and a big sign reading A HAPPY TEN FOR OUR ABBY! She thought of everything.

  “Let me go first!” Phyllis begged.

  “No, please, I want to!” Melody said.

  “Abby should. After all, it’s her birthday,” Marci pointed out. I looked down the other nine lanes, where people got to bowl anonymously.

  “Well, at least let her pick who goes first then,” Kris said, seemingly aware I wasn’t fighting for that honor.

  “Go reverse alphabetical,” I suggested, and then I wandered off as if in search of the right weight ball, leaving Barbara lining everybody up reverse alphabetically in two lanes.

  I slipped between the popcorn machine and a huge tank of stuffed animals where you could put in a quarter and a claw would grab at the animal you wanted, and I watched the party that was supposed to be for me. Silly, crazy, screaming girls who, except for Rita, couldn’t understand me. I was dying inside.

  If I were somebody else, I might want to be one of those girls bowling in lane #10, their names and scores on the board: Tonja, Rita, Phyllis, Mom, Melody, and Maureen on one team: Marci, Linda, Kris, Dad, Barbara, and me on the other.

  Dad bowled a strike, but the only other person who knocked down all her pins was Linda. We were just plain awful. My turn awaited. Finally, Barbara bowled and I was next.

  I returned with a black ball. There is nothing graceful about a skinny almost-ten-year-old girl hurling a six-pound globe down a narrow aisle. The only grace we bowlers experienced was in getting a spare, which Dad described as a second chance.

  Suddenly, Maureen rolled a strike and everybody screamed. I covered my ears, watching for their mouths to close so I knew I could take my hands away. I came with a headache that was only getting worse, compounded by Neil Sedaka, the smell of hot dogs, rolling balls, crashing pins, and fourth graders.

  Tonja dropped her six-pound ball on Mom’s foot, Kris spilled her soda all over the floor, and Barbara was mopping it up with Dad’s coat. I slumped low in my plastic chair and stretched out my feet. Stupid blue, brown, and yellow shoes. I hadn’t even taken off my coat. Could we go yet?

  “It’s your turn, Abby,” Phyllis said. “Hurry and go!”

  I wished I could get my turn over faster, but I had never been able to knock down more than four at a time.

  “Who’s the birthday girl?” I heard from far away, pretending it wasn’t me and praying there was someone else with a birthday.

  “It’s her,” someone said, pointing at me.

  “Who’s the birthday girl?” I heard again as the man brought over a pink T-shirt with the words Knock ‘em dead on your birthday.

  “Put it on!” my friends encouraged, but I shook my head in such a way they didn’t force me. The man looked disappointed. The whole thing was ridiculous.

  “Abby, that was kind of rude,” Mom scolded. “What’s gotten into you?”

  Dad tried to help me with my swing, but gave up quickly.

  Every time Marci threw the pink ball, I thanked God for the padding on the side of the lane. We always moved behind the scoring table, knowing she could throw it backward or sideways and take out any one of us. I looked at the scoreboard. Nobody had rolled over an eighty. Wow. Time for a break.

  Mom had made a cake with ten candles and frosted lanes. The girls argued over who would get the bubble gum bowling balls lining the sides. I didn’t really care.

  I opened my presents and got a Troll doll, Barbie, turtleneck sweater, smiley face clock for my bedroom, and poster of David Cassidy. I thanked them all. Then Linda handed me a soft package. I ripped open the wrapping paper to discover a large stuffed monkey. The girls started laughing and I felt my face burn. Did they know? Who would give me a monkey, knowing Joel was the one who loved monkeys?

  “I though
t he looked like Curious George!” Linda said, shrugging. She didn’t look guilty. But Curious George?

  “Abby, open another present,” Mom said as she handed me a bright pink package obviously from Marci.

  “I don’t really want to,” I said at last.

  “C’mon, Abby, at least open what I got you!” Phyllis begged, yelling over Jefferson Airplane.

  “And me, too! You didn’t open mine!” said Melody. What was the big deal anyway?

  “It’s just …” I stuttered. “I don’t know …”

  “Maybe it’s time to light the cake,” Rita said, granting me a temporary reprieve.

  Mom lit one candle and, with it, lit the other nine. Blue- and pink-colored wax dripped over the frosting. On cue, they sang “Happy Birthday” as badly as they bowled, Melody Ludema’s nasal pitchiness sticking out above the rest. It was better when she didn’t sing.

  And then, because she just didn’t get it, Linda picked up that stuffed monkey and added, “Happy Birthday to you, you live in a zoo, you look like a monkey, and you smell like one, too!”

  “Blow them out! Blow them out!” the girls chanted. “All at once!” Kris said as if I needed instructions. “All TEN!” Phyllis added. “Make a strike!” Mom cheered. I bent down close to the cake and tried not to breathe deeply. The Spare Room smelled of cigarette smoke, hot dogs, pizza, stale popcorn, catsup, and mustard.

  As soon as I blew out the candles, Mom pulled them out and began cutting the cake.

  “I want the pink gumball!”

  “Can I have a piece with lots of frosting?”

  “I want the blue piece.”

  “I only want cake, Mrs. McAndrews.”

  I wanted to yell, SHUT UP!

  “Which one do you want, honey?” Mom asked. “Which part of the cake?”

  “I don’t care,” I said. And I meant it. As at most birthday parties, the girls scraped off the frosting, took a bite of the cake, and then went back to play.

  We bowled one more set. The ball felt so heavy, weighted. Once Linda threw the ball and it flew in the air and came down with a thud. I looked for a dent in the floor and checked the ball for damage when it returned.