“Nothing is going to change after today,” Miles said. “You know that, right?”
My parents and I nodded. We understood that lightning wouldn’t strike our house at midnight. No alarms would sound. The stars would stay out, and the sun would rise again in the morning. He was right that the larger world would remain the same.
“Tomorrow,” Miles continued, “we get back to work as usual.” He looked at me as if awaiting confirmation.
“Of course,” I told him. “I’m ready.”
I was, in fact, already picturing the long line of girls waiting for their readings. We could tell those girls so much about their lives, but we couldn’t tell them enough. Not yet. It would take years for the addendum to finally be published, and even longer for the stigma surrounding abduction to begin to fade. We were yet further removed from the first returned girl being admitted into university, or from the father-daughter inspections falling out of favor. At the time, I could only hold on to Julia’s metaphor of the tree, a concept that remained so present and alive in my mind I could hear the rustle of wind through leaves whenever I closed my eyes.
“It’s almost midnight,” my mother said. We directed our attention to the clock despite ourselves. How indebted we were to time.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Miles repeated, but his voice broke on the last word.
My father put his arm around my brother’s shoulders. My mother held my hand. The clock struck midnight, and nothing changed. And nothing would be the same again.
* * *
* * *
The next day dawned warm and humid, and I woke up sweating. I remember the salt on my skin, how my hair stuck to the back of my neck. I remember almost everything about that morning and the strange hours to come: how my brother knocked gently on my door, how he nudged it open and peered inside, how he asked me to join him on a walk.
He led me through the outskirts of town, cutting through alleys and backyards, moving farther and farther from home. We walked together mostly in silence. I could feel an energy coming off him—anger, maybe, or resentment, or grief.
He cut to the right, taking us into a park.
“Where are we going?” I asked. His legs were longer than mine, and I rushed to keep up.
“I want to show you something.”
He led me off the park path, through the athletic field, and along the edge of the woods. Where the field ended, we proceeded into a meadow overgrown with tall grasses.
“My friends and I spent time here when we were kids,” he told me. “We made forts out of mud and weeds. A few times, we came late at night to set off bottle rockets.”
I had known none of this. It was another of my brother’s secrets.
“When I got older,” Miles continued, “I brought girls here.”
I ducked my head, embarrassed. “Why are you telling me this?”
“So you can know me better. So we can know each other.”
Miles led me through the weeds and I followed, stepping in the trace marks he left in the grass. I watched as he bent down to retrieve something and hold it aloft.
It was a strawberry—a tiny, bumpy strawberry plucked from its sweet green leaves. The berries grew late that season, later than I’d ever seen them before.
“You remember these?” he asked. “We had them all over the yard.”
“We tried to sell them.”
“A business failure. We were hopeless.” Miles brought the strawberry closer to his face, examining it. Then he popped it in his mouth and chewed.
We were quiet, as if waiting for something to transform. Finally, Miles bent to pick another berry, and then another. I would never forget that image of my brother standing with his hands cupped full of strawberries, a look on his face like triumph. As if he believed those berries could bring him life.
“You were afraid to eat these at first,” he went on. “Remember? You thought anything wild was poison.”
I joined him in gathering. We raked the grass clean, staining our fingers. We folded the bottom hems of our shirts and dropped the berries there. A cool wind snapped against us, hitting me so strong and sharp I felt I was being unzipped.
Miles reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic bag. Bloodflower pills rolled around inside.
“You want one?” he asked.
“No. And you shouldn’t take one, either.”
“We all need a way to go on.” He gazed into the field beyond, deep in thought. “You know, I took you into that alley because I was weak. I wanted answers, and I wanted to save you, but I was also afraid of not knowing the future. I felt helpless against what was coming.”
“I understand, Miles.”
He rattled the bag again, but I shook my head.
“Maybe bloodflower will be the reason, in the end,” I said.
He made a face. “The reason?”
“You know what I mean. You should take care of yourself.”
His expression was amused. “We both know how this ends. Let me do what I need to face it.” He brought a pill near his lips and paused, meeting my eyes. “Take one with me?”
I pulled back. “Bloodflower made me remember.”
“This time will be different. Especially if you just take half.” He placed the pill between his teeth and bit down hard, cracking it in half. He withdrew one of the pieces and held it out.
“Half will be gentler,” he added.
“Why is this so important to you?”
He blinked, as if the answer were obvious. “So we can be together. We don’t have much longer, do we?”
With some reluctance, I accepted the sliver of bloodflower. I took this drug that had come from my brother’s mouth and placed it in my own. I swallowed.
We lay next to each other in the grass. For a long while we watched clouds move across the sky. I was thinking how the world can open up in new ways if only you shift to view it from a different angle. Before, all I saw were weeds and wildflowers, but now I had the whole blue face of the planet to gaze into. There were so many layers to the world.
Miles reached over and took my hand. The bloodflower was working. We floated, skimming along the grass together. First I saw us as children, picking and eating those strawberries, but then I watched our current selves as if from above: brother and sister lying in the grass, holding hands. I felt, in that moment, a mistake had been made. We were meant to be twins, to share one fate, to live the same stretch of time on this earth.
“Miles,” I said. My voice felt strange, a disembodied vibration in my throat. “Are you afraid?”
Silence. I felt the grass pushing against my back, the sun on my face. My brother was quiet for so long that I wondered if he’d fallen asleep. Finally, he spoke.
“You and Julia are going to work together for a long time. The two of you will help countless girls.” He paused. “You’re going to change things.”
“We already are. We’re changing things right now, with you.”
“You have years ahead of you. Decades. I’ll be gone soon, but you’re so young, Celeste. You have the whole of your adulthood to come. You and Julia will be experts in the field. You’ll accomplish things I couldn’t even imagine.”
I clung to his hand. It was impossible to imagine him being gone—no more body, no more voice, no more mind. Where would he go, I wondered, and what would be left of the rest of us?
“You and Julia will expand your curriculum,” he continued. “Our parents will help the cause, as will Marie’s mother, as will so many other people you haven’t even met yet. That addendum will be published in Mapping the Future. Fewer and fewer girls will be abducted. All girls and women will gain more control over their own lives and bodies, bit by bit. It will happen slowly, but it’s coming. And you’ll be at the head of it.”
“You can’t know all this,” I said. “Not for certain.�
�
But I knew that Miles was right. I knew it as surely as if he had a direct line to all that was to come, a map of markings more complete and complex than any other. This future he described unfolded before me as clearly as if our mother was reading it to us as part of a bedtime story: There I was, an older version of myself, working side by side with Julia. There I was, handing out textbooks and teaching a class. There I was, making the same predictions my brother had once made. I was a teacher, an interpreter, someone who earned the respect and trust of girls the nation over. I moved, I married, I taught girls, I watched as the abduction predictions dwindled over time, until they stretched so thin they started to disappear.
In that wavering mirage of the future, Miles was by my side. Then he was not. Throughout the whole of my womanhood, I would carry not just my brother’s life but his death. The slick patch of winter-made ground, the fall, the hematoma. The end of him, despite it all.
I came to with a start. The sun had moved in the sky. Miles was lying on his hip, glassy-eyed, watching me.
“What just happened?” I asked him.
His expression was serene. “I think you know.”
I didn’t. Or if I did, I refused it. Everyone knew the only true way to predict the future was through a woman’s markings. The tarot, crystal balls, astrology, palm reading—all of that was a scam. Bloodflower was a drug for the past. It made girls remember. It couldn’t tell the future, that was impossible, it just couldn’t.
But I saw the future spreading before me regardless. I watched the unspooling vision of girl after girl lining up outside Julia’s townhouse, each more beautiful and true-skinned than the last. Miles was not there save for a strobing flash in my memory, the energy in my hands as I carried out our work. The taste of strawberry. The markings spelling life and the markings spelling death.
I lifted my arm tentatively into the air. The grass below my body prickled. I was of the world and I was beyond it. Girls were being born all over, their cries beating a protest into the air. The vision was clear. I grew older, grew settled, grew skilled. Girls lined up to see me. In those young bodies I found the same thing, which is to say a lack, so many times that soon I was barely looking for anything at all. Instead I pressed my fingers to the markings on the girl before me and thought, with wonder and intention: You are free. You are wild. You are, now and in the future, entirely your own.
Acknowledgments
Thanks first and forever to my literary lifelines: Huda Al-Marashi, Jennifer Marie Donahue, Liz Breazeale, and Jackie Delano Cummins. Jennifer and Huda have been there from this novel’s beginnings and are, to steal Huda’s term, my literary soul mates. Liz and Jackie made my years in the MFA rich in feminist energy, which surely infused the pages of this book, and their continuing friendship sustains me both creatively and personally. Each of these brilliant women lent her time, attention, and critical vision to help me become a better writer, and I’ll remain forever grateful.
Huge thanks to so many other writers who helped me along the way. Charlie Oberndorf read parts of this novel in various early iterations, and Kathy Ewing, Mary Grimm, Lynda Montgomery, Mara Purnhagen, Tricia Springstubb, Sam Thomas, Susan Grimm, Bill Johnson, Amy Kesegich, Mary Norris, Jeff Gundy, Donna Jarrell, Susan Carpenter, Sherry Stanfa-Stanley, John Frank, Lawrence Coates, the late Wendell Mayo, and my cohort at Bowling Green State University’s MFA program contributed advice, insight, and writerly camaraderie over the years. Thanks also to Bob Mooney and Kathy Wagner, who encouraged me in earlier days when I needed it most, and to Washington College for the gift of the Sophie Kerr Prize.
My eternal appreciation and respect to Erin Harris, my outstanding literary agent. I knew from the start that she’d make me work harder than any other agent, and because of that, she got the best book out of me. Erin, you were right: it was worth the wait.
I could not have dreamed up a better editor than Stephanie Kelly, who has been an enthusiastic advocate for this novel from the moment she read it. Her sharp editorial eye helped me see this fictional world more clearly and inspired me to bring renewed energy to its pages. All my thanks to Lexy Cassola, Natalie Church, Caroline Payne, Sarah Thegeby, Alice Dalrymple, Chris Lin, Kaitlin Kall, Erin Byrne, Tiffany Estreicher, and the rest of the Dutton team, as well as Alexis Seabrook and Mary Beth Constant, for putting such care into this book.
The Corporation of Yaddo, Art Omi: Writers, the Tin House Summer Workshop, and the former Writers in the Heartland offered invaluable support related to this novel. Thanks to Ramona Ausubel for teaching the craft class at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference that sparked the genesis of this story back in 2012. I also extend my gratitude to the good people of Cleveland Public Library for giving me a flexible job that helped support my own writing, with special thanks to Tim Diamond.
My late mother, June Lois Walter, always believed in my writing, and I’ll never stop being grateful for her support and influence. Thank you to Craig Walter and Scott Walter for the sibling experiences; to Emily Garver and Jenny Benson for embracing me as family from the start; to Kelly Moore for always championing my efforts to make the writing life a priority; to Megan Doyle, Amy Mescia, Adrienne Murry, Bethany Schrum, and Erin Snell for the long-standing friendships; to Matt Weinkam for all he does for local writers; and to the many writers, teachers, students, organizers, librarians, and booksellers who make Cleveland’s literary scene what it is and for welcoming me into it.
Finally, to Peter Garver: thank you for challenging me, for supporting me, and for always encouraging me to pursue what matters most.
About the Author
Laura Maylene Walter is a writer and editor in Cleveland. Her writing has appeared in Poets & Writers, Kenyon Review, The Sun, Ninth Letter, The Masters Review, and many other publications. She has been a Tin House Scholar, a recipient of the Ohioana Library Association’s Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant, and a writer-in-residence at Yaddo, the Chautauqua Institution, and Art Omi: Writers. Body of Stars is her debut novel.
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Body of Stars Page 29