Secret Star

by Nancy Springer

  “Hey!” She shoved him away. “What the—”

  “C’mon, baby, you know you’re crazy about me.” He tackled her with both arms, toppling her back onto the bed, and there he was on top of her, his hips heavy on hers, jamming his mouth into her face.

  He was big and brawny, made of solid muscle. “Stop it!” Tess screamed at him, squirming to get free, but with his weight on top of her she could barely move. He had her arms pinned, she couldn’t get her hands on him, but she could bite, and she did. Hard.

  “Hey!” He flinched away.

  “Get—off—me!” Once she finally got some leverage she threw him halfway across the room. He landed on his butt on the rug, and she stood over him so scorching mad she couldn’t say half of what she was thinking. The—the consummate jerkhead, where did he get off thinking he could grab her like that? “You’ve got no right,” she panted at him.

  “Bitch! You hurt me!” There was blood on his face.

  “Oh, poor baby!” She slammed out.

  She got halfway down his driveway before he came after her in the truck. “Crazy bitch, what’s the matter with you?” he yelled.

  “Nothing’s the matter with me.”

  “Slut! Get in here!”

  Oh, that made a lot of sense. She wouldn’t give him what he wanted, so now she was a slut? And she was supposed to get back in his truck so he could take her somewhere and try again? Right. Sure. “Go kiss yourself,” she told him, striding along as fast as she could without running from him.

  Butch called her several more names before he revved the truck and roared away. “You can bloody walk home!” he screamed at her.

  She did.

  It was late when she got back, but her cold dinner was still on the table and Daddy was still up, sitting in the dark living room with nothing but a burned-down candle and Ernestine for company. With his lips pressed together. “You’re grounded,” he said.

  Tess looked at him with no heart to try to explain. There was no such thing as a prince, she was angry at herself for ever having thought there was, and her mouth felt filthy from Butch no matter how much she scrubbed at it with her hand, her whole face felt filthy from Butch. She felt filthy all over.

  Daddy was watching her for a reaction, and he seemed to see guilt in her face; his bald spot went dark and he swelled up in his chair. “You’ve been messing around with that bum Kamo!” he yelled. “I knew it, and I won’t have it! He’s not welcome here, and he’s not welcome near you.”

  All of a sudden Tess was nearly as furious at Daddy as she had been at Butch. She wanted to hit something, it was so frustrating, this whole nuisance of being a girl. Butch thinking he could score with her. Daddy thinking that was what she’d been doing. “For God’s sake!” she screamed. “What do you think I am?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Kamo might be my brother! You think I’d—”

  “He’s not your brother!”

  “Like you know that!”

  “I do know that. He’s not your brother. He’s not any relation to you.”

  This was too important to shout about. “How do you know?” Tess asked, almost whispering.

  Daddy’s voice came down as well. “I just know. He’s not related to you.”

  “Daddy—”

  “He’s not, Tess. That’s all I’m going to say.” Daddy swung around and zoomed Ernestine into his bedroom. He closed the door.

  Tess blew out the candle and stood in the dark thinking, trying to figure out how much to believe. She wanted to believe whatever Daddy said—but how could she anymore? There was too much he wasn’t telling her.

  That night after she finally got to sleep she had the nightmare again and tried to see it through. But it got all mixed up with Butch somehow and she woke up knowing nothing except that she wanted Kam, she needed to see Kam, he was the only one she could really talk with, she had to see him, and how could she? She was grounded.

  In the morning things went both better and worse than Tess expected. Better because Daddy had French toast ready when she got up, with syrup made from brown sugar. Tess knew what this meant: she was forgiven. “I was crabby last night when you came in,” he said as she sat down to eat, which meant she wasn’t grounded after all and was about as close as he ever got to apologizing.

  “It’s all right,” Tess said, and for a moment it was.

  “Had a bad day yesterday,” Daddy explained. “And it seems like you’re never around anymore to help me out.”

  She looked at him with her mouth full of French toast and grew aware that French toast was nothing but soggy flabby bread sweetened with sugar water. “What kind of bad day?”

  “My chest hurt. I had to push on over to Millers’ for help, and for a couple minutes I felt like me and Ernestine weren’t going to make it.”

  Tess stopped chewing and sat there staring at him.

  “Just angina, the doc says. But now we got doc bills, and a whiz-bang emergency room bill, and a new kind of pill bill, and you wouldn’t believe how much them suckers cost. And the Medicare don’t cover all of it.”

  Chewing again, she didn’t taste the food, and her stomach felt like something heavy had just landed in it: all the things Daddy hadn’t said.

  Like, there was never going to be enough money for anything, no matter how much she worked at the IGA.

  Like, the more she grew up and got herself a life, the more he was going to be alone.

  Like, he was afraid of dying. He was feeling old and afraid.

  He said, “I’m starting to think we’re going to have to unload this place after all, Tess. Get an apartment in town someplace where there’ll be people around and I can get to the doctors’ offices and the welfare offices and maybe I can find some kind of job.”

  Welfare? Apartment? Move in town? But—this was home. There were trees out back, hills, room to breathe. Deer, wildcats, hawks, red foxes in the rocks. Anyhow, they had just cleaned the cistern. Her voice came out a whisper when she said to Daddy, “You’re giving up. Don’t give up.”

  Move in town? You could barely even see the stars at night in town.

  “Got to, Tess. I’m getting up there, I gotta be realistic. But you’re young, you shouldn’t be worrying about an old poop like me, you should be going to school—”

  “Oh, right.” She got up and headed outside and walked into the woods so she wouldn’t have to hear any more of this.

  It had rained overnight. Little white starflowers, so dainty they were practically see-through, were coming up from the black mossy ground like a promise. They didn’t help. She tried playing “Secret Star” in her mind.

  In this dirty world

  you can’t see far

  but you gotta believe

  there’s a secret star

  But she couldn’t believe anymore. There was no secret star for people like Daddy and her. They were dug into a hole so deep she couldn’t see a twinkle of light. There was no way out. They would never get the electricity back, or the phone. No amount of working at a minimum-wage job would ever pay the bills. Next the house would go. They were just sliding down, down, like in a coal chute. Might as well give it up and live in a cowshed like Kam.

  8

  It was her day off, Sunday, and she wasn’t grounded after all, yet Tess didn’t feel as if she could go see Kamo. She went back inside and sat staring at the clutter spread everywhere because Daddy couldn’t reach things if they were put away, and the scars on the paneling and doors from his wheelchair, and the blank screen of the TV, and Mom’s picture on top of it staring back at her. Daddy kept her studio portrait there. Sometimes when he forgot Tess was around she would hear him talking to the picture. “Miss ya, babe,” he would say. “Ain’t nobody never been so beautiful.” Her name was Teresa Riordan Rojahin Mathis, and she was spectacular. Green eyes, honey-colored hair, sweet face with a tiny Mona Lisa smile. “But I’m doing okay,” Daddy would tell her. “Hanging in there.”

  Dumb, Tess scolded herself. She
had been stupid to think Butch could actually like her. Stupid to think even in her wildest dreams that anybody was ever going to love her the way Daddy still loved her mother. Why did I have to turn out like a palomino ox instead of like her? Looking at Mom didn’t make Tess feel any better. She didn’t remember her. Looking at her was like looking at a photo in a magazine.

  Lunchtime came and passed, but there was nothing to eat except leftover French toast, so nobody ate. Daddy sat at the kitchen table playing solitaire with a deck that had a joker instead of an ace of hearts. Tess sat where she was.

  Outside, the day was the color of dirty hubcaps. Getting set to rain.

  In the gray light an orange blob pulled into the weedy gravel driveway.

  “Who the—” Tess looked. It was an old VW bus, what kids call a hippie bus. There was a black guy with dreadlocks driving. Somebody got out of the passenger side: Kam.

  “Oh, my God.” Her first thought was that he’d give Daddy a heart attack just by being there. She bolted up and ran out to tell him to go away before Daddy saw him. But something about his face stopped her. He was smiling. Downright grinning, his wide mouth and one eye as happy as a long day of sunshine. She had never seen him like that before.

  “Hey, Tess!” He hugged her, then let go again before she could blink. “Meet Joshua.” The black guy was opening the back doors of the van. He smiled and waved at her. Kam said, “Give us a hand?”

  “With what?”

  “You’ll see.” Kam led her around back of the van and lifted out—a drum.

  It was a metallic-blue Pearl-brand bass drum. Kam handed it to Tess and said, “Happy birthday,” even though it wasn’t her birthday. Then he reached into the van again and pulled out—a tom-tom.

  And Joshua was standing there with lengths of chrome-plated drum stand in his hands, saying to Kam, “Where should we set it up, man?”

  Kam looked at Tess, but her mouth was stuck in a half-open position and wasn’t functioning. He looked at the house, where Daddy had wheeled his chair into the doorway, maybe just to watch but maybe to block it—and then Kamo smiled even wider and said, “How about right here in the yard?”

  “You say so.” The two of them moved to the center of the crabgrassy patch in front of the house and started setting up—it was a drum set, a whole hot-rockin’ four-drum set with crash cymbal and ride cymbal, the works. Tess had never gotten to play on a real complete drum set in her life, not even in school.

  “Yo! Tess, bring that bass,” Kam sang. Tess walked but felt as if she were floating, as if the sound of his voice carried her to him. She loved his voice. Usually it was made of shadows, but that moment it was made of rainbows and silver.

  He looked the drum over before he set it in its place. All the dampers were there on the insides of the skins. “Not bad for secondhand,” he remarked.

  Not bad? That sparkly-blue, heaven-colored drum?

  “Grab the hi-hat out of the van,” Joshua suggested, smiling the way Kamo was.

  “Can you bring the stool, Tess?” Kam called.

  There was so much wonderfulness she couldn’t carry it all at once. Floor tom-tom, snare drum, foot pedals, sticks, extra sticks with plastic tips. Kam came to help.

  “Hey!” He looked at her face and hugged her again, longer this time. “No big deal, Tess. Just helping the dude clean out his garage. C’mon, try it out.”

  Her heart was aching fit to split right in her chest, because she was feeling two things at once: Lord-God happy, because Kamo was giving her this wonderful thing—and deep-purple sad, because she knew she and Daddy needed other things more, and maybe she ought to sell the drums, maybe doing that would bring enough money for—some of the bills or something ...

  “Tickle it, Tess!” Kam urged.

  She was going to play it at least this once, right there on the front lawn. She settled her bottom on the stool, hugged the snare drum between her legs, positioned her feet on the pedals, balanced the sticks in her hands and closed her eyes a minute to think how she was going to do this, because it had been awhile since she had played on anything except scrub buckets. But the rhythms were jumping like lottery balls in her head, and she started the big, thick ride cymbal going right along with them, eight quick beats to the frame.

  Then she got the bass going, twos and fours. Then she started to fill in left-handed with everything else that was bubbling in her brain, and her left foot was pumping the hi-hat in time with the snare, and as usual she couldn’t quite quick-lick it all in but she was cooking, she was smoking hot, she kept getting closer and closer, which was just about as good as it gets, and she didn’t care how the hi-hat’s telescoping stand kept sinking down or how she looked with her big butt bouncing around on that stool—the little drum angels were dancing like popcorn behind her eyes, and just because she felt like it she smacked the crash cymbal and boiled into a riff, chopping on the side of the snare and whacking an open-mouth ping out of the hi-hat and skittering the sticks all around the set like witches whirling under a full moon.

  Standing there, Kam arched his back and threw back his head so his hair trailed down. “Whoo-eee mama!” he yelled to the sky.

  “Rock steady,” Joshua said, crouching on his haunches and listening. He had been smirking when Tess started, but she could see he wasn’t anymore, and now Tess knew she was real.

  She knew she couldn’t sell the drum set, damn it. Not for any money. Some things were more important than—than …

  She stopped drumming. Swiveled around on her stool to look at Daddy. He hadn’t spoken, he hadn’t ordered Kamo or the drum set off his land—yet.

  Benson Mathis had been thinking. Since the night Kamo had said “Rojahin” to him he had been thinking a lot.

  There was what he wanted, which was for Kam to go away and things to be like they were before. But then there was what he knew to be true, which was that things would never be the same. There was what he feared, which was that Tess would hate him when she found out. But then again there was what he knew to be true, which was that he had to let Tess grow and he had to let her go.

  In strong moments he was getting to the heart of the matter, which was not so much what to do or what might happen as what it meant for him to be a man.

  Nothing had prepared him for this. Back when he had legs he could stand on, being a man had meant carrying the most weight, earning a bigger paycheck, holding his own in a fight. It had meant getting through boot camp okay, serving his country and coming home again and not talking about it too much. It had meant winning his woman. It had meant defending and protecting her. Right up to the minute they had put him in this wheelchair he had known what it meant to be a man.

  But now—what the hell was he? Kamo had looked to him like he was still a man, and he had let the kid down.

  Kamo was looking to him again. So was Tess. Finished playing her new drum set, turning to see what he thought, and Lord God Almighty was she good. What was it going to mean for her to be a woman?

  Benson Mathis knew he had to do better for her than he’d been managing lately. He flexed his shoulders and got himself moving, got Ernestine rolling out of the doorway, across the flat doorstep and onto the grass. Finding the heart of the problem, he had found his own heart, and he felt it warming him. He felt himself smiling.

  He looked Kam in the eye. He felt his voice come out dry and friendly as he said, “What kind of damn fool would set up drums in the yard?” He said, “Kids today, got no sense. Crazy. For God’s sake bring those drums inside before it starts to rain.”

  That night it happened again. Tess’s dream. The walls, the strong walls that were supposed to hold out the bad thing, thinned and started wavering, going black, blowing like shadows in the wind.

  Don’t wake up.

  She could almost see, now, what lay behind. She could see—a man, a golden man, coming in the door with his hand raised, his face—she wanted to see his face—

  Stay with it.

  But then—then all she could
see was the other man in the dark corner—and—she was just a kid, sitting on the stairs and looking down between the rails, frightened—but why? The man in the corner was just Daddy talking with Kam, the two of them as cautious as strange dogs getting acquainted, the way they had been all evening, Kam saying There’s something I have to do, Kam saying Gotta go now, but Daddy—Daddy was not in his wheelchair, why not? Standing there, reaching for his pocket, saying Get out! and she—she wanted to shake and cry and hide so she wouldn’t have to see, yet even as she watched from inside the nightmare she knew the future, knew she was going to be left all alone, she knew—she knew she would never see the most important person in her world again—

  She woke up as if a gun had gone off by her ear, feeling achy and abandoned. Then she knew. She sat straight up in bed, gasping, knowing clear to her bones what she had been too excited all evening to recognize.

  Something I have to do, Kam had said the other day. Just because she had tried to be a friend, he felt like he had to do something for her. Before he went away.

  The drums were Kamo’s way of saying good-bye.

  9

  Heart thudding, she bolted out of bed and into her shirt, her jeans, her boots. She ran out the door, not even caring whether Daddy heard her thundering out in the middle of the night, whether he would worry. Let him worry. She had to find Kam before it was too late.

  Joshua had gone off in his van soon after he had brought the drums, but Kam had stayed till dusk. He was on foot. He would have gone back to his camp to get his things. Maybe—maybe there was still time.

  Of course it had to be a cloudy night, no light at all. No moon, no stars, just darkness with entirely too many hard objects in it. Trees. Roots and rocks to trip over. Obstacles, like ditches and drops and streams. Tess tried to go through the woods, but in the dark it was like combat. She had to retreat. Found the road and loped along on blind faith, figuring as long as her feet slapped down on asphalt she was okay, sobbing the whole time, barely able to breathe as she kept running. Every once in a while there was a farm with its security lights on so she knew where she was. But it was eerie quiet. Not one car passed. The only sounds she heard were herself, crying, and farm dogs barking as her thumping feet ran by.