Outside, a fat gray squirrel whipped his way up a leafless tree. Nova gasped. What was the squirrel doing out in this cold weather? She crawled on top of the desk to see him better. He seemed to sense her. He stopped on a low, bare branch and stared back at her, tail twitching.
“Guuhhhh,” said Nova, slapping her palm against the window. She wanted to ask why he was out in such cold, but the words would not come out. “Guuhhhhggguhh!”
“Get down, please, Nova,” coaxed Billy. When she didn’t respond, he put his arms around her waist and removed her from the table, which she did not like. She pulled away.
“We don’t sit on tables,” Francine admonished, friendly but firm. “You know that.”
Nova glanced back at the window. The squirrel was gone.
Now she felt sad. She needed NASA Bear. She looked down at her arms, then at the desk. Where was he? She looked at Francine and Billy. Oh! There! Francine was still holding him. With a screech, Nova grabbed one of his legs and yanked him roughly away, hugging him to her chest.
“Are you okay?” asked Francine.
“Mm,” she answered, but it was not a yes or no sound. She meant “Mine.”
“Nova?” asked Billy. He reached for her. She backed away, certain he would hit her for screaming. But she would not let him. Instead, she hit herself, one-two-three-four times in the side of the head with her free palm.
Gently, Francine took her hitting hand and lowered it. She guided Nova’s chin with her thumb. Nova let herself make eye contact with Francine for a second. She did not see anger there, but the feeling of looking right at Francine was intense anyway. Nova wanted to say she was sorry, even though she wasn’t sure why she should be. It simply seemed like the sort of thing kids said when adults started staring at them.
“It’s okay, Nova,” said Francine softly. “Everything’s okay.”
Nova, feeling calmer, glanced around the classroom. Her gaze settled on the list of rules posted by the teacher’s desk.
Quiet Voice
Calm Body
Nice Words
Happy Hands
Listening Ears
Respect Property
Help Others
Be Kind
“Is she reading the sign?” asked Principal Dowling. He sounded surprised.
“Just looking,” said Francine pleasantly.
But Francine was wrong.
She was reading the sign.
She’d read the whole list, every single rule.
For a second, Nova felt excited, so excited she had to happy-flap her hands and squeak. She’d just read that sign all by herself, every single word! Even property, and that was a tough one!
“We were told that Nova can’t read anything yet,” Francine went on. “She doesn’t know the alphabet. But we’ll work on it!”
The alphabet?
Nova stopped happy-flapping.
The alphabet was the name for the ABCs. Nova knew her ABCs. Bridget taught her the ABCs when she was six!
She felt her face going hot.
Does not speak. Cannot read. Severely mentally retarded.
Her eyes filled with tears. She needed Bridget. Bridget would tell them, “My sister’s not dumb. She’s a thinker, not a talker.”
The tears burned as they fell. Nova was ready to be All Done with this tour. She bit between her thumb and her forefinger to keep from crying too hard, but Billy took her hand away from her mouth and held it.
“Is she…okay?” asked Principal Dowling.
“I think Nova’s a little overwhelmed,” answered Francine as she fished a tissue from her purse. “Her social worker told us that happens sometimes. She’s an anxious girl, especially in new or unfamiliar situations. We’ve mostly been keeping her home since they placed her with us, to get used to things.”
“Which is precisely why we appreciate you letting us come today!” Billy reached out to shake the principal’s hand again. “We want her first day to go as smoothly as possible.”
“Of course!” Principal Dowling smiled, but at the same time shot Nova a nervous look he hadn’t worn before. Francine held the tissue up to Nova’s nose and asked her to blow.
“Francine will be dropping her off and picking her up each day,” said Billy as Principal Dowling led the way back to the main double doors.
“I can drop her here and still get to my classroom in plenty of time.” Francine tucked a stray lock of hair behind Nova’s ear. “The elementary school is right down the road.”
“Ah, yes,” said Principal Dowling. “How is kindergarten? Got a good group this year?”
Francine nodded. “I love them. They always start off so helpless! Babies, practically, unable to read or write or tie their shoes or color inside the lines, but by the time summer vacation rolls around…”
Nova wasn’t listening anymore. She wasn’t crying anymore either. She was humming softly and holding NASA Bear with one hand, tapping her chin with the other, thinking again about the very first time she’d walked down halls like these, back when she was a kindergarten baby.
School would start tomorrow.
She was not ready.
JAN 19, 1986
Dear Bridget,
T-minus nine days until Challenger launch.
Tomorrow I start my new school.
I saw it today with no other kids in the building.
It seemed okay.
I liked the special education classroom.
When we walked in, the first thing I saw was the poster of the solar system.
I started to bounce and hum and hum and bounce because it was so beautiful. It was big and huge and shiny with all the planets from Mercury to Pluto, surrounded by stars. I could see Saturn’s rings and Jupiter’s red spot and cloud-dotted Earth and fiery Mars and gassy brown Venus and ice giant Uranus and cool blue Neptune. Neptune looks like the stone in the mood ring you gave me. You know Neptune is my favorite. Here are the reasons:
It is blue and I like blue.
It is cold and I like cold.
It might have rings and I like rings.
It has two moons and I like moons.
Plus it has huge windstorms and I like huge windstorms.
Last September, when Hurricane Gloria hit New England, we watched the news coverage on television until the power went out. We spent two days in the dark and you told me, “Just pretend we’re on Neptune, where winds rage at over one thousand miles per hour!” I wonder how long power would be out on Neptune if people lived there.
Only nine more days until space shuttle Challenger blasts off through the stratosphere to float among the stars, Bridget. Only nine more days until the First Teacher in Space gets to see all this for real. Real stars, real planets. Only nine more days until she sees the world from outside the world. You know what that means!
T-minus nine days until I see you again.
“We might have to be apart for a little while,” you said. “But when Challenger launches, I’ll be there. No matter what, I’ll be there. I promise.”
That’s what you said.
You promised.
While I was staring at the nine perfect planets, Billy bumped my arm and whispered, “Don’t forget to breathe!” which was a good thing because I think I did forget! To make myself breathe I had to cover my ears and close my eyes so I couldn’t look at it anymore, but I can still see cool blue Neptune in my head, round and bright and shiny and perfect.
The classroom walls are perfect too, decorated with shapes and colors. I knew most of the colors from our Crayola box but some I never saw before. I also saw triangle and crescent and circle and square and one shaped like a stop sign.
Do you remember when you taught me colors and shapes, before we went to foster care and I got sent to school? You would
hold up each Crayola and say things like “Brick Red, for drawing buildings” or “Cadet Blue, more gray than blue.” I liked Lemon Yellow best.
Then you would cut my sandwiches special, hold up the pieces, and say, “Tuna triangle has three sides,” or “Ham-and-cheese circle, round like a ball.” Peanut butter jelly crescents were my favorite.
My desk is really a table, Bridget. It is a silvery color with a name tag that has my whole name on it, Nova Bea Vezina, black writing on a Crayola Maize background with a red apple in the corner. I love my name tag. I love my table. I even get to sit right next to the window and you know I love to look out windows.
There are lots of bookshelves. I didn’t get to look at the books yet so I don’t know if Beezus and Ramona are there. Above the bookshelves are posters of Mother Goose rhymes like in my elementary school classrooms except these all had sheep, every single one. There was a Baa Baa Black Sheep and a Little Bo Peep sheep and a Mary Had a Little Lamb sheep. You know I hate sheep.
On the drive to Billy and Francine’s house, I was thinking about how it used to be when you were at school but me and Mama stayed home and had fun. I only remember a little bit, like how she liked to braid my hair and kiss my forehead and call me Super Nova. We raked leaf piles to jump in. Sometimes we walked to the brook to skip stones. When I got tired, she carried me. We ate lunch on the couch while watching TV. I drank red-purple Kool-Aid. She drank red-purple wine.
After lunch, she turned on the radio.
I would try not to be scared.
I would tell myself, “Bridget will come back soon.”
I knew everything would be okay again once you got back.
Sometimes the radio brought good news.
“The value of gold hits a record high! Over two hundred twenty dollars an ounce! That’s why we bury it, Super Nova. The dollar keeps falling, but we’ll be fine with our gold!”
Sometimes the radio brought bad news.
“The USSR is testing nuclear weapons! They’re detonating neutron bombs! This could be it! The beginning of the end! And where’s President Carter?”
Sometimes Mama listened to static instead of the news. Those were sheep days. I wish you were there. It would not have seemed so scary if you were there.
“Communism prevailed when Saigon fell! It’s only a matter of time before they come for us! Your father knew the truth. That’s why he never came back from Vietnam. Missing in action, that’s what they said. He can’t get back to us. No place is safe. We need shelter! We have to hide!”
That was when she would lead me to the kitchen. Mama would have me crawl under the table, then she’d put the white woolly blanket over the top so it hung down to the floor on all sides. Once our shelter was ready, she would crawl in too. We would wait and wait while nothing happened, with woolly whiteness all around.
“You’re safe now,” she’d whisper. “You’re safe, Nova Bea.”
Safe, in the belly of the sheep.
After a long time passed, or maybe just a little, you would get home and take my hand and say “It’s time to come out.” Mama would come out too, except if she fell asleep. If she fell asleep, you’d put a pillow under her head and drape the white woolly blanket over her body. Then you would make me a snack.
The whole time in the belly of the sheep all Mama could do was hug me and worry. All I could do was wiggle my hands and wait.
Waiting for you was the worst.
It is still the worst.
I am trying to be on my best behavior here, Bridget. I’m trying not to scream or throw things and I will try to do my best job in this new school. If I am on my best behavior, I will get to stay, and that will make it easier for you to find me. Plus, when you come back, you will say, “I’m proud of you.” I will do my best job to make you proud.
Living with Mama, my happiest day was when you gave me the notebook with the crayons to keep with me in the belly of the sheep. Remember how you told me to write to you every day? Well, I’m still writing to you every day. Writing to you made me feel better when I was stuck inside the belly of the sheep. Writing to you makes me feel better now. Writing to you makes me feel like I’m not lost in space, floating all alone among the stars.
Are you writing to me?
I think maybe I could read your letters now, Bridget. I only pretended before, but at Jefferson Middle School there was a big long list of rules. One of them said “Happy Hands.” Happy Hands! What does that mean? I know happy means smiling but hands cannot smile. Hands are not one of Peter Pan’s happy thoughts. I wanted to tell this to Francine but I could not.
That’s when I got sad, Bridget. Not just because I don’t know how to have Happy Hands, but also because I read that sign. I read it all by myself, and nobody knows. Francine told Principal I do not even know my alphabet, but right now I can hear you in my head singing the whole song, even “Now I know my ABCs, next time won’t you sing with me!” I know every single letter. I know a lot of words.
I need you to come back so you can read my letters, Bridget.
I miss you.
Love,
Your Super Nova
Nova could not sleep. According to the digital alarm clock Billy had placed in her bedroom the night before, she awoke at precisely 3:04 in the morning. After lying in bed staring at the ceiling for fifteen minutes exactly, she got up, slipped on a brand-new pair of electric-blue slouch socks, and glanced toward the window. It was snowing again. Maybe it would snow so much school would be canceled and she wouldn’t have to go.
She hoped so.
As silently as possible, Nova opened the door that led to the attic and climbed the narrow wooden stairs. Careful to avoid tripping over cardboard boxes, old toys, and holiday decorations, she made her way to the porthole-like window in the far wall.
She pressed her nose against the glass and watched as her breath formed a wet, clear circle in the frost. With one finger, she scraped a little of the frost off and slipped it into her mouth. Like ice cream without a flavor. She liked it. She scraped some more. She placed it on her tongue. Scrape, scrape, scrape, until the frost was gone.
Outside, it was dark. No streetlights, no porch lights, not even an idling car in a neighbor’s driveway. It was perfect for stargazing, if only she had a telescope.
And knew how to use a telescope.
Nova licked a little of the cold dew that was left on the window before finding the moon. As much as she loved stars and their constellations and beautiful cool blue Neptune, her favorite space rock was definitely the moon. She loved staring at it, imagining herself with Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, taking those first steps on the hard, white surface, planting the American flag.
“One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”
She didn’t care what Mama believed about government-orchestrated sound stages. Nova knew in her heart that men had walked on the moon and they’d do it again. Bridget said so.
She closed her eyes and pictured herself as if she was hovering above her own head, hiding in the closet with Bridget at their mama’s house, pretending to be rocketing off on a mission to the moon when it wasn’t safe to be seen.
The first time they went to the moon, Nova was five and Bridget was ten. They were in the closet at Mama’s house. Mama was in the kitchen with the radio on, and a stranger was there. Mama was yelling at the stranger.
“I know what you’re trying to do! You’re trying to steal my children!”
“I assure you, Mrs. Vezina, we are not interested in stealing your children, we are only concerned with their welfare. We have had reports that—”
“Nova needs me! And I need Bridget. She’s the only one who knows what the television secretly broadcasts after the sign-off!”
Bridget and Nova were usually not allowed to be awake late enough to see the
television sign off, but sometimes Mama let them stay up and they all watched Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show together. When it was almost time for TV to be done for the night, a waving American flag would show on the screen and the national anthem would play. Mama always made them stand and put their hands over their hearts, and Bridget would sing. Mama said that would make their daddy proud, since he was in the army.
After the national anthem was over, the screen would show a jet. The jet would fly around in the sky in black-and-white and a man’s voice would read a poem, the same poem, every single night. Nova loved hearing the poem. She especially loved the beginning and the end.
The beginning went—
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds—and done a hundred things…
And the end was—
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew—
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
Next sounded a high-pitched shriek that Bridget said meant it was “time to turn off the tube and go to bed,” but that was when Mama was happiest, because static was coming next, and static brought secret news, news that made her smile.
The first time Bridget and Nova made it all the way to the moon, Mama was not smiling. She was crying. Bridget and Nova closed themselves in the closet, where their rocket ship was.
“It’s okay,” said Bridget. She hugged Nova, then slipped NASA Bear into her arms. “We’re not here anymore, Nova. We’re headed far away. Close your eyes. It’s countdown time. Ten…nine…eight…”
“Mrs. Vezina, I need you to calm down, please,” said the stranger.
“Seven…six…five…,” said Bridget.
“Why are you doing this!” asked Mama, but her voice was fading farther away with every counted-down number.
Planet Earth Is Blue Page 3