A Handful of Stars

by Cynthia Lord

  I waited while Mrs. LaRue copied the application and pulled a blue notebook from her shelf. “Salma, have you ever done a pageant before?” she asked.

  “No,” Salma said. “This is my first one. I thought it sounded like fun.”

  “Oh, it is fun!” Mrs. LaRue agreed. “It’s the highlight of the festival! You get to dress up all pretty and lots of people come and cheer you on.”

  That didn’t sound any fun to me, but Salma smiled.

  “You’ll be judged on beauty, blueberries, talent, and personality. The beauty portion takes into account your hair, makeup, and dress. Do you have a pageant dress to wear?”

  “Lily’s friend Hannah is loaning me her dress from last year,” Salma said. “But I wanted to ask you about the talent part.”

  “Most girls sing,” Mrs. LaRue said. “Dancing is also popular. One year we had a baton twirler, but that nearly ended in disaster. The baton went flying into the audience! You aren’t a baton twirler, are you?”

  Salma shook her head. “Could art be a talent? I could show the audience some paintings I’ve done.”

  Mrs. LaRue hesitated. “Art?”

  “There’s a first time for everything,” I said loudly. “And Salma’s art is definitely a talent.”

  “I guess that would work.” Mrs. LaRue put Salma’s application in her notebook. “Glorious Hair Styling always donates their services to the contestants at four o’clock on the day of the pageant. They’ll have a space set up in a corner of the arts and crafts barn at the fairgrounds. But don’t wear your pageant dress, just in case the girls at Glorious spill anything on you. The public gets to watch and sometimes those Glorious girls get chatting. Nicole Thibodeau learned that the hard way last year when one of those stylists got hair gel all over her dress’s collar!”

  The more Mrs. LaRue talked, the worse I felt. Salma was from the camp. She had an unusual talent. She wasn’t as familiar to everyone as most of the contestants were. I’d had my doubts before, but Mrs. LaRue made them ten times worse.

  “They aren’t going to cut my hair, right?” Salma asked. “Just curl it and stuff.”

  Mrs. LaRue handed us Salma’s copy of her application. “The stylists won’t do anything you don’t want them to, but if you were my daughter, I’d be right there to make sure.”

  I didn’t think Salma’s mom could come, so I said, “I’ll make sure.”

  “Be at the church at six thirty. The pageant starts promptly at seven,” Mrs. LaRue said.

  “Do I need to bring anything other than my dress and my art?” Salma asked.

  “Just a beautiful smile!” Mrs. LaRue said.

  As we walked home, Salma was quiet. Then she said, “Bet they’ve never had a contestant from the camp before.”

  “No, I think you’d be the first,” I said. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “I don’t know.” Salma looked down at the road in front of us. “I like helping my family, but I don’t want to do farm work when I’m grown-up. I don’t think we’ll ever have enough money for me to go to college, though. That takes extra money.”

  “Lots of extra money,” I agreed.

  “When Hannah said the prize was a savings bond, I thought that could be a start. And it’d be just for me—the money I make now goes to help my family. But the good thing about a savings bond is that it’s for later. I’d have to keep it, like a promise for the future. Does that sound silly?”

  I’d never seen Salma looking discouraged. She always seemed so sure of herself. “No,” I said. “Not silly at all.”

  She kicked a little stone along the road. “I don’t think Mrs. LaRue thought I had any chance to win, because I’m from the camp. People want us to come and work, but they want us to be invisible.”

  I blushed, because I knew she was right. Before Salma, I’d never given much thought to the workers and their families who came and went every summer. Mostly they kept to themselves and we kept to ourselves. They were just there, and then one day they weren’t.

  But when Salma became my friend, she changed that for me. She could change it for other people, too. Just like Mama being the first French Canadian girl to win the pageant had changed people’s minds. I bet some people didn’t think Mama had a chance, either. But she’d challenged that and showed them all.

  I stood up taller. “Someone has to be first. And if anyone thinks you don’t have a chance of winning, well, there’s only one thing for us to do.”

  “What’s that?” Salma asked, lifting her head.

  “Prove them wrong,” I said.

  At the beginning of summer it always feels like there’s so much time ahead: whole empty calendar pages of sunshine, warm sea breezes, midnight thunderstorms, and running barefoot in the grass. Enough afternoons to do every single thing you wanted to do and even some days left over to do nothing at all.

  But somehow summer fills up and flies by. Instead of feeling hopeful and free and happy as August wore on, I couldn’t help feeling sad pangs that when the blueberry festival was over and summer went away, Salma would go with it.

  Every chance we had, Salma and I painted bee houses. As we worked, and customers came and went from the coffee station, I quizzed her on blueberry facts.

  “Okay, here’s another one,” I said. “Why do we still employ blueberry rakers? Why isn’t the whole industry mechanized?”

  “One reason is rocks,” Salma said, painting tiny sea lavender flowers on her bee house. “The land is rocky, and it costs a lot of money to move boulders. People with rakes can get into places that a machine can’t.”

  “Right.” I skimmed through the Maine Wild Blueberries brochure Salma had picked up at the Winthrop office. “When is the wild blueberry season in Maine?”

  “I’d know that one without even studying,” Salma said. “Late July to early September.”

  “And then where will you go?” I asked.

  She looked up from the flowers she was painting. “Maybe Pennsylvania for apple season. I hope so, anyway. The school I go to in Pennsylvania has the best art teacher. Mrs. Danbury is one of my star friends. She almost makes up for fractions.”

  “Fractions? What do you mean?”

  “My Pennsylvania school is behind my Florida school in math,” she said. “Not by a lot, but they hadn’t done adding and subtracting fractions when I left Pennsylvania in fourth grade, and my class in Florida was past that when I came. So I missed it and I always get adding and subtracting fraction questions wrong when you have to change the bottom numbers. I hate when people think I’m not smart or they make fun of me just because I don’t know something they know.”

  “I don’t like that, either. Does either school have after-school help?” I asked. “I had to do that with decimals. I hate the decimal point! Hard to believe something so little can cause so many problems!”

  Salma shrugged. “It’s too hard to stay after school because I don’t have someone who can come pick me up at the right time. Give me another blueberry question.”

  I looked back at the brochure. “Maine harvests what percentage of lowbush wild blueberries in the USA?”

  “Ninety-eight percent,” Salma said.

  “That’s right! What’s the Maine state dessert?”

  “Blueberry pie,” Salma said.

  “Well, there was a push a few years back by the whoopie-pie people,” a voice said, startling us both.

  I hadn’t paid any attention to Marty Johnson fixing his coffee next to us. I certainly didn’t know he’d been listening.

  “But the blueberry pie people won,” Marty said. “How are blueberry bushes pruned?”

  Salma smiled at him. “By mowing or burning. Doesn’t burning kill the plants, though?”

  “Only on the top. Burning keeps the weeds out and destroys disease,” Marty said. “After a field is burned, the blueberries are the first plants to return. So burning gives blueberries a head start. Do you know what the top of a wild blueberry is called?”

  “The calyx
,” Salma said. “It’s in the shape of a five-pointed star.”

  “Atta girl!” Marty put a plastic lid on his coffee. “You keep it up! You’re going to do great!”

  After Mrs. LaRue’s doubts, it felt really nice to have someone on our side. As Marty left, I looked back at the brochure. “When did it become popular for factories around here to start canning wild Maine blueberries?”

  “During the Civil War. Cans of blueberries were sent to feed the Union Army.”

  At my feet, Lucky startled and gave a little bark. I looked down the store aisle to see that a lady had come in with a German shepherd. The dog was wearing a red-and-black service dog vest.

  “Shh. It’s okay, Lucky,” I said. “He’s just visiting. He won’t hurt you.”

  Lucky was on his feet now, tail wagging. I had to grab his collar to keep him from going down the aisle to the dog.

  “Lucky wants to make a friend,” Salma said.

  “You aren’t supposed to distract service dogs,” I said. “And Lucky gets so excited. It might annoy that dog. Or he might worry Lucky would hurt his person.” Gripping him by the collar, I looked back at the brochure. “How do wild blueberries make new plants?”

  “They spread underground by rhizomes,” Salma said, “which create new roots and stems. A wild field has lots of different rhizomes all running along under the ground, so that’s why there can be so many different blueberry colors, sizes and, um?” She made a face.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “I’m trying so hard not to ‘um’! There can be different colors, sizes, and—?”

  “Flavors,” I said, setting Lucky back under the table. “We can stop now if you want to. You already know more about blueberries than I do!”

  “But I have to be one of the best,” Salma said. “Or I won’t get to show my talent.”

  The chime above the door sounded as the woman with the service dog left the store. Good!

  Lucky lay back under the table and rested his chin on my foot. I waited a few seconds to be sure he would stay, then I picked up a new bee house and the autumn leaf stencil. I hadn’t done that one in a while.

  “Why don’t you try doing a bee house without the stencil?” Salma asked. “It might look better than you think.”

  “It might look worse, too.”

  She shrugged. “But at least it would be yours. That’s what I like about art. It lets me become more like myself, not more like everyone else.”

  Well, that was all well and good for Salma. I would never have signed my bee houses or called them “art,” but it still stung to hear her say the stenciled bee houses weren’t even mine. “Not everyone’s as good at painting as you are, and I want these to sell,” I said sharply. “It doesn’t feel like the right time to try something new.”

  “Maybe you’re scared to try?” Salma asked.

  “Like you’re scared of fractions?” My eyebrows came down. “I can’t afford to waste these houses.”

  “So what about the blueberry enchiladas?” Salma asked. “Are you going to take a chance on them?”

  “Yes.” I had already decided that we could give away little samples, and then people could try them if they weren’t sure about buying a whole one.

  She smiled. “Mama said she’d be glad to make us the tortillas. But I can’t bring the blueberries. Mr. Winthrop lets us pick a few to eat ourselves, but I couldn’t pick them to sell.”

  “I know where I can pick some,” I said. “You don’t have to help me, though. You have to do that all day long.”

  Salma shrugged. “It won’t feel like work if we do it together. I can bring a couple of rakes so it’ll go faster. Where should I meet you?”

  “It’s not far from your camp. I’ll walk over and get you tomorrow night after supper.” As I taped the autumn leaves stencil on my bee house, I glanced down to the brochure open on the table. “When was the first blueberry rake invented?”

  “1910.”

  I kept asking, and she kept answering until the drying shelf above my table was full of bee houses.

  The next day, I ate supper early so Salma and I could pick blueberries for a long time before it got dark.

  I walked Lucky over to the camp. This time I didn’t stop at the office. Mr. Winthrop hadn’t made me sign in last time, and I wasn’t sure how he’d feel about visitors bringing dogs.

  Some kids were playing tag around the cabins, and a woman was hanging out clothes on a rope tied between two trees. Lucky let me go first. He was sniffing right and left—there were new smells to check out. “Come on,” I said, pulling him along.

  Salma’s mother was sitting on the sill of the doorway, painting her toenails with gold nail polish. “Stinks!” she said, pointing to her foot.

  I nodded. “I like the color, though.”

  “Hi, Lily!” Salma came through the doorway, nudging past her mom, making the tiny brush spread gold over her mom’s toes, messing them up. “Salma!” she scolded.

  “Sorry, Mama. I’m borrowing two blueberry rakes, okay?” She grinned at us. “Hey, Lucky!”

  His tail started wagging like crazy. He pulled forward on his leash, trying to find her. Salma sat down on the grass and Lucky climbed right into her lap—which was funny because he’s so big that Salma couldn’t even see over him.

  “Lily, here.” Mrs. Santiago motioned me to sit next to her.

  Salma said something impatiently in Spanish and her mom said something back, but finally her mom shook her head and Salma’s shoulders slumped. “She wants to paint your fingernails. I told her we’re in a hurry, but she said it dries fast.”

  I don’t paint my fingernails very often, and I’ve never had them painted gold. But if Salma couldn’t talk her mom out of it, I didn’t stand a chance.

  I gave Lucky’s leash to Salma and sat down.

  Mrs. Santiago took my hand and started painting. I’d never sat next to Salma’s mom before. The only mom I’m used to sitting next to is Hannah’s mom, so this felt tingly—weird and nice and sad, all mixed together.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind helping me pick blueberries?” I asked Salma. “ ’Cause it would be okay if you didn’t want to.”

  “I don’t mind.” She peeked around Lucky and grinned at me. “I bet I’m faster than you!”

  I laughed. “I’m sure you are!”

  As the tiny brush moved over my fingernails, my hand didn’t even look like mine. When my ten fingers all ended in gold, Mrs. Santiago held my hands and blew on them.

  I swallowed hard, sorry we were done. “Thank you—gracias. They look pretty.”

  “Come on,” Salma said. “I’ll grab the rakes. Your nails can finish drying on the way.”

  I looped Lucky’s leash around my arm so I could hold my hands out and wouldn’t risk smearing the polish. As we walked, I glanced back a couple of times to Mrs. Santiago sitting in the doorway. It was such a little thing to put polish on someone’s fingernails, but it was a mom thing, and it made me all messed up inside to have someone treat me like a daughter.

  The only place I could see my own mom was where Salma and I were heading. When we got to my blueberry-picking spot, Salma dropped her blueberry rakes and made the sign of the cross: forehead to heart, shoulder to shoulder. “A cemetery?”

  “I always pick here, because these blueberries don’t belong to anyone in particular. They’re everyone’s blueberries.”

  Lucky waited patiently while I opened the metal gate. “It’s fenced in, so I can let him run free in here.” I clanked the gate closed behind us.

  “Won’t he get hurt running into the gravestones?” Salma asked.

  I smiled, unclipping his leash. “Watch him.”

  Lucky sniffed the air and then took off running down the lanes of the small cemetery, turning each corner perfectly.

  “How does he know?” Salma asked.

  “He’d been here lots of times when he could see.” I threaded the limp leash through the fence so it’d be ready for our w
alk back home. “Things don’t change here, at least not very often. So he remembers where everything is.” I watched him sniff the pathway between two stones. Yellow-and-black butterflies and mason bees flittered around him. When he could see, he used to snap at bugs that flew by. Now they have to be close enough for him to hear them.

  Along the chain-link fence, the berries were so thick that the bushes looked blue from this distance. “The blueberries are best over there,” I said, pointing. “They don’t mow too close to the fence so the bushes grow bigger.”

  Our feet crunched the reindeer moss under our feet, as loud as if we were walking through autumn leaves. The only other sounds were the wind blowing the little American flags on the soldiers’ graves, the buzz of insects, the chirp of birds, and the occasional rumble of a car driving down the gravel road that ran past the cemetery.

  “Do you worry about ghosts?” Salma asked. “I knew someone who was followed home from a cemetery by a ghost. At least that’s what she said.”

  I looked at the gravestones, all facing the blueberry barrens across the road, like they were watching over them. “That would be okay with me if it were the right ghost.”

  “Is your mom here?” Salma asked.

  I nodded and led her past the rusted metal trash barrel and some gravestones with faded fake flowers and little solar lights, all the way to the pink granite stone with the bear cub on top. When she was small, Pépère called Mama his little bear. It’s weird to think of my grown mom being someone’s little girl.

  “What happened to her?” Salma said.

  The breeze blew a strand of hair across my nose. I let it stay there. “She was in a car accident.” I didn’t look at Salma, because saying that always stops a conversation cold. The other person never knows what to say, and it makes me feel doubly bad. Bad for the truth and bad for making them feel bad. “She and Mémère got in a fight over something Lucky did. So she left. She was driving on a back road and she hit a moose. They’re dark brown, so they don’t show up at night very well, and she must not have seen it, because there weren’t any skid marks on the road to show that she tried to stop.”