Why the Star Stands Still (Gives Light #4)

11

  Cry Havoc

  My cousin Marilu stayed with us for a few days out of August. She was as much of a zombie as she had been during the ghost dance; inert, unresponsive, lost in another world. To make matters worse, Mickey's foul mood crested and climbed with no end in sight.

  "Do you know what I think it might be?" Dad commented, when he came to visit one day.

  "What?" I asked.

  He looked around quickly to make sure neither Mickey nor Marilu was haunting the premises. Finally, he whispered: "That time of the month."

  I stared at him.

  Dad started to color. "I mean," he went on, stammering. "Your mother told me about this ages ago; apparently women in the same household...they...well, they synch up. You see..."

  "Dad," I said. "Mickey's ten."

  He didn't understand.

  "Never mind," I said, and patted the back of his hand.

  Marilu didn't stay with us for long. On Sunday, I saw her out to the bus stop outside the turnpike. She sat on the windy little bench, the picture of unhappiness.

  "Hey," I said, and sat next to her.

  "It's so empty," Marilu said. "At home. Ever since he left..."

  She was talking about her best friend.

  I pressed a hand lightly against her back. "Why don't you stay here?" I asked. "In Nettlebush. At least you'd be with family."

  "Thanks," she said with a sigh, "but I can't keep running away forever. I'll see you in winter, Sky."

  I watched her climb on the bus when it rolled up to our stop. I lifted my hand and waved.

  I walked home and found Carole Svensen sitting at my computer.

  "Oh, sir, it's good news," she promised. "I found you a lawyer in New Mexico. We're playing internet chess."

  I gave her a thumbs up and climbed the staircase to the second floor. I thought I'd heard Rafael's voice coming from Mickey's room. Sure enough they were sitting together on her bed--along with one very fluffy gray kitten.

  I paused in the doorway and looked again. "That can't be right," I said.

  "Sky!" Mickey's foul mood had reached its end at last. She scooped the mewling furball into her arms. "Look what Rafael gave me! Isn't she cute?"

  "You got her a cat?" I asked Rafael. I hoped I didn't sound as incredulous as I felt.

  "It's just," Rafael said hastily, "the Tyke's cat keeps breeding, and she's got no room for all those damn babies--"

  "Rafael, Sarah Two Eagles is twenty-eight," I said. "I don't think she's a tyke anymore."

  "Can I feed her?" Mickey asked.

  I looked to Rafael.

  "Yeah," Rafael told me. "The T--Sarah gave me a tin of milk. S'on the table."

  "Go ahead, then," I said to Mickey.

  Mickey crooned with delight and carried her new friend down the stairs.

  "A cat, Rafael?" I asked politely.

  "What?" he said, defensive. "She kept stomping around like a damn--a damn--"

  "Like Godzilla?"

  "What?"

  "You really need to watch a movie one of these days."

  "Like that stupid thing with King Tut? Yeah, right--"

  "The cat, Rafael," I said, returning to the point.

  "Anyway, Mickey was stomping around like--like I-don't-know-what. And she told us about that cat she used to have, the one her mom killed--"

  "Oh. You think she was upset because she remembered her cat?"

  "Well, yeah," Rafael said, running his hand through the back of his hair. "Don't you?"

  "It makes sense..." I agreed.

  "Help!" Mickey yelled up the stairs. "She's going to the bathroom!"

  Rafael and I looked at each other.

  "Clean it up," I said, and pointed at the door.

  He scowled and trudged outside.

  The next several days saw a definite shift in Mickey's attitude. She named the cat "Mini"--apparently a reference to her new friend's size, but if you believe that one, I'll tell you another. She was so attentive with that kitten--feeding her milk from a dropper until she was strong enough for solids, taking her to bed at night--I didn't have it in me to rally against Rafael for making the choice without me. Even when I broke out in a ferocious rash.

  "Are you allergic?" Rafael asked one night, when we were getting ready to go to bed.

  "What gave you that idea?" I asked grimly, and scraped my fingernails across my skin.

  Dad seemed to like the kitten, too. He came around one day with a handmade scratching post and praised her prowling gait and her clear blue eyes. She completely snubbed him, though, in favor of teething on my plains flute. I could see I'd made myself an enemy.

  Cats and scratching boards and plains flutes aside, there was a bigger matter on my mind. Zeke had mentioned that we'd better get a move on if we wanted to adopt Mickey.

  One sweltering August day found the three of us sitting in the dark cellar below the kitchen, accompanied by a flashlight, alleviated by blocks of misty ice. The four of us, I should say. Mickey had Mini wrapped snugly in a pendleton blanket and pressed to her chest for warmth. Smart girl.

  "See," Rafael said. "This is the best place on earth."

  Mickey rolled her eyes. "You said that about the badlands."

  "So what?" he challenged. "There can be two best places on earth."

  "Uh, no," she retorted. "There's only one 'best,' that's why it's superlative..."

  "Pearl-what?"

  Mickey blanched. She looked at me, repulsed. I gave her a tiny little smile. "Yes," I said, "he's always been like this. Mickey, can I ask you something?"

  She checked at that, suspicious. "Sure..."

  I chose my words carefully. "School starts pretty soon."

  Mickey's face contorted with antipathy. "Thanks for reminding me."

  I swear to God, that cat was sneering at me. I scratched the rashes running up my wrists. I'm onto you, I thought.

  "It's just," Rafael said. I smiled at him. "You wanna go to school here?" he asked. "On the reservation?"

  "With Henry's dad?" Mickey piped up.

  Rafael looked ready to let slip the dogs of war. "Yes," I said, before he could cry havoc. "Henry's dad is the teacher here."

  Mickey considered it. She nodded slowly. "Sure," she said. "I wanna go to school here. It's probably better than my old school."

  Mickey perked up suddenly. "Could I blow up a water fountain, like you did, Sky?"

  "Almost did," I said.

  Rafael tossed me an affronted look. "No, you can't," he told Mickey.

  "But you're welcome to try," I added.

  The horrified look on Rafael's face was flawless. I smiled angelically.

  "Anyway," Rafael went on. I was glad he had followed my train of thought. "How about Christmas? You wanna spend Christmas here, too?"

  "What do you guys do for Christmas?" Mickey asked curiously.

  "Why don't you stick around," I suggested, wiggling my eyebrows, "and find out?"

  Mini mewled contentedly against Mickey's shirt. I reconsidered our rivalry with some level of approval. I guessed I could call a stalemate, just this once.

  "I could stay?" Mickey asked cautiously. "If I wanted to?"

  "If you wanted to," I said.

  She brushed her fingers gently over Mini's tufted gray ears.

  "I'll think about it," she finally said.

  September came much too soon for my liking. I piled fresh notebooks into Mickey's backpack--bright red, just the way she liked it--and swung the straps over her shoulders. I whisked the baseball cap off her head.

  "No hats in the classroom," I said. "Mr. Red Clay doesn't like it."

  "Mr. Siomme," she corrected. She placed her breakfast bowl on the floor when she thought I wasn't looking. Mini leapt down from the scrubbed countertop and lapped up the remnants of her blue corn mush.

  "You're not gonna run off, are you?" Rafael said scathingly. He sat fastening a new iron head to his hunting spear. "Because eve
rybody knows everybody here, so if you skip school--"

  "I'm not stupid, Rafael."

  "Oh yeah? You think I'm gonna forget you ran off and tempted the bears?"

  Mickey didn't respond. But the way she smiled--and tried to hide it against her shoulder, her head turned--I knew as well as she did that she wasn't stupid at all. On the contrary, she was a frighteningly cunning little girl.

  And as it happened, we didn't need to worry about her skipping school at all. A knock sounded at our front door--a rarity in Nettlebush--and when I opened it, I found Henry Siomme on the other side.

  "Hi, Mr. St. Clair," he said, smiling sunnily. God, he's just like his mother. "Could I walk Michaela to school?"

  I didn't have time to process his proposal. Mickey rushed past me, her hair flying behind her in a messy cloud. Was it my imagination, or were her cheeks tinged pink? "Bye Sky!" she called out. "Bye Rafael!"

  I closed the door after them, dumbfounded. Rafael stepped into the front room, Mini clutched safely in his tattooed arms.

  "Henry Siomme," he said through gritted teeth.

  "Foster daughter stealer," I mourned. I finally understood Rafael's qualms.

  Rafael left to go hunting with his uncle in the badlands. I decided it was about time someone tackled the laundry--most daunting of tasks--so I tossed our dirty clothes in the wash basin and dragged it outside, washboard in tow.

  Mickey's kitten, as I was starting to realize, was an outdoor cat. She stalked after me on her soft pads, her head low to the ground, like a fearsome predator. She sat with me when I knelt by the brook and rinsed Mickey's "Stop Looking at Me" shirt.

  "Stare at me all you want," I said. "I know you're waiting for me to let my guard down before you strike."

  And she didn't try to deny it.

  Immediately following the unpleasant bout with our laundry I headed out west to see whether Annie could use any help. Lila and Joseph strolled past me with their fishing boat suspended above their heads and Aubrey and his brothers worked hard at hilling the soil in front of the farm manor. It wouldn't be long now before the enormous autumn harvest.

  We cooked, Annie and I, in the kitchen, one of those boring, mundane tasks you've done so many times that before you know it, your hands are working without any input from your mind. We filled dozens and dozens of pots with mattache, or corn and onions braised in butter; we left them standing on the counters to be warmed again in the evening.

  "It's so nice, having the boys out of the house," she told me. We went into the foyer and readied the hearth for sagebread. I opened the door to the patio and hoped the heat would drift outside. "I love them, of course, but they're positively infuriating. Leon's decided he has a vendetta against pants."

  "Think he'll demonstrate that vendetta in the middle of the classroom?"

  "Mm, I don't doubt it. And Nicholas was keeping a pet mudworm and it died--"

  "Oh, no."

  "--and now he walks up to strangers and asks them when they're going to die--is that a kitten?"

  "Rafael picked her up for Mickey," I said. Mini had followed me into the foyer; now she strolled out onto the patio. "She's killed two dragonflies already. She's a terror."

  "Well, Skylar, that's what cats do."

  "Not this one, Annie. There's an evil gleam in her eye, I'm telling you."

  "Don't be silly."

  "You know I can't promise that."

  We retreated into the pantry. Annie showed me her back, Celia and Elizabeth sitting contentedly in their twin cradleboards. I got out the wild sage while Annie searched for the bottled yeast.

  "Really, though," she said. She does that sometimes--that is, she'll address you like you were already in the middle of a conversation with her. Really what, Annie? We went into the kitchen and started mixing the flour by hand. "Two men raising a little girl..."

  It took me a while to realize Annie was referring to Rafael and me. "You're not afraid we'll turn her into a trucker," I said solemnly, "are you?"

  "I've seen your little girl. She's already a trucker. But what are you going to do when she starts needing bras and sanitary napkins?"

  Distant terror started sinking in. "Bras... That's still a thing?"

  "What did you think it was, a passing trend?"

  "Why don't you just let them fly free? You've got nothing to be ashamed of, right?"

  "Thank you for reminding me--I've got to feed Celia yet, she didn't feel like eating this morning."

  "I'm not sticking around to see that," I said quickly.

  "Have a nice day," she said sweetly.

  I scooped Mini into my arms and humbly left Annie's house. I retreated to my own home around noon to see whether I had any updates from Carole Svensen. I didn't--maybe it was her day off, I don't know how the outside world works--but a catastrophe of a different nature met my ears.

  I don't know whether I've mentioned this, but in Nettlebush, the average school day is only four hours long. Our ancestors were smart enough to realize that children have a hard time paying attention any longer than that.

  Mickey was already home. Rafael, too.

  And that God awful metal music was screeching out of the stereo in the sitting room.

  I set Mini down and she hissed at me, like it was my fault. She darted into the kitchen for cover. I covered my ears with my hands and encroached carefully on the warzone.

  For a moment, I was spellbound. There were obvious discrepancies between them--Rafael's hair raven-black, Mickey's face freckled and snubbed--but the way they thrashed and bopped their heads...well, it reminded me of something out of a Catholic exorcism. I was starting to wonder whether I ought to call in a priest. They were even dressed kind of alike, I realized: in plaid button-downs, Mickey's a size too large, Rafael's jeans ruined at the knees.

  I made my way over to the stereo and shut it off. Silence. Sweet silence. Two indignant heads whipped in my direction.

  "This doesn't look like homework," I said lightly.

  Mickey's face lit up, catching me off guard. "School was awesome!" she said. She hopped over to the sofa and clapped her hands. Mini came prowling out of the kitchen. "Mr. Siomme told us about the Si...Si..."

  "Si-Te-Cah," I supplied gently. I sat with her.

  "And I already knew about them eating each other so I answered a question right. I never did that before. And then he paired us up for reading and Nick was actually really nice today. He kept asking me when I was going to die, though."

  "What?" said Rafael, bewildered.

  "Hang on," I said, backtracking. "Did you say school was 'awesome'?"

  Mickey pinched her eyebrows together. "Yes. Why?"

  "Where did you get that from?" I wondered.

  "Not from me," said a surly Rafael.

  "Me, neither," I said. "Must be a genetic throwback."

  It was funny to watch Mickey screw up her face with bemusement. "What are you morons talking about?"

  "Nothing, sweetheart," I said. "Do your homework."

  "Fine," Mickey grumbled, and zipped open her backpack.

  Charity came along a little while later, and the girls sat by the brook with the treacherous gray fluffball, reading from their battered old history books. I watched them from the window with a small smile on my face. Time moves way too fast. I can still remember reading from those books when I was in school myself.

  I felt a pair of arms wrap around my waist. I felt a chin resting on my shoulder.

  "She's pretty awesome, too," Rafael said, his voice in my ear.

  My smile deepened. I traced his winding chain tattoo idly with my fingertips. "Are you sure you're not just saying that because she likes your terrible music?"

  "You don't know what you're talking about," Rafael contested. "Anyone who calls the saxophone good music must've had his brains scrambled in the womb."

  "Sounds appetizing."

  "She's kind of like you," he said. "She's smart."


  I considered that. "Thank you, first of all," I said. I don't know whether I'd call myself smart. "But she's more like you. She's very cranky."

  "I'm not cranky. I'm differently tempered."

  "I can't believe you just said that."

  "Yeah, me neither."

  "Do you know anything about bras?" I asked.

  I could hear the uncertainty in his voice when he replied. "What, like I've ever seen one up close and in person?"

  "You're right," I said, after some reflection. "I'll ask Jessica when I see her."

  I saw Jessica at dinner that night, when Morgan Stout was debuting his new woodland flute for all of us. She laughed so hard, my face turned red. Women. Why can't you ask them a simple question and get a simple answer in return?

  "Maybe she doesn't need a bra when she gets older," Rafael grunted, when we went to bed that night. "Maybe she can just toss 'em over her shoulders."

  "Have you ever actually known anyone who did that?" I asked.

  "My grandma," he said. And he said it so plainly, so forthright, I honestly didn't know whether he was joking or serious. "Not Grandma Gives Light, the other one."

  "Oh, the one with the claws."

  "Yeah. Her bust was huge. Like a floatation device."

  "Is Grandma Gives Light sticking around Nettlebush?" I asked.

  Rafael pulled the bedsheets down the mattress. He pulled a face. "Matter of fact, she is. Uncle Gabe's pretty worried about it--because, you know, she's kinda old--"

  "That's one way of putting it--"

  "--and if she kicks the bucket in their house, they're gonna have to move. And, you know, they like that house."

  "I like it, too."

  "Yeah. I like our house better, though." Rafael lay down, his hair fanning across his pillow. "Any of Balto's pups been around lately?"

  I shook my head and smiled. I lay next to him.

  Our room's pretty nice, you know. Blue-white walls and a carpet in pendleton orange and gray. A photo of Annie sits on the windowsill. The rest of our photos sit on the closet door. That closet's an unmaneuverable mess. I still have to steel myself whenever I open it.

  Rafael's eyes were on me. I could feel them even when I turned off the lamp at my bedside.

  It's funny. All it takes is a look from him and I feel like a dumb, helpless, enamored idiot. I feel like I'm a kid all over again. All these years later.

  That just can't be anything but love.

  I reached for his hand and found it in the darkness, guided by the moonlight streaming through the window. I twined my fingers with his. His palm curved against mine. I like that, you know? I like to feel him. I like to know he's there. He's always going to be there.

  A knock sounded on the door; and before either of us could answer it, Mickey stepped inside, her long hair tumbling around her face.

  "You shouldn't'a done that," Rafael said gruffly, turning his lamp on. "How do you know we weren't thanking each other?"

  "Huh?" Mickey asked, her hand on the doorknob.

  "Never mind," I said. "Get over here."

  She climbed up over the bed and perched between Rafael and me. She played with the ends of her hair, probably to avoid looking either of us in the eye.

  I touched her shoulder. "Is something wrong?"

  "I can't sleep."

  "Oh? Why not?"

  She hesitated; and then she shivered, sliding down against the mattress. I looked at Rafael over her prone head.

  "You have a bad dream?" Rafael asked. Already he was fast at work pulling the blankets up to her chin.

  "What? No. Honest," she said. "Just...you know."

  By the look on Rafael's face, he very clearly did not know. Neither did I, truth be told.

  "What if she comes back?" Mickey asked.

  Weighted with sadness, I combed my fingers through her hair. "She can't hurt you," I told her. "She went to prison."

  "Well, what if she breaks out? That happens sometimes. Doesn't it?"

  "Not as often as you'd think," I said.

  Mickey didn't seem assuaged. She folded her hands atop the bedcovers--diplomatically, I thought--her forehead puckering in the lamplight.

  "Hey," Rafael said.

  She turned her head just slightly.

  "If she comes here, and she tries to get you?"

  I frowned, not entirely sure he should give credence to that scenario.

  "I'm big," Rafael said. "You see my muscles? I won't let her get to you. I'll pick her up and throw her off the reservation."

  "You can't do that," Mickey said.

  "Why not?" he said. "You think I'm not tough enough?"

  He sat on his knees. He picked her up and plucked her off the bed.

  "Hey!" she yelped, swinging her arms. Her protests transformed into giggles. Rafael held her effortlessly over his head. "Sky!" she appealed. "Help me!"

  "Okay," I said. I stuck my fingers beneath her belly and tickled her. She pealed with laughter, bright and musical, the best sound I had ever heard.

  Later on she fell asleep between the two of us, her cheek on Rafael's arm, her hair tickling my neck. I brushed the fringe from her closed eyes with the pads of my fingers. I thought about how perfect she looked to me. How I suddenly couldn't remember what our home had looked like without her.

  In Shoshone, there's a saying. It's a long one, and it doesn't have an English equivalent, so bear with me.

  Sutummu tukummuinna. It means: I don't speak your language, and you don't speak mine. But I still understand you. I don't need to walk in your footsteps if I can see the footprints you left behind.

  Those Shoshone. They really think of everything.