What Do the Stars Look Up To?

I

June was blanketed beneath heavy heat. I sat across the table from you and watched as you scraped your fork against your plate and soaked already sloppy pancakes in syrup. The woman on the table beside us had hair matted to the back of her neck and was suffering through the blaze. With each drag of your little pitchfork across china, she seemed to lose it more and more, her eyes twin suns burning across the café. Mom would have told you off, but I let you make faces and shapes out of your brunch until it dissolved back into batter.

I drove you to school and listened to you complain about my leather seats, how they stuck to your legs and squelched when you shifted about. I told you to sit still – how silly of me. You were always shifting; head out the car window, tongue lolling dog-like into the wind. Mostly, you were shifting through time. Hair longer, mind sharper, those curious eyes quicker and quicker. 

When I picked you up, I watched you trace the very same path through the throng as I once did, bag slung over one shoulder. The old oak tree by the front gates sighed in the wind and stroked my shoulder in passing, whispering sentiments of lost causes. Its bark, wearied by years of standing guard, was marred by a graffiti gravestone which read ‘Here Lies Freedom’, and around it was a smattering of carved initials. I believe ours are on there somewhere, a J and a P, held hostage by legacy.

II

The sun shone brighter, come mid-July. Vast and blue was the sky, lonely in absence of clouds. The gravel was hot and crinkled beneath our tires when we biked into town every evening. You would drift around corners and kick up thick plumes, speckling your cheeks with sandy freckles. I still tip dust out of my shoes before I get home sometimes, even though we haven’t biked in a while. We rode to the park to watch the sun tuck itself to sleep beneath the tree line.

Sometimes we threw a ball about, or sprawled out on the grass and soaked our socks in evening dew as the cool breeze settled in. Flat against the earth with our heads tilted backwards, it was as though we were looking down into the sky and its swirling sea of stars – We might fall in, I said, if you don’t hold on tight. So we linked hands and let our legs dangle over uncharted galaxies. You asked lots of questions when the blood rushed to your head, your face aflame with the burning sunset.

Did you know that all these stars are dead? Isn’t that amazing – that they can shine for so long after they’re gone? And what came before them? What do the stars look up to? 

I thought about that for a long while, my gaze searching. In the distance, a bonfire was spitting tongues of smoke into the dusky blue, its warm breath gusting over us. You gripped my hand a little tighter, and that warmth was bone deep. I figured then that it wasn’t so strange at all for stars to shine for so long; you’ll be smiling down at me forever.

III

Autumn’s withered wings fluttered and took flight. The air began to bite with October’s bared teeth. When we were very little, you slid notes under my door frame, messily scrawled pleas for blankets and bedtime stories. Slinking downstairs into the shadows and making a show of missing the bottom step which creaked, we would watch the microwave spin and spin and spin for us, humming to itself. You’d press your face right up against its golden window and marvel at how something so small could trap the sun.

Dad would let us ride in the back of his truck to the pumpkin patch. The trees were bare, naked to the wind, and as the sun set, the tips of their branches were dipped in molten fire. Dad told us a story about how the Harvest Dragon roared vengeful breaths from his perch amongst the treetops. That’s why all the leaves burn, wilt, fall. Your breath fanned against the window and fogged it up, and we laughed our heads off when you asked if it was possible for little girls to become the Harvest Dragon.

This time of year meant costumes and regalia and all things frivolous. We meandered the neighbourhood, weighed down by sacks of sweets aplenty, but sometimes you were happy to keep watch over the driveway and shout Trick or treat out of the letter flap. No one makes as much of a fuss about Halloween anymore, but Mom still finds it funny to ask whether she should make a costume for me. I couldn’t help thinking this October, if it was Halloween and I could be anything, I’d most like to be myself, with you, again.

IV

November was colder still. The Earth shifted beneath me and winter once again leered on the horizon. If we were lucky, the lake froze over and we would skitter across the ice, carving fissures and fractures into its glass surface. When the lake was powdery in the mornings, you would make snow angels, your coat scratching against the frost. If we skated for long enough, the ice wore thin and started to crack. You fell in once. Mom doesn’t like it when I talk about that, but I will. 

It was dark. It was always dark in November. We liked to try spinning, twisting this way and that on the point of our skates, digging at the ice until it gave way to the black unknown. The frothing water beneath smoothed into a strange, dark mirror. We should have retired with the sun. Your jacket was navy, a murky blob against a murkier sky. You did not scream, but the ice did, splintering along the paths we had etched with a deep, elastic cry. I got you out somehow, but I don’t remember much. Your fingers were blue, your body jittering and your teeth clacking. Everything was cold.

At Thanksgiving dinner that year, you were thankful for snowmen and Mom was thankful you were alive. She let you have extra helpings of everything, and Nana slid you twenty dollars under the table when she thought no one else was looking. I remember saying If almost dying is worth twenty dollars, then I might try it out, and Dad clipped around the back of the head. I usually couldn’t relate to whatever Mom was thankful for, like wine, or motherhood, but I understood that year. That you were alive.

V

Christmas was quiet this year – too few presents under the tree. You were always Chief Decorator, distributing baubles about the branches. You made sure the dark side of the Christmas tree was draped in tinsel too, so it wouldn’t get cold. Dad and I made a special effort to cover up every nook and cranny, to dangle bits and bobs wherever there was emptiness. It looked horrendous, and we forwent the traditional angel atop the tree. Instead, we took it down to the yard and sat it beside you on a wreath.

We had wrapped up warm the night we went to the market in search of an angel for our tree. I gave you a piggyback as we browsed the stalls; scents sweet and meaty – all things Christmas – hanging fresh in the evening air. Under thousands of fairy lights, abuzz like fireflies, and with your red scarf tight around your neck. Your hair was shiny, rich gingerbread. Dad kept pretending to confuse his biscuit with the end of your plait and you must have been hot-chocolate-drunk, the way you laughed, so blissfully unabashed.

We had been wreaking havoc all evening, bumping into people and knocking ornaments over. Mom kept telling us off. She really told us off when we toppled an expensive china angel, rendering her headless. It’s alright though, Dad said, we were on the market for an angel, anyway. Our angel sat primly in the middle seat on the way home, the silver bells around her neck jingling merrily. She was still headless, which was vaguely off-putting, but we glued her back together. Her head was slightly off-kilter, perpetually tilting downwards, Which is special, Dad said, because it means she can watch more carefully over our family.

VI 

I’ve been told that it helps to write it all down; words are fuel to the fire of time. Time, whose hands heal as they tick about the clock. So I throw words to the page as though kindling, and wait impatiently for a flame to catch. I biked to the park this evening and spread myself flat against the green, tearing out blades of grass to give my hands something to do. I lay there long enough for the cold to seep through my gloves; lay there until I was numb to the chill. I watched the New Year ticking towards me in furious explosions; a thousand little suns and stars tumbling from ground to sky, sky to ground.

What do the stars look up to? I always struggled to answer that question. It was your favourite to ask, but all I could ever do was hum in agreement and pretend to think long and hard about it when, really, I didn’t know anything at all about the stars. But I like to think I can see you now, sprawled out against a constellation, your head tilted backwards to look up at Earth. You’re watching distant fireworks skyrocket up, and up, and up, and burn bright – starbursts blossoming against the endless tapestry of the cosmos.

When I join you someday, you will ask me again what the stars look up to, and I, a star, will be looking up to you.