been trying, but I smell S-E-X, missy, and I'm not taking any chances. I lived too long and come too far to blow it now.'
I sat like a fish in that airless room, flopping, as the rain battered the metal roof and walls. She was kicking me out, for nothing. I felt the ocean tugging me from my tiny little place on the rock. I could hear the river, carrying its tons of debris. I tried to think of an explanation, a reason that might satisfy her.
'I never had a father,' I said.
'Don't.' She crushed the twice-smoked butt out in the ashtray, watched her fingers. 'I've got myself and my own kids to worry about. You and me, we hardly know each other. I don't owe you a thing.' She looked down at the front of her fuzzy sweater and brushed at some ash that had fallen on her full breast.
I was slipping, falling. I had trusted Starr and I'd never given her a reason to doubt me. It wasn't fair. She was a Christian, but she wasn't acting on faith, on goodness. 'What about charity?' I said, like a falling man reaching for a branch. 'Jesus would give me a chance.'
She stood up. 'I'm not Jesus,' she said. 'Not even close.' I sat on the bed, praying to the voice in the rain. Please, Jesus, don't let her do this to me. Jesus, if you can see this, open up her heart. Please Jesus, don't let it be like this.
'I'm sorry, you were a good kid,' she said. 'But that's life.' The only answer was rain. Silence and tears. Nothing. I thought of my mother. What she would do if she were me. She would not hesitate. She would spare nothing to have what she wanted. And thinking of her, I felt something flow into my emptiness like a flexible rod of rebar climbing up my spine. I knew it was evil, what I was feeling, self-will, but if it was, then it was. I suddenly saw us on a giant chessboard, and saw my move.
'He might be mad,' I said. 'You thought of that? If he knew you sent me away, because you were jealous.'
Starr had been halfway to the door, but she stopped and turned around. She looked at me as if she'd never seen me before. I was surprised at how fast the words poured out of me then. I was the one who never had words. 'Men don't like jealous women. You're trying to make him a prisoner. He's going to hate you. He might even break up with you.'
And I liked the way she flinched, knowing I had caused the lines in her forehead. There was power in me now, where there had been none.
She pulled down her sweater so her breasts were even more prominent, glanced at herself in the mirror. Then she laughed. 'What do you know about men. You baby.'
But I felt the doubt that had made her turn to the mirror, and kept going. 'I know that men don't like women who try to own them. They dump them.'
Starr hovered by her dresser, uncertain now whether she should stop listening to me and get rid of me quick, or let me go on mining the possibilities of her doubts. She busied herself looking for another butt in the ashtray, found one that wasn't so long, straightened it out between her fingers, and lit it with her powder-blue Bic lighter.
'Especially when there's nothing going on. I like you, I like him, I like the kids, I would never do anything to screw it up. Don't you know that?' The more I said it, the less true it was. The angel on her bureau looked down, ashamed, afraid to see me. The rain drummed on the roof.
'Swear you're not interested in him?' she said finally, squinting against the vile smoke. She grabbed the Bible off the bedside table, a white leather Bible with red ribbons and a gilded edge.
'Swear on the Bible?'
I put my hand on it. It could have been the phone book for all I cared now. 'I swear to God,' I said.
SHE NEVER CALLED Children's Services, but she watched my every move, every gesture. I wasn't used to being watched, it made me feel important. I sensed a layer of myself had been peeled off that day in her bedroom, and what was under it glowed.
One night she was late getting dinner, and as we were finishing, Uncle Ray glanced at the clock. 'You're going to be tardy if you don't get a move on.'
Starr leaned back in her seat and reached for the coffeepot behind her on the counter, poured herself a cup. 'I guess they can get on without me for one night, don't you think, baby?'
The following week, she skipped two more meetings, and the third week, she actually missed church. Instead, they made love all morning, and when they finally did get up, she took us all out to the IHOP, where we ate chocolate pancakes and waffles with whipped cream in a big corner booth. Everyone was laughing and having a good time, but all I could see was Ray's arm around her shoulder on the back of the leatherette booth. I felt strange, and moved the waffle around on my plate. I wasn't hungry anymore.
THE RAINS PASSED, and now in the nights the new-washed sky showed all its stars. The boys and I stood out in the darkest part of the clay-muddy yard, listening to the runoff on the Tujunga out in the dark beyond the trees. Heavy pancakes of mud congealed around my boots as I craned my head back in the vapor-breath cold and tried to pick out the dippers and the crosses. Davey's books didn't show so many stars. I couldn't separate them.
I thought I saw a streak of light. I wasn't sure if I even saw it. I gazed upward, trying not to blink, waited.
'There!' Davey pointed.
In a different quadrant of the sky, another star broke loose. It was eerie, the one thing you didn't plan on, stellar movement. I tried to keep my eyes open without blinking. When you blinked, you missed them. I held them open for the light to develop on them like a photograph.
The little boys shivered despite the jackets over their pajamas and muddy boots, chattering and giggling in the cold and the excitement of being up so late as they gazed at the stars that started pinging like pinballs, mouths opened in case one should fall in. It was completely dark except for the line of Christmas lights that twinkled along the edge of the trailer porch.
The screen door opened and slammed. I didn't have to look to know it was him. The flare of a match, the warm stinky pot smell. 'Ought to take down those Christmas lights,' he said. He came out on the yard where we were, the ember glow, and then the sharpness of his body, the smell of new wood.
