Paula Motta
How to Be a Stargazer
See your mother answer the door. The man standing there, holding the pizza. Ignore how she shifts her weight, how her fingers drift through her long hair. Don’t think about the way she smiles at him. How her hand lingers for a beat when she presses the rolled up twenty into his palm. Not everything means something. Think instead of how the pizza will taste, once it’s free from his grasp. Think salty. Think sweet. Think warm.
Don’t wonder what’s keeping them outside—talking, laughing, even as the sky bleeds indigo. Don’t imagine the crisp, oily dough cooling in the box. Don’t think about how she’s in between boyfriends, so there’s no one to pay the bills. And when she insists they finish their conversation inside, pay it no mind. Best to just go with it.
Pretend it’s fine that a stranger comes to deliver dinner one night and stays until morning. That he becomes your mother’s boyfriend before the slice of leftover pizza hardens in the fridge.
Just open your bedroom window and settle your telescope on the tripod. Adjust the height, align it with the North Star. Bring your eye to the soft rubber cup and breathe deep. Feel the cool air on your face. Smell distant rain, a breath of jasmine.
Think about anything else. Like how much we think we know at first—but don’t. Stars, for example. How until someone tells us, we think they are fixed in the sky.
Prepare. Your friends’ moms will ask how she met this new guy—like they did for the last, and the one before that. Answer honestly. Shrug your shoulders. Turn away at more questions.
When he starts working nights, sleeping shirtless on the living room floor, you will need to be careful. Snake around him on your way to the kitchen. Quickly, is how you must go: past those Lakers sweatpants, that loud, open-mouth breathing, the empty beer cans strewn about. Try to forget his feet sticking out from under a blanket, the curly dark hair on his toes, the nails yellow and bloated and thick.
Ignore the shout sleeping in your throat: Would it kill you to move to the couch?
When you rush by one day, and he seizes your leg, turn away from the voice that croaks, You woke me up.
Appear unbothered. Those bloodshot eyes, that big hand choking your ankle. The smell of his breath, the waxy film on his teeth.
Understand: bills don’t pay themselves. Shake your head yes, you get it, and look sorry. Shake your ankle from his grip. Shake off the stare pressed to your back as you hurry to your room.
When he’s awake, and wants your mother’s gaze, exist in the periphery. Leave the house, find something to do. Be the side note, the non-restrictive clause, the omitted phrase of the ellipsis. Put your headphones on and lie in bed. Read about planets, about galaxies, about dark matter. About all of the things unknowable and out of reach.
When your mother finds you trying her mascara wand, don’t rush from the bathroom. Let her show you how to paint your lashes, even as her hand flickers like a broken light. Smell the cigarette smoke on her fingers, in her hair. Feel the bite of her clavicle bones against your chest when she hugs you.
Don’t touch his stuff. Not his old record collection, not his football jerseys, not his army-green duffel bag full of heavy tools. Don’t be curious. Don’t ask questions. The electric guitar—don’t even look at it. On the nights he believes himself a musician, he will want your mother to listen. Just put your headphones back on, volume high.
When they fight and he leaves, skip a few days of seventh grade. Bring her chamomile tea and watch her favorite movies on repeat. Don’t let her toast cement on her plate; make her take bites. Flip Uno cards at the kitchen table; remind her of the rules when her meds make her tired, a little far away. Don’t forget to let her win sometimes.
Leave no space between you on the couch. Fuse yourself to the softness of her bathrobe, the smell of her skin, to the glimpse of your mother when she just is.
Look at her face, the dark eyes mirrored back at you. Her hair, how it falls into the same waves as yours. Examine her wrist as she shuffles the cards. The veins like blue lightning beneath the thin skin. Look at your own wrists. If your network of arteries is a parallel print, is what you would like to know.
The storage facility sits in the center of town. He brings you and your mother there the night he returns. He can play his guitar in the unit he rents, no neighbors to protest.
The wide, paved path you walk is flanked by rows of metal buildings. The lights affixed to the front of each storage unit snap on with motion. Some are broken, quilting the pavement in patterns of light and dark.
Some people call this area bad—so close to the strip mall and the McDonald’s. The only spot around here to loiter. You know it’s no worse here than anywhere else, just a little unzippered in this part of town.
You trail him and your mother, moving slowly to his storage unit. Their hands locked, they pull each other close, swaying, kissing, whispering. A week apart has turned them into a package the other has never opened.
Why you were made to come along is unclear. You can’t stay alone at night, she said. You wonder how she decides—what you’re too old or too young for.
The pulse of another motion light cracks open his face—sharpens his wide, hungry eyes. You know your mother sees how much he wants her. How certain he is that he’s something she wants too. What you see is everything he’s missing.
You follow them to his unit—steel-framed, garage-doored, like all the others. You watch him punch a code, push the door up. The screech of metal makes you shiver.
In her tight jeans and bodysuit, your mother disappears into the darkness. He follows the click of her heels on the concrete, smacks awake each puck light fixed to the wall.
A musty, bodily smell rushes you when you step inside. Something sour, something suffocating. You don’t dare breathe deep.
In the muted buttery glow, you examine towers of boxes, a metal bed frame, a toaster oven. Strewn about the floor are bloated, open boxes of the yard sale type. There’s a deflated air mattress in the back right corner. Next to it, a blanket, a battery-powered camping lamp, food wrappers, empty bottles of booze.
He says to you, don’t touch anything.
Your mother sits on a small black bench in front of a drum set, taps her fingers on a cymbal. He digs through a box of electrical cords, looks up to say to her: That was my father’s. Be careful.
She pats the space beside her and waves you over.
You share the seat with her, your legs pressed together. When you step on the bass drum’s kick pedal, you smile. You like the sound. You like her head resting on your shoulder, how the coconut scent of her hair smothers the rank.
When you find the drumsticks, you hand her one. With your mother on the snare and you on the cymbal, you tap out a beat. You both furrow your brows—rock stars lost in the moment—and giggle quietly.
I said don’t touch anything, he says, his eyes on you.
Stare back at him. Still staring, put the drumstick down. Get up as she looks at you. Look back at her in your way that says: don’t worry, it’s cool.
Listen to his clumsy strumming. His eyes swing between the guitar and your mother. She is beautiful, that is a fact. But what else exactly beaches these men so fast at her feet? What if you have it too? What if you don’t?
With quiet steps, you walk out and away.
You do not intend to wander. You just want to breathe different air, look at the sky. When you turn right into another row of units, you pause. It’s a clear night, Orion easy to find. With a finger, you draw an imaginary line from the three stars of Orion’s Belt. Down and to the right, to Sirius—the brightest star in the sky. You used to believe that if you lay under it long enough, that you could absorb some of its light.
You walk fast. Then slow. You can walk how you want to; you’re alone. There’s a smoothness to this freedom. Also an emptiness. A spoon licked clean.
Hear the whine of his guitar fading away. In the distance, see the lights from the gas station.
Look up to a violet-washed moon. Look back, but only once.
You think you hear something. A unit draws you to its roller door. When your fingertips brush the cold steel, you go still. You listen. Your face warms as the door returns your breath. You wonder about the stories on the other side, lingering among all the deserted things.
Close your eyes tight. Imagine a coin collection someone once believed valuable. Old furniture. Stacks of old newspapers. A shoebox of love letters, written in cursive on postcards. All of it perfumed with dust, cold and darkness.
Shake it away and close your eyes tighter. Imagine a young couple renting this unit. Neatly packed totes of blankets, hiking gear, holiday decorations. Two bikes leaning against the wall. They’re expecting their first baby and need the extra storage until they move into their new house.
Your things have been jailed in places like this before—usually after a sudden move. Your books, clothes, folded posters. You don’t see most of it again. If you can’t pay the monthly fee, the owners toss what’s worthless. You like to think that before that happens, at least one person has stood outside where your things slept, listening against the steel to your stories.
The last row of storage units backs up to the parking lot.
Someone close by says: You lost?
Turn around, see him sitting in the open entrance of the third-to-last unit. Freeze. Walk a little closer. He is at least seventeen. No more than twenty-five. He sits cross-legged on the ground in ripped jeans splattered with white paint.
Take a few more steps toward him. Consider his hair: shoulder-length, grease-slicked, parted in the middle. Around his head, the band of a headlamp—the kind used for camping. Consider his eyes. Bruise-like, a blue so dark they’re nearly black.
Know you shouldn’t answer this boy-man. Hear yourself say: No, you are not lost. Don’t try to understand why you don’t just keep walking.
See his hands joined in his lap. Resting on its side in his palms, a small bird.
See the bottoms of his feet, painted black with dirt. Say that your mom and her boyfriend are over there, and point to a place that seems close—but not too close.
A floodlight cuts a white glow into the unit. Peer around him to see what lives there.
Just a bunch of my old stuff, he says, following your gaze.
Your stuff? All this?
My Dad’s, he says. Getting a few things I need.
You’re close enough now to smell sweat, the kind that’s had weeks to settle.
The bird lies on its side in his hands, revealing its whitish-tan underbelly. Which is good because in this position, it can still see the sky.
He strokes the black and light gray feathers with an index finger. Note how unbothered the bird appears by this. It’s not moving in that scared way of your mother’s. You also freeze when panicked.
You consider saying, They don’t like humans petting them. Instead, you ask, What’s wrong with the bird?
I don’t know, he tells you. Something up with its wings. I found it lying over there. He nods toward the entrance to the storage facility.
You wonder where the bird was headed before it fell. And if it wanted to go there.
You both watch closely as the bird squirms in his palms. It lifts a sleepy wing, then lets out a few clipped, faint chirps before going still again.
His attention shifts from the bird to you. He looks at you longer than he should need to. Think now of your messy braid. The dirty purple sandals you slipped into when they said you were coming with them. The burst of acne on the bridge of your nose.
He pushes an overturned milk crate toward you with his foot and says: Sit. If you want to.
You should leave. This person is not someone you know. But a bad person does not sit cross-legged on the cold ground cradling a broken bird in its hands. Of this, you are sure.
So go ahead and sit. Tell him you’re sixteen.
Why the lie, you do not know. But feel the power of it. The surge of adrenaline. A strange kind of freedom.
Reach out your hand for the beer he offers you. Hold the cold liquid in your mouth. Feel your throat resist the swallow. Force it down. Smile a little.
So what’s your deal? he asks you.
Deal? You think. You don’t have a deal.
My mom’s boyfriend thinks he’s a musician, you finally say.
He smiles and says, I do too sometimes.
He shifts the bird into one hand and with the other taps the top of a paint can, nodding his head in time to the beat.
He laughs and you understand you must smile. But you don’t.
You should ask him some questions, but you don’t know what you want to know besides why does he keep looking at you?
You think, what if there were a telescope designed to see into minds? Bent, reflected light revealing a blueprint laid bare—with just a single glance into the lens.
Your mother: how does she choose her strangers? And since she’s chosen so many, and for so long, why doesn’t she pick better ones?
Look around and behind him again. See a sewing mannequin leaning against a wall. A coffee table and a low-slung green couch. An open box of drinking glasses with ornate designs. These are not a father’s things. An old woman’s things, maybe.
But there are other items, some not so old-woman-like: a sheet strung in a back corner to form a hammock, for example. You wonder how easy it would be to break into one of these units. Look up—no cameras.
Again, the feeling that you should leave. But something keeps you there. He might have an answer, though you’re not yet sure of the question.
See him look at you for a long time again. He shifts the bird to one palm, takes a long sip of his beer with the other, then runs a hand through his greasy hair.
Do you know what you will do with it? You ask, inspecting the bird.
He shrugs. No idea.
Remember your mother. Stand up, thank him for the beer you didn’t finish.
He stands up too. You’re leaving already?
I have to get back now, you say. Hope it works out. The bird, I mean.
Look right into those blue-black eyes when he reaches for your wrist. Feel a stranger’s touch—a light grip. Not a mean one, playful even.
In one of his hands—your wrist. In the other—the bird. You want your wrist back, but you hesitate.
Come on, don’t go yet, he says quietly. He smiles. I like talking to you.
When you pull away, he tightens his hold—just a little. Not as tight as when your ankle was grabbed in your living room. But somehow, they both say the same thing: What you’re doing right now, it’s not what I want.
It’s boring without someone to talk to, he says, maintaining his smile. And I can’t save this little guy alone.
Sorry, my mom—you begin.
He says, I’m not some creep. I just want to hang out a little longer.
As you turn away, he reaches with the hand holding the bird to grab your other wrist.
The bird dives on sleepy wings. The smack of body meeting ground eclipses all other sounds.
His hold on your wrists loosens as he stares at the bird at his dirty feet.
You pull free, ready to run. The bird’s eye blinks alive. You take a step back and scoop it gently into your hands, not caring that it gives him the chance to reach for you again.
In his truck, headed back to the apartment, you watch the bird breathe slow. You hope the cool wind through the open windows reminds it of flying.
He drives with one hand. The other hand rests on your mother’s thigh. Every few minutes, they look at each other and smile.
Something about the hum of the engine, the smell of the cinnamon air freshener, the sound of your mother’s low whispering. The weight of the bird in your hands, its small head resting on your forefinger, its wing smooth as smoke against your skin. Your muscles loosen. A calm settles in—thick enough to invite sleep.
You don’t hear what starts the argument—like it matters anyway.
Only a few minutes from home, watch that big hand reach for her thigh again, this time seizing it and squeezing it hard, as if to hold her in place. Watch the muscles in the back of his neck strain as he shouts. Follow the arc of his fist into the steering wheel. Hear your mother shouting back, writhing to the passenger side door.
Feel the car veer left, then right—an excited kid through a crowd. He crushes the brake. See your mother reach for the handle, see the passenger-side door swing open.
Watch from behind the window. See her unfold onto pavement in the middle of the road. A frozen snow angel, limbs stretched wide. Her body still, she speaks something to the sky.
Tell yourself to run after her. Realize you are stapled to the seat. Look down into your hands. What to do with the bird?
Scream for her. Scream like she did for you earlier in the night, when she realized you were gone. When he still had a grip on your wrist and her wild shouts tore through the night air. Remember how loud she called your name, the terror in her voice. How far the sound reached—blasting through those steel walls. Through all those dusty, forgotten things.
Remember the resolve slipping from his face, from his grip, when he heard it. Remember the feeling of your hand safe inside your mother’s.
Stay inside that feeling. The one that imagines a world where the bird doesn’t die cradled in your strange nest of bone and skin. Or one where your mother isn’t sick anymore.
Force your mouth, your throat, your lungs to synchronize—to cry out what she needs to hear: Get the fuck up, Mom! Please. I need you.
But you are immobilized. You’re your own star, pressed to the dark road, bathed in the celestial glow of a truck’s headlights.
Not yet, though. Not yet.
For now, stay inside the truck, breathing in time with the bird.
For now, remain the stargazer, waiting to witness some kind of radiant, unknowable thing.
Paula Motta is a high school English teacher in Boston and an MFA candidate in fiction at the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.