Ana Robbins
I remember wanting the stars. I wanted to see them, be under them, connect to them. I think I knew I was made of stardust long before Carl Sagan broke the news to me. I grew up in a double-wide trailer in a southern town of 200 people. “Light pollution” was not a phrase in my vocabulary yet. When the sun went down over my trailer park, I could look up at the sky and pick out the big dipper, the little dipper, Orion and his famous belt, Leo the lion, whatever the crab was called, and countless others that my mom’s book on constellations listed. I wanted to soak them in, see them move across the sky as seasons changed. When I looked at them, I was outside of myself, seeing what used to be there millions of years ago. There was only one problem: I wasn’t allowed to look.
My mother had a…rule? neurosis? quirk? when it came to nighttime. As soon as the sun went away, no matter how early it was, it was time for me to go to bed. Maybe she thought it was more natural to plan her child’s rhythms by the rotation of the earth rather than the clock, but it could have just been an excuse to send me to bed. Either way, I always complied. As a kid, her motivations had no impact on whether or not I would do as she asked—fear of her response did. And so, I would see my happy ass off to bed, resigning myself off to the next four to six hours of staring up at the ceiling, wide awake.
Softened darkness. Mom’s nightlight in the hallway always bugged me. I wanted TOTAL darkness, not some “comfy” middle ground. I wanted to be completely away from my life, unable to sense where I was in relation to space and time. If I couldn’t see it when I opened my eyes, maybe it wasn’t there. The glow at my bedroom doorway prevented that happy fantasy. So, I laid still, holding my stuffed bunny named Bunny, and stared up at the ceiling while the minutes ticked away.
Finally, I heard the TV turn off and mom’s bedroom door close, signaling her own retirement. Good. Hopefully she’ll be asleep soon. My back started cramping, so I started to shift my weight onto a hip to flip over. A horrible, deafening CREEEEAAAAKKKK stopped the movement in its tracks. God, I hated that bed. I knew if I made too much noise early on, I’d keep my mom awake. The fewer hours in the day she was conscious, the better. My eyes focused on the air, tear liquid crackling in the dryness. The air was starting to swirl into colors and pictures, congregating and solidifying on the thin film of my pupil. Tiger shaped rainbows, clouds made of steel—it’s gone! Shit. I blinked. I held my eyelids open, and waited for the world to de-focus again so I could find more stories.
A half hour passed. Gunk had started to build up in the corners of my eyes and my back was screaming at me to move. I listened as hard as I could, straining to find even the slightest hint of wakefulness from my mom’s end of the house. Nothing. Not a single shifting sheet was to be heard. Slowly, I raised my upper half off the bed and pulled myself into a sitting position. The groan of the bed was low and quiet; I hoped it didn’t travel too far. My legs bent into a kneeling pose as I steadied myself, heels firmly planted into my butt. No sound. A good sign. The grey metal window frame was tantalizingly close at that point, steadfastly covered by my room’s yellow plastic blinds. The turning stick to adjust the angle of the blades had been removed to prevent me from opening them; Mom said the light would just heat up the house and raise our energy bill. I should turn on my light instead. Yeah, okay mom, makes perfect sense. I put out my index finger and slowly pushed one of the blades aside, causing the rest to follow in a V formation. Slowly but surely, what I desired was revealed to me: the window. And through my little four inch face space, I could see the night sky, completely lit up with stars. There were so many, millions, even! It was as if a rich giant had been walking home from the diamond store and had tripped over Earth, spilling her haul into an inky black sea. There were so many diamonds, I marveled that I could even still tell it was night out. Each tiny light, so far away, so free. I wanted to go outside, lay under them, just look at them, figure out their very existence. Who were they? I was part of them, I knew. If I understood them, then maybe—
“LAY DOWN AND GO TO SLEEP.”