Stella by Starlight Page 17

  her fatther father is full of hate. She knows that is the truth. So does every living soul in Bumblebee.

  so there is really nobody to tell.

  48

  Just Plain Joy

  Stella was learning to run the kitchen. Mama, sitting with her leg elevated on a pillow, directed, guiding her on details Stella had never paid much attention to before—like boiling and frying and searing. Hot-water corn bread—cornmeal, water, flour, sometimes an egg—plopped into sizzling grease. Succotash—okra, corn, tomatoes, and peppers—sliced, diced, boiled, then fried. Cookies—sugar, butter, cinnamon, flour, and more sugar. Stella had generally preferred eating the goodies rather than cooking them, but Mama’s years of gentle lessons were paying off now.

  Jojo, without being told, had taken over most of Stella’s barn chores. The family never missed church.

  “Is it truly Christmas in two days, Stella?” Jojo asked for the seventieth time. “And for sure we don’t have to go to school this morning?”

  “It truly is, Jojo,” Stella assured her brother for the seventieth time. “Why do you think I’m making Christmas sugar cookies?” She wiped her hand across her forehead, smearing flour across her brow. “And no classes—just the pageant tonight. Now go get me some more sugar.”

  “I think there are a few raisins left in the jar,” Mama called out, pointing to a high shelf.

  Jojo looked at Stella’s face and burst out laughing. “You got more flour on your face than in the bowl!” he cried.

  “Keep that up and I won’t let you have any of my cookies,” Stella warned, flicking flour his way.

  “You’ll probably burn them again anyway!”

  “You’re right,” Stella agreed good naturedly, “but I’m getting pretty good at this cooking thing.” Jojo scurried to find the raisins. She sat down at the kitchen table to stir the thick dough.

  “Stella, honey—I might not be fit for dancing, but I can certainly stir some batter,” Mama said, stretching her arms for the bowl.

  “But I want to do it,” Stella said with a smile. “I’m gonna try to make us a really good Christmas supper, Mama. All by myself.”

  “I have no doubt. Holler if there’s something you can’t figure out.”

  Stella heard a rustling in the loft and hopped back up to get the coffee. Papa was awake. The family had seen him less and less the past month—in addition to keeping their farm going, he’d taken a part-time job at the mill to bring in a little more money, so he was often gone, and always tired. She poured the coffee into a cup and brought it to the table, but Papa strode directly to his wife and kissed her on her forehead.

  “Mornin’,” he said. “How’s my Georgia Peach?”

  “Fair to middlin’,” she replied with a bright smile. “I’m just sittin’ here watchin’ our daughter cook like a grown woman!”

  “Mornin’, Papa,” Stella said as he made his way to the table. She slid the steaming cup in front of him.

  “And how’s my other favorite girl?” he asked, slurping the coffee. “Don’t tell your mama, but I think you might have learned how to brew the perfect pot of coffee!”

  “I heard that, Jonah Mills,” Mama said, laughing.

  “Are you off work today, Papa?” Stella asked hopefully, now placing a slice of lumpy corn bread in front of him.

  “No, but I’ll get home early—in time for the Christmas pageant. And I’ll be home Sunday. Since it’s Christmas, they’re closing the mill the whole day.”

  “Good,” Stella said. “You can get some rest.”

  “Tell that to the cow, the mule, and the chickens!” her father said with a bemused smile. “Y’all ready for your show tonight?”

  “You and Mama are gonna love it,” Stella replied. “I get to be assistant director.”

  “That sounds like an ideal role for you. How you doin’, girl?” Papa asked. “You gettin’ enough sleep?”

  “Yes, Papa. I’m feelin’ just fine.”

  “You make my heart happy, Stella,” her father said. “For everything you do with your brother, helpin’ your mama with the cooking and washing. You have no idea.”

  “Everybody helps. The neighbors still bring food from time to time. Jojo has gotten really good with getting firewood and cleaning the barn and doing the outside chores. And Mama’s gettin’ so much stronger. We’re gonna make it.”

  Her father gulped down the rest of his coffee and began lacing his boots. “I’ll see you all tonight,” he said. “Lookin’ forward to seein’ that pageant of yours.” Putting on his hat and taking the corn bread with him, he headed out for the three-mile walk to the mill, where, Stella knew, he’d be lifting logs and sweeping sawdust all day long.

  Mama dozed while Stella washed the dishes, swept the house and both porches, and peeled potatoes for supper. When Mama woke up, her eyes were glowing. “Hey, you two! Let’s decorate the Christmas tree!”

  Jojo jumped with excitement. “What we gonna put on it?” he asked.

  “How about we start with popcorn?” Mama suggested. She told Stella to heat the butter, toss a half cup of the popping corn in, cover it, and wait for the pop.

  “Pop! Pop-pop! Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop!” Jojo sang along with the popcorn as the kernels exploded into delicious bits of fluff. When she took the top off the pan, he cheered.

  Taking a needle she’d threaded, Mama showed them how to pull it through each piece of popcorn. Soon they had a long chain done. Then another. They would have had three, but Jojo kept eating the popcorn.

  “What else? What else can we put on the tree?” Jojo asked, his mouth full.

  Mama had an idea. “Go out to the henhouse, Jojo, and get some pretty feathers. Look for the long ones—the tail feathers! And pinecones! There must be a thousand pinecones—” He darted out before she finished speaking, leaving the front door wide open.

  “Jojo! You don’t live in a barn!” Stella called after him, only to hear her mother laughing.

  “What?” Stella asked as she closed the door.

  “You sound just like me!” her mother said.

  While Jojo was out collecting, Stella had another idea. She pulled out a long spool of bright-red knitting yarn from Mama’s sewing basket. She took every single spare button from the basket’s bottom. As with the popcorn, she strung each one onto the yarn. She tied a knot between each button so they wouldn’t run together. She had just knotted the last button when Jojo returned, triumphant, with the egg basket filled with feathers and pinecones. Together, they made a garland of pinecones and chicken feathers, so pretty that Mama decided then and there that they had just created a new holiday tradition.

  Strand by strand, Jojo and Stella walked around the tree, wrapping it with the popcorn, the buttons, and the garlands. When they finished, all three stood back, Mama leaning on her cane, well pleased at how pretty it was in the fading afternoon light.

  “I think it’s our best tree ever,” Jojo said, picking a popcorn husk from his teeth.

  “Just plain joy,” Mama breathed.

  “We couldn’t have done it without you, Mama,” Stella replied, knowing in her heart it was true.

  49

  Not in the Script

  From the back of the church, the children from Riverside School streamed in, their hands clasped as if in prayer. Some wore bedsheet or towel robes, others were in costumes made from feed sacks. As they made their way to the front of the church they sang, in voices sweetly in tune, thanks to all the practices,

  “Away in a manger,

  No crib for his bed,

  The little Lord Jesus

  Laid down his sweet head;

  The stars in the bright sky

  Looked down where he lay,

  The little Lord Jesus

  Asleep on the hay.”

  Stella, standing in front beside Mrs. Grayson at the piano, nodded, pleased. Perfect so far. Then a little voice shouted out, “Hi, Mommy!” Four-year-old Hope Spencer had taken her hands out of the prayer position to wave wildl
y at her parents.

  “Hi, Daddy!” her twin sister Hester echoed, waving as well.

  Stella put her finger to her lips, trying to shush the twins, but people in the audience simply chuckled, and Mrs. Spencer waved back, happiness splashed across her face.

  “The cattle are lowing,

  The poor baby wakes,

  But little Lord Jesus,

  No crying he makes.

  I love thee, Lord Jesus,

  Look down from the sky

  And stay by my cradle

  Till morning is nigh.”

  When they reached the front, the children scrambled to find their places. Tony, Johnsteve, and Randy, the three wise men, stood regally in one corner—for only a minute, however, because somehow, Randy’s crown toppled from his head!

  “Hey! My king crown!” Randy whispered far too loudly. The crown rolled off the stage and Randy rushed to retrieve it, dropping a jar of what was supposed to be his gift to the baby in the manger. Apple jelly, not frankincense or myrrh, spilled across the stage.

  The other two “kings” clapped their hands over their mouths to restrain their laughter. Randy scurried back to his place, crown in hand. But as he tried to adjust it back on his head, he bumped into Johnsteve, who teetered on the edge of the pulpit. Tony grabbed him to keep from falling, causing his own crown to come tumbling off. The three boys gave up all attempts at dignity and now were just trying to keep from bursting into laughter.

  “And it came to pass that all the people had to go pay taxes,” Helen Spencer, as the first narrator, was saying in a loud and proper voice. Stella could tell she was trying to get the play back on track. “But Mary and Joseph couldn’t find a hotel anywhere! So they stayed in a barn.” Stella looked up in surprise when Helen added, “I bet Mary let Joseph know that she wasn’t very happy about that either!”

  That wasn’t in the script. And now the whole audience began to laugh.

  Then Carolyn, dressed in a long blue dress that had been donated by Miss Mary Lou of the Bumblebee Baptist Church, and a blue bath towel draped over her head like a shawl, added dramatically, “Joseph! A barn? Are you for serious? Don’t you know I’m about to have a baby in a few minutes?”

  Stella looked to Mrs. Grayson, who looked horrified. But as she scanned the audience, who was clearly enjoying it, she settled into a bemused headshake.

  Hector Spencer, wearing his father’s plaid bathrobe, played Joseph. He looked around for a moment in confusion; this was not how the play had been rehearsed. So he glared at Carolyn, glanced at his father in the audience, then said, crossing his arms, “I’m doin’ the best I can, woman! Times are hard!”

  By this time, the people in the pews were rolling with laughter, including, Stella saw, her mother. It made her feel so good to see her mother laughing.

  The shepherds forgot the words to “Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow.” The little angels simply sat down on the stage giggling because Baby Jesus, played by Hetty, climbed out of the box that was being used for the manger and said loudly, “Mama! Gotta go pee-pee! Now!” Mrs. Spencer ran to the front and grabbed the child, but it was clearly too late.

  At that, Mrs. Grayson gave up. Laughing herself, she said, “I think we better halt this production right now!”

  She took Stella’s hand and walked from the piano to the front of the church. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, still laughing so hard she had to catch her breath, “the children worked very hard on the pageant this year, but as usual, it never quite goes as planned. We had a counting song for you, and a full-length play—really!”

  Pastor Patton joined them, trying hard to suppress his own guffaws. “We all know how the story ends, folks. Jesus was born, gifts were given, and the world was made a better place. But you know what? I think one of the best gifts of all is laughter. There’s never enough laughter. So let’s thank our children for that. Please give all of them a huge round of applause!”

  “We still gettin’ presents?” Jojo piped up after the clapping subsided.

  That made everyone laugh again. Mrs. Grayson replied, “Bags of fruit and candy for all of you are on the back table. Merry Christmas, everyone!”

  Mrs. Hawkins, sliding onto the piano bench, struck up the chords on the old piano and ended the pageant with, “Go Tell It on the Mountain.”

  “Go tell it on the mountain

  Over the hills and everywhere

  Go tell it on the mountain

  That Jesus Christ is born.

  Hallelujah!”

  50

  Thinking About Flying

  STELLA’S STAR SENTINEL CHRISTMAS EDITION

  There is nothing more butifull beautiful than dawn on Christmas morning. the sky is just beginnng beginning to wake up. Early morning clouds cover the stars like blankets. The moon, looking sort of like a ripe peach, hangs in the sky like another decration decoration.

  (editor’s note: wow! That was pretty good! I just might be getting the hang of this writing business.I just might glue this to the wall!)

  (second editor’s note: I am the editor! And the reporter! I like that.)

  For Christmas I wish for more love, less hate. and more cookies.

  soon all the chickens roosters on the lane, who think they have more power than they really do, will decide it is time to wake everybody up. They don’t know the sun will come up anyway.

  Roosters never look beyond the fence. I doubt if they ever think about flying.

  But I do.

  Acknowledgments

  Union Mills, North Carolina. Yes, this is for you. Thank you for the stories on the porches late on summer nights. Thank you for the lightning bugs and the sweet tea. Thank you for the memories you didn’t even know you were creating.

  Thank you, Lord, for the release from the black hole of “wordlessness” I found myself in a couple of years ago. I will never again smirk about the pain of not being able to find the right words. Sometimes they hide in deep, dark places. Thank you for the light.

  Thank you to my editor, Caitlyn Dlouhy, for giving me the tools to work through the pain, for understanding and space and time, which in the world of publishing is a supreme and precious gift.

  Thank you to my friend and agent Janell Walden Agyeman, for her strength and encouragement and complete belief in the power of the spirit, and the wisdom of the ages, and for her acknowledgment of the ancestors to hold us up and lead us onto our designated path of light.

  Thank you to the National Association of Black Storytellers, who inspire me each year, and who taught me the nuances and subtlety of storytelling, the secret voice of the drummer, and how to weave our history into story, to weave culture into fiction.

  Thank you to my parents for their continued complete belief in me, (Mom, your story is coming next—look out!), and to my husband and children and grandchildren for their love and support.

  SHARON M. DRAPER was inspired to write this book after coming across the diary of her grandmother, who, although she had been forced to stop going to school in fifth grade, insisted on writing each night by the light of the moon. Sharon’s most recent middle-grade novel, Out of My Mind, was a New York Times bestseller for over a year and won more than twenty state reading awards. She is the two-time Coretta Scott King Award–winning author of Copper Sun and Forged by Fire. She has also received the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Author Award for New Talent for Tears of a Tiger and Coretta Scott King Author Honors for The Battle of Jericho and November Blues. Her other books include Romiette and Julio, Darkness Before Dawn, Double Dutch, and Just Another Hero. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is a popular school and conference speaker. For more information visit her online at SharonDraper.com.

  Atheneum Books for Young Readers

  Simon & Schuster

  New York

  Meet the author, watch videos, and get extras at

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  ALSO BY SHARON M. DRAPER

&nbs
p; Copper Sun

  Double Dutch

  Out of My Mind

  Panic

  Romiette & Julio

  The Jericho Trilogy:

  The Battle of Jericho

  November Blues

  Just Another Hero

  The Hazelwood High Trilogy:

  Tears of a Tiger

  Forged by Fire

  Darkness Before Dawn

  Clubhouse Mysteries

  The Buried Bones Mystery

  Lost in the Tunnel of Time

  Shadows of Caesar’s Creek

  The Space Mission Adventure

  The Backyard Animal Show

  Stars and Sparks on Stage

  WE HOPE YOU LOVED READING THIS EBOOK!

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2015 by Sharon M. Draper

  Jacket design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover

  Jacket illustration copyright © 2015 by Sarah Jane Coleman

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.