The Girl with the Stars in Her Eyes

I

Twelve-year-old Sabella Laaksonen looked up into the star-filled sky as she stood by the rental cabin beside Dark Lake in Eagle, Vermont on the last night of summer vacation, and made a wish.

“Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might have the wish I wish tonight. I wish I had a friend who I could tell my secrets to—a friend who would understand and like me for who I am, not who they think I could be if I just tried harder.”

Sabella had been raised to believe that if you are kind, others will be kind to you, but she found that others are only kind if they think you’re pretty, and nobody thought that Sabella was pretty.

Sabella had unruly strawberry-blonde hair that she pulled back in a utilitarian ponytail. Her hair seemed to stay greasy no matter how often she washed it. As a young child, Sabella had loved the splatter of freckles across her nose, but once she started school, she quickly learned to loathe them. Either freckles or red hair inspired scorn in other kids, and Sabella had both. As if a freckly face wasn’t bad enough, Sabella’s nose and forehead remained shiny no matter how hard she scrubbed her face, and she had frequent acne breakouts.

Sabella loathed her gapped, buck-toothed overbite. She wasn’t sure if the braces she wore to correct the problem were helping. Every time Dr. Favager tightened them, she spent a miserable night wishing she would die because her mouth hurt so bad. Her mother’s statement that ladies had to suffer for beauty offered no comfort because Sabella didn’t believe that there was any procedure or process known to humanity that could render her beautiful.

To make matters worse, since the onset of puberty, Sabella’s thighs and butt seemed to be growing non-stop. When she was younger, she had beamed with pride when her father praised her for being trim and athletic. Now it seemed that no amount of running or hiking or climbing trees was enough. Her legs and butt were still fat.

Sabella had tried eating less, but this insulted her mother.

“I slave the afternoon away to make good food for my family, and you just pick at it!” Thyra Laaksonen scolded. “I don’t know why I bother. I might as well just put a box of cereal on the table. You’re so fussy! Why can’t you be more like Alex? He has a good, hearty appetite!”

“Alex is still growing up,” Sabella protested. “The only thing I’m growing is fat!”

“You’ll never be fat, Princess, not with the way you run and play,” Brice Laaksonen reassured his daughter. “Now go on, eat up! Your mother worked hard to put this meal together.”

Sabella genuinely liked her mother’s cooking and it made her feel warm inside when her father praised her for eating hearty. She often had seconds and sometimes thirds, eating until she felt like she was ready to burst. After dessert, she would excuse herself to wash up for bed. Once alone in the bathroom, she forced herself to vomit. She always felt disgusted and ashamed afterward, but she couldn’t think of any other way to keep herself from getting fatter.

Sabella admonished herself that she needed to run more. It might prevent her from gaining more weight, and her father would be proud if she earned a place on the track team.

“No being a quitter, Isabella Thyra Sarah Laaksonen,” Sabella scolded herself. “If you are going to be victorious, you need to train like your life depends on it, because it does. You must be active while you’re young, so you don’t end up weak and sick when you’re old. Tomorrow we will get down to business. We need to do at least 100 crunches and 100 push-ups and at least ten pull-ups every day. When we get back to El Paso, we need to get up early and help Dad dig the holes for the new trees. You can’t afford to get fat! Fat girls don’t get good-looking guys, they just get jealous of thin girls. No more excuses, Sabella Laaksonen, you need to get skinny and stay skinny!”

II

Back in El Paso at Jubilee Catholic Preparatory Academy for Young Ladies, Sabella struggled to gain and keep a magazine-perfect physique while living in a body that wanted to be ample in the hips and thighs and modest in the bust. She would have traded her ability to dash like a wild colt for a pretty face and perfect body in a heartbeat even though nothing made her feel quite as exhilarated and free as sprinting did.

“Are you there, God? It’s me, Sabella.”

Sabella opened her prayers this way each night because she identified with the titular character from Judy Blume’s story. Margaret and Sabella had some of the same concerns, although Margaret seemed to be an ordinary-looking girl rather than a greasy-haired, pimply-faced, metal-mouthed monstrosity, and, unlike Sabella, she seemed to be reasonably well-liked. Sabella could count the friends she had on one hand, and even among them, she knew that she was nobody’s first choice.

Funnily enough, one of Sabella’s friends was a girl named Margaret. Margaret Leavitt was in the eighth grade. Like Sabella, she was a shy girl with braces, and she was a runner. Margaret was tall and rangy. She had bright yellow hair and big brown eyes and Sabella thought that Margaret looked like what a daisy would look like if it turned into a person.

Margaret was easy to talk to, and for a time Sabella allowed herself to think that Margaret might be her best friend. She realized that wasn’t the case on the day that she, Margaret, and Vivien Banks were walking together. Margaret and Vivien ignored Sabella while planning a sleepover.

“Let’s invite Miley Miller too!” Vivien suggested excitedly.

Sabella slipped away from Margaret and Vivien and shuffled home, looking at the ground.

“Who needs them anyway?” she asked herself. “I’m going home to draw angels and prepare for Bible study. The angels are my real friends and one day I will be an angel. Then I will become a guardian for a girl who is sad like me and I will make sure that she knows she’s never alone.”

Sabella stopped into the Church of Saint Opportuna to pray. She put a quarter into the offering box and lit a candle.

“Dear Angels, I need to ask you two things and both of them are about friends,” Sabella prayed. “If I have an angel who is my special friend in Heaven, I would like to meet him or her, and if there is a friend here on Earth especially for me, I would like to meet him or her. I think Margaret is still my friend, but I see now that she isn’t my best friend. I thank God for showing me that, even though it hurts my heart. Oh, and dear Angels if you could ask God if he could make me not so ugly, I would really appreciate it. I know that God sees the beauty in all of us, but people aren’t quite so nice, and I’m tired of being called mean names. I don’t have to be as beautiful as a model, just ordinary will do. Thank you, dear Angels, from your devoted servant Isabella Thyra Sarah Laaksonen. Amen.”

III

As Sabella continued her journey home, she heard someone calling her name. She turned to see Scotty Tyler, one of the students St. Aredius Academy for Young Gentlemen and smiled. Scotty was a tall, lanky redhead with a face full of freckles, a toothy grin, and laughing sky-blue eyes. He didn’t have a mean bone in his body, and Sabella wished there could be more people in the world like Scotty.

“Hey Scotty,” Sabella greeted as Scotty offered her the sunflower he was carrying.

“There’s still about a hunnert seeds, I think,” Scotty declared. “They’s yours if you want ‘em.”

“I do,” Sabella said. “Thank you so much. How’s your day going, Scotty?”

“Every day is a blessed day,” Scotty said, and Sabella admired his devotion. “I’m havin’ a wonderful day. But you look a little down at the mouth.”

“Well, not now that you’re here. I was feeling lonely and wishing for a friend.”

“Well, where’s Margaret at? I know the two of you like to pal around.”

“She’s palling around with Vivien Banks and the two of them are planning a sleepover with Miley Miller. No Sabellas were invited.”

“Gosh, I’m sorry, Sabella, that stinks. I’d invite you to a sleepover, except boys and girls ain’t allowed to have sleepovers together, of course. I think it’s kinda silly that a boy and girl can’t do a sleepover if they’s just friends, but you know how grown-ups are.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sabella agreed. “But a boy and girl can go to the movies if they’re just friends. Mom and Dad might make me bring Alex, though, so we’ll have to pick one that’s okay for kids to see.”

“That’s okay, I like kids’ movies anyways,” Scotty confessed. “My folks will probably want me to take Cyrus along too.”

“Perfect,” Sabella said. “’Cause Alex and Cyrus are buds anyways, and I like kids’ movies too. I’ll look at the paper and you look at the paper. Give me a call after dinner but not later than 8:30, okay? Thanks, Scotty! This is gonna be way more fun than a stupid sleepover.”

“You’re welcome, Sabella. I’ll call y’all tonight.”

IV

Fourteen-year-old Sabella Laaksonen looked up at a sky full of stars through a haze of tears. Her father said that it was just one of those unfortunate things. Scotty had something called Marfan syndrome, which is what made him tall and thin as a telephone pole. It was also the reason that Scotty’s heart stopped one night while he was sleeping, and he flew off to heaven. When Sabella said angrily that Scotty was too young to go to Heaven and she needed him here to be her friend, her father chided her.

“God must have needed Scotty for a special mission,” Brice reasoned. “Maybe there’s a boy or girl in the world who needs the help of a kind angel like Scotty. Y’all pray for his soul now, Girl, and don’t be so selfish. If you just put yourself out there, you’ll make new friends.”

“I don’t want new friends, I want Scotty,” Sabella muttered as her father walked away. “We was like twins. Scotty, if you can hear me, I hope maybe you’ll be my guardian angel, ‘cause I can sure use one. And even if I make other friends, I’ll never forget about you. You’ll always be my other brother, guaranteed.”

V

Sabella was lonely without Scotty and sank into depression. The other girls shunned her, saying that she brought things down with her gloomy attitude. Each night, Sabella looked up at the stars and wished she could meet a friend who would understand her. Her prayers were finally answered when a new girl started attending Jubilee at the beginning of her sophomore year. Ingrid O’Neal was a small, wiry, African-American girl who sewed her own outfits and enjoyed weaving ribbons and beads into her hair and pulling it back with handmade headbands or scarves. When new girl Ingrid saw Sabella sitting alone at lunch looking out the window, she took the initiative and sat across from her.

“Is it just me, or are a lot of the girls here downright unfriendly?” Ingrid inquired quietly.

“It’s not just you,” Sabella replied in hushed tones. “And I hate to say it, but it’s better to know what to expect. Some of ‘em are really prejudiced.”

“Well, that ain’t a surprise. We in the South, Child!” Ingrid chuckled. “Honestly, you the only one I’ve seen so far that ain’t strutting ‘round here like she Queen Victoria.”

At this quip, Sabella snorted with laughter and quickly pretended to sneeze when several of the other girls turned to glare. Ingrid chuckled and patted Sabella’s arm.

“Careful, or this yella stuff they tryin’ to pass off as lemonade might come sprayin’ out your nose,” she chortled. “By the way, what’s your name, Queen? I’m Ingrid O’Neal.”

“Isabella Laaksonen, but most people call me Sabella. Where did you come from?”

“Well, my Auntie done some research, and apparently my family comes from the area around Zimbabwe. But the state that be my fate is Alabama, specifically, Birmingham.”

“Oh, like Dr. King. My Daddy says he was a very brave man, but he says we can’t talk about it too much ‘cause people are prejudiced. My Daddy works for Shakerville Petroleum. What’s your daddy do?”

“He’s a film editor and he also does voices for cartoons.”

“Oh, that’s so neat!” Sabella praised.

Sabella was disappointed when the bell rang. She and Ingrid put their trays on the dish cart.

“What year are you?” Sabella asked.

“Frosh. That’s what Babe calls it.”

Noticing Sabella’s puzzled look, Ingrid laughed.

“Babe’s my big brother. His real name is George, but he was named after Babe Ruth and he plays baseball too. You’ll meet him. He’s a good guy except for the way that big brothers are boneheads sometimes.”

“I’ve only got a little brother. I used to have a friend who was like a brother, but he died from a heart attack.”

“I’m sure sorry to hear that, Queen. Hey, meet me outside of school if we don’t have no classes together. Maybe we can make some plans.”

VI

Sixteen-year-old Sabella Laaksonen glared at the starry sky, cursing the Heavens.

“I am not ever gonna be friends with nobody again!” she declared angrily. “Every time y’all give me a friend, you just take ‘em away. It’s bad enough that Babe and Ingrid and their folks were moving to Oakland, but y’all didn’t have to let ‘em get in a car wreck! I ain’t having faith in nothing no more. Every time I do, I just get hurt.”

Sabella’s father admonished that it was wrong to be angry with God, but she didn’t listen. She was tired of being told that she was bad and that her feelings were wrong. She still missed Scotty and was heartbroken by Ingrid and Babe’s deaths.

Sabella never allowed herself to form another deep connection until the birth of her son in 1985. Her bond with his father was cerebral rather than emotional, and when they started to wear on each other’s nerves, the marriage ended in divorce. Whenever she allowed herself to get attached, it ended in betrayal or loss. So, Sabella gave up on love and friendship and resigned herself to a life of loneliness.

VII

Sixty-year-old Sabella Laaksonen looked up into the star-filled sky as she stood beside Dark Lake in Eagle, Vermont on the last night of summer, and gave thanks.

“It sure as hell took you long enough, and I thought you weren’t going to come through at all, but it’s time for me to thank you for finally bringing me the friend I need,” Sabella said, reaching to take the hand of a craggy-faced, elfin white man in a white linen suit wearing a white Fedora. “Tio is an even better friend than I dared to imagine, and I know you’re probably going to be shocked by this, given all the times I bemoaned not having a boyfriend, but I’m glad he’s a platonic friend and not a romantic interest. I promise that I will always strive to be the friend he needs, and I am eternally grateful that he sees me as one of his Best People.”

“Amen on dat, and de same for you, Miss Sabella,” Tio replied, squeezing Sabella’s hand. “I am pleased as punch to be one of you Best People too. Anyways, Rey might gonna push me in Dark Lake if I try to make de move on you. Also, dis old man too bone tired to be a lover. I ain’t know why folks tink a body always gotta be getting da booty bouncin’. Romantic love might be a many splendored ting, but friendship be da foundation for everyting. If you ain’t got friendship, you ain’t got shit, and dat be de god-damn truth of it.”

“It sure is,” Sabella agreed as she and Tio walked arm in arm toward her house. “I’m glad I finally found my BFF. I just wish it hadn’t taken so long.”

“It come when Madam Fate and de Heavenly Host say it do,” Tio replied. “Sometimes it take dem fuckers a while to get off dey lazy ass, but when dey finally got round to it, dey done it right. Now, looky here, BFF, I got me a serious problem.”

“Tell me. I’ll help however I can.”

“Well, I simply ain’t know if I oughta bring my famous deviled eggs to Sunday Supper Club, or if I oughta go all fancy-pants and make a quince pie.”

“Make the deviled eggs. Then we’ll have some fancy-pants innovation. I’ve got a great idea for a quince-rhubarb pie that will have folks begging for the recipe.”

“Den we tell ‘em it be an ancient Cajun secret,” Tio chortled. “We gonna keep ‘em guessing, dat am certain!”

Sabella looked up at the stars one more time in gratitude before following the friend that she’d been waiting for all her life into the house.

Acknowledgments

“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” is copyright 1970 by Judy Blume.