Big and Small

Phoebe is lying in the field, her heavy frame compacting the earth and her eyes upturned to heaven. Her thick arm is outstretched, reaching up to the stars. Slowly and deliberately, she traces out the paths of her childhood with a pointed finger. She draws her mother’s round face, two stars for her eyes, shining out of a web of wrinkles. A cluster of stars under a wispy cloud could be her little sister’s tuft of hair. But Betty is ten now, so instead she picks out a little kicking stick figure, booting a pinprick football against the garden wall.  She traces her father’s arched back along four constellations. A column of stars becomes his walking stick, which he taps impatiently against the side of his foot when something is troubling him.

Earlier, his fingers had failed the walking stick. It had fallen from his wavering grasp and hit the kitchen floor with a thud. Phoebe had looked into his eyes and watched all the stars going out, one by one.

Her finger continues its path across the expanse, lingering briefly at each constellation, until it comes to the one she wants. Ursa Major. The Big Bear.

Not many people know, Pheebs, but there’s a story behind how the bear got up there, her mother had told her when she was little. It was a camping trip, and the very first time they had lain down and looked up at the stars, side by side. Her mother had traced out the constellations and celestial bodies with a dense fist, punching marks into the sky. For the Bears, however, she had stopped, her corded wrist uncertain. But the hesitation only lasted a moment. In the next, she told Phoebe the story of a beautiful huntress from mythology, called Callisto. 

Callisto was a virgin goddess and she lived in a forest with the other huntresses. But the god Jupiter had fallen in love with her - Phoebe’s mother had pointed out here that these gods were nothing like the Lord that they loved and knew to be their Father in heaven, for they were sinful and evil. Jupiter wanted to have Callisto for himself and he raped the beautiful girl. She became pregnant but managed to hide the shame of it for months and months. But, at some point or another, she had to bathe in front of the others. When they saw the disgrace, she was cast out, tarnished and alone. She gave birth to a son named Areas. Jupiter’s wife, Juno, was enraged when she found out, and turned Callisto into a bear. From hunter to hunted. She was forced to hide and scavenge the same woods she had once ruled. Years later, she encountered Areas when he was out hunting.

And in that moment, the Good Lord took pity on them and transformed them into stars and put them in our heavens to look down on us. He saved them and now they forever show an example to little girls like you. Phoebe had followed the line of her mother’s arm, which was now gesturing to the smaller bear, Ursa Minor. He floated above his mother, paws pointing helplessly into the emptiness. Then, her father had called them back down to earth and the campfire, for beans and sausages. They rose up, leaving two identically shaped imprints in the grass, big and small. 

The images from earlier in the day flash across the sky in the wake of Phoebe’s finger. Her mother’s icy anger. The vacancy of her father’s expression. The darkness. It is excruciating, and she drops her arm, sinking down further into the cool mud. Spikes of grass and thorn shoot pain through her legs with every breath, but she does not have the energy to stand. Their stares hold her.

She had placed her swollen feet gently on the floorboards as she passed the living room where her father was sitting, his arched silhouette barely visible in the evening light. The television set was on, but silent. He looked to be sleeping, slumped forward over his knees, with his walking stick positioned carefully in front of his feet. Its handle pointed to the doorway like an accusation. Then she heard the sobs. Big ratcheting sobs that came from his whole body. His huge shoulders juddered unevenly each time a strangled choke forced its way out. He hunched over more in his effort to contain them, but still his cries punctured the quiet. With each breath, they heaved their way out of his chest and smacked Phoebe in the gut. Doubled over, retching, stumbling, she ran from the house, but the sobs continued on.

Her mother had been simpler, in a way. Whore. Slut. Hundreds of variations of the same insult were thrown out to stick like scars to her skin, or stars to the sky. And then, finally, the sentence: Get out of this house and never come back. 

Phoebe did not know what she had expected from the mother who had used stargazing stories as cautionary tales for her young daughter. But, somehow, it was not this. She had taken the abuse with little protest. And now that her mother’s spirit was gone and her back was turned, Phoebe had heaved herself to her feet and retreated. Standing outside the kitchen, football tucked under arm and face blotchy with mud, was Betty, the executioner. Skinny legs quivering in the chill from the front door, slammed open. Round eyes scared and processing her older sister’s disgrace. Her big, sinful sister.

So, Phoebe had come to the field. With echoes of baked beans scraped off the bottom of tin pans and sticking in her throat, the whack of mallets on tent pegs, tire wheels skidding in the mud, ice crunching on baby teeth, children shouting and running in front of a red sky. Watching her mother’s sturdy finger jotting at the stars in the darkness while she felt so small, so alone, and so far away. She remembers his fingers now. Her eyes catching on his again and again across a pew. Three nights of awkward, teenage fumblings when they were meant to be at choir practice. The boy himself did not matter. He did not love her, and she did not love him. But in those moments, she felt less small. Afterwards, they lay side by side, with only the tips of their little fingers touching. She felt God’s gaze beaming down on her and she met His eyes defiantly.

She stirs deep inside at the memory. Slowly, she lifts a hand and cups her breast, feeling her own heartbeat thumping blood persistently around her body and to the lifeform growing inside. Her rounded stomach protrudes from the grass like a mound.

Her heart and body ache with longing as she looks up at their burning faces, and beyond. The two bears, big and small, shimmer and multiply in her tears, and swim across the star-filled sky.