A memoir, with an embellishment or two…
I’ve been brooding lately, about the past, about what was, what might have been, how the unfinished business of the past creates the reality of the present and the promise of the future. Despite my infallible faith in what will be, the future, as always, refuses to reveal itself and so I am forced backwards instead. Backwards into a story that should have been forgotten, back back back into the unreliable facts of the past with its Pandora’s Box of unfinished business. Like this one: the Starlight Boy. If we’d followed him down to the river that day, things might have turned out differently…
A hot summer day in the late 1960s
My best friend Cassie elbows me in the ribs and points to the boy on the blue bicycle, the fat boy who lives at the end of the street, the boy with a face like a pale melon. He wobbles towards us on his bicycle calling, “Starlight! Starlight!” at the top of his voice.
Cassie laughs into her hand and I bend down to tie my shoe lace and suddenly, the boy and his bicycle are upon us and “Watch out!” Cassie cries and pushes me away from the road and away from the boy who pedals furiously past, staring straight ahead, searching for the place on the horizon where the treetops meet the sky. I fall backwards into a hedge of wild roses.
“What a menace,” Cassie snorts and she grabs my arm and helps me to my feet. The boy is pedaling towards the house on the corner now and we hold our collective breath as his front tire catches on a patch of gravel at the side of the road and he spins out of control, lurching over the curb and onto the newly seeded lawn, which doesn’t slow him down until the front tire collides with a rock wall and he swerves towards the road, losing his ball cap on a low-slung branch that rakes across his forehead like a claw.
“Starlight!” he cries again.
Cassie rolls her eyes and pulls a thorn from my cheek. She’s tougher than me, forever dragging me from one dangerous place to the next – from the lean-to in the woods where the hobo sleeps, to the field near the high school where a girl’s body was once found, to the swaying foot bridge and the treacherous river Thames beneath it. My mother is always warning me away from the river, threatening a string of diseases, or worse, if I succumb to the water’s moods. I swim in it anyway because I asked my science teacher if what my mom said was true.
He shook his head. “You’ve been misinformed,” he said quietly.
The street is quiet now and there’s no sign of the boy. I pull another thorn from behind my ear and kick a lump of tar into the middle of the street, scuffing up my new school shoes. I’m bored, I tell Cassie and she nods and starts to say something but our conversation is interrupted. The boy and his bicycle whiz past.
“Starlight!” he shouts and toots his horn once, twice, three times. The corners of his smile almost reach his ears. “Starlight! Starlight! Starlight!”
When he gets to the corner he stops abruptly and looks to the left up the steep hill to the main road, and then to the right where the street narrows and curves towards the river. There isn’t a single person or car in sight but he keeps jerking his melon head this way and that, trying to merge with an imaginary stream of traffic. Finally, he turns towards the river.
His voice wavers in the distance, grows faint. “Starlight! Starlight!”
Cassie frowns. “I don’t think he’s allowed to go down there,” she says.
I shake my head. “Probably not.”
“No probably about it. We should go after him.” She challenges me with those milky-blue eyes that get all churned up when she looks at anything too long and says, sadly, “He’s lost.”
“At the river? Already?”
She shakes her head, “No stupid”, and taps the end of one finger on her head beside her eye. “Lost inside his head. He doesn’t know where he is.”
“Oh.” How can he not know where he is, I wonder, when he goes home for supper every night and wakes up in the same bed every morning and has a mother and father to tell him what to do? Cassie gives me another insolent look. I look down at my feet.
“So,” I try, “We’ll go after him?”
She narrows her eyes and nods but just then my mother appears on the front step and calls me in for supper and if I don’t go in now there’ll be hell to pay so Cassie and I part ways.
At the supper table, after a fight with my mother over the tar on my new school shoes, I think about how Cassie and I once watched through the wrought iron rails of the front gates at the boy’s house. His parents were working in the front yard, two tiny people as if out of a fairytale, old and gray and hunched over their rakes and shovels, raking here, shoveling there, dwarfed by their own sprawling world. I’d heard my mother whisper to Cassie’s mom over coffee that the house was worth a bomb, which I’d taken to mean the boy and his parents were rich and so I always imagined him rich and reckless, tossing coins that shone like falling stars onto the road as he pedaled back and forth; emptying candy from his pockets stuffed full with black balls and caramels in tin foil and dangling strings of grape and cherry licorice. If I was rich like that and was allowed to ride my bicycle back and forth on the road all day, I wouldn’t have a care in the world.
Cassie and I meet at the corner of the street after supper. She nods towards the river. “Mom asked if we’d seen him today,” she whispers, as if we have something to hide. “I said we thought we’d seen him on his way to the river and when I said this her eyes went all hard and cold and she wanted to know why we didn’t go after him.”
My stomach feels heavy, like I’ve swallowed a mouthful of stones. “We were going to. But it was suppertime. Should we go now, do you think?”
She shrugs. “I guess so,” then pauses to reconsider. “I wonder if Fallon has seen him. Let’s go to his house first.”
I follow Cassie to Fallon’s house, nervous all over again. My mother doesn’t like me to play with Fallon because he has a monkey and a parrot for pets and his parents have long hair and teach at the university and are never home and Fallon is allowed to do whatever he wants. “My mom won’t like it,” I say.
“Your mom doesn’t have to know,” Cassie tells me flat out.
But no one’s home at Fallon’s house except for the monkey who is sitting spread-legged on the drain pipe over the garage, eating a pear, so we cross the road to the boy’s house.
“There’s been some trouble,” the boy’s mother croaks, standing on the front step, her head and shoulders in a stoop, peering at the ground like she’s searching for something. “The police found his bicycle in the river an hour ago.” She looks up, her black eyes mournful.
I feel like I’m going to throw up and Cassie gasps, horrified. “Drowned?” is all she can say and suddenly I feel woozy, like I’m spinning, like I’m going to fall into a heap at my own feet. Why didn’t we go after him? I stumble down the stairs backwards and Cassie looks over her shoulder at me and scowls.
“No,” the old woman says finally and I feel the light coming back into my head. “But he could have. It’s not safe for him here. We’re sending him away.”
Cassie and I walk home in silence. Above, the sky is a suffocating black. There are no stars yet. “We should have gone after him,” she says.
I sigh. She’s right, we should have gone after him because now he’s being sent to a dim little room in some tall concrete building and he’ll probably never see the sky or those stars again.
And even now, over forty years later, I feel bad about what happened that day and when I look up at the stars on a warm summer night, I remember the boy on the blue bicycle, the fat boy who lived at the end of the street, the boy with a face like a pale melon.
Starlight!
copyright 2007-2011 by cathy kozak – all rights reserved
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Do you have regrets? Big or small, share one of yours here, in the comment section, or post a regretful piece on your own blog and I’ll link to it here. If you have no regret, I salute you …
(thanks to Fran799 for blue bicycle image at the top of the page)
Great story, great descriptions! (I hope part of the embellishment was the institutionalized part….)
Thanks for reading Julia and sadly, no, the boy was institutionalized. It is the dialogue that is embellished because after 40+ years, who remembers exactly what was said?
Great story. Not doing what we should have done can really haunt us for a long time.
Welcome Ivana and thanks for reading. Regret is a powerful emotion…
What a lovely and poetic way to make amends. xxx
Thanks for reading Isabelle and for the whisper in my ear that this piece might be an apology…
Ouch…she pulled a thorn from your cheek. What an image. What a great story. Thank you for sharing, you paint your memories so vividly.
Thanks for reading Yali and for your encouragement. Do you have a new blog?
Thanks for this story Cathy. Very moving and very nicely written. I can totally relate to your friendship with Cassie, I have great memories of all the silly things I did with my friends when I was younger. The world is full of ifs and frankly, it is unlikely that this was the only reason he was sent to an institution…My parents divorced shortly after me being sent to the French equivalent of a boarding school and I used to think that if I had stayed home, they would not have divorced…If only!
Thanks for reading Muriel. And you’re absolutely right, the what ifs of life could drive us mad! As children, don’t we take a lot on? That you might have prevented your parents divorce, for example…
Lovely story, Cathy. Are you going to be including it in a book?
It’s so sad how children internalize things when they are young, and think every event is somehow related to something they did or didn’t do.
In reality, this was a troubled boy who would have ended up institutionalized at some point, and it had nothing to do with two little girls walking down the street.
Thanks for reading Hollye. I don’t know yet where this piece will end up, we’ll see. It is sad how children internalize things and yet if there is a trusting adult around to help them process things, well, sometimes the effects can be softened. Alas children are so often worried about telling their parents, not wanting to get into trouble, not wanting to upset the ‘adults’.
Cathy, I read to the end because your story made me worry that he drowned. I’m glad that he didn’t, but you can’t blame yourself that he was born to parents who became elderly too soon (a ‘surprise’ menopause baby?) and were unable to care for him as he needed to be cared for.
If it wasn’t that day that the parents decided to keep him safer, it would have been another when you weren’t around. Still, this is a tribute to the Starlight Boy, and the people who read this will think of him.
Welcome Valerie and thanks for reading and yes, there is a bit of a reversal at the end of this story which is a relief on one hand and yet sad that the poor sweet boy was put away, on the other hand. And yes he was likely a midlife surprise baby. What a wonderful thought, this piece as a tribute. I like it
Wow. I almost didn’t read this one. I tend to stay away from stories about children that look like they won’t end well. I’m a coward that way. While I’m really glad I decided to finish reading this one (it was beautiful – as always!), I think The Starlight Boy and his story will be haunting me for a while…
Sam, I know exactly what you mean about staying away from certain stories. I can’t help but look at my life and wonder. But I’m glad you read anyway and I hope you aren’t haunted for long…
Cathy,
I couldn’t pull myself away from this post. Brings back some memories of my childhood too, only I was the fat girl. I’ll have to ponder on this one. I’ll try to post about it later when I’ve spun it around in my head for a while.
Thanks for sharing your truths.
Sarah
Starlight! Starlight!
Sarah, thanks for reading. Childhood memories can really stay with us and that’s a fact. Though I wasn’t a fat child, I do and did have a big nose and this was the bane of my existence for many many years. Fat-skinny-quiet-loud-rich-poor-tall-short-black-white-smart-stupid, nothing got us off the hook…
Oh my, that was lovely. As I came closer to the end of the story I felt myself tightening inside, filling with dread. Great voice here. Even tho it was told from the older you, the you of that time was strong.
Regrets… I don’t like to have them as a rule because it requires that deep sort of re-evaluation of something, when looking back over it, cannot change it. The the only think I truly regret is not saying good bye to my father when he was slipping away to cancer. I just couldn’t.
Thanks for sharing this one with me..
Brenda
Thanks for reading Brenda. When filled with dread, take a long, deep breath in and a long deep breath out. Works every time. I know what you mean about regrets. I’d love to say I have no regrets but that just isn’t so. I’m so sorry about your father, maybe it was for the best, he might have preferred you remember him as he was when he was healthy and full of himself (as most dads are).
Brenda and Cathy- I think the same thing as you about regrets. They are regrettable. They don’t change anything but don’t you think they could stop us from doing the same thing over and over? This is a moving story Cathy.
Thanks for reading Kaye and good point, we may indeed learn from our regrets.
So much of this story transported me to my own childhood. There is a familiarity in your words, and in the scenes. I hope the boy had a chance to see stars again, to make of them what he will.
Thanks for reading Joanne. I too hope the boy saw stars whether in the night sky or in his dreams…
Writing can be masterful when we simply re-live the event – put ourselves right in the middle of it as if it was happening now. Often times easier said than done. Masterful, Cathy – as always :~)
mkathy – thanks so much. I agree about the reliving of events, a scene written in real time, as though it is happening now, retains the power of immediacy.
When I was nine years old my mother bribed me to join the Church Choir by telling me she would purchase me a teenage
type doll if I would agree to this. I really wanted a Barbie, but my mother was extremely frugal and drove a hard bargain. I ended up with a much cheaper version known as ‘Debbie’ who came from Hong Kong.
One day as I was playing with Debbie, horror of horrors, the back half of her head to which the hair was attached came completely off! I was terrified, fully knowing that accidents and mistakes came in the same category as wilful disobedience in my mother’s book. I ran down the stairs to the kitchen where my mother was preparing supper, sobbing and crying, Debbie in my hands. “What’s the matter?” asked mum. “Jennifer broke my special doll!” (Jennifer was my older sister.) Jennifer was called and asked if this were so. Pretty soon there were two of us crying as Jennifer stated in no uncertain terms that she had never touched my doll, but as we shared a bedroom this could not be proven. We argued back and forth loudly and visciously and with great clarity, having learned from the best.
My mother didn’t know who to believe, and I gained a reprieve because of this.
The following year my sister got leukaemia and after a long illness died. I have carried the guilt and shame of my action like a mantle ever since. Not being able to go back and say “sorry” and apologise appropriately leaves unfinished business, a weight not removed. I groan inwardly everytime I think of lying about my sister and not being able to put things right. Like Cathy’s experience, a tough one to endure through the years…
Wow, Elizabeth, what a story, so powerful and the regret so deep. Thank you for sharing this story with us. And remember, as we all must with our childhood regrets, big or small, we were just children and mostly didn’t know better.
What a beautiful story… and so sad.
Thank you for writing this.
Padmavani
Padmavani, thank you for reading and your kind comments.
A regret which I doubt will ever end is as told in this story I wrote last year.
Flash Fiction: ‘The Call of the Pink Bootie’
It was pink, damp and filthy, yet beautifully small. It looked superfluous. A tiny, cold foot had moved along this path, on wheels or in a mother’s arms.
Could chubby toes be turning blue?
Looking about urgently, the gloomy street was deserted. I often walked alone at night, lately.
Claiming it from the pavement seemed right, like we shared a home. I surrendered to the delicious blend of talcum powder and cheesy-puffs; stirring strong emotions.
Seizing my tummy in fists, I replayed months of struggling with hormone injections, invasive internal scans, hot flushes, crazy mood swings and hushed prayers, and the delightfully raised expectations of I.V.F.
An emotional roller-coaster-ride!
Eventually, I had sat on a porcelain seat, while tears fell like liquidised dreams. As empty as the bootie, I’d stared – powerless – at the negative test result, and an end to possibilities.
Still aching, I pocketed the bootie.
Shah Wharton (c) 2010
I did add to this, expanding on the story a little – but I’ll be damned if I could find it!
That was after the first of two failed IVF rounds. X
Wow Shah, this is so very moving. That bootie represents so much, most especially the failure of the IVF, which is not your failure…
‘The future, as always, refuses to reveal itself’. So we are left with yesterday and today. Seems to me your friend on his bicycle was seeing things differently – what was that starlight he saw?
You had to go home. He had to go to the river. That’s what it’s like, people have to do things differently. They just do. It can be hard BUT I have hope that he took the starlight with him. And he left some for us too Cathy through your beautiful story.
Claire x
Claire thanks for reading and thanks, again, for your clarity and matter of fact take on life. ‘You had to go home. He had to go to the river.’ Of course. And I do think the boy took that starlight with him because his head was ever in the stars of his own design…
Cathy – How well you crafted this story…it kind of reminded me of my favorite book, ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’!
Corinne – Welcome and thanks for reading. I’ll check our your blog later today. It’s been years since I read To Kill a Mockingbird, maybe it’s time for a reread.
I was thinking much the same thing Corinne.
Thanks for reading Kaye. Now I’m really going to have to reread Mockingbird.
As always, you generate so much in terms of response to your own words, coupled with what they trigger in the rest of us. And while you frame this around the issue of regret, to me it speaks to questions of compassion and curiosity and the way we view people who are ‘different’ from us. The narrator may be brooding in the intro, but the voice of the young girl is all the more powerful for its innocence. There’s always at least one line in your work that stops me and somehow serves as a kind of metaphor for the narrative. “You’ve been misinformed,” says the science teacher, and isn’t that so often the way it is?
Deborah thanks for reading and yes, this story also brings up the issue of how we understand those who are different from us. Thanks too for pointing out the metaphor, you have an amazing talent for identifying this in others work and especially for creating it in your own
Riveting. Beautiful. Filled with angles for contemplation. It is interesting that so many of your readers feel more than what regret evokes. I too am moved in so many more ways than down a regretful road. Maybe because I try to live my life without regret, I can NOT for the life of me think of something that I wish I could change. Those places that needed a change from me at one point: a change in perspective, a change through forgiveness…I do it as soon as I can.
I don’t think if you had followed him it would have changed his fate…and if you had followed him, the change that has happened for those of us lucky enough to have read about it…well, missing out on a piece like this, now that’s regrettable!
Thanks for reading Meagan. In the process of writing this I’ve been reminded, through my own ‘voice’ on the page, of my childhood naivety and innocence. And this question of fate and free will, a curious life question I’ll never tire of asking! I admire your lack of regret, it’s one of my goals in life and I’m working on it
As always, your writing is beautiful. I love the sense of melancholy and regret, very touching. Thanks as always for sharing!
Thanks Julie
Cathy what a beautiful story. When we look back on our memories it’s hard to remember that we were only children then, with a childs sense of right and wrong. Thank you for finding me through Megan Frank! I enjoy your writing.
Kathy, welcome and thanks for reading. The adult lens doesn’t always do justice to childhood sensibilities, does it?
very nicely written.
Sheba, welcome back and thanks for your compliment.
Cathy this was sweet and I do understand how you felt that day. I was more like your friend and was always fighting for the underdog…and when I say fight I mean fist fights because some bully was picking on a kid such as starlight. You wanted to do and just couldn’t its ok and right now you honor him by allowing us to love him and the kids who wanted to do something to help him.
Now as far as regret I don’t have many but I will tell about something that I could classify as a regret…well sort of….When I was in grade school that’s when Barbie came out. We lived in a mixed neighborhood. It was an upper middle class group of all races, religions and you name it. Many of the girls were only children and got anything that they wanted. I never really did without but I really wanted Barbie. That year at Christmas all of us had said how we would get Barbie and lots of clothing etc.
I was raised by my parternal grandparents who were well to do but my grandmother was mean. She liked to do things that would hurt my feelings. For some odd reason she just didn’t like me…anyway…Christmas came and my sister and cousins ran down to get their Barbie doll (we all asked for the same thing). They beat me and had theirs opened and playing with them by the time I got there. I just knew mine was there. When I got to my gifts there stood the biggest doll I ever seen in my life. She was called a Patty Play Pal…she was the size of a small 3 year old child not only that she was black as tar. (don’t get me wrong I had no problem with my race…but really I wanted white Barbie).
Everybody on the whole block laughed at me. I named her Terry and played with her when no one was around. I was very angry with my grandmother so I beat Terry up and mashed her stomach in…I cut up all of her clothing and let her sit around naked and would put her in places to frighten people including my grandmother.
Sorry to make this long story short. I didn’t get my Barbie until my husband brought me a vintage one on our 10th anniversary…As for Terri I still have her with the smashed in stomach and I love her more than I would ever love that Barbie…she’s now over 50 years old and wears a wig and second hand clothing but she’s mine and I regret punching in her stomach….ok not the type of regret as most but you know me…RevLa
Wow, RevLa, what a wrenching story, what a sadistic grandmother. This is one of those stories where an inanimate object takes on great meaning and symbolism and I felt sorry not only for you but for the poor Terry doll! Well written.
I once had a big doll but he was a boy doll called, wait for it, Bad Boy. My parents bought some furniture from a shop by the same name and the sofa came with a free boy doll, with whom I developed a disturbing love-hate relationship. To this day I wonder if my complications with men have anything to do with Bad Boy…
Cathy – what a powerful piece this is. Thank you for sharing it so beautifully, and for bringing this lesson forward so that we might all learn something from it.
I will have to do some thinking about regret. Will certainly loop back to you if I write about it…
Kristen thanks for reading and for your kind comments. And yes, please post again if you have more to share.
I really enjoyed this beautiful story and your lovely writing. It felt almost like a film, I could see every character, the monkey, the mothers, the Starlight the boy saw and so it broke my heart at the end.
Thank you for the gentle reminder to do what you can and a little bit more.
Cassandra, thanks so much for reading and for your kind comments. I’m sorry to have broken your heart
My writing does tend to a strong cinematic quality, probably because I am able to visualize what I’m writing in such detail. But this same quality can sometimes prevent me from digging deeper into the heart of the characters or the story. A proverbial double edged sword…
Cathy, your writing has a way of commanding my attention, and you don’t disappoint. Good read. I left my deepest regrets at the foot of the Christ’s cross–had to–otherwise they would have killed me. I wish you could hear my voice because I’m not saying this in a saccharine or proud way. It’s just the truth. No looking back.
Jodi, thanks for reading and for your kind comments and I applaud your courage in leaving your deepest regrets behind.
this is incredible, cathy. first time at your blog and i LOVE your writing. thanks for sharing over at emily’s!
Welcome eloranicole and thanks for reading and your kind comments.
Frankly what intrigues me most is “Starlight, starlight!” I wonder if the little boy was truly the one lost. What magic was he seeing?
Thanks for reading Joybird. I have never stopped wondering what magic the boy was seeing. Recently, after watching a Space documentary on television, my husband shared what he had learned and it was this: we are all of us made of stardust. Something the Starlight boy already knew
Absolutely beautiful. Thanks for sharing, for tearing me out of my world for a few wonderful moments while I poured over this story.
And thanks for stopping by my blog, and for the encouraging words.
Cara, welcome and I’m glad your few snatched moments were fruitful!
As a perfectionist, I always analyze the situations by what more I could have done. However, I am learning (slowly) that sometimes, no matter what I do, what will be, will be. I can do my best, but I cannot do everything. I am limited. If I accept that, perhaps I will not be so full of regret at every turn.
Thanks for reading Jen. You make an interesting point and this question of fate and free will is a deep one.
this is a fascinating write…wonderfully told…that little boy, i wonder if he saw something we can not…
Welcome Brian and thanks for your kind comments. I remember thinking, as a child, that it must have been wonderful to see Starlight day and night!
I am so happy you left a comment over at my blog because what a delicious, wonderful surprise I had waiting for me here. You are an excellent writer. You described the boy so well that the visual brought me into a sort of sweet sadness for him. I was happy to learn he didnt’ drown. I connected immediately to this sweet, innocent boy screaming “starlight,” and although he is in an institution today, at least he did not drown. I wonder how many other starlights he has seen since then. Your story was mesmerizing. You’ve won a fan.
Welcome Rebecca and thank you so much for your kind comments. I fervently hope the boy was able to see the Starlight that gave his life meaning forever…
your starlight boy could be one of the subjects of my husband’s studies– one who told of life in an institution, before being moved to a Community Living home, like the one my husband now staffs. he gets paid to keep starlight boys safe. huh.
i’m not sure how to share my regrets. i have been pondering, though. i’ll have to sit and stew some more — and blog — to give you a better answer.
Bethany Ann – thanks for reading. How wonderful it is that someone cares enough to keep these starlight children safe!
oh cathy, this was so poignant and it brought tears. thank you for painting this beautiful boy in our minds and hearts so he’ll never be forgotten.
Thanks for reading and your comments and if this boy has even a small place in your heart then I’ve done what needed to be done…
There’s a haunting quality about your writing, Cathy, right from your intro: “I’ve been brooding lately, about the past, about what was, what might have been…” The rhythm is just perfect, and it makes a real difference.
Thanks Deborah, for reading and for your comments.
Cathy, you write so well, loved your post and we all have our basket-full of regrets.That’s what makes us human…
Sulekkha, welcome and thanks so much for reading. You’re right, we all have regrets, it’s the learning and the letting go that empties the basket…