star show
Though I’m flat on my back under the enormous sky, I know I’m really in the local planetarium, where I’ve come with the other third graders for the Star Show. Tonight the trailing blazes of white explode across the darkness like firecrackers, and my companions ooooh and point and say, Over there, though the words are too late to be of use and hang in the air much longer than light.
What I remember about the Star Show is the commentator’s calm voice, the miracle spreading overhead as he lured us in, as if he didn’t need special tongs to hand us the sky’s mysteries. He needed only the reclining seats, the artificial ceiling shuddering close with its countless stars, our willingness to leave the known earth, our parents, teachers, friends, our selves for this uncertain meeting in the dark. He urged us to let our eyes adjust for the journey, he asked us to relax as the room began to spin and he whispered in his knowledgeable voice about Jupiter. Like a priest appearing suddenly in the dome to discuss the Holy Mother, he explained with sorrow and anger that brilliant Galileo had to retract his scientific conclusions before the Inquisition.
This made us sad, because we already knew that Galileo was right, that four moons revolved around Jupiter, as the earth revolved around the sun.
And then, as though someone was shaking out a bedspread, someone shook the sky and all the stars shifted — it was winter, night of the lean wolf. His voice grew cold and we buttoned our sweaters because the temperature was falling, and we wanted to follow him wherever he was going, which was December. Across the mountain passes we hunted bear; with the Spaniards, we cured buffalo hides and predicted the hour of sunrise. Who didn’t want to linger on that winter mesa with the spotted ponies, so close to the stars?
There wasn’t time. He was galloping towards summer while I sat thinking of what I’d lost: a glimpse of the sadness to come, the astronomer’s sure purpose. He guided the constellations from early spring to June and then the sun rose higher than we thought possible and the longest day endured; he brought us into a meadow drenched with light but it was night, we knew it, for now we could name every star. How could he leave us here, now that we had become his, now that he had asked us to learn his heaven?
As the chairs began to tilt he threw the stars across the sky, flung meteors carelessly, and laughed a grown-up laugh. He punctured the darkness with white bullets and the kids began to shout. The seats fell forward and the sun rose in the auditorium, warming the air. I sat before the retreating stars, bereft. Row by row we stood and blinked into that autumn afternoon, as the ordinary jeers filled our mouths. For weeks, the sky was a white sheet against the amber leaves.
