"The Stars Don't Shine Tonight" by Magi Sumpter
The stars don’t shine tonight-- but they never have. Where we grew up, we learned quick how to figure out the linework in each other’s faces in the blackness of night. Paw told me we come from wolves, so our eyes just know better than other people.
His face stayed soft, and what light the moon gave me reflected off his cheeks so he spoke like the moon too. I liked it, thought it made him look like that little man on the side of a biscuit can. I was heavy then, and biscuits brought me joy, especially smothered and covered in butter n’ honey.
I liked this boy. He drove a lime green motorcycle and went to church every Sunday. The worst word he’d ever said in life was “hell,” and only ever talking to God. Mama told me she wanted me to marry him, only because she said my teeth looked whiter when I smiled his name. I thought it was stupid she said that, only because she was right. I sat in front of my mirror and said his name over and over again until my canines twinkled like stars.
He talked about the stock market and how he was gonna make enough money to leave someday. We both had plans to get out, and plans to go to different places. He said after school, he had a job lined up in Dallas to work on an oil rig, it’d be two weeks of bad and two weeks of motorcycles on the highway. I had to go to the big-C College because no one in my family ever made it there before. All my teachers said my brain worked different anyway, and I couldn’t get my body to do things my brain wanted it to do. I read books; and he bound them.
That night we were sitting in the back of his pickup truck. He was flaking the red paint off the tailgate and watching it fall to the ground. Work just ended, and we stayed after everyone else left to make sure the grease was filtered and the money was counted right. He did the first thing always, and I did the second. That’s how we worked together. And after the grease was filtered and the money was counted right, we went outside and sat down on his tailgate like we did every night he didn’t bring his bike, and we talked until the one big star peeked over the neighboring Waffle House.
Our parents didn’t care, though. We both lived a block away in either direction, and a block in a third direction from a sheriff. Ain’t nothing was gonna happen that hurt us, except that one time I sat down on his tailgate and forgot I had my pepper spray in my back pocket, burning my butt like a cat paw on cast iron. He thought it was real funny, but still held my hand while I cried.
He brushed his hand against mine that night I’ve been talking about. I never let him know I noticed, mainly because I was too busy fighting the frog jumping around in my throat. It kept sticking its tongue out, trying to eat the butterflies flying around the rest of me.
Right when he did that he told me he could never write a book—oh, I forgot to mention that I’d told him I was wanting to write a book. He said he wasn’t smart enough for it, but I said that’s okay. He’s a lot smarter than me in other ways, like how he could get his body to do what his brain wanted it to do. He said that was easy. I said writing a book was easy.
We were both wrong, but that’s okay, too. That’s all I really wanted to say about that night. Oh, and also that we never needed the stars.
His face stayed soft, and what light the moon gave me reflected off his cheeks so he spoke like the moon too. I liked it, thought it made him look like that little man on the side of a biscuit can. I was heavy then, and biscuits brought me joy, especially smothered and covered in butter n’ honey.
I liked this boy. He drove a lime green motorcycle and went to church every Sunday. The worst word he’d ever said in life was “hell,” and only ever talking to God. Mama told me she wanted me to marry him, only because she said my teeth looked whiter when I smiled his name. I thought it was stupid she said that, only because she was right. I sat in front of my mirror and said his name over and over again until my canines twinkled like stars.
He talked about the stock market and how he was gonna make enough money to leave someday. We both had plans to get out, and plans to go to different places. He said after school, he had a job lined up in Dallas to work on an oil rig, it’d be two weeks of bad and two weeks of motorcycles on the highway. I had to go to the big-C College because no one in my family ever made it there before. All my teachers said my brain worked different anyway, and I couldn’t get my body to do things my brain wanted it to do. I read books; and he bound them.
That night we were sitting in the back of his pickup truck. He was flaking the red paint off the tailgate and watching it fall to the ground. Work just ended, and we stayed after everyone else left to make sure the grease was filtered and the money was counted right. He did the first thing always, and I did the second. That’s how we worked together. And after the grease was filtered and the money was counted right, we went outside and sat down on his tailgate like we did every night he didn’t bring his bike, and we talked until the one big star peeked over the neighboring Waffle House.
Our parents didn’t care, though. We both lived a block away in either direction, and a block in a third direction from a sheriff. Ain’t nothing was gonna happen that hurt us, except that one time I sat down on his tailgate and forgot I had my pepper spray in my back pocket, burning my butt like a cat paw on cast iron. He thought it was real funny, but still held my hand while I cried.
He brushed his hand against mine that night I’ve been talking about. I never let him know I noticed, mainly because I was too busy fighting the frog jumping around in my throat. It kept sticking its tongue out, trying to eat the butterflies flying around the rest of me.
Right when he did that he told me he could never write a book—oh, I forgot to mention that I’d told him I was wanting to write a book. He said he wasn’t smart enough for it, but I said that’s okay. He’s a lot smarter than me in other ways, like how he could get his body to do what his brain wanted it to do. He said that was easy. I said writing a book was easy.
We were both wrong, but that’s okay, too. That’s all I really wanted to say about that night. Oh, and also that we never needed the stars.
Magi Sumpter drafts divorce papers by day and eats them with spinach artichoke dip by night. You can find her editor-in-chiefing Southchild Lit or on Twitter @MagiSumpter for all of your musing needs.