Read Your Eyes in Stars for Free Online Page B

hobo camp. Last winter he took gloves and scarves to them, and leftovers from the Nolan refrigerator.
    I’d called after the tramp, “Don’t you feed your dog?”
    “Mind your beeswax!” he’d shouted back. Then he’d dragged the poor dog across the gravel, muttering at him, “Come on, you stupid animal!”
    If I had told my mother about the way he’d treated the dog, she would have marched to that spot instantly and stayed there, hoping to catch this man. She would have scolded him, shaking a finger at him, telling him she would report him to the SPCA if he didn’t take better care of his dog. That was one thing I liked about her. She stuck up for cats, dogs, birds. She wouldn’t even kill a spider in our house.
    Another thing about my mother I liked was the way she treated Myra from Elmira. Sometimes I’d see Myra waiting for the bus back to Elmira, wearing Mother’s worn-out sling pumps with bobby socks, or sporting on a sweater some five-and-dime rhinestone pin Mother had tired of,which Myra wore scrubbing floors. Working alongside each other hanging clothes or doing dishes, they gossiped together about Hollywood stars, and my mother occasionally invited her into the backyard on summer afternoons for a glass of iced tea.
    “Poor Myra!” said my mother once. “That’s what happens when you give your most valuable possession away to some sweet-talker. No one buys the cow when they can get the milk free.”
    “Was Daddy a sweet-talker?” I asked her.
    She waved her hand at me as though she were waving away flies.
    My mother wasn’t up for many heart-to-heart talks about the facts of life. If I’d listened only to her, I’d still think babies came from long-legged large white wading birds with red beaks.
     
    My mother finished the discussion about tramps by asking Elisa, “Hasn’t your mother ever known someone who’s down on his luck? We’re in the middle of a depression, in case she doesn’t know that.”
    Elisa said, “My mother says Americans encourage lawbreakers with their movies.”
    “We’re not talking about lawbreakers,” said my mother. “We’re talking about homeless people…. Are those eggs from our refrigerator?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Surprise, surprise,” said my mother.
    “Elisa brought the bread and olives.”
    “And the lettuce and the mayonnaise,” said Elisa.
    I knew my mother thought Elisa was using me.
    One day I asked my mother what I could possibly have that Elisa would want. She had an answer without even thinking about it. “Someday ask yourself what a bright, attractive girl is doing with someone younger and from people she deems not good enough to introduce to her own family. Maybe the answer to that is someone likes being superior to someone else. Someone likes to lord it over someone else.”
    “I tell her things about people. That’s what she likes.”
    “ Pffft. What do you know about people?”
     
    But that morning Mother had something up her sleeve, because she had that certain sugary tone to her voice. “Where are you going for your picnic, girls?”
    “The backyard,” I said.
    My mother looked at Elisa with one of her crooked smiles and said, “Oh, is the picnic in your backyard, Elisa?”
    “Not over there,” said Elisa. “This yard.”
    “I am afraid that’s not possible,” my mother said.
    “We always picnic here,” I said, though this was to be only our second picnic.
    “Not today! You know how your father feels about your being anywhere near one of the prisoners,” said my mother.
    Elisa’s eyes grew large with excitement, and she said something in German I’d heard her exclaim before. She was probably cussing. Sometimes German wasn’t that far from English, and I understood: words like Hure and Sau and mein Gott .
    “Is there a prisoner coming?” she asked.
    “There is a prisoner already here,” my mother answered. “The Bugle Boy.”
    Elisa ran to the window near the dinette. “Can I see him?”
    “You’re not