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Lulu
by Man O'Neal They always told Lulu to reach for the stars. They told her to wait for a summer night when it was even and warm and she could go outside in her nightgown. “You can do it Lulu” They always said. “You can reach one if you try.” So she walked down her front porch, barefooted and small, and stretched her little arm into the plum-colored sky. They always told her that stars had secret spots like the silence under her bed. She used to play down there and pretend she was in love. She would hum wordless songs while tying dust bunnies into her hair, fantasizing that they were poinsettias left by her admirer under the floorboards. Lulu loved the spaces beneath her bed, so if they were anything like that, she very much wanted the stars. She wanted to inch her tiny fingertips into their cradles. She wanted to scoop out the happiness that she heard was waiting in the nooks. So she rose up on her toes and stretched so hard that her eyes shut tight and her lips pursed together until midnight. Straining and trying and hoping and wanting she went on and on as the owls watched from the branches. She reached with all of her seven years. But Lulu was just so young. Her shoulder began to ache as did her feet and her heart. She grew tired and sad and lonely and cold. And she became discouraged as wishing ones do, then fell with a huff to sit on the lawn all alone. “I wanted a star” she sighed to herself, as she brushed her hand along the grass and tried not to cry. She ran it back and forth in slow, gentle motions. And the tips of the blades tickled her palms. She giggled a little, then she did it some more. She started to imagine that it was a kitten, a big green one whose big green head she lived upon. Then she shot up and ran across the world to find one of the ears. She ran past her neighbor’s house and along the empty street. She hopped fences and crossed backyards with great excitement and a smile. At the end of town, towering in the dark of one o’clock, she found it; a giant kitten’s ear glinting in the blackness. It rose from the earth in a great, humongous mountain – going up and up and disappearing into the clouds. Winks of green grass peeked through the night like the fibers of very fine hairs. It even twitched when she gave it a poke, causing little tremors to quiver beneath her feet, and a sudden breeze to come rolling through her hair. Lulu jumped into it and climbed. She panted and laughed inwardly for what she had discovered. Her nightgown got dirty as did her cheeks. And when she got to the top and made her way over the peak, she saw a boy her age, sitting in silence, just as dirty as she. He was in long sleeve blueberry pajamas with big marble buttons of beige. “Who are you?” Lulu asked. He told her that his name was Lu, just Lu, and that he had grown tired of reaching for the stars. She sat next to him, and together, they dangled their feet off the edge as they watched the setting of the moon. They could see everything. They were so high that, if they tried again, they might have reached a star. But they didn’t bother. Instead they looked into the distance at the lights and the lives twinkling along the land. They saw the black, unending sheet of a sleeping planet, the glittering dots left by those that called it home, and all the wisping swirls of the clouds that passed softly by their knees. All the while they stroked the furs of the big kitten’s ear. When they looked out to their right, they could see the delicate streaks of whiskers fading off into the horizon. And if they peered straight ahead, they could even glimpse the lining of a pastel pink nose over the curvature of the globe. They were the only ones who knew. And this is how Lulu and Lu learned forever how to love close things, and how to listen for the purring of the grass. |
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