University of Northern Iowa

Yellow StarsAuthor(s): Michael WatersSource: The North American Review, Vol. 271, No. 3 (Sep., 1986), p. 46Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25124760 .

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N A R

painting on the easel even though she didn't expect to work on it. Not now. She busied herself, frowning, by picking the scattered clothes off the floor. "Life's not over."

"No. But I'm past looking for perfect thrills." Ellis stood before her sister with a stubbornness held firm by the arms tightly folded across her chest. Her eyes seemed to Jo?lle to be falling back toward the memory of bruises. But the sight of a nipple?tender and soft?peeking out from the crease of a

sharply set elbow was enough to make

Jo?lle laugh and cry her way through things. Ellis, Ellis, she thought, you are still what you don't think you can be.

Mama. Sister. You just can't get rid of it.

Jo?lle helped her sister dress. Ellis said everything had to be just right. "When he comes in," she said, "I'm

going to be buttoned up and ready." So Jo?lle hooked her into a heavy nursing bra, straightened the collar of her

blouse, and held her jeans while Ellis looked for her sandals. She told Ellis that she would stay upstairs for the

evening and that the painting was going with her. "I'm

nearly finished now. I can do without a last sitting for a while. We should wait. Let things settle down a little."

I

"I'm not breaking my promise, you know, J. Not yet anyway. That painting will get finished." Ellis was brush

ing her long hair away from her face with Annie's tiny pink hairbrush. "And then we'll start another one, and I'm not

kidding. When we've got time, I want you to do a picture of me however you want. I meant all that a while ago. I

don't take my clothes off in daylight for just anybody." But Jo?lle made her stop. "Please don't try to make

any more deals," she said. "I don't like what you're

doing, but I'll live with it."

"Well," said Ellis, as she lifted her daughter from the

crib, "if you want to stare at and love every inch of me

anytime soon, I'll probably be ready not long after I remember how itchy that living room rug is."

The feeling between them was bundled and shifted in the weight of the sleeping child that Ellis handed to Jo?lle for the evening.

"Remember," Ellis said, "to check her diapers before

you go to sleep." "You just remember to keep it quiet," Jo?lle

reminded Ellis as she carried Annie toward her bedroom. "I'm trying to hold a family together upstairs." D

-1

MICHAEL WATERS

YELLOW STARS

Starting on April 29, 1942, the Dutch Jews were forced to wear a yellow Star of David.

Crossing the Prinsengracht canal

from the greengrocers' shops to the bookstalls and cafes,

grasping my mother's hand, the water below sweeping

winter's debris to the sea,

I spotted three yellow stars

bicycling toward me, fallen, I guess, from the sky.

I looked through layers of air?

daylight, but I could tell

the stars were no longer there.

Later I saw yellow stars

everywhere: on trams, swaying

to Wagner in the park,

yellow stars trying to feel

at home, hovering over

little stars, their children.

But soon the stars floated

away, puffs of smoke

over the opening fields,

the icy blossoms of jasmine. Then winter again, our flowers

gone, the stars vanished.

Where did the yellow stars go? Do you, like me, long to know,

gazing into the night

sky to search among the white, thermal stars, the flaring

orange, for those few

yellow stars that returned

home, that call down now

to this strange planet:

behold us in the milky

light of creation

waiting to be born

46 September 1986

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