The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson

day, in church, the congregation would sing to them, “Happy Birthday, Dear Christians.” But on this night, both young women were glad to be spared a song as they were overwhelmed by the smell of food in the church hall. There were the legendary fish cakes women from Bird Hill were known for all over the island, and which no small number of less-favored women bought at the bottom of the hill on Saturday mornings. Dionne could smell the yellow cakes with pineapple filling and frosting and the milk-soured mouths of the children who ran circles around their mothers. The church hall doors remained open behind Clotel and Dionne; the sweet stink of the guava trees, which were planted when an ugly woman named Cutie died and left her small fortune to the church, wafted inside.
    Both girls were new to the high heels that bore blisters into their feet. Dionne was painfully aware that she’d finally turned sixteen, the age at which Avril said she could start wearingheels, and her mother wasn’t there to see her wobbling or to show her how to walk in them. Dionne and Clotel shifted their weight as Father Loving said an interminable prayer, during which Dionne fluttered her eyes open to find the reverend wiping his brow and studying her breasts, which pressed insistently against her dress. After his incantations, Father Loving offered them each a new leather-bound King James Bible. Clotel seemed genuinely excited to accept her gift while Dionne took hers reluctantly. She mumbled thanks to everyone for their gifts and kind words, all their variations on wishing her the best of life in Christ. Then she steeled her shoulders, readying herself for the inevitable conversations on one of two topics—books or baptism.
    â€œSo, now that you turn sixteen, are you going to give your life over to the Lord in service?” Mrs. Jeremiah asked, her rheumy eyes taking Dionne in. She clutched Dionne’s elbow between two firm fingers. The younger woman felt that Mrs. Jeremiah’s conviction about Christ could break bone.
    â€œYes, God willing,” Dionne said. Her voice cracked. God’s name felt like a word in a language she’d never learn.
    Dionne looked over the jaunty red feather in Mrs. Jeremiah’s hat and her gaze landed on her grandmother and Phaedra. She felt keenly the absence of her mother, who was in no small part responsible for her birthday turning out like this and should, she thought, at least be there to witness the disaster. The women kept bringing more and more food in aluminum pans out to the blue-flame burners. And Dionnekept expecting her mother to walk through the church hall’s front door.
    The people on the hill were Christians, and seriously so, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t like to have a good time. Lyrics like “get something and wave for the Lord” were made for Bird Hill, where any news was reason to have a party, and parties could start in the late afternoon and put the stars to bed the next morning. The Soul Train line sent women hobbling back to their seats with sweat on their brows and complaints on their lips about their old bones, the small children rubbing their eyes and seeking their mothers’ laps.
    Dionne and Trevor, who had been keeping each other at a respectful distance until then, came together in the back of the church hall. They agreed to slip out separately and meet at their usual rendezvous location, star side. They’d named it that because of the way the moon and stars bathed the graves in the cemetery that sloped down behind the church in light, eliminating the need for flashlights that might lead prying eyes to their hiding place. “We’ll call this our special place,” Trevor whispered the night they named it, and Dionne, desperate for space that was not her sister’s, not Avril’s, not Hyacinth’s, just hers, nodded, thinking he could give her what she needed.
    A couple hours later, when the sun