CHAPTER ONE-THE SOUTHERN CROSS

The smallest constellation is The Southern Cross or Crux. Crux (or Crux Australis) is the scientific name. The Southern Cross lies inside the Milky Way and is surrounded by the constellation Centaurus on three sides.
Junie
June 17, 1963
Tomorrow I am ten. Tomorrow my great-grandmother, Mam, will be 100. My grandmother Sugar Lea, Mam’s baby daughter, although she is not technically a baby any longer because she is almost 67, but Mam still calls her “Baby-girl”, anyway Sugar Lea is having a huge birthday party to celebrate our birthdays. I know that I am getting my first tube of lipstick and hopefully a canopy bed of my own like the one Mam sleeps in. Mam is only getting to be 100, because that is in itself a gift.
Mam is big on names and nicknames, my nickname is Junie. One day she looked up at me, while I was turning cartwheels in the front yard and she called out to me from her perch, sitting just as pretty as a canary dressed in her yellow shirtdress that she had probably owned for the past forty years and it fit her to a perfect “T” because she had never gained more than one ounce in all her adult years. Anyway, she looked at me from her perch on the front porch and hollered out to me that I looked just like a June bug tumbling around in the grass. From that day on, I became June Bug, Junie Moon or Baby, depending on who was talking to me; except my own Mother who calls me by my full Christian name, Camilea Fern Brown.
My daddy is dead. We do not speak of him in my house because, I do not know why; I personally never knew him, and I have never even seen a photograph of him because all I know is that he deserted my Mother before I was born. I am not even sure if he is technically dead, but in my Mother’s heart he is dead and so I suppose he is dead even though I would like to know for certain. I know better than to bring up his name or his memory because when I do my Mother gets a sad look in her face and that tells me to keep my mouth shut. Actually, the entire family avoids speaking of my Father. I feel there are certain rights regarding knowing something about your heritage, but in my case I have learned that I must put off knowing anything about him. I feel he is alive. I have always found it strange that there are no photographs of him lined across the mantle or on the top of the grand piano that sits in the parlor of our big house. It is as if he never existed. However, I know he did because there is me. I think I must look like him because I do not look like my Mother or anyone else in my family at King’s Paradise.
I am dark skinned or olive as Sugar Lea likes to call it, with black hair and my eyes tend to be green, or almost yellow, depending on what color I am wearing. My hair is heavy and course and I wear it down my back in one long braid and have worn it this way since I remembered. My grandfather tells me that my hair, my braid is a medal that I should wear proudly. I have wanted to chop my hair off a million times, but none of my family will allow it. Therefore, I am obligated to wear my medal and be proud of it I suppose.
We have many Cherokee and Creek Indian descendants in our family and I suppose my hair represents the departed ones before me. I do not mind my hair so much, but I would like to try and wear it in another style that looks more grown-up.
I wonder if my Daddy has the same black hair and yellow eyes but I never looked into his eyes and saw a reflection of my soul, and I never will. I have missed him and at times felt orphaned; yet, because most of my life I have been raised by Mam, Sugar Lea and Ada Maude – my black mother, I have not become an orphan.

That is the difference. Feeling like an orphan and being one. Orphans are a lost lot in life. Drifting and clinging onto anything and everything which comes into their way. I could have become a total tomboy by now were it not for Mam, because she insisted that I was always a lady first; I could not even say “darn” or “shoot” around her. Mam was in the third graduating class of Hudson College for Women. She studied Shakespeare and Thoreau. She wanted “Walden Pond” and got it by marrying Big Daddy and coming to live at King’s Paradise.
King’s Paradise is an old, drafty house that at best resembles an anchored ship. It is safe and beautiful here in every season. With every light that floods it. First morning sun is the most beautiful to me, but even in the moonlight there is a beauty that is hard to define. You just have to be here to understand the beauty. Poems, essays, even photographs do not do justice to the way the light transforms this old house. My grandmother keeps the house lit mostly by kerosene lanterns. There is the glow of the blue television light that streams throughout the big den on the back of the house that was remodeled five years ago. We got electricity here only ten years ago, the year I was born. It wasn’t a question of whether or not we could afford it, it was a question of beauty and aesthetics. I suppose technically the interior of the house is most beautiful at night all lit up with the amber glow from the kerosene lanterns and candles.
I love it here. This old, crooked house where nature meets modernism. We finally got a real electric stove two years ago and now our clothes smell free of the ever clinging smell of wood smoke. I miss the wood stove, but my Mother doesn’t because it was the one chore delegated to her: stacking the hickory, oak and locust against the side of the house in the wood shed. She preferred this chore because she said it was mindless and kept her in shape. She has an aversion to exercise and prefers to think of herself as some kind of pioneer woman, well come to think of it all the women at King’s Paradise think in some terms of a pioneer spirit.
My Mother’s real job is a professor at The University of Alabama sixty miles away in Tuskaloosa. She is real smart and even though she loves me, she is too busy most of the time to deal with me. I understand, but I do wish just once she could look me full in the face like Sugar Lea and Mam do and see the real me.
My Mom is an Astronomer and Sugar Lea says that for most of her life she has had her head in the stars. I know all the constellations and can find the North Star in a New York minute but it is hard to compete with such a stellar sky for my Mother’s attention.
I laugh about it some days and other days I cry. It is hard to justify knowing that your Mother prefers the company of the North Star to your own.
Momma needs the stars as much as she needs food, water and shelter. She is a wanderer by nature, a sense of permanence is lacking in her soul. Sugar Lea says Momma lacks roots to ground her and that is the reason her head is always in the sky with the stars. Momma set her eyes on the horizon many years ago but for Momma alone the horizon seems to be ever changing just like the location of her favorite constellation, The Southern Cross.
It is hard to find the Southern Cross in the Alabama sky on most nights because it is technically only visible in the Southern Hemisphere and even though Alabama is southern, it is not in the Southern Hemisphere. However, Momma waits all year for the month of Kitty to arrive so that she can see the Southern Cross. On warm Kitty evenings she carries me on her back across the pasture which smells of rabbit tobacco and cow manure, where we find a perfect patch of crimson clover and sit ourselves down to find the Southern Cross.
Momma thinks the Southern Cross is the new Star of Bethlehem because thousands of years ago the four major stars that make up the Southern Cross were the object of reverence by wise men just like the ones who visited the Baby Jesus. At that time, the Southern Cross was visible at the horizon and then suddenly the constellation just disappeared. Momma thinks the Southern Cross went away when Christ was crucified and she believes when it is visible to everyone on earth and then and only then peace will finally come for good. It is believed that European explorers rediscovered the Southern Cross and made it an official constellation. For many years the Southern Cross was actually a part of the constellation Centaur’s feet, the Centaurs in mythology were part man and part horse. One Christmas when I was very young I told Momma all I wanted was a Centaur. I really believed they existed, now of course I know they really do not exist at all and I am probably the only person in my class who knows what a Centaur is. Mam thinks Mythology is very important and that it teaches us great and wonderful life lessons. She questions what myth is anyway, she believes reality is myth in disguise and of course she believes God is Gravity and that is the missing link in Einstein’s theory. Momma does not necessarily buy into this theory of astronomy or physics at all. She believes the Southern Cross is there to save us all from hell and damnation. She says when the Southern Cross rises high in the Heavens again everything will be good again with the world.
Many believe the Southern Cross effect will begin to appear in the year 2007 as the constellation begins to brighten again. Some prophets believe the “End Times” events end in 2007, possibly resulting in Armageddon, Hope for the world will come from the Southern Hemisphere. This brightening supernova could be the new Star of Bethlehem.