The Stars Beneath Our Feet

“If you only expose yourself to whatever everybody else does, you’ll never create anything new. I think that’s what got your brother: He couldn’t see any other way out of here besides dealing. Got caught up in that street lifestyle, like that sheisty Rockit and all them.”

Steve’s warning to Lolly sets up the major conflict Lolly and Vega face over the course of the narrative. They can choose one of two paths: Run the streets like Jermaine or find something they are passionate about like Steve and his art and movie-making.

“It was funny because it wasn’t something that I would’a thought to ask for, but sitting there then in my room, it seemed like something I had been wanting. I just hadn’t known that I had wanted it.” 

Lolly’s response to Steve’s Christmas gift, a book called A Pattern of Architecture, directly contrasts his response to Jermaine’s gift of a game console. Jermaine’s gift seems like it’s for another kid, while Steve’s gift is more meaningful, an early sign that Lolly will create art, following in Steve’s footsteps and not Jermaine’s.

“So many people hate them and call them names that I don’t think it’s something anybody would really pick to be if they had a choice in it. Who would choose to be gay when they knew it was so much easier to be straight?”

Lolly is young and naïve enough to wonder whether sexuality is a choice, the way his father believes it is. Lolly stumbles onto the reality that sexuality is innate through a kind of logic: No one would choose to live a harder life than they had to. Of course, this idea of easy versus hard choices echoes what Steve says later about dealing drugs with a crew—this seems like the easy choice, but Lolly should choose something else.

“I didn’t know what, but it gave me crazy energy to want to rip apart all of my Legos and make them into something else. Something different.”

Lolly was hoping that Jermaine’s gift would be meaningful, but it is Steve’s book on architecture that inspires him with a burst of creative energy. His response to the book shows that, even though he doesn’t know it yet, Lolly is an artist.

“In my mind, I saw Jermaine’s bed. It looked like he was laying beneath the white covers. Only, the vision I saw was made out of Legos. I could see his hand peeking out from beneath the sheets. It was a brown hand, all blocky from being made out of Lego bricks.”

Lolly often says that building with Lego makes him feel closer to Jermaine, like Jermaine is right there with him. His vision of Jermaine made out of Lego bricks symbolizes that Lego is an outlet for Lolly to process his grief over Jermaine’s death.

“The only thing that seemed to help was building my castle. When I was building, I forgot about everything else. But Ma was going to make me rip down the House of Moneekrom tonight, I knew it. And I didn’t know what I was going to do then. Really did not know. Like I was losing control.”

The fact that losing the House of Moneekrom makes Lolly feel like he is losing control shows that this build is an emotional outlet that allows Lolly to be himself and to feel everything he has been repressing. Tearing down his castle is like tearing away a part of himself.

“There were lots of white people that lived in Harlem. But at the same time, it was like they didn’t really live here. They had their own special places in Harlem that they went to that not many Black folks went to. At least none of the Black folks I knew. I mean, you never even saw them at any of our barbershops. Not really. I mean, if these white people lived in Harlem, why didn’t they get their hair cut at our barbershops? Maybe they thought Black barbers wouldn’t know how to cut white heads. Or maybe the white people thought we wouldn’t like them in there. It was weird. I guess they liked staying invisible. And they liked to hide. Like Tuma. And Daddy.”

Lolly’s thoughts about the white people who live in Harlem reflect his gradual understanding of the world around him. Lolly has many questions about people who experience a different reality than him, like gay people, people with cognitive differences like Rose, and white people who have privilege due to their race. His questions don’t stem from hatred, but from lack of experience.

“Lately, my days were bad days to be anywhere. The badness usually started in the mornings right after I woke. Sometimes I would wake up carefree, and then it would hit me. Jermaine. And I would feel that heavy rock grow weightier on my chest, while I was lying there on my back, still in bed. The rock would just sink dead into the center of my chest, right into my heart. Like it was sinking into mud.”

One of the novel’s main themes is coping with grief. The heavy rock in Lolly’s chest symbolizes Lolly’s grief following Jermaine’s death. At first, Lolly’s coping skills are rudimentary: The only thing that makes the rock easier to deal with is doing something mean to someone else or lashing out in anger to mask his sadness. As Lolly expresses his pain through his Lego construction, the rock gradually loosens and disappears. He has learned how to cope with his grief in a healthier way.

“Jermaine used to say that listening to Tupac was like listening in on the mind of every young Black man in the ghetto. I didn’t used to believe that.”

Lolly references famed 1990s rappers Tupac and Biggie, who are an example of Lolly’s newfound appreciate of the many forms of art. Lolly didn’t used to believe what Jermaine said about Tupac’s music, but now he learns that art can change people’s emotions and thoughts. Lolly pours his experience with loss into his Lego castle, just as Tupac captured the experience of being a Black man in the city.

“‘I’m not autistic,’ she said again. ‘I know. You ain’t got no definition,’ I said.”

Lolly’s growing empathy for Rose catalyzes his character growth. In the beginning of the novel, Lolly mocks Rose’s difference, calling her cruel names like “Frankenstein” and “Big Rose.” When they get to know each other, Lolly is surprised to find that Rose is a talented builder and a protective friend. Lolly accepts her differences and admires her talent. He doesn’t define her by her disability.

“In fact, Vega’s music was making me sad even though I had been feeling all right before. It’s funny how music can do that to you. I guess all art is like that. Making art, you can sure change people. Make them feel a certain way or think a certain way. Mr. Ali had said that what we were doing in the city room was art. I hadn’t even thought of it like that before, but I think Ali was right. We were creating worlds in here. Lately, I had been feeling like it was just something that I had to do. Like I didn’t have no choice in it. I wanted to do it forever.”

Lolly sees himself as an artist, a person who creates worlds. He is proud of the way his original ideas and stories about Harmonee move those around him and help him face his grief, pain, and loss.

“Rosamund, when you die, they bury you, but your soul flies to the stars. Your mama, your daddy—they were buried under the ground, but they’re stars now, girl, stars beneath our feet.”

Rose repeats these words in times of extreme stress, though she doesn’t explain what they mean. The words are a combination of what her grandmother told her about her parents’ deaths and a line from 19th century Irish poet Richard Chenevix Trench’s poem “The Story of Justin Martyr.” In Trench’s poem, a man contemplating suicide has a vision of Saint Justin, a 2nd century Christian martyr, who convinces him not to kill himself. For Rose grandmother, and now for Rose, the poem has meaning because Rose’s mother died by suicide. Rose uses it like a mantra that helps her process her emotions.

“Our coyote was part of a species in danger. Hunted down and shot up. We knew how it felt.”

Nicky the coyote is a recurring symbol of imperiled freedom and the sensation of being hunted to extinction, something Lolly and Vega feel intimately. Lolly and his friends feel a bond with Nicky the coyote because he represents the longing for safety and struggle to survive that they too experience every day.

“Well, if we was different, you know, been born with money…It’s just…making good art and music ain’t really expected of us. That type of work is unexpected.”

Vega’s pessimism response to Lolly finding out that he and Rose have to tear down their Lego cities reflects a critical social consciousness that is unusual for someone so young. Vega already understands his relative lack of privilege—because of economic inequity, he and Lolly have a severe disadvantage as artists, no matter how talented they are.

“I was surprised by how fast it fell. The construction had taken so long. The destruction didn’t last any time at all. I guess it’s quicker to tear down something than to build it up.”

Building Harmonee was an outlet for Lolly to process his grief. Lolly is surprised at how quickly Harmonee falls once they begin the deconstruction process, because building something from scratch takes such an incredibly long time. Similarly, though it only takes a second to lose a loved one, it takes a long time to cope with their death.

“His violin shoots out a black bullet straight into Harp’s forehead and the bullet keeps flying straight into Gully’s forehead, right behind Harp! They both drop to the pavement dead. And their bodies break all apart into little blocks. They were made of Legos!”

Lolly often imagines stressful situations made out of Lego bricks. Earlier in the novel, he pictured Jermaine’s body made of Lego blocks. Lolly processes what’s on his mind by building Lego and he understands the world around him through art. Lolly imagining Vega’s Lego violin shooting a bullet symbolizes the conflict between the decision he and Vega face, to join a crew or embrace their art. If they kill Harp and Gully, they will destroy their chance at a future as creators, just as the bullet destroys the Lego bodies.

“I had never been in here before. But when I was little, me and my friends used to think this police station looked like a moon base. As little kids we used to pretend that. From the outside it was shaped funny, like something that should’a been on another planet. When I got older, I grew to know what it really was.”

Lolly is only 12, but in Harlem, he is no longer safe on the streets. When he was little, he could imagine the police station as a moon base because he was innocent enough not have any interactions with this building—its interior was as distant to his life as the moon. Now that he is older, he has had multiple encounters with the station: Jermaine’s arrest, and now Yvonne’s. He understands the reality of the station and can no longer have fantasies about it.

“‘Well,’ I said, feeling cooler, ‘it’s about using your head, getting a spark from being creative, I think. All I’m trying to say is I’m real lucky that Yvonne helped me the way she did.’ I had got too emotional. ‘It saved me,’ I said.”

Yvonne’s choice to steal bags of Lego for Lolly may have cost him the chance to build the display for Tuttle’s window, but it gave him something more important. In the beginning of the novel, Lolly was overcome with grief over losing Jermaine. Building with the stolen Lego saved Lolly from being eaten up by anger and depression. Lolly also grew to appreciate other forms of art, such as the poetry Rose’s grandma gave him. As he recites a line from one of the poems in his speech to Mr. Tuttle, he emphasizes the power of art to transform human emotions.

“I stuck out my hand and he lightly placed the gun into it. I felt it in the darkness. Heavy, cold and mean. That Glock felt like the end.”

The Glock that Frito gives Vega symbolizes the path of crew life and violence—what Steve calls the “easy path” of following the expectations of those around them. Jermaine chose the streets, which ultimately led to his death. If Lolly and Vega choose this path, it could very well be the end, not just of their futures as artists, but of their lives.

“I think I was able to help Vega when I told him he had a choice to make too: Frito and the gun, or me and his violin.”

The novel’s main themes of art, choices, and inequity culminate in Lolly and Vega having to make the difficult decision about whether to join a crew or pursue their passion, art. Lolly helps Vega see that sometimes the harder choice is the right one.

But what me and Rose had gone through together over the past few months had been the main cure for me. She had helped heal me the most.”

Lolly heals through his friendship with Rose. By getting close to a person with incredible talent and difficulty communicating, Lolly develops empathy and emotional maturity. Because Rose has also lost a loved one, they can process their grief together in a healthy way. Lolly realizes that it’s impossible to really know who someone is or what they are capable of until you get to know them and truly see them.

“‘I wanna go by my real name from now on,’ I said, and spun back around, walking forward.”

Lolly’s decision to go by his real name, Wallace, means that he is embracing his identity. He has grown in monumental ways in the months he spent building Harmonee with Rose. The Stars Beneath Our Feet is a coming-of-age novel, so Lolly’s choice to embrace his real name suggests that he has accomplished this rite of passage.

“The folks you hang out with can raise you up or bring you down low. Over time, they can make you think a certain way—change who you really are.”

Lolly learns the hard way how influential the people you surround yourself with can be. The more distant Jermaine grew from Lolly, the more he followed the dictates of Rockit’s crew and its harmful influence. The same is true for Frito’s influence on Vega. The more Vega hangs out with Frito after he and Lolly get jumped, the more hardened Vega becomes. He behaves and thinks differently, and even seriously considers killing Harp and Gully.