Paper Hearts Don't Beat

I found out several years later that my mother, after regaining consciousness, had kicked my father out the night before. The gun we didn’t know she had was kept under her bed in a shoebox. She pulled it on him and made him leave. He went to his parents’ house just down the street from us. He had spent time living with them previously after fighting with my mom, either because he left or because my mom threw him out, so we weren’t too worried. The time he’d been kicked out before, I went to visit him every day after school.

My paternal grandparents lived in an old three-story Chicago house, the same house my dad and his six brothers and two sisters grew up in. The first floor always smelled like polished wood. Built in, solid-oak bookshelves lined the walls and all the doors were trimmed out in thick mahogany. The second floor was filled with bedrooms, the backmost of which belonged to my dad. The attic was the best of all. I called it the game room because it was filled with all the toys left behind from the kids growing up: buckets of various action figures, piles of old Barbies complete with accessories, Connect-Four, Hungry Hungry Hippo, and the best of all, a ping pong table right in the center with silver-handled paddles. My dad and I spent hours up there together playing games and talking. He told stories about his life growing up and how much fun it sometimes was to have so many kids all living together in that big house.

We could visit him over there anytime we wanted. This time though, my mom seemed resolute about her decision and told him he couldn’t come back until he got help with the cocaine problem. She started working full-time, which is when we began Day Camp.

Day Camp was really the name I gave the house of our babysitter, Mrs. Walker. Sophie and I went every day along with a boy named Justin and a girl, Stacy. The four of us were so similar in appearance that the only things distinguishing one from the other of us were specifics. Features and expressions. Subtleties. Heights, the placement of dimples, scars, knee diameters, fingernail to cuticle ratios, DNA. For as similar as our outsides were, the living situations we experienced by way of our parents varied considerably. Stacy and Justin were from the same neighborhood as Mrs. Walker. Sophie and I were not. We lived closer to Jefferson Park, where the houses were small, very old, and very close together. These houses were new and enormous and had expansive yards with hired landscapers.

While Sophie and Justin watched TV, Stacy and I drew hopscotch lines with chalk, held jump-rope and breath-holding contests, laughed in shrills, running from one activity to the next. Only from breathlessness would we land and would do so in a pile of limbs, tangled hair, and hard, silent laughter. Day camp became my favorite place. My time away from Mrs. Walker, Justin, and Stacy, that too-large-for-living house, and all that it contained was reduced to a state of waiting.

At naptime, Mrs. Walker made us nap on the floor of the downstairs family room together. We did it every day and each of us had a regular spot. My spot was between Stacy and Sophie. Stacy and I couldn’t sleep, so we played games instead. When we heard Mrs. Walker coming to inspect us, we held our eyes closed and breathed evenly, lying as still as we could. When we heard her walk away, we started giggling. We dared each other to get up and run around the perimeter of the room as many times as we could without being caught.

“I’m gonna go for four laps,” Stacy whispered. I had just finished three, which was the record.

“Don’t do it! You’ll never make it!” Her face broke into silent laughter and I started laughing too, snorting out loud before slapping my hand over my mouth and pushing my forehead to the floor to muffle the noise.

“Shhhh!” Stacy put her hand on my shoulder and looked back toward the stairs, listening for any sign of approach. I reached over and grabbed her hand, looking to where she watched. I saw her look at me from the corner of my eye and I kept my gaze directed away from her. She gripped my hand tighter and I looked at her. She had a half smile on her face and a question in her eyes. I nodded. She gave one last glance back and got up. Keeping her step as light as possible, she trotted around the room. She was rounding the corner for a fourth lap when I heard footsteps. I reached over and grabbed Stacy’s pant leg and she went down. We stifled our laughter and she scrambled to her spot, quickly getting into a fetal position with her back to me. I held my breath and turned over just in time to fool Mrs. Walker into believing we were still sleeping.

After naptime ended, she made us lukewarm coffee sweetened with condensed milk, creating a unique flavor I have since failed ever to reproduce. I adored those room-temperature sips of candy-sweet darkness. I began asking for it at home, where I would only get stern looks for answers from my mom.

Then came the day. The day was as bright and as clear as all other days at Day Camp were, cut from raw pleasure in silver smooth slices and lined up one after another for the melting in my mouth.

Stacy wanted to go for a swim. Neither of us had brought a suit. For Stacy, this was not a problem because she lived just across the street and down. We started to her house to get her suit and a spare suit for me to borrow. Her parents were at work but she knew where they hid the key. The excitement of fleeing Mrs. Walker’s house and yard without her permission or knowledge was of a new breed for me, dangerous and penetrating of some undefined, never-before-broken membrane of acceptability within me. I was aware that such a membrane existed, dividing my good-girl nature from the sort of careless recklessness I had observed in other, less strictly-disciplined children. I had barely probed it once by convincing Sophie to climb up the shelf of the pantry and liberate some of our Halloween candy to supplement our daily ration against my parents’ wishes.

I knew something of the driving force of emotions as distinguished from reason, that which motivates other children to break rules, and I knew that I would act accordingly given the right opportunity and good enough odds against being caught or even just the courage to act. This was that opportunity and I had taken it. Slit open the wrists of acceptability, as what is deemed acceptable by anyone, and let its pulse feed the voluntary trespass, the proud strides through the door that reads do not enter, the deliberate and forceful acceleration against the traffic of a clearly marked one-way street. Lightheaded and with a racing heart, I followed Stacy to her house. Giddy with rule-breaking zeal, I was somewhat subdued by the newness and grandness of her home. Justin and Stacy’s house was as large and striking as Mrs. Walker’s Day Camp.

The interior of Stacy’s house was bulging with sumptuous lavishness, marked by a regal form and dignity―moldings, decorative paneling, trim, and ceiling treatments―imposing in appearance to my exceedingly ordinary if not inadequate home situation. Overcome and solemn, I crept along quietly over the stately oak flooring behind Stacy to her room, when she whirled around and placed her hand against my chest.

“I used to get sent to France on summers to my grandparents’ house. My grandfather is a doctor for babies, a pediatrician,” she said, and paused, unblinking.

“Really?” I asked. A breeze that came through an open window lifted her hair and smelled like pinecones. She stared.

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t have to go this summer.”

“Me, too,” she smiled. She started to climb the stairs, then hesitated and turned again.

“Have you ever played doctor with anyone?”

“No.”

“Jessie, my best friend in France, lives next door to my grandparents. We played doctor sometimes. She pretended she was the doctor and I was the patient.”

I was intrigued. I had been to the pediatrician with Sophie once for a routine checkup. We had to take off our clothes and the lady touched our privates. We were embarrassed and we giggled. Then she gave us a sucker and we left.

“What did you do?” I queried, eyebrows arched.

“Maybe we can play sometime and I’ll show you.”

We stood in awkward silence. Again, I had nothing to say.

“Let’s go swimming!” I declared. She nodded and continued up the stairs to her room.
Stacy rummaged through the drawers of a dresser while I dangled my legs off the side of her bed, which was covered with a plush, pink, feather-stuffed comforter embroidered with her initials and silky to the touch. Finding her bathing suit, she tossed it on the floor and pulled out several others for me to choose from. Just as I was about to hop down and cross to the bathing suits, Stacy tore off her shirt and just as swiftly shoved down her shorts, kicking them off from around her ankles. I looked away and felt my face grow hot. I sat too stiff and straight.

Trying to act casual in this pose was a challenge, but I swung my legs and picked at the down comforter underneath me while forcing a relaxed posture by bending nearly double, forehead all but touching my knees, flaunting my embarrassment. But why was I so nervous? Sophie and I had been down to less than our underpants together before without incident or even notice. Still, her sudden and unexpected nakedness warranted at least some awkwardness, though maybe not quite so much. I felt her cross the room in my direction and looked up. Even before my face completed lifting, I was knocked backward onto the bed and pinned at the wrists, Stacy’s blond hair falling into my eyes, my open mouth, her breath on my face. She said nothing.

My stomach hollowed, flipped, registering physically the abruptness of being straddled and hunched over by another girl. The mouth is the altar of the body and all sensation collects there, coating the tongue with cotton. Fear like cement affixes to the roof of the mouth, teeth grip one another, the bones of the jaw contract. I gulped at nothing, almost choked, raced my mind through options of what this might mean. Was it a new game? Doctor? Wrestling? Ten seconds and it’s a knock out? She began moving rhythmically astride my hips, pushing herself up against my trapped wrists and looming higher above to see my face, what my expression revealed.

I began at first to twist about like a worm, my arms wriggling in pursuit of freedom, my legs squirming, careful to avoid imitation of her motion. My weak attempts to escape her hold only made her grip me harder so I writhed and bucked wildly against her rigid, sinewy frame and broke loose. Exploding from the house, I ran down the street back toward Mrs. Walker’s house. When I reached the sidewalk, I tripped and fell straight forward, skinning my hands and knees. I flipped over and peered up at the house. I saw Stacy standing in her bedroom window, watching me. Immediately she jumped away and the curtains fell closed. I got to my feet and limped on, tears burning the back of my eyes. I would not cry; I could not have her see me cry. My stomach felt empty, like aching hunger. So much thrill and fear had left me limp.

I reached Mrs. Walker’s house and sought out my sister. I found her quietly playing with paper dolls we had made together the night before. It was a game we had played since Sophie was big enough to hold scissors. We cut out families with moms and dads and daughters and colored them in with clean, yellow happiness. We penned on their faces various good-natured expressions, but mostly exceedingly genuine smiles. Smiles as impregnable and clear as the paper happiness that formed them. Paper shaped from my hands and Sophie’s: marrowless, humble, two-dimensional life. The permanent contrasted with the accidental. The conjecture of our very own concentrated, essential existence. They contained the best of us. We gave them our hearts, thick and real, and they beat them for us.

Take it up With Misters Smith and Wesson

When I came home, I found Sophie standing in the gangway surrounded by a pack of growling dogs poised for attack. Sophie was standing very still, a funny little half smile on her face. She seemed confused by their snarling faces, torn between her love of dogs and the unmistakable threat in these ones – black lips drawn back, gleaming sharp teeth. Missy burst from behind the house, barking and snarling. I rant to Sophie and was inches from her when Missy’s chain stopped short, snapping her back. My heart hammered, expanded, threatened to blow. The mad gods turned toward Missy. I grabbed Sophie and jerked her body against me. We both jumped a bit when the frenzied pitch of my mother’s scream echoed through the gangway. She exploded from the side door. Armed with a broom, she swung wild, savage arcs at the mad dogs. All five of them snapped to attention. My mother, reckless and hulking, advanced, and they scattered, nails struggling for traction against the smooth, slippery concrete. I swung the gate open and they poured out. We celebrated like we’d just won a small library, hugging and hopping on our toes, clapping and smiling. Missy hopped happily around us, catching the mood.

When my dad came home from work, I wanted to run at him and tell him the whole story, but the moment he walked through the door my mom burst from the kitchen and threw a tin tea container across the room aimed straight at his head. He ducked; the tin soared through the air where his head had just been and smashed against the wall behind him. Leaves, shoots, and small, tight baggies of white powder burst from the can, scattering in all directions. Wide-eyed, jaw-dropped, he stared at the tin and mess on the floor. He looked up just in time to receive a back-handed blow hard enough to rock him on his heels, and he stumbled back. He went after her. She ran into the bathroom and locked herself in.

“You can’t hide this shit from me!” she screamed through the door.
I slapped my hands over Sophie’s ears and pulled her back down the hall into our room where I closed and locked the door. I heard my mom’s shrill voice through the door and my dad’s shouts in reply.

“Why did mom do that?” Sophie asked. She sat against the wall holding a doll, plucking out the hairs on its head one by one. I watched her hands, pink and small, dirt beneath her fingernails, carefully grabbing only one strand of hair at a time, jerking quickly with a snap of her wrist. Once the hair was free, she dropped it on her lap and set out for the next, close to the same spot where she had taken out the last one, creating a gradually expanding bald spot.

“She was mad. She found bad stuff dad was hiding.” I shuffled a deck of cards.

“Yeah,” she said.

I took out a stack of paper and our box of scissors and crayons. We spread out a blanket and got to work. Hours must have passed before my mom knocked on the door, asking us to come out for dinner. The contents of the tin had been cleaned up. The smell of toast and gravy wafted from the kitchen. My dad sat at the table, ladling white sauce with flecks of beef on a stack of toast. My mom went to the counter to toast more bread, and Sophie and I took our seats.

“Sit up, girls,” my dad said. He watched while Sophie and I straightened our spines and laid our hands in our laps; then he gave us a slight nod and lifted a forkful of dripping bread into his mouth, making sure to chew with his mouth closed. Table manners were highly important to my dad. My mom appreciated proper etiquette as well, especially in her daughters, lest we end up looking “trashy” to anyone.

That night after dinner Sophie, Missy, and I sat in our room going over the details of our adventure from earlier in the day. Downstairs, my mom’s muffled voice was growing louder. My parents had been drinking and smoking pot for the past hour and 47 minutes. I knew because Sophie and I were sent to our room the moment it started. My mom had been talking the entire time. Sometimes when she was high, a poetic gem within her would emerge and her eloquent, verbose speech would monopolize conversation, excluding my dad.

Her words seemed to forcibly anger my father. It seems to me that it would begin with a subtle uneasy feeling that spread outward from an inherent wrath; a hot, molten nucleic ire he stored deep in his chest. By the time it surfaced, he had been quietly disturbed for some time and the surge of rage seemed sudden, the unexpectedness of it confounding even him. My father, whether high or low, was never good with words. He had to fight everything with his fists.

“Beginnings and endings. They make life, which only exists in time, inherently tragic. Although sometimes I think there is a region of existence beyond time from which I came and to which I will return. Or, perhaps more acutely, a region where the idea of me exists currently and is expressing itself in various ways and places simultaneously, time and this self that I currently am being but one of them.”

“Cut it out, Christine.”

“What frightens me is that we are bound fast to the laws according to time: that everything in life has a beginning and an end. Everything. Who I love, what I know to be real, what I have will all be gone, will disappear or turn out to be illusory, and all that I contrive to gain will be taken away.”

“Enough with that horse shit now.”

“Even if you and I are together for this life, we will have separate and unequal durations.”

“I said shut the fuck up!”

“One of us will be gone and one of us will be left. I wonder if the one of us who is gone will be held within time somehow by—”

The beating started after Sophie had fallen asleep. I pulled the blanket higher up over her head and made sure our door was locked before I sat down to listen. The steel and concrete foundation of the building shuddered with the blows. Heavy thumps through the walls and floor, like a dumbbell falling from a shelf. There was something wrong, something lacking from the noises that usually accompany their fights. I heard no cries from her, no fighting back. No hurtled objects colliding with faces. Only the occasional grunts he made between fist falls.
After a while, I began to worry that he had killed her. I got up and it stopped. A thick sludge of silence rose into the grooves dug by the noises of violence in the air, like clotting blood filling an open wound. I listened hard. Nothing. I waited what seemed to be hours. Still nothing. At last I fell asleep next to Sophie, sandwiching her between Missy and myself.

That night I dreamed that I was in a crowd of people tightly filling a room whose floor was breaking away avalanche-like from the wall opposite one single door that seemed to be shrinking as I scrambled near it, fighting to get through, shoving and throwing elbows, even gouging out eyes to make people go down. When I finally reached the threshold and was about to step through to safety, I heard a shot and felt a bullet enter my back squarely between my shoulder blades. I was thrown forward on impact and as I reached to break my fall, I felt a second shot penetrate high in my left shoulder, then a third almost simultaneously in the back of my neck. Lying face down I felt the warm blood rise, breach the skin and spill down the slopes of my sides and neck to the floor where I saw the dark red puddle form and spread. I felt the pain acutely, struggled for breath while my lungs collapsed, and knew I was dying.

I woke up to the same sealed, airtight soundlessness that I had fallen asleep with. I crossed the hall to my parents’ bedroom door. Pushing open the door slowly, I looked in to find the shape of my mother alone beneath a heap of covers. Overflowing ashtrays and prescription pill bottles littered the night tables. My dad wasn’t there, which was not unusual; he often woke up before any of us and left the house without making a sound. I saw a glint of sun bounce off metal on the nightstand. A gun. A hand-held revolver lay perpendicular to the bed on the table to the right of it, partially covered with cigarette ashes, handle facing my mother. I stared for a moment and then winced, remembering my dream. I drew back as if being pulled from the threshold and into my room where I relocked the door.