“Maybe you’re part zebra fish. Or squid,” said Aaron, taking his hand away. He yawned and slipped under the covers. “Didi says squid and octopi have three hearts. And earthworms have five. If someone cuts them up, they can still live.”
Didi was Aaron’s teacher. It was my job for now to take Aaron to school every morning and to stand in the schoolyard until Didi took the kindergarten kids inside. Peter had to drop his little sister, Rebecca, off, too, so I got to hang out with him before class.
I didn’t like Didi. She was a know-it-all. Her face was shaped like a tin top. Her hair sat in a perfect snake coil on top of her head. At the end of the day when I picked Aaron up, she took out a tube of lipstick and turned her mouth red without looking in a mirror. Then she smacked her lips like the hungry wolf in “Little Red Riding Hood.” Aaron was forever quoting her.
“That’s amazing, Aaron,” I said. “If Didi says it, I guess it must be true.”
“So maybe you’re more like a worm,” said Aaron.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Or a hagfish. They have five hearts. And they’re slimy. Really gross. They have one nostril and a tongue that stabs holes in other fish and sucks out their insides.” Aaron made a slurping sound and rubbed his belly. “Or a bull,” he added.
“A bull has one heart,” I said.
“Yeah, but its heart is five times as big as ours,” said Aaron, grinning. “So a bull counts.”
“Maybe I’m not like anyone or anything else out there,” I said. “Maybe I’m a first. The first girl with more than one heart—an evolutionary link, like the platypus.” Aaron settled himself on his pillow. “If Dad had grown an extra heart, he’d still be alive,” I said. “Don’t tell Mom that,” I added.
“It’s not true,” said Aaron, closing his eyes. “If one heart can stop all of a sudden, so can two—or three or four or five. And then you’d be dead just the same.”
An hour later, Aaron was still awake. He played with his hair, twisting one strand. He hummed to himself. The hum was a sure sign he was about to drop off to sleep. Backing away from the bed, I reached his door. It was cluttered with peeling cow stickers. Too soon! The hum stopped. Aaron’s eyes flew open. “Don’t go!” he cried. He reached his arms out to me, wiggling his fingers. “Read to me. Or tell me a Grandpa Ben story.”
“Grandpa can tell you a story on Wednesday when he picks you up from school.”
“Read then.” He pointed to The Little Prince on his shelf of favorites. It had been Dad’s favorite, too.
“You remind me of the prince,” I said. I opened the book to the title page, where the prince escapes his planet by hitching a ride through space. “You really do.” I lay down beside Aaron, making myself comfortable on his pillow. I propped the book up on my knees.
“You mean I come from another planet, right?” said Aaron.
“Something like that,” I said.
Find him, said my Dad heart . . .
I’m in my room with Dad and The Little Prince. The book is open to a drawing.
The Little Prince isn’t very old, I say, but he looks kind of old, doesn’t he?
Some people have old souls, says Dad.
Do I? I ask.
My father shakes his head. Suddenly, I want an old soul more than anything in the world.
I think maybe Aaron has one, says Dad.
My Dad heart filled with a sorrow as heavy as syrup. I felt dizzy. I slumped forward. My arms went limp, and the book hit the rug. Aaron tugged on my sleeve. He clapped his hands in front of my face. He looked worried. “Briana?”
I bent down and picked up The Little Prince. I slammed it shut. “I don’t feel good,” I said. “I need you to go to sleep. Lie down and close your eyes. Please.”
Aaron stared at me. “Make the pod,” he whispered.
I stood up and tucked him in like a mummy, drawing his sheets tight and wrapping him snugly around. I turned off the light.
“Too dark.”
I switched on his night-light, another flying cow, this one jumping over the moon. He started once again to play with his hair. I heard a hum, like a robot’s gears spinning deep inside the workings of the boy alien trying to pass as my brother. He closed his eyes.
“G’night, Aaron,” I said. The hum continued.
G’night, Beautiful, said my Dad heart, startling me. My father’s deep voice spread warmth through my veins, slowing my pulse down to the beat of a great bull’s giant heart.
It wasn’t a command this time like Say goodbye or Be your own, or a song Dad used to sing like “Blackbird” or “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” or “Estrellita.”
It was as if Dad were in the room. Not creepy or scary like a ghost. Just a voice. Dad’s voice. G’night. It echoed so loudly, I thought Aaron would hear it, too, but he was asleep at last.
SLIPPERS
I missed Dad’s breakfasts. Pancakes. French toast. Omelets. Mom always made scrambled eggs. I took a forkful and felt my throat close up. Mom had been making scrambled eggs the morning Dad’s heart stopped. She had made scrambled eggs every morning after that for months now.
“I don’t want to take Aaron to the park today,” I told Mom at breakfast. “He made a scene yesterday. You pick him up at school. You take him. Please? Or ask Grandpa Ben.”
“Aaron has therapy today,” said Mom. “I can’t ask Grandpa to take him to therapy.”
Mom never sat down at the kitchen table anymore. She stood by the stove, clutching the spatula in her fist like a soldier on guard duty.
“Well, you can’t ask me either,” I said. “I have too much homework.”
Mom crossed her arms and leaned against the sink, frowning. I forced myself to eat a few bites of toast. Mom poured some milk.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what Aaron did?” I asked.
Mom scraped the frying pan and tossed it into the soapy water. Her green eye looked greener. For weeks after the funeral, while friends and neighbors slipped in and out of the house bringing groceries and comfort food, it had wept, dripping tears. Now it was dry and bright. The Clothespin Angel Mom was in there somewhere. All I had to do was wake her up. “What did he do?” she asked.
“He saw a girl from his class standing in line by the water fountain,” I began. I pictured the girl with long white eyelashes as thick as a toothbrush. She had pale blue eyes. Sunlight glinted in a halo of sparkles off her hair. Her bangs hung in a straight line across her forehead. Dressed in pink, she looked like a fairy.
Aaron had hopped from foot to foot. He had smiled, pointing to his smile with his middle finger to show the girl how happy he was to see her. “Hello,” he said. She ignored him. “Hi, hello,” he said, smiling and pointing. “The girl saw Aaron,” I told Mom. “I could tell she saw him, and she knew he was in her class but she wouldn’t look at him.”
“What’s her name?” asked Mom.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Aaron said it starts with P. Penelope? Priscilla? Maybe Petra.”
Mom sighed. “It would help if he could remember his classmates’ names.”
“The P girl looked right through Aaron,” I said. “Aaron stood there, yelling. I tried to drag him away so the other kids could take their turns, but he wouldn’t stop. He punched me.”
“Where?”
“On my arm, here,” I said. I pushed up my sleeve to show her the black-and-blue mark.
“I’m sorry,” said Mom. She came closer, bent, and kissed the spot. Her lips felt scratchy and dry. “Why did you wait until now to tell me?”
“You were sleeping when we got home,” I said, jerking my arm away. Mom turned her back and swabbed the kitchen counter. “You’re always sleeping now,” I said. Mom had stopped going out at all except to get the mail and to walk the block to the grocery store and back. It was the only time she wore shoes. She spent hours in the market, picking out green beans one by one and forgetting most of what she was going to buy.
Mom slapped the makings of my lunch on the table—
Swiss cheese on whole wheat. “I can make my own sandwich,” I said. “Really, Mom. You don’t need to do that anymore.”
“I make Aaron’s—I may as well make yours,” Mom answered.
It wasn’t the sandwich that got to me. It was the way Mom wrapped it. A plastic baggie first, then wax paper, then silver foil, crisscrossed with giant rubber bands. The fat thing looked like a crab—the kind Peter told me about that seals itself in its own shell, backing into a smaller and smaller space until the space gets too small and it dies.
Mom held the bundled lunches up to the light, knocking them together as if she were giving a pair of dice a click. She handed them to me. “Don’t dawdle on the way home,” she said. I could tell she was seconds away from going back to bed. Mom’s room was a few steps from the kitchen, but it may as well have been on another planet once the door was shut. She would be asleep when I got back. She wouldn’t know if we had dawdled on the way home or not.
“We won’t,” I said. I wanted her to look at me, to remember a time before Dad died, Before Aaron, when we were happy. I searched my brain for something Mom would want to remember, something that was just ours.
“Do you mind getting the laundry started when you get home, Briana?” asked Mom. “I don’t feel up to it today.”
“I told you—I have homework,” I said.
“And I told you I don’t feel well,” said Mom.
Find her, urged my Dad heart . . .
I smell soap and hot tar. The sun is bright. Mom is hanging the laundry on the roof. Before Aaron. Someday, everyone will go back to drying clothes in the sun, she says.
I reach into a basket of damp twisted clumps. I hold up one of Mom’s dresses. It’s soft gray with a pattern of seahorses. It flaps against my leg. She takes it from me and hangs it on the line. Two drops of water fall from its folds. They glisten like button eyes on the black tar. I stoop and pick up another dress, pink with a pattern of leaves, then another, buttercup yellow with green buttons. The dresses flutter in the breeze. I start on the socks. Blue elephants. Red peppers. Floating watermelons. Butterflies.
The light turns to gold. Mom shows me how to paint and glue paper wings on the clothespins. We work with our heads close together. Mom’s curly hair brushes my cheek. Clamped down tight with little handmade guardian angels, our clothes dance on the line, casting long shadows. The sun sinks in the sky. The shadows fade.
When Dad comes home expecting dinner, Mom and I are still up on the roof, talking to angels.
“Remember Clothespin Angels?” I asked.
Mom smiled, a real smile.
“I do,” she said. “I think I saved one somewhere.”
“They had such pretty wings,” I said.
“All the colors of the rainbow,” said Mom, her green eye glowing.
“With sparkles. And stars.” I sighed.
Find her, repeated my Dad heart.
Mom’s smile turned sad and disappeared. Her face went blank. She was looking at me standing there right in front of her, but her green eye wasn’t seeing me anymore. It was still shining though. Mom, the old Mom, was in there somewhere. I was sure of it. For that one moment, Mom had remembered how we were Before Aaron, before Dad died, when she was still mine. I had turned back the clock.
That afternoon when I came home with Aaron, I half expected Mom to be awake. She would open the door, hug me, and ask how my day had gone. She would tell me something funny ha ha or funny cuckoo about hers. I rang the bell. No answer. I rang again. I looked down at the welcome mat by the front door. Carefully, I lined up my boots and Aaron’s sneakers beside Mom’s blue slippers. I waited, rang one more time, then slowly dragged out my key.
My boots had been out in the world doing what boots do. They had cut a crazy zigzag across the streets of Inwood. Aaron’s sneakers had left muddy footprints in the lawns of Fort Tryon Park. Mom’s slippers had been tracking from room to room and back again, never leaving the house, leaving no prints at all.
TINA
Before first period the next day, I ducked into the bathroom and dug into my backpack for Dad’s hat, trimmed with fake fur, Russian-style. I sat it on my head like a loaf of bread, brown as dirt.
I checked myself in the mirror. Green eyes. Nose, not too big, not too small. Wavy hair like Mom’s except for the color, black like Dad’s. I looked exactly the same as before Dad died, but I had become invisible. No one looked directly at me anymore. With the hat, they would have to look.
After the dumpling visit, when I first went back to school, I saw Tina and Reena at their usual table in the lunchroom. They saw me, too, but they didn’t call me over. I could tell they had been talking about me.
Daisy hailed me from across the room. “Briana!” she yelled. I waved back. She was sitting with Neil and two of her friends. Her best friend, Al, was a poet and posted readings on YouTube. Beads and bits of ragged cloth and feathers dangled from his bare arms. He looked like a walking dream catcher. Her other friend Jon had a pale moon face framed in a mess of frizzy black hair. He drew out everything he said in a drawl, so slow that teachers often thought he was making fun of them. Jon scared me a little. I didn’t belong at Tina and Reena’s table, but I didn’t belong at Daisy’s either. I didn’t belong anywhere. I backed out of the room and waited for Peter in the hall.
Later, when Tina saw me in class, she asked me how I was doing. I hated that question except when Peter asked it and I didn’t have to answer.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Tina asked why I hadn’t come over at lunch.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Do you want to come to my house after school?” she asked. “Reena’s coming over.”
“Thanks,” I said, “I can’t. I have to pick up Aaron.” I waited for her to say I could bring Aaron over, too.
“You’re always with Aaron now, huh?” she said.
“I guess,” I said. “Except on Wednesdays when my grandpa picks him up.”
“I have dance lessons on Wednesdays.” She narrowed her eyes. I had never noticed how small they were when she did that, and close to each other like the chocolate chips my mom stuffed into her cookies. “Why can’t your mom pick Aaron up?” she asked.
“She wants me to do it.”
“Oh,” she said.
“For now,” I added.
“Yeah, well, see you,” she said, and hurried away.
After that, I had lunch with Peter every day. Once in a while Neil joined us, but mostly he ate alone or with Daisy. For a week or so, Tina and Reena asked me how I was doing whenever they saw me. Once, they asked me how Aaron was doing. “How are you and Aaron doing?” they asked. They exchanged looks when they asked me that like they were sharing a joke. Then they stopped talking to me altogether.
I was late for English, Mr. Woodman’s class. Mr. Woodman had freckles. He told us that in his spare time, he played Chopin on the piano for his pet cat, Fellini. I hurried in and found a seat in the back, behind but not too close to Tina and Reena. If Mr. Woodman noticed Dad’s hat, he didn’t say anything. He was making a checklist on the blackboard of things to look for in a fractured fairy tale.
“Look for the unexpected twist at the end,” he said.
“Or it’ll look for you,” said Morty, the class clown. His friends laughed. The radiator was on full blast. Dad’s hat weighed on my head like a hot stone.
“Briana,” said Mr. Woodman. “Would you like to share your fractured fairy tale with us?” The last thing I wanted to do was stand up in front of the class. “Don’t read the moral,” said Mr. Woodman. “Let’s see if your fellow writers can guess. Okay, listen up,” he said. He passed out ungraded copies of my story so everyone could follow along. He thrust my paper into my hand. It was an A.
I rose to face the class.
“‘Little Rock Riding Hood,’” I read. There were a few laughs.
One day, Little Rock Riding Hood set out to visit her grandpa.
“Watch out for the Grumps,” w
arned Mother. “They spit.”
“No Grumps,” said Little Rock Riding Hood.
“And don’t stop for Long Nose or his Cat. They’ll talk your ears off.”
“My ears?” Little Rock Riding Hood liked her ears. They were made of seashells. The boy who had made her out of a rock had glued them on. “No Grumps. No Long Nose. No Cat,” she promised.
“Roll away as fast as you can if you see the Chit Chats,” Mother added. “They’ll twist what you say and make you wonder if you know anything at all.”
“No Grumps. No Long Nose. No Cat. No Chit Chats,” promised Little Rock Riding Hood. “Maybe I should just stay home?”
“If you’re a good little Rock Girl and listen to your mother, you’ll be as safe as a barnacle on a sea stack,” said Mother.
“How safe is that?” asked Little Rock Riding Hood.
Tina raised her hand.
“Mr. Woodman,” she said. “You’ve got a pet cat, right? You’re Long Nose! Me and Reena are the Chit Chats.” Tina sat back in her chair, her arms crossed over her chest like a lawyer resting her case.
“I like your who’s who, Tina.” Mr. Woodman laughed. “Let’s see. Why don’t I read Long Nose? Tina and Reena, you read the Chit Chats. And do I have volunteers for the Grumps?”
Morty raised his hand. Sam and Stan, the two other class clowns, did, too. Mr. Woodman nodded at them. “Go on, Briana,” he said.
“Little Rock Riding Hood rolled into the forest, where she met a clump of Grumps,” I read.
“Where are you going?” chorused Morty, Sam, and Stan.
“‘I’m not telling,’” I read. “‘Mother says you spit.’ Before long, Little Rock Riding Hood came to a tumble-down shack. At the gate stood Long Nose and his Cat.”
“Where are you going?” read Mr. Woodman. He looked around the room. “Who would like to be the cat?” he asked. Daisy raised her hand. I smiled at her. “Where are you going?” Mr. Woodman repeated, waiting for Daisy to find her place on the page.
The Girl with More Than One Heart Page 3