The Girl with More Than One Heart

by Geringer Bass, Laura;

  “Now for the sword,” I said, and reached into my closet. There were all Dad’s yellow baseball bats. I tossed a dress over them and handed Aaron the hanger. He tied the towel around his waist like a belt and tucked the hanger into it.

  I stayed in the closet, pressing my ear to the wall, straining to hear what was going on in the kitchen. I felt sweaty. There was a rasping sound, like rats scratching through plaster. Was Mom crying? “Lil,” I heard Grandpa Ben say, “pull yourself together.” She was crying!

  “Didi is a nosy body!” sobbed Mom. I didn’t disagree with that. Now was my chance to slip out of my room and listen.

  “All set,” Aaron sang out.

  “Not quite,” I said, spreading my arms and pretending to rise up into the air like a bird. “Here are your winged shoes.” Taking off my sneakers, I threw them at Aaron. He ducked. Then he put them on his own feet and flapped his arms.

  “I’m Perseus! I’m going to kill the monster Medusa! I’m flying,” he yelled. Was it that easy to fly? Maybe it was easy for old souls like Aaron.

  “Stay here a minute, Aaron,” I said. “Don’t touch my stuff.”

  Aaron pointed to my bare feet. “Are you spying?” he whispered. “Can I come?”

  “No, stay here and be very quiet,” I said.

  Aaron clomped around the room in my shoes, faster and faster until he collapsed on the rug. “I can go anywhere,” he said. “I can do anything. Look out, Medusa,” he cried, brandishing his hanger sword. “Here I come!”

  “Stay!” I said, as if he were a dog.

  I crept toward the kitchen. Gritty soot stuck to the soles of my feet. I peeked in, careful to keep out of sight. Mom and Grandpa Ben were cleaning up. Grandpa Ben was wearing Mom’s apron, the silly one with the pattern of purple poodles. He had splashed so much soapy water on himself, a big stain was soaking through. Mom wiped her hands on a checkered dish towel. Was I too late? Had they already talked about Didi? I closed my eyes and listened. My Dad heart was singing the baseball song.

  I don’t care if I never. Beat. Get back. Beat. Beat.

  I felt the beats in my belly. Beat by beat, my Dad heart pushed me forward. Beat by beat, it pushed me out of my hiding place.

  “Don’t!” I said. I planted my feet on the floor. It kept pushing, pushing, beating hard.

  I don’t care. If I never . . .

  I look down. I’m standing on a damp plank of wood. A porch? Where? Dad is shouting at me. He holds a thick roll of tape in his hand. He marks big X’s on the windows. Our cottage! We’re in Cape Cod. Before Aaron.

  Dark clouds gather. The wind rises. Go inside! Dad yells.

  I spread my arms, flapping them like wings. My shirt billows out around me. I run as fast as I can from one end of the porch to the other. The sky is mine. I can lift up and fly straight into it like a bird. Or an angel. A beam of sunlight rips through the clouds. The wind rises, ruffling my wings.

  Another kind of cloud—a cloud of flowers—floats by from a garden down the road. Roses. Daisies. Violets. I stop running and stare. Earth mixes with sky, sea with land. The world is upside down, waving its roots in the air.

  With a loud crash of thunder, the rain falls. I’m soaked and cold. I shiver. Again, Dad yells over the wind. Go inside! A window from the cabin next door hurtles toward me. It frames the churning ocean. It turns and turns, its glass panes crusted over with sand like those Disney cartoons where fairy dust rises from the flick of a wand. It comes straight at me.

  Sand stings my eyes. I can’t see. I can’t breathe. I’m stuck . . .

  I do care if I never get back. I do. I don’t belong in Before Aaron. I don’t want to be stuck. I had made a wish, but I was wrong.

  Move! says my Dad heart . . .

  Dad’s hands are heavy on my shoulders. He gives me a push. His face is set and hard like wet stone. Move! he says.

  My heart beats fast. I can’t move. I’m stuck. I’m stuck. I’m going to die.

  MOVE! says Dad again. He gives me another push.

  I took a flying leap. Out of hiding. Out of Before Aaron. Grandpa Ben saw me first.

  Mom’s eyebrows shot up. “Briana?” she said. “Where’s Aaron?”

  “In my room,” I said shakily.

  My clothes felt clammy. My hair was plastered to my head in damp Medusa waves.

  “Why aren’t you there with him?” asked Mom. “You’re soaking wet.” She put a hand to my forehead, testing for fever. “What were you doing?”

  “Playing,” I said.

  No one said anything for a moment.

  “Do you think you’ll ever go outside, Mom?” I ask, shivering.

  “I go outside every day,” she said. “Were you eavesdropping?”

  “I don’t mean just down the block to the store,” I said. “Someday, do you think you’ll really go outside?” My voice squeaked. I clamped my jaws to keep my teeth from rattling.

  Suppose Mom said no? Suppose she intended to go back and forth to the corner grocery store forever? Suppose she was stuck? Who would take care of me? Of us? Of me and Aaron?

  “Someday,” said Mom softly. “Yes.”

  “Soon?” I pressed. “Someday soon?”

  “Soon,” said Mom even more softly, but her voice wavered. Grandpa Ben didn’t say a word. He stood there in the middle of the kitchen. I caught his eye. I waited for him to say something. He shook his head helplessly.

  “When?” I asked Mom.

  “If you’re asking me if I’m going to that conference with Didi that Grandpa Ben was talking about, the answer is no,” said Mom.

  “You have to go, Mom,” I said. “Please. Didi wants Aaron out of her class—out of the school. If Aaron gets kicked out, we’ll have to move. Away from Peter. Away from . . .” I stopped.

  “Dad always came with me to those meetings,” said Mom. “He was better at talking to teachers. Grandpa can go this time. I’ll try to come next time.”

  “There may not be a next time!” I cried.

  “Don’t push me, Briana. I’m doing the best I can.” Mom sighed. “We can’t afford a special school for Aaron no matter what Didi says,” she added. “We can barely pay the rent. We’ll have to move anyway, Didi or no Didi.”

  I stared at Mom. “Move?” I said. I turned to Grandpa Ben. He took off his apron and folded it. He looked beat.

  “Not right away,” said Mom. “I haven’t figured it out yet.”

  Mom was figuring things out. That was good. Maybe she wasn’t stuck, but she hadn’t asked me if I wanted to move. She hadn’t asked Aaron.

  “Well, I’m not moving,” I said. “Just so you know. I’m staying right here.”

  I didn’t say, “With Dad.”

  HAT

  I looked for a photo of Dad for Daisy. It was Dad who always took all the pictures. I sat on my bed, leafing through Mom’s albums. Mom and I in Disney World with Minnie Mouse and Goofy. Mom and I dressed for Halloween. Every year, I was the Wicked Witch of the West. Mom stuck a tiara in her hair. Aaron was always Superman.

  I wondered why Dad bothered to take the same pictures of us year after year. Nothing changed except that we looked a year older. I peered into my grinning Wicked Witch–green face. I was sure back then that nothing would ever change.

  Mom was beautiful in Dad’s photos. The way she looked up and smiled. It was a smile for Dad. The happiness in it spilled out on me because I was all dressed up and standing by her side, but it was for him. It wasn’t her Clothespin Angel smile. It wasn’t a mother smile. It was full of love and something else, something a little wild that lit her up in that moment Dad had taken the picture. I studied her eyes. In the black-and-white photo, it was still easy to see which was green and which was brown, but the brown was missing something. Fear. There was no fear in Mom’s face, not the tiniest trace.

  Find her, said my Dad heart.

  “Where are you, Dad?” I whispered. “I’m looking for you.”

  Finally, I found a photo of me and Dad in front of our Cap
e Cod cabin. Dad held me in his arms. We gazed into each other’s eyes. Mom had dressed me in a ridiculous frilly outfit, with puffy white sleeves and tight braids. I looked silly, but Dad looked at me as if he were the luckiest guy in the world.

  I couldn’t lend that one to Daisy.

  Here was another of me and Dad in a hammock on the back porch in the Cape. I was a toddler. I had straddled Dad’s chest and was playing with his hair. He had his hands around my waist, to make sure I didn’t fall. He had that same look on his face. I was just a baby who couldn’t do anything yet, who couldn’t be trusted not to fall out of a hammock, but he looked proud of me.

  That wasn’t right for Daisy either. I turned the page.

  There we were at the Thanksgiving Day Parade. I sat on Dad’s shoulders. I must have been heavy in my winter coat and boots. I held a pink balloon on a stick. My hat drooped over one eye. The hat was much too big. Wait. It was Dad’s hat. He was bareheaded, and my hands were on his head. The sun was in his eyes. I couldn’t see Dad’s hat very well. The fur blended in with the dark shadow of a tree in the background.

  I could give Daisy that one for a little while.

  “You said if you could lift me every day, you’d always be able to lift me, even when I got big. Even when I was a grown-up. Remember?” I asked the Dad in the photo.

  “Do you want to come over after school today?” asked Daisy when I handed her the photo of Dad. We were standing by my locker in the middle school basement. “We can watch Buffy reruns with Neil.” It was a Wednesday, Aaron’s Grandpa day.

  I called Mom.

  “Who’s Daisy?” she asked, but she said okay when I told her Daisy was in my class and we could walk to her house from school.

  I was nervous. I had never been to Daisy’s house. Neil talked about Buffy the Vampire Slayer the whole way over. He was in love with Willow, the super geek on the show.

  “I love Buffy,” I said, “especially after her mother dies and Buffy’s left all alone to take care of her little sister, Dawn.”

  “Yeah, I get that,” said Neil. “Dawn’s . . . not quite normal. Like Aaron.”

  “Neil!” said Daisy, shocked.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s true, Aaron isn’t . . .”

  “Who is?” said Daisy, giving Neil a shove.

  Daisy let us in with her key. Where was her dad? Neil threw himself onto the couch in front of the TV, put his feet up like he lived there, and picked up the remote. Daisy’s ink drawings were scattered all over the messy living room, taped to the walls. A portrait of a pair of boots. A brush and comb. A ball of string. A snake skeleton.

  “Come see my room,” said Daisy. I followed her to her bedroom. It was piled with stuff: jars of beach glass and pebbles, gnarly bits of driftwood, a row of hourglasses in descending sizes, the last one a minute’s worth of turquoise sand. I picked up a little ivory box and held it in the palm of my hand.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Open it.”

  Inside was a single black shark’s tooth and a miniature mermaid the size of a bean carved out of wood. Daisy’s treasures reminded me of the ones my dad had brought back for me from his sales trips.

  “Did your dad give you these?” I asked.

  “No,” said Daisy. “My mom.”

  “Was she an artist?”

  “My dad’s a sculptor,” said Daisy. “My mom . . . was just a mom.”

  “Where’s your dad?”

  “At his studio. He spends lots of time there,” she said. “It’s okay. I’m in charge. He trusts me.” I was glad my mom didn’t know Daisy’s dad wouldn’t be home. She never would have let me come.

  On Daisy’s desk, a Martian-like plastic head with holes in it held six sharp pencils, each a different color. Thick black notebooks filled with sketches were piled all around on the shelves and on the floor. The walls and ceiling were a cheerful yellow.

  “Don’t you love the color?” asked Daisy. “It’s called Sweet Butter.”

  “I do. I love it,” I said, but I liked my blue better.

  In the center of the room stood a tall easel. It was draped in a ratty red bedspread, covering something big. I threw Daisy a questioning look. “It’s not finished yet,” she said. “Let’s go back to the living room. Neil brought popcorn.”

  “Wait,” I said. “If you want, you can borrow my dad’s hat.” I dragged it out of my pack and fluffed it out. Still, its fake fur looked squashed and sad. “So you can draw it from life.”

  “You sure?” asked Daisy. She held it out in front of her in both freckled hands.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I don’t want to wear it in school anymore.”

  “Awesome,” she said, setting it down on her drawing table among the stones and bird’s nests and feathers. Above her table, Daisy had hung the drawing she had done in Mr. Woodman’s class of Little Rock Riding Hood in the woods. Its corners were curled and it was ripped at the bottom where the green ink had pooled into a big blot, but it made me feel good to see it there. I reached up and touched it.

  “Mr. Woodman wants me to write another Rock Face story,” I told her.

  “Like a series?” asked Daisy.

  “Yeah, for Inwood Chatter. I don’t know . . . I think maybe I’ll do one called Rockpunzel.”

  “Ha! You’re coming to the first meeting of Chatter, right? This Thursday?”

  “I have to pick up Aaron,” I said. “I wish it met on Wednesdays, when my grandpa picks him up.”

  I waited for Daisy to pull a Tina face and judge me a freak for being so tied to my crazy little brother. Who would want a friend that always had a kindergarten boy tagging along? “Come on over next Wednesday then,” said Daisy. “I’ll draw. You’ll write. We’ll turn this place into Rock Face USA.”

  “Hey, c’mon, what’s taking so long?” Neil called from the other room. “We’re all set. Last episode of season five.” Daisy looked at me. We burst out laughing.

  Neil had chosen the episode when Buffy saves her sister, Dawn, by hurling herself into the Hellmouth. When Buffy wished her mom were still around to guide her, Daisy teared up. So did I. Neil remained dry-eyed behind his thick glasses and passed the popcorn. He cheered when Buffy called Willow her “big gun” in the battle against evil.

  “Go, Willow!” he cried, waving a fist in the air. “You rock!” He turned to me. “I love Willow,” he said.

  “She loves Tara,” Daisy reminded him. “She’s gay. She’s not interested in you.”

  “I know,” he said. “But in high school, she loved Oz. So there’s still hope.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but Oz was a werewolf.”

  “You’re right,” said Neil, shoveling a heap of popcorn into his mouth. “There’s no hope. No hope for me at all.”

  “It’s okay,” Daisy said. “I love Spike but he loves Buffy, so there you go.”

  “Of all of us, you’d be the best Buffy,” said Neil, picking kernels out of his braces with his fingers.

  Daisy laughed. “Thanks,” she said. “That’s sweet, Neil, but no way I’d sacrifice myself for a kid sister if I had one. Briana is more the hero type.” She passed me the popcorn. “I bet you’d save Aaron if he were in trouble.”

  Would I? Would I save Aaron? It wasn’t me who had saved him that time in the street. It was my Dad heart. I pushed the guilty memory away. It didn’t belong here in Daisy’s house, where for the first time since Dad died, I felt . . . happy. Like the Hula-Hoop girls in the park having fun, I was just where I belonged. For now. Tears of relief blurred my view of Daisy’s freckles and her broad smile. She wasn’t like Tina. She didn’t think I was a joke or a loser for taking care of Aaron. She thought I was a hero.

  SECRETS

  “Daisy’s doing a portrait of my dad,” I told Peter at lunch a few days later. “From a photo. I lent her his hat so she could draw it from life.”

  “I knew there was something different about you,” said Peter.

  We sat at the short table closest to the swinging doors. It didn
’t exactly fit in the room but had been squeezed in anyway, leaving space for two side by side. Mostly, grown-up visitors to the school sat there, but there was no rule against kids using it.

  Mom had made me a chicken salad sandwich. The treat was a whole pickle wrapped in wax paper. I took a crunchy bite. Peter played with the pile of long rubber bands I had tossed aside with the wrappings. He held up his hands, bound by bands.

  “Cat’s cradle?” he asked. Was there any other guy in school who would have the guts to play a girls’ game in the lunchroom?

  I plucked the elastic closest to my finger. “Cat’s cradle is for girls,” I said.

  “I was trained in the cradle by the best,” said Peter. “It’s the only thing I learned from the pushmi-pullyu except to stay out of its way.”

  I transferred Peter’s cradle from his hands to mine. “Did Tina invite you to Reena’s birthday party? I don’t think she’s going to ask me.”

  “Nope, haven’t heard a thing,” said Peter. He jerked to the side. “Ow!” he yelled.

  Morty, Sam, and Stan from Mr. Woodman’s class passed by. Stan had bopped Peter on the head. They made smooching noises, smacking their lips, followed by barf sounds. Heading for their own table, they laughed like hyenas.

  “That hurt, jerks!” Peter called after them. Two tables away, Tina and Reena giggled. Tina was wearing lipstick—light pink and frosty. Sarah M. was sitting between them, a shiny blade of blond hair falling over her face. No one could make her hair look that perfect. You had to be born that way. She wore lipstick, too. Red. The three were huddled with their heads close together. It used to be me in the middle. Sarah M. had taken my place.

  Neil wandered past Tina’s table, his earbuds dangling from his pocket. He spotted me and paused, then touched his head as if saluting. I smiled and waved him over. He stumbled and almost went sprawling but caught his tray just in time. He righted himself and, blushing, hurried away toward Daisy’s table by the window. Tina whispered to Sarah M., who nudged Reena. They laughed. Had they tripped Neil?

  “Take this, will you?” I said. I held the cradle, nice and tight. My fingers brushed against Peter’s. I blushed and almost botched it.