“I don’t know, Grandpa,” I said. “Do they?”
“No! Do you know why? Think about it.”
“I’m thinking, Grandpa,” I said. “And I don’t know why.”
“They don’t stop because the storm is no louder than what’s come before,” said Grandpa Ben. “Thunder is just something that happens at a certain time of day, like lunch.”
Aaron kept on drawing. He wasn’t listening. Grandpa wasn’t getting through.
“Come on, Aaron,” I said. Taking his drawing hand off the cold window, I held his fingers between my own until they were warm. I led him into Grandpa Ben’s kitchen. “Let’s make a racket,” I whispered.
“As loud as the storm?” he asked. So he had been listening!
“Louder,” I said.
To demonstrate, I dragged out Grandpa Ben’s biggest soup tureen and his largest ladle. I dumped his spoons and spatulas on the floor. I pulled out the silverware drawer, turned it upside down, and shook. Forks and butter knives came tumbling out. Aaron put his hands over his ears.
Grandpa Ben came in. “Careful,” he said, but he was smiling.
I tackled the rotisserie and added its parts to the pile. I climbed up on a stool and brought down the griddle and a skillet from a high shelf. “C’mon, Aaron,” I said. “I need help.”
Aaron found a funnel and beat it with a serving fork. Bang, bang! “More!” I cried.
Together, we went at it, piling up an arsenal of pots and pans, graters and grinders, jugs and kettles, whisks and cutting boards, tongs and tubs. We stripped Grandpa’s shelves and drawers of everything except the sharp carving knives and pointy tools. I stood breathless, staring at the mountain of stuff.
“Now,” I said. “Let’s make noise!”
Aaron and I each grabbed a noisemaker and danced around, yelling at the top of our lungs. “Bang, bang, bang!” screamed Aaron, jumping up and down and crashing two steel pots together. Like a fun house mirror, Grandpa Ben’s toaster reflected Aaron’s red face. When he was up, he looked like a clown with a bulb for a nose. When he came down, he was a freak with long teeth and lips as thick as cucumbers. Should I be the good girl and calm him down before he jumped right into a Rock Face tantrum? I stuck out my tongue at the toaster. My neck looked too long.
Bang, bang, bang! beat my Dad heart. Be. Your. Own. I grabbed a spoon and beat it on the reflection of Aaron’s face in the chrome, then on my own. Boom, BANG!
Grandpa Ben held Grandma’s samovar under his arm like a football and bopped it with a spatula. He grinned at me. He was the only one not jumping, but he made a lot of noise. After a while, he sat on the lid of the garbage can. Putting the samovar down, he beat furiously on the tin bread box with two gigantic forks.
Like the silkworm farmers, we got louder and louder, until we were so loud that old deaf Mrs. Neuland from downstairs pounded the ceiling with her broom handle. I grabbed Grandpa Ben’s broom. BANG, BANG! said my Dad heart. BANG, BANG! went my broom. It was like throwing Mom’s ratty blue slippers away, only better. BANG!
Aaron had stopped jumping and was staring at me. Grandpa Ben stopped drumming. He stood up. “I’ll call your mother. She’ll wonder why I haven’t checked in by now.”
My Dad heart was still beating hard. I peeked at the toaster. Aaron looked like just Aaron again. My neck was still too long. I bent down and brought my chin to the top of Aaron’s head. My face in the toaster wavered like a puddle. I brushed my cheek against Aaron’s. Aaron giggled for the first time that day. We looked around at the mess. It was time to go home. To NAA.
Say goodbye, said my Dad heart. Let go.
What would happen if I said goodbye? My Dad heart hadn’t been talking to me much in the past few days. What if it stopped? What then?
ROOM
That afternoon, holding Aaron’s hand on one side and Grandpa Ben’s on the other, I walked into our new home. The hailstorm had turned into pelting rain. The moving men had left, and Mom was snacking on leftover Chinese takeout in our new kitchen, using a book carton as a tabletop.
“So I hate to say I told you so,” teased Grandpa Ben, “but you didn’t need to waste your money on all that therapy for Aaron. All you needed were a few old pots and pans.”
“Don’t start, Dad,” said Mom, not even asking what he meant. “Aaron, do you want to see your room?”
Aaron nodded but shut his eyes tight. He covered them with one hand and gave the other to Mom. “Tell me when to open my eyes,” he said.
She led him down the hall and flung open the door to his room. “Now,” she said. Aaron ran in and stopped in the middle of the room. I followed.
The wooden floors were polished warm and glossy, and the walls were a soft velvety shade of blue. My blue. Aaron’s bed was made with his cow comforter and pillow, shams all fluffed up. A few toy cows had been unpacked and lined up on the shelves. In the center of the ceiling, Mom had hung a huge globe of golden light, hand-painted with trellis vines, cheerful birds of paradise, and a Noah’s ark of animals: a wolf and a bear, a buffalo, a moose, a yawning hippo, a single-humped camel, a spotted prancing pony, and an elephant. It was more than a light. It was a green-eye miracle. Aaron stood taking it in. His room glowed.
“Do you like it?” asked Mom from the doorway. She was beaming, an expression I remembered but hadn’t seen for a long time.
Aaron ran to her, and she scooped him into her arms.
“I love it,” I said. “I really do.” Suddenly, I wanted to run to Mom’s arms, too, and collect a hug, but I stayed where I was, my feet planted on the floor.
“Let’s unpack all my cows,” said Aaron happily.
“I’ll help,” said Grandpa Ben.
I left them and stepped a bit farther down the hall.
“Wait a minute, Briana,” called Mom. “I want to show you your room.” I hesitated, then pushed open the door to my room.
It was smaller than Aaron’s. Wasn’t the older kid supposed to get the larger room?
A bare bulb dangled from the ceiling. I switched it on. It was dead. Mom’s driftwood lamp sat unplugged on a book box by a pile of other cartons. I plugged it into the only socket.
I looked around.
Nothing had been unpacked. Well, I didn’t want Mom to unpack my stuff.
But where was Bat Dad? Had Mom thrown it out? Panicked, I crashed open the closet door. The handle cracked against the wall, chipping the pink paint. Pink? I hated pink.
Blue was my color. Blue, blue, blue. Mom knew I hated pink, but she had gone ahead and given Aaron the blue room.
The closet was empty except for Mom’s raincoat and a beige polka-dot umbrella hanging on the rod. The umbrella was wet and still dripping, making a small puddle on the floor. A rag had been spread underneath to catch the drops, but it was soggy and soaked through. I kicked it aside. Where were the yellow baseball bats? What had Mom done with them? Bat Dad was gone.
“Mom!” I yelled.
“Just one more minute, Briana,” Mom called. “I’ll be right there. Grandpa and I are busy helping Aaron get settled.”
Busy. I knew what was keeping them both so busy. They were helping Aaron set up his room so that every little thing was just so, just right, hunky-dory, as Dad used to say.
“Is everything hunky-dory?” he would ask, usually when he knew it wasn’t.
I dug my hands into the hip pockets of my jeans and stared out the window. The rain was still coming down hard. There was no heat in my room. I heard a hiss and a clank like steam trying to rise in the pipes, but it was cold. Shivering, I put on Mom’s raincoat and looked at myself in the mirror. The slicker was bright turquoise. I covered my damp hair with the hood. It was too big and made me look like a stowaway, an orphan girl in stolen clothes who wasn’t supposed to be there. That was it—I wasn’t supposed to be there. This wasn’t my home. This wasn’t my room. This wasn’t where I belonged. Maybe Aaron belonged here, but I didn’t. My worst fear had come true. We had moved, and all that was left of Dad had disa
ppeared. I slammed the door to my room and returned to Aaron’s.
“Where’s my Dad box?” I demanded. Mom looked up, startled. She and Grandpa Ben knelt on the floor, helping Aaron arrange his toys.
“Look, Briana, all my cows fit on one shelf,” said Aaron cheerfully.
“The box of bats? It’s in your room,” said Mom, wearily wiping her hair away from her eyes.
“It isn’t in my room,” I said, clenching my teeth. “You promised, and it isn’t there. I trusted you . . .”
“Why are you wearing my raincoat?” Mom interrupted, bewildered.
“It was in my closet,” I said.
“Your closet?” Mom asked, puzzled. “Briana . . . ?”
I kept moving. I had to keep moving. “Goodbye, Grandpa,” I called over my shoulder, quickly stepping down the hall.
“Wait, Briana . . .” called Mom. “Where are you going? Grandpa is just leaving. I’ll show you your room in a second.”
“Seen it,” I yelled. If Grandpa Ben was leaving, it would take another half an hour of fussing with Aaron’s stuff before he was really out the door. He didn’t know how to make a fast exit, but I did.
The doormat was the same old worn-out WELCOME in woven block letters, but it looked all wrong. The front door was wrong, too—polished steel instead of dark green. I pulled on my sneakers.
Move! said my Dad heart.
I strode through the lobby, where two old ladies with tiny leashed dogs were chitchatting on a red couch that looked as wrong as everything else, and I ran out into the storm.
NOT YET
I sped through the driving rain. Big splashy drops struck my face, streaming down my cheeks. I sank into an icy brown puddle, trapped for a moment in a deep pothole. Splatters of mud, fragments of splintered sticks, and burrs of soggy debris stuck to my jeans, weighing me down. I turned toward the river, battling the wind.
A flash of lightning pointed to a weird cone-shaped thing on the corner curb. It danced and swirled toward me, picking up dead leaves like a vacuum cleaner. It sprayed grit into my face, into my hair, into my mouth. It spun me around, sucking at me. Spinning faster, it took my breath away. My eyes stung. The dust devil grew taller, rising to the rooftops, and tilted away down the street.
I had been expecting this storm since the day of Dad’s funeral. The wind would sweep the city away. Buildings would crumble, trees would topple, subways would flood and grind to a halt, the sidewalk would break into a million pieces, the West Side Highway would cave in. Hailstones as large as eggs would rain down.
I ran past a flooded stoop piled with weird junk sculptures made out of toilets and smashed typewriter keyboards and rusty wire. I reached the river. Whitecaps sloshed over the deserted bicycle paths on Cherry Walk where there was no fence. Angry eddies swirled around the jagged piles of rocks. My socks and sneakers were soaked and icy cold. I pulled Mom’s skimpy raincoat tight. The wind got underneath it, flapping it fiercely like beating wings. I stared out at the choppy water. I could have stamped my feet or flung my arms around or jumped up and down to get warmer, but I just stood there and let the cold seep in toward my hearts.
A neighbor had once tried to drown herself here by walking into the river. She had loaded heavy books and rocks into her backpack and waded in up to her chin. After a while, she had turned around and waded out and gone home for a cup of tea. Why had she wanted to die? Mom said it was because her husband had left her and she was alone.
I shivered. Mom was alone now. Dad never wanted to leave her. He never wanted to leave me. Still, he was gone.
Estrellita? said my Dad heart . . .
Dad stands beside me. He puts his hand on my hair, brushing a wet strand away from my eyes and tucking it behind my ear. He traces my eyebrows with his thumb, gazing at me. His eyes tell me how much he’s missed me, how much he loves me and loves standing there next to me. I touch his hand, and he folds me close. We stand together in the wind, my eyes half closed, my face pressed up against his chest.
Let’s go inside, says Dad. It’s getting cold.
Not yet, I beg. Not yet.
You’ll freeze out here, says Dad.
A gray mist hovers over his head. His face disappears.
Not yet, I whisper.
He’s gone . . .
I turned and struggled up the slippery stone steps. I passed the battered garden, the dead flower beds beaten down by the hail and slashed by the rain. Panting, I climbed the hill where I once made three wishes. At the top, I slipped and fell, ripping my jeans and scraping both knees on the granite. Blood ran down my legs, mixing with mud.
Go home, said my Dad heart. Find her.
I pushed on. Go home.
Home.
FIND Her
The willow was down, split in two. One half was uprooted and tossed aside; the other was still standing, stripped of its crown of leaves. It looked headless. I stood before it, shuddering.
I took a deep breath. It caught and came out in spurts.
I threw myself against the lobby door, hoping no neighbor would see me. Dripping, I climbed the stairs two at a time. The peeling paint on our apartment door was the same as it had been that morning, the same as it had been before the move, before the storm. I tried the key in the lock. My hands shook. The door swung open, letting out its familiar creak and moan.
I was home.
I squelched through the empty kitchen, leaving small puddles of muddy water on the tile, down the hall past the bedroom where Dad’s heart had stopped, past Aaron’s door, to my old room. Bat Dad wasn’t there. I opened the closet. It was empty except for a few hangers. I stood, my Dad heart beating fast, in the middle of the rectangle my bed had made on the wooden floor, marked by four dark bruises. No one would know a girl in eighth grade had slept here, a girl with a friend named Peter and a friend named Daisy and a friend named Neil, a girl with more than one heart. There was a faint trace of an arrow left from the masking tape the movers must have put down that hadn’t come up clean. It pointed toward the empty space where my bureau had stood, where I had looked for Dad’s LEGO throwaways.
Find her, urged my Dad heart.
Something glittered in the dust. I moved toward the small spot of brightness and scooped a strip of pink sequins into my hand. I blew the dust off. It was one of Mom’s Clothespin Angels. The wood was cracked, the face so faded all I could see were two tiny dots for eyes. Where its smile had once been, there was dirt. It was splintered, badly damaged, a sad-looking thing. One wing was gone, the other stripped of all but a few shiny little stars and beads. Find her? Was this what my Dad heart wanted me to find? It had been hiding there all along.
The doorbell rang. I froze. It rang again. Clutching the angel in my fist, I stood up. Had the super seen me come in? Had he come up to tell me to leave? I tightened my grip on the broken angel and went to open the door. It wasn’t the super. It was Mom.
Rainwater dripped from her chin. Her lips were pressed together in a straight line.
I burst into tears. “I took your raincoat,” I said between sobs.
Mom shook herself like a dog trying to get dry. She looked down at my muddy knees. They had stopped bleeding but they were a mess.
“Let me clean you up,” she said. “Take your shoes and socks off. You’ll catch pneumonia.”
I stood there in the doorway, staring at her. Mom had run out into the storm, looking for me. How had she known I was here?
“What’s that you have in your hand?” asked Mom.
I held the little doll with its one ragged wing up for her to see. “I found it on the floor in my room. Isn’t that amazing?”
Mom looked at the Clothespin Angel. A light flickered in her green eye.
I turned my back on Mom, sniffling, and walked through the kitchen, past the ugly rusted spot where the trash can had stood, past the bedroom where Mom had barricaded herself for months. I sat down cross-legged on the floor of what used to be our living room, where Peter had kissed me. Mom had left the ratty gre
en rug behind. Now that the couch was gone, I could see all the places where the rug was stained. It smelled of spit and milk. Mom followed and sat down close beside me. She didn’t sit in one graceful swoop like she used to but dropped to her knees first and then tucked her legs beneath her.
“Briana, listen,” she said. “That was my new room you were in, the pink one. Not yours. You didn’t give me a chance to show you yours. That’s why you couldn’t find your Dad box.”
“So it’s there, in my room?” I asked.
“Yes, of course it is. Come back with me and see. What does Aaron call it? Bat Dad?” She tried for a smile.
“I don’t want to come back with you. I don’t want to live there. I want to live here,” I said. “I miss Dad.”
“I know,” said Mom. “I miss him, too. I’ll always miss him, wherever we live.” She waited while I cried.
“Remember how when I was little, Dad used to lift me and carry me around in his arms?” I said. I swallowed hard. “He said that if he could lift me every day, then he’d always be able to lift me, even when I got big. Remember?”
“You were your father’s girl.” Mom sighed, opening her purse and offering me a tissue. It smelled sweet like flowers.
“I must have known he wouldn’t always be able to lift me,” I said. “I knew he would get old, that someday he wouldn’t be strong.” My voice caught. “But he was strong when he died. He wasn’t old. I bet he could still have picked me up and carried me.”
Mom’s eyes filled with tears. “Yes,” she said. “He could have.”
“It isn’t supposed to be this way,” I said.
“No,” said Mom. “It isn’t.”
We were quiet.
“Remember the time in the Cape last summer when Dad came up by surprise?” I asked after a while.
The Girl with More Than One Heart Page 13