The Heart That Breaks

by Inglath Cooper

  I walked past Mama and out of the room. She followed quietly behind me and then stepped in front of us to open the door and lead the way out to the blue and white truck parked in our driveway.

  The man standing there waiting for us wore a brown uniform. A gun hung in a holster around his waist. He glanced at the watch on his left wrist, an impatient look on his face, as if he had other places to be, and we were wasting his time. He opened a panel on the side of the truck. The door had a vent on it, but the inside was dark and scary-looking. I would sooner have put myself in there than let him put Henry in, but he just reached out all of a sudden and took him from me, like he wasn’t mine, like he didn’t belong to anybody, but was just a piece of county property without value.

  Before I could say a word, he had shoved the now-whining Henry in the side door and slammed it shut. “Y’all have a good day, now,” he said.

  An audible gasp burst out of my throat. I turned and ran back inside the house, crying so loud now that it made my own ears hurt, and I didn’t care if I did sound like a child. In my room, I threw myself on the bed, my heart feeling as if it were going to shatter into a thousand pieces. I have to tell you I just wanted to die right then. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the fear Henry felt or what was going to happen to him now. I thought of the awful stories I’d heard about the county pound and the fact that it had been built right next to the landfill and what happened to the dogs when they were put to sleep because nobody wanted them.

  I don’t know how long I lay there, sobbing. But I never heard the door open. I didn’t know Mama was even in the room, in fact, until she sat down on my bed, and then I felt the soft, furry face nuzzling into the corner of my neck.

  Shocked, I bolted up and stared at Mama who was looking at me with pure apology in her eyes.

  “Why?” I asked, not letting my gaze go to Henry yet because I was sure this had to be some awful joke that would end up not being true.

  “I really believed they would try to find him a good home,” she said. “I would never have called if I hadn’t thought that. I asked the man just now how likely it was that he would be adopted. He said because of his breed, that probably wasn’t going to happen. You pretty much never ask for anything, Ann-Elizabeth. I’m sorry for being so selfish, honey.”

  I threw my arms around her neck then and hugged her so hard that in between us, Henry squealed in protest. We both started to laugh, pulling back to let him wriggle free, his little tail thumping against us.

  I really believe love gets built around certain moments in our lives. This was one of the moments that made me know for sure I would always love my mama no matter what else she ever did or didn’t do.

  *

  Ann-Elizabeth

  I WAIT UNTIL I’m sure Lance is asleep before I slip out the window of my bedroom. I don’t want to take the chance that he might open my door and discover I’m not there.

  Unfortunately for me, he stays up late watching some comedian who’s about as funny as a case of chicken pox in July. Of course, Lance thinks he’s hilarious.

  It’s after midnight when I finally duck across the backyard to Henry’s makeshift dog house. Lance had refused to let us buy him a real one from Tractor Supply. “That’s nothing but a flat out waste of money,” he had crowed when I asked Mama if we could get him one of those nice Igloo ones I had seen when we went there for Henry’s food one Saturday.

  In the end, the only reason Lance agreed to Henry having any kind of a house at all was because Mama mentioned that the county had an ordinance that said you had to provide adequate shelter for your dog. I’d heard them arguing late that night, and the bruise under her eye that she tried to cover up with concealer the next morning was the price she paid for the plastic blue barrel Lance stole from work and brought home for Henry to sleep in.

  He is standing at the entrance now, waiting for me. I lean over and give him a hug, and he lets me throw the blanket inside before leading the way in. I crawl behind him on my hands and knees, dragging another blanket and my alarm clock behind me.

  He waits for me to stretch out in the only position that makes it possible for the two of us to actually sleep.

  When I’m situated, he lies down beside me, his back to my belly. I put my arms around him and feel him start to relax in the way he does every night once I’m in here with him.

  It’s October, and it’s getting cool. It will be forty degrees by morning according to the local weather channel.

  So far, in the six months that Henry has been living out here, we’ve slept through some pretty ridiculously hot nights. We’ve yet to face a winter though, and the chill in the air tonight reminds me that Virginia won’t exactly be a forgiving place for sleeping outside as it gets colder.

  I tug the blankets high around both our necks so that we’re completely covered, our mutual body heat beginning to chase away the cool air. “I’m sorry I didn’t get out here sooner,” I say to him. “You know Lance and his stupid late night TV. Hey, I know, maybe he’ll get strangled on his snuff one night, and we’ll find him keeled over the next morning. At least we could say he died laughing.”

  Henry sighs, and I choose to think he’s agreeing with me. That would be an easy way out of our problems. And I’m not kidding myself. We do have problems.

  The fights between Mama and Lance are getting louder, and they happen more often. It used to be every few weeks or so that he would have one of his explosions. It was like he did his best to hold it in for as long as possible, and then some little thing she would do like working an extra hour at the convenience store or forgetting to buy milk, would set him off. He would blow up like someone had put a hand grenade in the back of his pants.

  And with every argument, he gets bolder. The yelling is louder. Furniture is now involved, whether it’s being thrown across the kitchen floor or kicked until it’s sporting a new hole or dent.

  And Mama’s bruises are no longer so easy to hide from me. “Why does she let him treat her like that?” I ask Henry, my lips pressed close to his ear. “If I could kill him, I would.”

  I hear myself say the words out loud. The first time I thought them, it actually scared me.

  I don’t even like to swat flies.

  In fact, killing anything goes against something at the core of me. When I was twelve, we watched Food, Inc., and once I learned what really happens to cows and pigs when they go to a slaughterhouse, i.e., there isn’t some magical wand-waving command that instantly transforms them from a real animal into the centerpiece of a fun meal or breakfast muffin, I decided plants were going to be my food of choice. At least broccoli doesn’t leave this world in a state of full-blown terror. And if you believe in karma, eating something that dies that way can’t win you any brownie points on the cosmic payback scale.

  But back to Lance. I think about the little girl I read about in Mama’s journal, and I wonder how it is that she could pick someone who treats her the very same way her daddy had. It just doesn’t make any sense.

  One day when I was at the school library, I had to do some research on a paper I was writing for health class. When my teacher was on the other side of the room, helping another student, I typed VICTIMS OF ABUSE in the Google search engine. I scrolled through the first few topics, and then added another phrase. GROW UP TO BE.

  Some of the articles were completely over my head. But there was one that made my heart sink as I recognized its truth in my mama’s story. “Childhood victims of abuse often become perpetrators of the same kind of abuse inflicted on them. In some cases, victims subconsciously choose mates who continue the abuse they experienced as a child.”

  The article went on to acknowledge that nothing about this made sense, but that human beings tend to seek out what they know. To act out what they know. And I guess that’s how Mama ended up with Lance.

  I actually tried to talk to her about it one night when he was late getting home from work. I told her what I had read. “Maybe you can’t help that you picked hi
m. Maybe there’s a doctor you could see who-”

  That’s when Mama slapped me across the face so hard that my ears rang. I stared at her, too stunned to say anything.

  “Do you think I would intentionally pick a man who would treat me like dirt? That I would deliberately let him be a father figure to you?”

  It took me a few seconds to think how to answer. In my heart, I knew the truth, but I also knew that even if she deep down thought she deserved what she had in Lance, she never meant for it to affect me.

  “No,” I said softly, tears leaking out of my eyes despite my best efforts to hold them back. “I just thought maybe someone could help you know what to do. He hurts you, Mama.”

  These were the words that made her break right in front of me, her shoulders hunching forward, her hands covering her face.

  “I’m sorry, Ann-Elizabeth,” she said, crying. “I’m so sorry. I’ll figure this out for both of us, okay? I promise.”

  “You don’t have to do it by yourself,” I said. “I want to help.”

  “You’re still a child. You shouldn’t have to.”

  As much as I didn’t want to hurt her any more than she’d already been hurt, I could not stop myself from saying, “I stopped being a child the day he moved into our house.”

  And with the the growl of Lance’s truck in the driveway, I turned and left her standing in the kitchen, still crying.

  I pull the blankets tighter around Henry and me now, the cooling night air somehow managing to slip through its woven threads.

  The night Mama slapped me for the first time was when I realized there wasn’t any way I could fix our broken life. It was never going to be what it had once been, just the two of us and Henry. Poor as heck, but peaceful and as safe as you could be, living paycheck to paycheck.

  I feel this awful sense of mourning and grief for those times. Right behind it comes a wave of anger that is far more familiar to me these days, an anger that has begun to shape who I am, as much as I resent it.

  In the curve of my arm, Henry snores quietly. I start to sing softly in his ear, the latest Barefoot Outlook song I’m stuck on. The words and melody are already seared in my memory. And in my head, it’s CeCe MacKenzie’s voice I hear over my own. I love her voice, know every word to every song she and Barefoot Outlook have ever recorded.

  At home, I don’t sing to anyone except Henry. I used to sing in front of Mama, but the last time I did, I overheard Lance telling her after I went to bed that it was too bad I thought I could sing because it didn’t do anybody any good to live under illusions of grandeur.

  To her credit, Mama stood up for me, telling him she loved my voice and that I got asked to sing at church all the time. He had laughed and said it was the church’s job to make people think they had God-given gifts even when they clearly didn’t.

  I force myself to think about something else now because thinking about Lance and anything he says just fills me with an anger I don’t have an outlet for.

  Besides, this is the point of the night that I love the best. When Henry starts to snore, I know he’s completely relaxed because for the first time that day, he feels safe enough to sleep because I’m here.

  Maybe it’s the most important thing I’ll ever be in this life. Henry’s protector. But if it is, that’s okay with me. Henry loves me because I’m me. There’s nothing more required between us. Unlike people, he lives in the present moment, unencumbered by the bad things that have been done to him. And there have been plenty already. He focuses on the good in his life. These hours we get to spend together are all he holds in his heart. Gladness for now. And hope throughout tomorrow that I will come back again as I’ve promised him I would.

  I fall asleep with my cheek on his big, blocky head, and even the cool night air doesn’t bother me.

  *

  Ann-Elizabeth

  THE PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL I attend in Davidson County, Tennessee is huge. It’s easy for me to stay lost in the crowd. There are plenty of other kids vying for individuality with their pierced noses, tatooed biceps and mohawks so that my bland poverty doesn’t make me stick out too much.

  I spend as little time as possible in the halls during the five minute break between classes. Since the school is so big, it takes most of that time anyway to get from classroom to classroom.

  The truly determined can sneak in a make-out session in front of a locker here and there. These interludes challenge the life expectancy of Principal Calhoun’s Nikes as he jogs down the hallways, shooing the offenders apart and demanding they get on to their next class.

  It’s actually a pretty funny sight if you happen to be following along behind him on one of these missions. He carries a riding crop. Yes, a real riding crop. I don’t know if it’s left over from a chapter in his life where he had once ridden horses, or if it simply seemed like a tool that said giddy-up in a way that meant business.

  He’s really tall like someone who could have been a rider, his legs unnaturally long in proportion to his short torso. The top of his head is completely bald, but the remaining hair above his ears looks as thick and determined to hang around as that of any eighteen-year old in our school.

  It seems like an unfair thing for a man to endure, part of his hair disappearing altogether. I’ve wondered why he doesn’t concede to the total loss and shave the rest off instead of looking like he remains hopeful that the hair that used to be there will one day reappear.

  It might sound like I’m making fun of Mr. Calhoun, but I’m actually not. I kind of feel sorry for him. Student derision of our principal could be an actual sport here.

  He continues on down the hall now with his crop swatting, as I turn in to my English Lit classroom. I take my seat at the far back corner, dropping my backpack on the floor beside my desk and unzipping it to pull out my book.

  By now, I’ve pretty much perfected my tactics on how to get by in high school. I start to reread last night’s assignment, Horseman in the Sky by Ambrose Bearce. My teacher, Mrs. Sawyer, has already told us what a genius Bearce is because of his use of imagery and promised us a quiz on why it’s so important. The trick to making A’s is really just paying attention to the hints your teachers drop about what’s going to be on a test.

  “That’s got to be the most boring story I’ve ever read.”

  I look up to see Nathan Hanson take the desk beside me. Nathan. Hanson. I feel sure sweat has just broken out on my forehead. I hadn’t heard him walk in the room, so I guess I must have been more into the story than I realized. “Ah, it’s a little wordy,” I say, jerking my gaze from his blue-eyed stare.

  “You’re being nice,” he says.

  At our high school, Nathan Hanson is one of those guys in the A group of life. Just kind of born with it all. Very dark brown hair. Very light blue eyes. Six-three at age eighteen. Starting quarterback on the varsity football team. Oh, and his dad is a famous songwriter who has had songs recorded by Barefoot Outlook, which makes him practically royalty to me.

  I wonder what odds allow such a win in the genetic lottery pool. One in a trillion? A gazillion? Definitely, if that’s even a number.

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t understand it?” I say, hearing the disbelieving note in my voice.

  “I understood it,” he throws back. “I just nearly fell asleep while I was reading it.”

  I shrug. “It was pretty cool, that whole horse and rider against the sky thing.”

  “Yeah, until you realize they’re actually falling to their deaths. And that a son had just killed his father who was on the other side in the war. That’s messed up.”

  “I guess we’ve never had to face anything like that,” I say, looking back at my book.

  “I would never shoot my own father, whether we were on opposite sides or not. Would you?”

  “I don’t have a father, ” I say, still not looking at him.

  “Oh,” he says, immediately silenced.

  I do look at him then because for some reason, I want to witness his di
scomfort. That seems like a small price for him to pay considering the different hands we had already been dealt in life.

  “Did he die?” Nathan asks, unknowingly digging himself a deeper hole.

  “I never knew my father,” I say. “I wouldn’t recognize him if I passed him on the street.”

  “Oh,” he says again.

  Other students start filing in now, the seats around us beginning to fill up. “Why are you sitting here anyway?” I ask.

  “Is there some law against it?”

  “Nooo. I just thought maybe you were confused about the fact that this isn’t the cheerleader corner.”

  If I had planned for him to be offended, it doesn’t work. He laughs, as if I’ve just said something extraordinarily funny.

  “You’re sassy, you know it?”

  I’ve been called a lot of things, but that’s not one of them. I like his laugh though, and I have a sudden desire to make him do it again. “If you’re over here because you’re bored with the cheerleaders, I can assure you you’ll get bored here way faster.”

  “Well, you’re certainly entitled to your own opinion,” he says.

  Mrs. Sawyer raps on her wood desk with the ruler she uses as a pointer for the blackboard. “Class. Quiet, everyone. Let’s open your books to page one hundred. I trust you all read Horseman in the Sky last night. I’m so excited to get your thoughts on Bearce’s use of imagery. Let’s get started.”

  I look at Nathan, and I swear I don’t know what makes me do it. But I smile. And he smiles back.

  ***

  AFTER CLASS, I take an extra long time putting my book and notebook in my backpack. Nathan had left the room without acknowledging me further, so I chalk the whole thing up to a fluke as I head for the door.