Heart Like Mine (16 page)

“I’m
so
sorry this is happening, sweetie.”

“Me too.” I half snorted, stifling another sob. “I hid the ring in my purse. This is so not how I pictured celebrating my engagement.”

“Nothing is perfect, Grace,” she said with a heavy sigh. “If there’s one thing I learned being married to your father, it’s that sometimes, you just have to make the best of the hand you’re dealt.”

*  *  *

He was late again. My eighth-grade graduation dance was about to start at the school gym, and if I was going to catch the last bus to get there, I needed to leave in the next ten minutes or I wasn’t going to make it. I paced in our living room, waiting for my dad to get home from his shift at the garage. My hair was curled, my bangs were sprayed, and I was wearing a pair of acid-wash Guess jeans I’d found at Goodwill the week before. My mom had to work, so I had made sure that morning that my dad knew he needed to be home no later than six thirty.

“Of course,” he said, giving my cheek a soft pinch with grease-stained fingers. “Don’t want my girl to miss the big dance.”

Now my baby brother, Sam, cooed at me from his playpen by the window, sucking on a bottle and staring up at the mobile that turned in lazy circles above him. He had been born seven months
ago, and at the time, I was still a little horrified by the fact that my mother had gotten pregnant in the first place. I knew about sex, having read the educational book she had surreptitiously left on my bed when I was nine. This book also explained in great detail the unexpected hair that would soon sprout on my body, as well as the strange but imminent monthly event that somehow translated into my becoming a woman. I found the pencil sketches of boys’ erections highly disturbing, and for months after seeing them, I tried not to glance at any of my male friends’ crotches on the playground, lest I witness any such horror in person.

She told me about the baby after her first trimester, and six months after that, I held Sam in my skinny, shaking arms. With his cone-shaped head and swollen, slanted eyelids, he looked like a tiny purple, wrinkly alien. I had a hard time blanking out the fact that he’d shot out of my mother’s vagina, a feat I imagined was akin to pulling a pot roast through one of my nostrils.

“You can help me with him,” she said to me in the hospital. Her reddish curls were matted around her head like a wild woman’s and she looked pale and weak, more tired than I’d ever seen. Her green eyes were half-closed. “Babysit when I’m not home.”

I’d nodded at the time, my own red waves bouncing. I was excited, at first, at the prospect of helping my mother, completely unaware just how many hours a week my “helping” would translate into. I didn’t know how to picture myself taking care of this mewling little creature; I’d always had more interest in my father’s collection of Matchbox cars than the baby dolls people bought me—dolls that usually played the role of an enormous evil toddler who terrorized the race-car drivers on the speedway, threatening to smash them with her giant plastic feet. But I knew that after a month off, my mom planned to return to work at Macy’s to help supplement my dad’s job as a mechanic, so in the meantime,
I enrolled in a Red Cross babysitting course. I learned CPR, the Heimlich maneuver, how to handle minor injuries, and techniques for remaining calm in case of emergency. The other girls in the class seemed to be taking it lightly—they were taking care of other people’s children as a hobby, and for money. Not me. I studied my notes diligently—this was my baby brother I was going to be responsible for. I passed my final test with a perfect score.

During the day my mom took care of Sam, but most afternoons, as soon as I got home from school at three thirty, she had to leave for work. “I wish we could afford to hire someone else,” she said, “but we just can’t. Not now. I’m relying on you, okay? You can do it. Your dad will be home at six, and his bottles are in the fridge.”

But tonight, it was already six forty-five and my dad wasn’t home. I grabbed the phone and dialed the garage again. It rang and rang, until the answering machine picked up. That didn’t mean he wasn’t there. He could have been stuck under a car, trying to fix it so the customer wouldn’t have to go the whole weekend without anything to drive. He could have been on his way, slowed down by traffic.

He could have been at the bar, playing poker.

“Hey, Gracie Mae,” he’d say on the nights he came through the front door on time. He’d walk over to the refrigerator and pop the cap off a bottle of Budweiser. If Sam was awake and in his playpen, he’d lift him up, kiss him on his head, then proceed to the den, where he’d plop himself down in his brown leather recliner to holler out wrong answers for
Wheel of Fortune
and
Jeopardy!

Other nights, he didn’t come home until I’d given Sam his bath and gotten him down to sleep all on my own. “Stopped for a beer with Mike and Rodney,” he’d say, reeking of cigarette smoke and fried food. “How’d our little man do?”

“Fine,” I would always answer, keeping my eyes on my homework, knowing that stopping for a beer with his friends meant poker at the bar, and poker at the bar meant a fight with my mother later about how much money he’d lost. I tried not to listen to them from my bedroom, but the walls of our small house were thin.

“You have to stop this,” my mother said in a low, angry tone after she came home. “You know we’re barely making it. Since Sam was born, our health insurance alone is more than half your paycheck.”

“I’m just blowing off a little steam,” my dad said. “I’ll stop, I promise.” And for a while, he would. He’d come home every night, help me with the baby so I could finish my homework or even talk on the phone with a friend. But one night back at the poker table was all it took to lose enough to make my mother angry again, and for me to have it cemented in my mind that my mother had three children, not two.

I sighed now and didn’t leave a message. That was it. He wasn’t going to get here in time for me to catch the bus. I didn’t have any other way to get to the school. All of the other kids had parents who drove them there, and the few friends I had I wasn’t close enough to to call and ask for a ride. I wanted to go to the dance so badly my body almost ached. I wanted to stand next to Jeffrey Barber in the dark and wait for the DJ to play “Careless Whisper,” then “accidentally” bump into him. I imagined his black curls and dark blue eyes, his smile as he would take my hand and lead me to the dance floor. I imagined his hands on my waist, the smell of his neck. I imagined what his lips might feel like on mine and every inch of my body grew warm.

“Dad, where
are
you?” I said aloud, to no one, then looked over at Sam, who was beginning to gurgle in a way that I recognized
as the precursor to his starting to cry. Despite everything I’d learned about babies, I always felt a little scared when I was home alone with him, but I knew I didn’t have a choice in the matter. He was my family, and it was my job to help take care of him.

I dialed the women’s department at Macy’s and asked the salesclerk who answered if my mother was around. “Gracie?” she said when she came on the line, the word coming out in a hurried breath. “Is Sam okay? What happened?” I wasn’t supposed to call her while she was working unless it was an emergency.

“He’s fine,” I said. Across the room, as though on cue to prove me wrong, Sam started to cry. “But Dad’s not home yet. I’m going to miss the dance.”

“Oh, Grace. You scared me.” She exhaled a long, tired-sounding breath. “Did you call the garage?”

“Yes. He’s not answering.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie. I know you really wanted to go.” She paused a moment, listening. “Is that Sam?”

“Yesss,” I said with a sigh, drawing out the word.
Who else would it be?

“Why is he crying?”

“How should
I
know?”

“Watch your tone, young lady.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled, and then explained. “He just finished his bottle. He probably needs to be changed.” While I’d learned the hard way to cover his tiny penis with another diaper before taking away the old one, changing Sam was far from one of my favorite responsibilities. I couldn’t believe that something so small could produce something so completely disgusting—and so
much
of it. The pitch of his cries suddenly grew louder and a deep-seated, panicky ache clutched my insides.
I don’t want to do this. Please. It’s too hard. I don’t want to be here.
“Can’t you come home?”
I said to my mother, pleading. “Can’t you pretend you’re sick or something?”

“I wish I could, but I have to work. There’s a sale tonight and I’m the manager. I can’t leave. You know that.”

I was silent, feeling my blood rush in my ears. “I
hate
him,” I finally whispered. She knew I meant my father. This was far from the first time he had let me down, and I doubted it would be the last.

“No, you don’t,” Mom said. “You’re just disappointed.” She paused. “I’m sorry, but I have to go. I’ll talk with your dad tomorrow, okay? We’ll get it figured out. Please take good care of your brother. I’m counting on you.”

I hung up, staring at the phone, listening to the increasing pitch of my brother’s wails. “This isn’t fair,” I said. “I
hate
it.” Sam cried louder, and I took a deep breath, then made my way slowly over to him, hoping I could find a way to take his sadness away.

I wanted this to be like any other Saturday morning at my dad’s house, knowing I’d go home the next day and see my mother. But it wasn’t like any other day. Max and I had woken up in our Dad’s bed, his long body in between us, and I felt the crackle of dried tears on my cheeks.
Mama
, I thought, and started to cry. It didn’t feel real. I kept looking at Dad’s front door, thinking she might come walking through it. My body ached with a strange pain—my muscles were tingly and tight beneath my skin. It was a feeling I’d never had before, a sensation I didn’t know how to name. It almost was like I was floating just outside my body, tethered to it somehow but likely to drift off if I found a way to let go.

I didn’t know anyone who didn’t have a mother. A few kids at school were adopted and didn’t know the mothers who’d given birth to them, but none of them didn’t have a mother at all. Mama was who I went to for almost everything. When Bree made me mad or I felt like a teacher was being unfair. Who would I go to now? I closed my eyes and tried to hear her voice in my head—to remember what it felt like to have her thin arms around me and what she looked like when she laughed. All I could see was the image of her crying. All I could feel was the emptiness surrounding me now.

I thought about how she used to take me to the library every
Saturday, letting me run my fingers over the spines of books, as though I could feel which stories needed a good home. She always checked out a stack of books, too, with titles like
The Price of Love
or
Forbidden Fruit
and with half-naked people on the covers. She didn’t allow me to read them, but lately, when she wasn’t home, I’d sneak into her bedroom and flip through the pages, blushing as I read the steamier chapters. Mama believed in love. She had loved our dad so much and I knew she wished he’d never left. I wished he’d never left, too. If he hadn’t, maybe Mama would still be alive.

I sat on the couch with my brother, staring at the TV. It felt weird to just sit there watching cartoons, but we didn’t know what else to do. Grace left to go pick up some of our stuff from Mama’s house and my dad came into the den and turned the television off. When Dad sat down next to us, Max started crying almost right away, a quiet but blubbery noise. I reached over and took his hand in mine.

“I love you guys, you know that, right?” Dad said. He looked like he’d grown more lines on his face overnight and he hadn’t showered or shaved. I wasn’t used to seeing him with so many whiskers on his face. There were a lot of white ones; it made him look old. For some reason, that made me afraid.

Max and I both nodded. We had both cried so much last night, I couldn’t believe it when more tears came now. My stomach hurt and my eyes were so swollen, it was almost hard to see out of them. Crying made it worse.

“I miss Mama,” Max said. His voice crackled. “I don’t want her to be dead.”

“Me neither, buddy,” Dad said. “I wish I could change it, but I can’t. We’ll just have to stick together and find a way through, okay? I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right here for you.”

You left before
, I thought.
You left and Mama couldn’t handle it.
You got a new life and a new girlfriend and now she’s dead
. Panic suddenly gripped me. What if he died, too? What if he didn’t want us to live there? What if
Grace
didn’t want us? I felt wobbly inside, balancing atop the thinnest of threads, terrified I might make a wrong move and lose my father, too. Letting go of his hand, I wrapped my arm around my brother and he leaned against me, still crying softly.

“Ava?” Dad reached over and wiped my cheek with his fingers. “Do you remember anything from yesterday morning?”

I sniffled. “Like what?” Everything seemed blurry in my head, like a movie set on fast-forward. I wanted to press pause and then rewind so we could go back to yesterday, when Mama was still here.

“I don’t know.” He paused. “I guess if something happened that seemed out of the ordinary. If your mom acted differently than she normally would.”

The moment she threw her palm flat against the wall flashed in my mind. “She got dizzy,” I said. “She said it was because she had too much coffee, but I thought it was because she hasn’t been sleeping. Or eating.” I searched my dad’s face. “Can that make you dizzy?”

He nodded. “Sometimes.”

“What did the doctors say happened?” I asked, the muscles in my stomach twisting tighter with every breath I took. More tears swelled in my chest, trying to fight their way out.

Dad looked at Max and then back and me. “They’re not really sure. All we know is that she lay down in her bed and then . . . her heart stopped.”