Heart on a Chain

  He stops at the place I’d had him let me off the previous day and I nearly leap from the car, not waiting for him to open it for me, slamming the door behind me, running toward home, ignoring my screaming knees.

  Chapter Six

  It’s the most depressing weekend I’ve had—and I’ve had plenty of depressing ones to measure against it. Before it’s all been about what was at home for me, where this one is about what could have been away from home for me.

  A week ago, I wouldn’t have even thought of it, but now I do. I can imagine it and it’s Henrys fault; he treated me like I was the same as all the other girls when he asked. I don’t know anything at all about football, don’t know if it’s something I would like or hate, so that isn’t the thing that has captured my imagination. It’s just the being there, among my peers, sitting next to Henry.

  It doesn’t even occur to me to worry about the teasing or humiliation I might suffer by showing up in a social place where there’s less supervision than even at school, because somehow I know that if I’m with him, no one would bother me.

  Mom’s particularly ferocious this weekend as well, probably because Friday had been Dad’s payday. He still hasn’t come home from work by Saturday night which means there won’t be much money left when he does get home—if any—because he will have drank most of it away. This means that on top of my misery at missing out on being with Henry at the game, I also have the added fun of being her target.

  Dishes not being washed and put away quietly enough result in fingerprint bruises on my upper arm; causing dust motes to fly in the air earn me a punch in the chest that leaves me gasping for breath. Finally, on Sunday as she stands screaming in my face because I had eaten one of her candy bars—which actually is true for once, though in my defense I hadn’t eaten anything else all weekend and felt faint from being forced to stand in the corner for three hours straight—she reaches out and belts me below my eye, knocking me to the floor. Before she can harm me any further, we hear my father’s car turn into the driveway.

  “Go get cleaned up. You look a mess,” she tells me quickly. I’m well versed in the hide-the-abuse-from-dad game. Not because he cares about me, but because it just gives him more excuse for beating on her. I’m not going to look this particular gift horse in the mouth. I hurry up the stairs, washing my face, seeing the already purpling bruise around my eye. I hear him come in, her accusations and then the yelling starts. I slip into my room, opening the window and crawling out to find refuge on my swing.

  Monday morning I arise early and quickly shower and dress. I set a personal best record for being ready to leave, hurrying down my street and around the corner, where my feet skid to a stop.

  In the drop off spot, Henry stands, leaning against the hood of his car, legs crossed at the ankles, arms folded and head down, looking for all the world as if he’s in for a long wait. As if sensing me watching him, though, he suddenly glances up. When he sees me, a slow smile splits his face; he slowly unfolds and walks toward me.

  “Hey,” he calls, naturally, as if this is a normal occurrence for him to be sitting here.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask suspiciously.

  He laughs.

  “Good morning to you too.”

  I smile and shrug, embarrassed at being rude. “Good morning.” I look at him for a moment, and then ask again, “What are you doing here?”

  He sweeps his hand to indicate the car. “Thought you might like a ride.”

  I shift uneasily.

  “Did you think maybe I walk because I like to?” I ask, somewhat defensively.

  He’s taken aback by that.

  “Really?” he’s baffled. “You like walking that far to school twice a day, every day?”

  I look away, and then give a half-truth.

  “Yeah.” I do like walking most of the time, but only because the alternative is so unappealing. Some days it’s tedious, and sometimes my battered body makes it difficult, but it also gives me me time; time to think, to see, to feel and smell the world without anyone bothering me.

  “Huh,” he huffs, surprised and a little deflated. “Well, I thought maybe your knees…”

  “They feel better now.”

  “Oh,” he seems at a loss. The corners of my mouth lift slightly at his little boy look and I take mercy on him.

  “It was a really nice offer, though. I appreciate it.”

  He still looks a bit pouty, and I can remember the boy he had been in our earlier years in grade school.

  Suddenly he brightens and looks at me.

  “Maybe I could walk with you today. I’ll just leave my car here, and pick it up after school.”

  My brows furrow.

  “But how will you get back here to get it?”

  “I could walk back…with you…you know, if that’s okay….” He trails off and with shock I realize he’s feeling unsure of himself.

  “Okay.” My quiet answer surprises him—me, too, if I’m being honest. He gazes at me for a minute, gauging to see if I’m accepting because I want him along or if I just feel pressured. Whatever he sees in my face satisfies him, and he nods.

  “Alright. Let me grab my books and lock up.” He does that, hurrying back to my side. “Do you have a special route you take?”

  I nod, serious. “Yes, I like to take the one that gets me there.”

  He looks at me for a minute. I can’t keep the grin back. He bursts out laughing.

  “Yeah, I guess that would be a good one.”

  He grabs my books from my arms, lifting his shoulders. “My mom would kill me if she thought I wasn’t being an absolute gentleman for even one second.” Well, that would explain his opening the car door for me.

  He matches his longer stride to mine as we walk. He glances aside at me, opening his mouth to say something. The words never come. He stops abruptly and I stop with him at the alarmed look on his face, glancing behind me to see what has him worried. Has someone seen him walking with me? Looking back at him, I see it’s me he’s staring at.

  “What?” I ask.

  He reaches out, laying his hand lightly on my cheek, thumb lightly skimming just above my cheekbone.

  “You have a black eye.”

  I jerk away from his touch, bringing my own hand up to replace his, covering the side of my face, making my hair a veil between us as I drop my head. I’d mostly forgotten about it. I had covered it with some concealer earlier, though apparently I hadn’t done a very good job.

  “What happened?” I hear the anxiety in his voice.

  “Just being my usual clumsy self,” I lie. “I fell against the doorframe.” The lie rolls easily off my tongue, having told it many times before.

  He reaches out and pulls my hand away, turning my face toward his, examining it with the same care and concentration he used before when he had examined my scraped hands. He looks skeptical about my story, but doesn’t question me further.

  “You need to be more careful,” he chides gently. “Does it hurt?”

  His unfamiliar touch is doing funny things to my head, making it hard to think, so I pull away again and continue walking.

  “No. I had forgotten about it until you mentioned it.” He steps quickly to catch up to me. I can feel his gaze on my face, my cheeks heating up. He’s silent.

  “Does it look that bad?” I ask when the silence lengthens.

  He doesn’t say anything for so long I finally risk a peek at him. He’s looking at me with an intense watchfulness. He sighs.

  “No, it’s really not that easy to see.”

  “You saw it,” I accuse.

  “I’m pretty observant, probably more than what’s normal.”

  We walk in silence for a few minutes.

  “Have you ever thought of becoming a doctor?” I ask.

  He jerks in surprise.

  “What makes you ask that?”

  “I don’t know, you just seem sort of doctor-ish, you know, like today with my eye and last week when you were
cleaning my hands. You just seem really concerned about injuries.”

  He smiles. “Actually, I have thought about that. I’ve thought about it a lot. Enough that I have my schooling planned to send me in that direction. My dad’s a veterinarian, so I’ve spent most of my childhood watching him heal—animals, anyways. I always wanted to be like him, be a vet, you know? But even though I really like most animals, I’m not passionate about them like him, so I thought maybe I’d be better with people.”

  I try to imagine what it would be like to have a dad you admire so much that you want to follow in his footsteps.

  “I remember your mom a little bit,” I tell him. “She always came on field trips, and I remember her being in the classroom for parties and things.”

  “Yeah, she’s a good mom. It’s a good thing I have younger sisters, because she would miss having little kids to spend all her time on.”

  Tightness grips my throat. I vaguely remember my own mom once being like that. What a horrible child I must have been to have killed that kind of caring. I clear my throat, pushing those thoughts away.

  “I remember one sister; your mom always brought her in a stroller. You have more now?”

  “That was my little sister. She’s ten now. I have another sister who’s thirteen. Maybe you don’t remember her because she was in school herself. And I have a little sister who’s three; she was sort of an oops. Pretty embarrassing for a fifteen year-old boy to have a pregnant mom. But, what can you do? Besides, she’s a really cute kid.”

  “No brothers?”

  “No.” He laughs. “My dad says he and I live in an estrogen ocean, which isn’t too bad right now, but just wait until they’ve all hit puberty.”

  I laugh. He looks at me, embarrassed that he said that, then looks away.

  “What about you?” he asks. “Any brothers or sisters?”

  “No,” I say, thinking as always of the little brother I should have had, the little brother who’s death had destroyed my mother.

  I still have memories of life when it was good. That’s both a blessing and a curse, as the saying goes. A blessing because in the darkest of times those are what I cling to, what I dream about and re-imagine my life to be. Sometimes that’s all that keeps me hanging on.

  The curse is that those remembrances also make my life now seem that much bleaker because there was a time when life was light. The darkness began the day my dad lost his job—but really; people lose their jobs every day. Why had it been so traumatic for my father? That’s a question I’ve never had answered.

  In the beginning, my pregnant mother protected me from the worst of my father’s fury. She was the calm in the storm. When we could hear his car coming down the road, she would shuffle me outside to play on my new swing.

  It was there that I found my escape. With the wind blowing through my hair, blue sky above and green grass below, I found flight. I would imagine I was a bird, and that if I could just go high enough, I could let go of the chains and fly far away from the yelling, from the sounds that I refused to let my brain process, but that always resulted in a black eye or cut lip on my mother.

  When she went into premature labor after a particularly violent fight just a few days before Halloween, I was outside trying to reach that magical flight. I had heard my father slam out the front door and drive away when I heard her painfully distressed call for help.

  I ran inside and saw the pool of blood underneath her where she lay on the floor, holding her rounded belly and gasping in pain. About a month earlier some scary looking men had come during the day and taken her car. I couldn’t have driven her anyway, being only nine and small for my age. Having no phone also diminished the options. It was expressly forbidden to go to the neighbors at all. When she slumped to the floor and I couldn’t wake her up, I was desperate. I broke the rule and ran to the house next door.

  The neighbor called 911, but apparently, that was where her help ended. She didn’t even come to the house to see if she could help my mother, and even at that young age I could understand her reluctance to become involved. I would have happily uninvolved myself with my family if I could have.

  Soon there was an ambulance taking her away. No one seemed too concerned that they were leaving a nine-year-old home alone with a large puddle of blood marring the kitchen’s tile floor. I was afraid of my father coming home and seeing the mess, so I found some towels and wiped it up as best as I could. I had never actually used the washing machine myself, but I had seen my mother do it, so I tried to mimic what I remembered and placed the red soaked towels inside, dumping in what seemed like the right amount of soap, and twisting the dial until the water flow began.

  I then pulled the mop and bucket out of the closet and finished cleaning up, scrubbing around the edges of the puddle where the blood had begun to dry in a hard line, until I couldn’t see any remnants of the blood left. My father never did come home that night. He’d received the news somehow and had gone to the hospital. I stayed home alone.

  I’d been out back swinging for quite some time before realizing he wasn’t coming, and neither was she. So I went in, locked the doors and went to bed as if nothing had changed. Noises in the night when you are alone are much more sinister than when you have someone there with you.

  She didn’t come home the next day either, though my father came home briefly to tell me that she would be home the next day. I was surprised that he actually looked somewhat sad and something else—guilty?—when he stopped in. He brought a bag with a hamburger, some greasy fries, and a soda for me; a rare treat that I hadn’t had since before the day he had lost his job. He left and I assumed I would be spending the night alone again.

  However, I was awakened in the dark of the night when he stumbled in. I cowered down under my covers, afraid without the protection of my mother. His footsteps stopped outside my door, and ice crawled over my skin, freezing my body motionless, even my breath. Finally, he stumbled on, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I shook like a fall tree in the wind, unable to control the residual fear, tears running silently down my cheeks. Sleep was a long time coming.

  He did go to the hospital the next day to bring my mother home. When she arrived her stomach was strangely flat, and she did not bring a baby. I was so happy she was home I threw myself against her, wrapping my arms around her waist. But she didn’t hug me back, or even seem to notice I was there.

  “Leave off,” my father commanded roughly, a phrase both of my parents began to use with me quite often. I dropped my arms, looking up with a question. She didn’t even look at me, and I noticed how sad she looked, the corners of her mouth turned down deeply, eyes red and swollen. She walked into the house and lay down on the couch, turning her back toward us, pulling the blanket which hung on the back of the couch over herself, covering her head.

  “Mommy?” I questioned, calling her by the name I hadn’t used in a long time. She ignored me and then I heard her soft cries coming from under the blanket. I looked at my dad, accusingly, which seemed fair since he had been the cause of all her other tears for the last few months.

  He looked at me and I saw guilt flit quickly across his face again, then he looked away and replaced it with his usual scowl.

  “Your mom lost the baby,” he told me.

  Lost it? Shouldn’t we be out looking for it? He must have seen the confusion on my face because he clarified.

  “The baby died. Your mom will be sad for a while so go outside and leave her alone.”

  I was stunned. The baby had died? How did that happen? He glanced at me briefly again, saw the questions on my face and turned away.

  “I’m going out,” he called over his shoulder as he pushed out the front door. I stared after him, tears pricking my eyes. I looked back at the huddled lump on the couch that was silently shaking and did as I had been told; I went outside where my trusty friend the swing waited to take me away.

  “An only child, huh? Bet you’re spoiled.” Henry’s comment jars me back from my bitter m
emories as we walk. A cynical laugh escapes me at his comment. I’m the furthest thing from spoiled there could be. He looks sharply at me.

  “How was the game?” I blurt out, the first thing I can think of to change the subject. He watches me for a few moments longer, though I’m looking at the sidewalk, as if he might read my mind and see the truth.

  “It was okay, I guess. Typical, lots of screaming kids not watching the game at all. It’s more social than anything. I doubt more than a few of the people there could tell you the difference between a touchdown and a field goal.”

  I feel mortification color my cheeks, wondering if he knows that I don’t know myself.

  “I think most of the guys go to watch the cheerleaders, and most of the girls go to watch the football players.”

  He has no idea how great the whole thing sounds to me.

  “And we lost anyway. Next week should be better, though. We play Jefferson.” Jefferson High School is our schools biggest rival, though I never could figure out why they should be a rival more than any other school. “You should come.”

  Sensing the refusal I’m about to issue, he hurriedly jumps in. “Before you say no, just promise to think about it. If it’s an issue with your parents not wanting you to go with a boy, you could just meet me there. I’ll make sure there are girls with us so that you won’t have to lie. I can even get someone to come pick you up—a girl I mean. It doesn’t have to be like a date or anything, if that’s a problem. Just friends, just for fun,” he holds up a hand in supplication. “Just think about it? Please?”

  I don’t want to argue, or have to try to make up an excuse, so I just nod, knowing I’ll have to say no on Friday afternoon. He smiles triumphantly, and I feel bad thinking about having to take away his perceived victory.

  I have to admit, for the rest of the week, I fantasize about it. I imagine telling him yes, see again how it would be, sitting there like everyone else, as they all take for granted, being normal.