Our Fragile Hearts

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Piper looked up from eating her cereal. “And you’ll be at the bus stop when I come home like you were yesterday?”

I nodded. “Yes. Just like yesterday.” I wondered if Piper would ask me this question every day or if at some point she’d trust that I’d be there.

We waited at the bus stop in the car because it was raining. The bus was late.

Piper chewed on her nails. “Maybe the bus driver forgot us this morning. If he doesn’t come, can I stay home with you?”

I sighed and turned toward Piper. “No. If he doesn’t come, I’ll take you to school. And quit biting your nails. Girls should have pretty nails. Why don’t we paint yours tonight?”

Piper held out her hands. “Mommy bit her nails.”

I wanted to say that I hoped she wasn’t like Mom, but I stopped myself before the words flew out of my mouth. I was trying to get better at thinking about things before I blurted them out, especially when it came to Piper and Mom. “Still, hands look much prettier when your nails are longer and painted.”

I heard the bus screech before I saw it. I turned toward Piper. “Have a good day. I’ll see you when you get home.”

“And you’ll paint my nails tonight, right?”

“Right.”

I watched Piper run to the bus and board. As it pulled away, I wondered if I was doing the right thing for Piper. Would she have been better off with someone else, living with a family who might have been able to provide her with more than I could?

As soon as I started the car, my cellphone rang. It was the agency.

I coughed. “What? Howard’s dead? Omigod! I was just there and he seemed his normal ornery self.”

“Margaret just called,” Annie said. “Said he passed away in his sleep. She stopped in to check on him and found him in bed.”

“How awful for her.”

“Yeah, she sounded pretty upset.” Annie was a friend of Margaret. “Well, I wanted you to know.”

“Okay, thanks.”

I called Claire as soon as I hung up and told her about Howard. Actually, I needed her to tell me I wasn’t a bad person for feeling relieved I wouldn’t have to navigate his mess of a house ever again.

“It sounds like he went peacefully,” Claire said. “That’s the way I’d want to go.”

“Yeah, I suppose. I pity his daughter, though. She’s the one who has to get rid of all his junk. He’ll probably be the King Hoarder in heaven.”

Claire laughed. “What would he hoard?”

“I don’t know. There has to be something up there to hoard if for no other reason than to make hoarders like Howard feel at home.”

That comment launched us into playful banter over what Howard could hoard.

“Broken hearts,” I said.

“That’s too sad,” Claire said. “Maybe white feathers from wings. Or, I got it! Thongs.”

I laughed. “Thongs? Seriously? They probably don’t wear underwear in heaven. They’re probably underwearless.”

Claire coughed. “Not underwear, dummy! Sandals! The kind you wear on your feet!”

By the time I got off the phone with Claire I was feeling much better. She’s one of the few people who can lighten my mood even when it seems impossible.

I headed to my next cleaning job and met Kenny as I parked in front of his condo. He was pulling out of his driveway and stopped.

“Hi, Rachel,” Kenny said. “Can you do me a favor and throw the laundry into the dryer when it’s done?”

“Sure. Anything else?”

“No, just the usual. And thanks. You’re the best!”

Kenny left for his office and I headed inside. I loved Kenny’s place. It was ultra-contemporary and he had a flair for color. His entry and hallways were a pebble gray with tan undertones that popped with the white wooden trim. And his dining room was the color of an iris.

Kenny’s house was my easiest to clean. The guy was a neat freak. Nothing was out of place. Even the books he kept on his nightstand (all management books) were neatly stacked as if they’d never been read. He was the complete opposite of Howard.

As I cleaned I thought about Howard’s daughter and the mountain of stuff she’d have to go through. Maybe she’d call a junk dealer to remove it. Or rent a giant dumpster that’s dropped off and later picked up when it’s filled. It was sad to think Howard’s life would be defined by the junk he kept. To him, I’m sure it was treasure.

Funny how two people can see the same thing differently. Like the pile of travel magazines that had sprouted beneath Howard’s kitchen table. To me, it was another stack of worthless magazines to clean around. To Howard, it was a window on the world, providing a glimpse of life beyond the quarter acre he inhabited beside a corn field in the rolling countryside of southcentral Pennsylvania.

Did he dream of going to the places he read about? I wondered. Maybe it was his way of seeing places he could never afford to visit. And when I thought about the stack of travel magazines in this way, cleaning around it wasn’t nearly as big of a deal. There was hope and comfort in that stack and for Howard, maybe it was as close to the real thing as he’d ever get.

When I picked Piper up at the bus stop, she was happier than she’d been when I dropped her off. She bounced off the bus and over to me.

“So how was your day?”

“Fun!” She skipped over to the car and I opened the back door so she could crawl in.

“Fun?”

She smiled. “Yeah. Mrs. Baker gave each of us a paper bag with a letter written on it and we had to find items in the room that started with that letter.”

“What was your letter?”

“A, which was easy because I saw an apple on Mrs. Baker’s desk. Jacy had X and she couldn’t find anything, but then I helped her.”

“So what did you find?”

“A xylophone. I saw it on the toy shelf and it looked just like the one in the alphabet book Mommy bought me. It was different colors, like a rainbow.”

“Sounds like a fun game.”

I pulled into the parking space in front of our apartment building and turned off the car. Piper continued talking about the alphabet scavenger hunt. “And tomorrow is letter A day,” she said, opening her backpack and pulling out a piece of light-blue paper. “Mrs. Baker said we’re supposed to bring in an item that starts with the letter A.”

I smiled. “Why don’t you look for something while I take care of some things?”

Piper went to her room and I went to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. I remember when I was in kindergarten. We had alphabet days and most of the time I couldn’t find anything to take. Mom thought it was stupid and never helped me. I will always remember letter V day. I was so proud of myself. I found the letter V on a bottle sitting on the counter. When it was my turn to share what I’d found, Mrs. Marshal’s eyes popped and she grabbed the nearly empty bottle. When I got home, Mom screamed and called me names.

I cowered in the corner. “Please, Mommy. Don’t hit me. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

Mom held up a bottle of vodka and pointed at me. “Don’t you ever take a bottle of my booze to school ever again. Do you hear me? I don’t need them coming around here nosing in our business.”

“But it was letter V day,” I had explained. “And we were supposed to bring something with the letter V on it for show and tell. I didn’t know it was bad.”

“It’s not bad.” Mommy collapsed on the couch. “You’re bad. Now go to your room and stay there. And don’t come out until I tell you to.”

I ran to my room and closed my door. It was the third time that week I’d come home to find Mom drunk. She was a mean drunk, too. She hit me and said things that no parent should ever say to a child.

Later that night, when I was sure she’d fallen asleep, I sneaked into the kitchen. I was hungry and ended up eating some carrots and a banana that was mostly black. The next morning, Mom was still asleep on the couch so I ate some more carrots and another black banana and walked to the bus stop.

Dana, who was a year older than me and lived in the same apartment building, was there. She pointed to my clothes. “You wore that yesterday. And you stink.”

I sniffed. I didn’t think I smelled funny. I smelled like I always smelled. I looked down at my red shirt and black leggings. Dana was right. I hadn’t changed my clothes since putting them on the morning before. But that’s because I didn’t have clean clothes. Mom hadn’t done the laundry in days.

When I got to school, my teacher took me down to the nurse’s office.

“Hi, Rachel,” Mrs. Bee said. “Let’s see if I can find you some nice clothes to wear for the day.”

“But I have clothes.”

“Yes, you do. And they’re very pretty clothes. But aren’t those the clothes you wore yesterday?”

I nodded.

“Well, why don’t we find you clean clothes?”

I could feel my heart beat faster. “But you’ll give back my clothes, right? Because Mommy will hit me if I don’t bring my clothes home.”

“Hit you?”

“Yes. She hits me and then she sends me to my room and doesn’t feed me so I have to sneak out when she falls asleep on the couch.”