Drooping Heart
I dig my fingers into the bag and keep on digging. Digging until the plastic’s wrapped all the way up my arm and there’s no more room to dig.
I’ve always wanted to swim in mulch potato chips, and here I am. Wafting in maroons and reds. Chomping on chips and slivers and little wrinkles of wood chopped and chipped into perfect imperfection.
“Hey!” The man yells, and I’m back in the courtyard again. Sweating to shit. Arms dripping. Fingers slipping on the tape-wrapped handles of the wheelbarrow’s end. It’s filled way past the brim. Heavier than a boy my size can lift.
“Enough daydreaming. What’re you a little kid?” he asks. Then lobs a fistful of wood chips in his mouth. Stares at me chomping on them while I watch him savor every inch, sucking out all the juices, sloshing all the woodiness around his cheeks and his double chins.
“Drop it here.” He points to a patch of concrete cracks, then spits. The sound slaps me in the ear, and I watch the liquid leak into the cracks.
I lift the barrow and push it toward the spit. His shadow is cold and broken. His chewing scrapes my ears. Squeaks into every crevice. I hate this man. I hate what he stands for. I hate what he is. But most of all, I hate that I don’t have the courage to raise a fist or break a wrist to get out of here. Because this is what it’s always been, and truly, this is what it probably always will be — if I keep on bending to him, that is. Keep on doing everything he says. Every word he speaks, I feel it shrinking my ears. And after fifteen years, mine are half the size of any kid. I wouldn’t know it, but I believe him. I’m too scared. I’m too afraid. I have trouble listening. And it’s only getting worse over here.
The entire neighborhood’s quiet when we’re out planting, and part of me thinks everybody scurries back inside when they hear him. I see the parents and sometimes the kids watching through the window panes. Behind the curtains in their normal little houses with their normal little grins. They’re different than us. Our home is red. Red like mulch. Red like sandstone. Red like sauce that’s too hot in the garden.
“Now fill it in.” He yells.
I tilt the barrow and water the chips in. Watch all the little bits of wood slide out of the bedding into the concrete cracks until it’s filled in.
He reaches into his pocket for the kerchief. The same one he always uses.
“Get over here.”
I stare at the ground.
“Now!” He screams. A snap behind me is a new crack open.
“Goddamnit!” His voice makes it to the end of the culdesac.
The man raises the kerchief to his forehead and dabs it. Tries to calm himself, but he isn’t. He takes a deep breath and coughs instead. The cough is raspy, dry like his skin, and his nose is a jalapeño red.
He takes another breath. Kneels to the ground and sets the kerchief over the patch of wood chips.
“Come here.”
I stare at the ground and walk toward him.
“Look at me.”
I close my eyes and get ready for it.
“LOOK AT ME!” He flames my eyes open and the words sting like a whip. Tears pour down my cheeks, and he screams again so I bend.
My feelings fall like rain on top of the kerchief. So much rain that the linen starts rumbling. Bumbling. Shifting and quaking until a single stem bursts out of the center of the linen. The stem sends so high it smacks me under the chin, then flays open and lets a bushel of five flowered drooping hearts hang over the crack to hide it like it was never even there.
His hand touches my cheek, and I wince. The tears keep falling as he pulls me in.
“I can be emotionless…” He says. Almost like he cares.
“But this is your gift. You have something that I will never understand. Your tears — ”
He pauses.
“Your tears cover up sins.”
