Page 3 of The Heart That Breaks
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.
