Dark Heart (Dark Heart 1)

“My angel!”

My father nudges my mom off Bec, resumes CPR.

My mother’s sobbing. She shouts at me, telling me to back away, but no way. I’m talking to her—this will be the last time that I ever tell her anything—and Mom shoves at me again. I scream something at her and her fingernail catches my shoulder near my throat.

“Get out!” Her words are guttural. She means business, but I can’t move. I just can’t, and so my mom is leaning over me and Dad is shouting his counts, Maura weeping. Every time Dad pushes Becca’s chest, her grayish head lolls back.

“Sweet one is gone,” Maura says from somewhere that feels far away as Mom shrieks and my dad slaps Bec’s cheek and growls her name.

None of this can be real.

I get closer so I can stoke her hair, so maybe that’s what she’ll remember as she passes on. She’ll remember that I loved her…so much. “I love you, I love you Becca.”

Her eyelids tremble. Only for a second, they flutter. Her lower lip twitches. I can feel her focus on me, see the parting smile she wants to give me. Then it’s over and my mother must have seen because she’s wailing. She runs into Maura’s arms. My father stops the CPR but quickly starts again.

I can feel it—that she’s gone. Something hot and cold and heavy passes through me. My knees almost buckle and I wonder if the planet might stop spinning.

I can see my mom’s dark red nails as she slaps Becca’s cheek. My sister died!

I hear hushed tones and the crackle of a radio as I flee, dashing to the laundry room for shoes I barely get on my feet. I rush out as paramedics reach the front door. I’m dying as I move. I’m going to die just like my sister.

In the hall, I’m by the elevator. Going down, and I should have some trinket with me. I should have her with me somehow. I put my hand over my throat and close my eyes and spots flare underneath my lids. I’m shorting out. Can people die from pain? I can’t breathe.

You have got to breathe.

I walk out of the building, shaking like a leaf in the breeze. I see the ambulance and hate it, hate it. I rush down a little way and hail a cab and, with a strange and foreign voice, I give the driver an address in Red Hook.* * *Down the dark and sparse streets, through the traffic lights—weak lights—and past the buildings that I know like home. I’m silent. The cab driver is a youngish guy—somewhere between my parents’ age and mine. He’s listening to NPR and wearing good cologne.

Underneath the tunnel, and it’s very surreal. There are places in the burroughs where I’ve never been. Red Hook is one. I wait for it like a meteor or like a savior. Expectation. It looks black and white, broken and dingy. I don’t mind the way it is. My sister’s dead.

Industrial. Train tracks, docks, and narrow streets with buildings that are neither tall nor short but lean a bit, as if they’re thinking of throwing themselves onto sidewalks. A red-light jolt, a squeal of brakes that need new brake pads or new rotors; I don’t know. I don’t know about cars.

My driver says, “You sure about this?”

“Yes.”

He frowns at me in the mirror. I can feel concern, but I don’t want that.

Garages, neighborhood stores with neon window signs, bars on broken windows, old cars parked on curbsides. Narrow streets. I wonder why they are so narrow.

Streetlights, pools of dim light, dirty sidewalks. I feel sad for Luca, but the feeling’s distant. My sister is dead. Tonight she died. Obituaries, caskets. There will be no going back. A jump off of a ledge and falling. I wonder for how long.

Luca’s street is drab and dark and quieter than some others. The cab pulls to the curb, the brakes squeak, and he asks again if I’m sure.

“Thank you. Yes.”

I step out and tilt my head back to look at the building. Four stories. It’s square and brick, with stairs and balconies and doors on the outside, like a horror movie motel. His unit is 104. I laugh; the sound is hollow.

Hi, Luca, my sister’s dead.

His door is right there waiting for me. The zero between the one and four is missing. The door’s wood is warped in one spot. I notice an ashtray in the dirt beside the door. I think of Luca going through that door and can’t imagine.

I knock twice softly before realizing that I can’t. I can’t just show up. What time is it? I remember seeing a 3 on the clock inside the cab. Is it 3 a.m. or something:30?

I sit with my back against the door and draw my knees up to my chest. What if someone bothers me or…gets me? Do teen girls get gotten? Yes, of course they do. All the girls get gotten, isn’t that the story? I’ll be trafficked as a sex slave. I think of riding in a horse trailer and feeling wind come through the slits. Nothing clears the fog from my head. I know I should think of Becca but I can’t. That’s all a dream.