cut-out hearts

Grandma used to say I came from a line of cut-out hearts, like the banner hanging on the walls on Valentine’s Day. The IV bag dripped fluid into her, feeding her in molecules and sugar as she laid on the bed in the nursing home. She asked when she could go home. The doctors told her it would only be a month. But it was six weeks past and her dog was living with me, sleeping on the couch while I was gone.

I let the pills slide down my throat, the rectangular bars that keep me safe. I was hardened powder, two generations of toughened skin, searching for wills and handwritten numbers in notebooks. Grandma showed me the box three months ago, told me to remember and I can’t remember and I don’t want to spiral. Mom spiraled, said she was going to smash into a building and she was taken by someone from the county. I saw her in shelters, between hospitalizations. I’m going to find a job, honey, she said, I’m going to be a good mom. And then Grandma would take me for ice cream, even if it spoiled our dinner. I search for her in hotels, hoping she’ll recognize me, that the thoughts went away, and she’ll be my mom, again. I search for her wherever I go.

I danced to Grandma’s old records, the ones we played when I was a child.  I sat on the chair Leonard made for her, before he was drafted into the Vietnam War, the one she told my grandfather she bought at a furniture store downtown and hung out in the flower-painted vans, stood among historical figures and ate a cherry off a Rolling Stones cake in the album covers. The collection I sorted when Grandma sat in the chair and told me I was coming to live with her. I played some of my own, once, when I decided to stay there during a semester of college.

Some hearts break the chain, like your mom’s. They dangle, collect dust, Grandma said, I found tape in the drawer, and she let me stand on the stool, reaching with my eight-year-old hands. The chain fell to the floor, and it was one last thing I had of my mom.

Grandma bangs the call button against the bed. She asks if I’ve seen the red man, and I say yes, even though he’s a shadow. The red man with his cowboy hat glitching within the glass, trying to step out with his stitched boots. She says he’s not like Leonard. Leonard picked her up in his GTO and took her to the drive-in theater. Leonard shook her dad’s hand and promised to get her home by curfew as she turned each pill bottle around in the bathroom cabinet, checking for her mom’s name and stuffed it in the pocket of her jeans. Two cut-out hearts in her mouth as Leonard kissed her neck in the backseat, the stars talking like Steve McQueen. Two cut-out hearts she crushed with her sandal as she gave Leonard one last kiss before she ran inside.

Pam Avoledo's work can be found at pamavoledo.com.